If you want your online business to succeed, you must choose the right membership site platform. The top membership site platforms can assist you with user acquisition to payment processing. I selected and reviewed the 12 best membership site platforms in this guide so you can choose the right one for you.
What is a membership website?
A membership website provides members with access to restricted information and exclusive advantages. These privileges include special reports, newsletters, webinars, online courses, unique invitations to conferences and events, and free shipping. Many businesses, organizations, clubs, and other groups have membership websites to attract interested and loyal people.
Membership and subscription websites are sometimes confused, yet they provide distinct experiences. Let’s look at the significant distinctions in more detail.
Membership Vs. Subscription Websites
Membership and subscription websites are similar but not identical. Customers can join a club on a membership website or pay to utilize a product or service for a specific length of time on a subscription website. The financial contract that a subscription website demands defines it. On the other hand, a membership site may or may not require a subscription.
For example, you might pay a monthly fee to Netflix for unlimited access to their TV and movie offerings.
On the other hand, you can join Sephora.com and become a “Beauty Insider.”
You’ll have access to beauty seminars, exclusive trial-size products and packages, and exclusive offers as a member (e.g., a free birthday gift). Membership does not entail any fees, although you may receive rewards for increased spending. Access to your benefits requires the submission of your contact information and logging in with your unique credentials.
You can use a dedicated membership website builder or a multi-purpose CMS with the needed capabilities and extensions to create a gate for members or subscribers on your site. Using these platforms, you can also automate or make it easier to sign up new subscribers or members, process recurring payments, update member profiles in one place, and send out newsletters and other mailings.
What to Look for in the Best Membership Platform?
To choose your company’s ideal membership site platform, you must first know what to search for. As a result, you should list the things necessary for developing a membership site and your requirements.
Hosted Solution vs. WordPress Plugin
You won’t have to worry about technical issues like hosting, site speed, maintenance, or security because you’ll be using a hosted platform. On the other hand, building a membership on WordPress necessitates a higher level of technical knowledge. However, you gain a lot more functionality, flexibility, and adaptability.
So, hosted membership website builders are better for the average person who doesn’t know much about technology. I only recommend using WordPress if you have special needs that none of the hosted platforms can meet.
“Content and engagement”
All of the leading membership gurus, including Stu McLaren’s Tribe program, advise integrating various content types and delivery forms into your membership, and your platform should support this. For instance, you may only provide a single piece of material each month (or week), or you could add some online courses. You can also use videos, audio files, live coaching calls, newsletters, blog posts, downloadable checklists, and other types of content delivery. Apart from the material, creators’ memberships include several learning and engagement options, and you may need to use one or more of them:
- Drip Feed: You might want to release it on a timetable rather than providing immediate access to all of your content.
- Quizzes and Certificates: If your membership is focused on a specific topic (for example, cybersecurity), resources like quizzes, assignments, and certificates may be helpful.
- Gamification Tools: If your main goal is to increase engagement, gamifying your membership and rewarding members with badges and points is a brilliant idea.
Community Area
Creating a community is a fantastic way to increase member engagement, and it’s often a big selling point for membership sites. While some designers choose to have a community area on their website, others prefer to use something like a Facebook group.
Furthermore, many memberships include a private community as a primary benefit, necessitating the use of more powerful community features. It would help if you decided on the path you wish to take and selected a membership platform accordingly.
Membership Pricing
Your platform should be able to offer the following elements when it comes to membership pricing:
- Is it possible to set up a monthly or annual subscription on the platform? Is it possible to purchase a subscription on a weekly or quarterly basis?
- Can you quickly build numerous membership tiers and assign different materials to each? Is it possible to effortlessly migrate users between levels on the platform?
- Can you set up a free (or paid) trial for your membership site?
- Can you charge a one-time membership setup fee?
These are some of the most popular price elements used by successful membership sites, but you may have other needs, so be sure your platform can accommodate them. Lastly, your membership software should work with many third-party apps, such as email marketing services (ConvertKit), payment processors (Stripe), and analytics tools. Don’t forget to factor in your budget and the amount of customer service you require. Let’s look at the 13 finest membership site platforms and how they may assist you in launching an online membership.
The Top 12 Membership Site Platforms in 2023
1. Kajabi
Kajabi is a one-stop shop for creating, selling, managing, and marketing high-quality membership programs. It has a drag-and-drop website builder, a landing page maker, responsive website templates, and complete member administration, among other membership features.
Kajabi’s main advantage is that it makes membership programs simple, even for non-technical users with no coding experience. It provides pre-built sales and marketing funnels for various businesses, including membership sites. Kajabi gives you a sequence of pages, opt-in forms, landing pages, and course pages after you choose a membership site template. After that, all you have to do is upload your material and begin selling your package.
Kajabi also has powerful email marketing and automation capabilities. For example, you may use it to automatically categorize your users based on their behavior and involvement and apply tags to help you organize them better. You can also use automated email campaigns and sequences to get people interested in your products and get the word out about new ones. Kajabi’s email marketing and automation tools are detailed on this page. Kajabi allows you to create distinct member roles and access slabs for better member management. This lets you sell your program to a broader range of people and gives you more ways to make money.
Kajabi accepts payments through PayPal and Stripe. Stripe also allows you to set up recurring payments and installments. Kajabi is a feature-rich membership platform that makes managing and advertising membership programs easier.
2. Massive Networks
Mighty Networks is a complete membership site and community-building platform that stands out from the rest of the list. It lets you set up private membership communities that can be free or paid, and it gives you a lot of ways to interact with your audience. Your members, for example, get a Facebook-style timeline to see the community admins’ and other approved members’ posts, videos, courses, and other updates.
An example of a Facebook-style timeline from MightNetworks. You can use Zoom or YouTube Live to launch courses, on-demand content, or live webinars. Mighty Networks can also be used to create small communities for students in certain classes or programs. You can also use polls, native video, audio, and other posting forms to engage your audience successfully.
Your Mighty Networks community is hosted on your private domain, so you can change the look and feel to match your brand. Might Networks now only takes payments through Stripe, and you can offer your customers full, partial, and recurring fees.
3. MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the most popular WordPress membership site plugins, with over a billion dollars in revenue from memberships, online courses, and digital products its customers sell. It’s a simple membership site builder with all the features you need to create, manage, and develop online subscription programs.
It can be used to construct membership programs, sell gated material, provide limited-time access to content, or sell entire online courses. It also gives you complete control over who can see your content by limiting access to posts, pages, videos, categories, tags, feeds, communities, digital files, and more based on which memberships your visitors have.
You can also use MemberPress to create and manage member-only communities and forums. Any popular forum platform can add the community function to your WordPress site, and MemberPress can be used to control access. It also works with leading email marketing and lead generation software to help you sell your membership program more efficiently.
You may combine MemberPress with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net for payments. This lets you accept credit card and debit card payments and costs in installments, one-time charges, and fees that keep coming back. Features like drip content delivery, discount coupons, course development and LMS tools, price pages that can be customized, and compatibility with all common WordPress themes are all useful.
Overall, MemberPress is a comprehensive WordPress membership site builder that covers all the bases.
4. MemberSpace
MemberSpace is a well-known membership site platform that lets you make any element of your website members-only. It allows you to establish gated content on your website while maintaining complete control.
For example, you could make a couple of video tutorials on a topic available for free and then charge for the rest. Create a full-fledged membership site with different access levels and user roles. MemberSpace isn’t just for WordPress users. It works with other major CMS platforms, including Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, HubSpot, and custom-built websites.
You can use it to distribute drip material to your consumers, give limited-time content, or build membership tiers. It also contains several conversion-boosting tools, including automated emails for abandoned transactions, upsells, alternative products when a product is unavailable, and payment reminders. For payments, MemberSpace only accepts Stripe. Once you connect your Stripe account to MemberSpace, you can get full, partial, and recurring costs on your membership site.
5. Kartra
Kartra is a membership platform with content development, user administration, and advanced marketing capabilities. It’s an all-in-one membership platform that lets you manage customized membership programs and offer online courses. You can sell online courses, digital downloads, and various membership programs using Kartra. It comes with a drag-and-drop website builder and different responsive website themes that can be used to make landing pages and course websites.
Drip content, download restrictions, video controls, gated content, and more features allow you complete control over your material. On the other hand, Kartra’s marketing and sales tools let you quickly find relevant users and turn them into leads and customers. For example, it has one of the most significant sales funnel builders in the online course platform market. It lets you make funnels with landing pages, email sequences, videos, and independent opt-in forms.
It also includes an email marketing system integrated with its landing sites, products, and content, among other things. So, you can quickly track what users do, make custom campaigns, and tag different people based on how they act. Kartra’s video player is another outstanding feature that allows you to insert CTAs, apply annotations, and track user activity while watching videos. Overall, Kartra is a robust membership platform for eLearning companies and entrepreneurs with large audiences.
6. Thinkific
Another well-known platform for selling online courses, membership sites, and digital downloads is Thinkific. It’s ideal for creating closed-monthly membership clubs, drip content courses, and continuous training programs. Thinkific’s strength is its simple user interface and beginner-friendly features, making it easy for non-technical people to sell memberships and classes online. It takes classes and lessons in many different formats, such as videos, audio files, PDFs, webinars, etc.
It also includes various student evaluation tools, such as questionnaires, mandatory and optional assignments, and numerous quiz formats. In the same way, you could give successful students certificates of completion of a course to encourage and motivate them. You can make video completion mandatory and video downloads unavailable to boost content engagement.
Because of its superior course development features and easy user interface, Thinkific is still among the best membership management solutions but lacks the marketing features of Kartra or Kajabi.
Zenler No. 7
Zenler is yet another platform for creating high-quality online courses and subscription programs. It’s a great alternative to Kajabi and Kartra because it has many membership site features and advanced marketing and automation tools.
You can use Zenler to make gated content and subscription programs for members-only that include online courses, learning tracks, and video, audio, and PDF lessons that can be taken on their own. It’s a simple solution with an excellent user interface and many features for developing and selling courses and memberships.
Curriculum selection on the NewZenler page Zenler also includes an email marketing and funnel-building toolkit. You may develop email sequences and funnels from scratch for various business purposes or utilize pre-designed funnel templates.
You also get sophisticated member administration tools, such as assigning different user roles, tagging users, and individually or in groups enabling or disabling content access. Overall, Zenler is a robust platform for membership sites that works well for growing and scaling large subscription programs.
8. Wix
Wix isn’t your typical online course platform or membership site builder. Instead, it’s a popular content management system (CMS) and website builder that allows you to add a member’s area to your site.
So, why would you utilize Wix to create a membership program? It can help you make beautiful websites, landing pages, blog pages, and other pages with unique content for your membership site. It also lets you accept total and recurring payments from customers via PayPal, Stripe, AliPay, and other services. Wix’s Memberships and Packages page
Once you’ve created a members section on your Wix site, you can create content pages with videos, text, music, PDFs, and other material formats. You may also connect your site to popular email marketing platforms and marketing and business apps.
9. Uscreen
Uscreen is a multi-purpose, all-in-one platform that allows video artists to manage their whole video business from a single location. It lets you grow your streaming service by hosting all the content you want to offer your members, including VOD and live streaming.
Uscreen allows you to create your streaming service similar to Netflix, completely controlling every aspect. All Uscreen plans include hosting for videos, a website right out of the box, an unlimited number of built-in features, and more than 2,000 third-party connectors.
Uscreen has everything you need to make money from your content through subscriptions, such as lead generation tools, landing pages, the ability to create apps for mobile devices and TVs, and analytics.
10. Podia
The last membership site platform on our list is Podia. That doesn’t make it any less spectacular than the other solutions we’ve looked at thus far. In fact, because of its value for money, I consider it to be one of the most fantastic membership site platforms. Podia is a powerful eLearning platform that can build a wide range of content and membership sites. It also has a powerful email marketing and automation package to market efficiently and sells your membership programs without paying for a third-party email service.
Podia allows you to have an unlimited number of consumers and membership options. You can also set up as many user roles as you want and give each one a different content access level. Videos, audio files, digital downloads, written lessons, and photographs can all be used to create content.
Podia is an all-in-one membership solution for small-to-medium-sized subscription programs.
11. CMS Hub
HubSpot CMS Hub is a unique content management system that works with HubSpot’s marketing, sales, service tools, and CRM. You may use HubSpot lists with CMS Hub to restrict access to an area of your site to specific groups.
You can generate various forms of membership-based content with HubSpot, whether providing product updates to current customers, pricing offers to prospects or web pages in many languages to a worldwide audience. That way, you can give visitors to your site a unique experience without installing plugins or other software.
12. MemberPress
MemberPress is a premium WordPress plugin for creating and managing membership subscriptions and selling digital download products. Members can access your articles, pages, videos, categories, tags, feeds, communities, and digital files based on their membership status with MemberPress.
This plugin lets you connect to Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and marketing services like MailChimp. It also gives you advanced user flow options, content dripping, and other features right out of the box.
Conclusion
That concludes my list of the most effective membership website platforms. One of the best ways to make money and improve the customer experience is to offer paid content and subscription options.
