Before discussing how to establish
one, let's return to the fundamentals and define what a membership website
truly is. A membership website is a section of your website that provides
registered visitors with exclusive access to content.
Our
Top Pick:.
·
Wild
Apricot:
Overall Best
·
Kajabi:
Best
for promoting your site.
·
Memberpress:
Best
for turning WordPress site into a membership site
· CMS Hub: Best for organizations and small and mid-sized businesses >>>>
Content:
·
Your
Choice Of A Membership Site Builder
·
The
Top 6 membership Site Builders
Ø
Wild
Apricot
Ø
Kajabi
Ø
MemberPress
(Through Wordpress)
Ø
CMS
Hub
Ø
MemberSpace
Ø
Podia
·
What
exactly is a membership site?
·
Reasons
For Having A Membership Site
·
How
Do Member Sites Work?
·
Your Choice
Of A Membership Site Builder
So,
If you decide to launch a free membership site, all your members will require
is accurate membership information.
Regardless
of the choice you select, a solid membership plugin or platform will have the
following characteristics:
Contact segmentation:
Your selected platform should allow you to separate your contacts into members
and non-members and provide further segmentation options as needed.
Content restriction
is vital for the success of any membership business. It will distinguish
website visitors from members. A membership platform should allow you to
selectively restrict access to content depending on membership status.
User and member pages:
Your platform should provide the creation of membership-related pages and
forms.
The following are desirable but
optional features:
Automated Workflow Function: Whether
it's used to send welcome or renewal emails, an automated workflow function may
save you time.
Payment provider integrations:
If your membership is free, you may not require this integration. If so, this
is a vital skill to possess.
Engagement analytics
may not be necessary if you are already measuring engagement with a service
like Google Analytics. However, other membership platforms provide even more
specific data. If you use other solutions such as Wild Apircot or
CMS Hub, you will not require
third-party connectors. But if you use a plugin or extension, it should connect
effortlessly with your other marketing tools. MemberPress, a plugin for
WordPress, connects with Zapier so that you may connect it to other
applications.
If
you provide several membership levels, you'll need a plugin or platform that
supports many levels and pricing points.
So,
this review of the top 6 membership site builder will guide you understand and
making a choice when it comes to building your membership site.
1. Wild Apricot
Wild
Apricot is another strong membership management system that includes a website
builder as part of its range of software capabilities. This indicates that your
website is integrated with your membership database and an email system,
allowing you to effortlessly track and connect with members.
With Wild Apricot, businesses can:
·
Create a new website using one of twelve
mobile-responsive membership website templates. Personalize your website by
adjusting the colors and fonts to your liking and by using your own domain
name.
·
If you already have a website, you may
incorporate membership-specific functionality via widgets. You may continue to
use your familiar platform, with the added benefits of membership management
capability.
·
Easily modify your website with a
drag-and-drop editor. The interface is comparable to that of Microsoft Word,
allowing users without substantial web design experience to make modifications.
·
Utilize blogs and forums to engage your
community. Add news stories and other multimedia updates to your website to
keep members abreast of recent events. Create member-only or board-only spaces
to promote private talks.
·
Associations, organizations, chambers of
commerce, foundations and charities, clubs and sports clubs, and
educational/training institutions all utilize Wild Apricot to construct
membership websites.
Important characteristics include:
·
Event management capabilities.
·
Real-time database changes performed
automatically.
·
Establish regular membership fees.
·
Include an event calendar on your
website.
·
Check members and event attendance using
QR codes.
·
Guest and waitlist options are
available.
·
Website templates that are
mobile-friendly.
·
Credit card payment integration with
Square.
·
Export your financial information to
Excel or QuickBooks
·
Two distinct mobile applications for
administrators and members.
Wild
Apricot has an email system that links with your company's database, providing
auto-confirmations and reminders. It also assists with advanced contact search,
targeted campaigns, measuring email open rate and status, and more.
You
may also construct an online store with Wild Apricot's builder and themes.
There are features such as online product catalogs, product variation addition,
and member-only pricing.
Rating:
Based on the review from 59 users on Capterra, wild apricot has a rating of 4.5
, signifying the authenticity of Wild Apricot
Pricing:
The Wild Apricot restricted plan is free, while the premium edition begins at $48 per month and scales up based on the amount of contacts kept on the platform. However, the free option does not offer online payments, an online store, or applications. Additionally, they provide savings for multi-chapter accounts.
The
freemium plan does not include online shop, payment, or mobile app options, but
other premium plans include.
My
recommendation is to begin with the free plan. Upgrade to one of their most
popular programs, Group or Community, if you do not have many contacts.
Go To Wild Apricot.>>> Start Your Free Trial >>>
2.Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-inclusive online business
platform that allows you to develop online courses, coaching websites, and
membership sites.
It
provides pre-designed, customisable templates and a drag-and-drop interface for
creating membership sites without prior coding experience.
You
also receive templates for creating landing pages and email marketing campaigns
to promote your membership site and courses. It enables you to deliver one-time
email blasts, automated multi-touch sequences depending on consumer behavior,
event notifications, etc.
Using
the Kajabi membership platform, you may post material without worrying about
storage or bandwidth constraints.
Your
website will be optimized for search engines, making it easily available to
people that need it.
You
are only one article away from understanding how to submit your content and
reduce your dependence on coders.
Cloudflare's
domain provides robust protection for the Kajabi website, making members feel
protected.
The
website of Kajabi employs auto-scaling to maintain a high level of traffic.
It
also includes a visual editor for previewing and customizing your site, as well
as adding components such as countdown clocks and movies. The dashboard also
links your website to your marketing campaigns, emails, landing pages, and
items.
The
membership program also facilitates the creation of automated pipelines
utilizing pre-existing templates and sales funnels. There are several playbooks
and pre-built frameworks for launching any form of membership activity.
These
sales pipelines allow you to lay out and track the travels of your members. In
addition to courses, you can use this application to start your affiliate
network, manage podcasts, and automate your whole sales process.
Users of Kajabi has access to:
•
Private online communal space for members.
•
User forecasting and member progression tracking
•
Integrated CRM to track, segment, and filter members.
•
Kajabi's integrated checkout system grants members access to material behind a
paywall.
•
Kajabi offers promotional vouchers that allow users to gain points.
Create
surveys and quizzes.
•
Sales page editor
•
Video hosting and drip content
•
Ten or more pre-designed product themes
•
Kajabi websites may hold an endless number of videos.
•
With Kajabi, you may deliver information to several individuals concurrently via
email broadcast. An email series feature provides the automatic dissemination
of pertinent information.
•
Kajabi includes a high-converting landing page that can be tailored to your
aesthetic preferences.
•
Additionally, connection with payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe
expedites payments at no extra cost. Kajabi also enables you to configure
several membership levels, such as recurring payment, one-time plan, trial
payment plans, one-click upsells, etc.
•
Additionally, you receive a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices. The
mobile app also includes account recovery via stored progress and single-link
sign-in.
Rating: Based on trustpilots
report,
Pricing:
•
Standard: $119 per month
•
Growth: $159 per month
• Premium: $319 per month
Visit Kajabi >>> Start Free Trial >>>
3.
MemberPress (Through
Wordpress)
This
platform enables you to create a membership site using third-party plugins,
such as Simple Membership and Ultimate Member.
These
plugins are absolutely free to install and allow you to create members-only
content that you can charge for or provide for free to users.
MemberPress is a popular plugin choice for creating a membership site with WordPress.com. This plugin grants you complete control over the rights each member receives. A member who has subscribed for a whole year, for instance, gets access to more gated material than a person whose subscription only lasts one month.
·
MemberPress is a premium WordPress
plugin that makes it simple to build and manage membership memberships and sell
digital download items. MemberPress allows you to provide (or deny) access to
your posts, pages, videos, categories, tags, feeds, communities, and digital
assets depending on a user's membership status.
·
In addition to extensive user flow
choices, content dripping, and other out-of-the-box capabilities, this plugin
enables interfaces with Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and marketing solutions
like as MailChimp.
·
MemberPress is advantageous because you
may freely set content price, content order, copy revisions, appearance
modifications, and product customizations.
·
MemberPress empowers you to decide what
material to sell, how to sell it, and at what price.
·
You may use any theme with MemberPress,
even if it's not available on StudioPress. This tool allows you to tailor your
material to the preferences of your intended audience.
·
MemberPress may be readily linked with
Easy Affiliate, which is advantageous for the profitability of small company
owners.
·
MemberPress has a more sophisticated
reporting system that is streamlined so that members can simply access and
digest accessible material, hence raising relevance ratings.
It
gives complete control over content access rules and allows you to restrict
access depending on membership or paid digital items. You may restrict access
to child pages, posts, custom post kinds, categories, tags, and more.
The
membership plugin also allows you to produce and manage an infinite number of
coupons for promotions and giveaways. There are additional possibilities for
customizing promo codes and controlling their number of uses and expiration
dates.
Rating: Trustpilot
recorded a rating of 4.7 out of 5 for memberpress from a review conducted by 198
users.
Pricing:
MemberPress
includes three annual subscription plans:
·
Basic: $179 per year
·
Plus: $299 per year
·
Pro: $399 per year
All
options offer payment connectors, configurable checkout, content security,
content dripping, course development, and a self-service member dashboard,
among other features. It also offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Visit Memberpress >>> Get Started >>>>
Other notable characteristics
include:
·
Additional MemberPress attributes
·
Manage and monitor membership
subscriptions.
·
Include forums and social communities.
·
Integrates with your existing WordPress
site.
·
Implement API for your payment gateway
configuration.
MemberPress
includes a user handbook with each admin manual that explains how to use
certain features. The MemberPress technical staff is also available for
queries.
MemberPress
is perfect for integrations since it can be quickly connected to current social
media sites. A excellent example is the app Zapier, which can be used to
improve content marketing through advertisements and connection through data
exchange.
Reports
to monitor financial state, sales, and marketing operations.
It
permits the timed delivery of material and the expiry of content access.
Members
can establish, modify, upgrade, or cancel memberships directly on the website.
A
billing system that automatically approves or denies payment based on the
payment status.
MemberPress
has a well-developed and powerful security system that protects it from hackers
and ensures stability when several users access the same data.
MemberPress
allows members to establish, cancel, upgrade, and amend memberships straight
from the website, which immediately updates new information.
You
may restrict pages, custom post kinds, categories, and tags with MemberPress.
MemberPress
also allows you to install and use WordPress forum plugins such as bbPress to
establish your own password-protected community. The Pro version of the
software includes the Affiliate Royale plugin, which facilitates the management
of any affiliate scheme.
Additionally,
it connects with several third-party payment gateways and business applications,
such as PayPal, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, etc. You may also
install additional WordPress themes from businesses such as StudioPress and
WooThemes.
Integration
using custom codes and Zapier allows you to handle data and connect to multiple
goods and services. It also includes a user manual and a support staff to
address questions regarding admin pages or features.
Visit Memberpress >>> Get Started >>>>
4.
CMS
Hub
CMS Hub
is a unique content management system that is completely integrated with
HubSpot's marketing, sales, and service tools as well as CRM. With CMS Hub, you
can utilize HubSpot lists to restrict access to an area of your website to
select groups.
Utilizing HubSpot
HubSpot
includes a chat option where the instructor may freely engage and interact with
the learner to facilitate material sharing.
You
may tailor HubSpot's email to all of your students concurrently, saving time
and enhancing communication reliability.
With
a segmentation list, you may classify your contact list based on the material
they access. Additionally, you may personalize email engagements, page visits,
and lead scores.
Hubspot
features landing pages that increase your marketing approach because they are
often regenerated without the need of engineers.
HubSpot's free CRM
draws novice users since you can get monitoring data to assess their website
behavior. This access in conjunction with the marketing hub facilitates
improved decision-making.
Arrangement
at a certain criterion that triggers the required action makes process
automation tasks more obvious and easy.
Rating: From
the rating and reviews of 1936 hubspot has a rating of 8.7 out of 10 rating scale
(at Tustradius).
Pricing:
Pricing: CMS Hub is offered in
three tiers:
·
Starter ($45 per month),
·
Professional ($800 per month) and
·
Enterprise ($,200 per month)
Additional HubSpot features
The
paid Ad monitoring tool of HubSpot enables you to promote your content via
social media, Facebook, and Google Ads, so making your performance more
digestible.
Hubspot
provides an integration option that allows users to link numerous accounts
across various social media networks in order to draft and modify messages more
effectively.
With
HubSpot, reporting is simplified for reports about your purchase cycle and
interactions, which are enabled on the same platform.
Utilize
Tandem in Hubspot using the free CRM. You have access to the sales and
marketing center, and information is extensively shared amongst teams,
therefore expanding your market. This feature facilitates membership site
platform answers, which is consistent with customer happiness.
Visit Hubspot For More Info >>>
5.
MemberSpace
MemberSpace is a third-party
solution for building membership-protected content on Squarespace, Webnode,
WordPress, and other websites. With MemberSpace, you can fence any of your
pages and choose what members must do to unlock it. It might be as easy as
signing up for your newsletter or paying a subscription fee etc.
MemberSpace
is one of the most secure membership site solutions.
This
security feature instills confidence and enables individuals to produce and
sell online courses by increasing membership.
Promoting
membership helps establish your brand and reputation.
MemberSpace provides all
the features you would expect from a leading membership site platform. When
you adopt them, you promote company success.
These characteristics include:
·
Construction of your path
·
Creating your course website
·
Marketing and selling your content
·
Helping your pupils
·
MemberSpace's attributes and advantages
·
You will have total control over your
material since you have the freedom and flexibility to operate and price your
course company.
·
Automatic onboarding facilitates
communication with students and question management. After course completion,
certificates can also be generated automatically.
·
MemberSpace gives you the ability to
make your website visually appealing without paying for developers or
designers.
·
MemberSpace, a robust, all-inclusive
platform with an intuitive layout and usability, will give you the confidence
to launch your business.
·
Connecting with students on MemberSpace
so that instructors and students connect beyond the traditional course
material.
·
The price structure of MemberSpace
allows students to pay for their courses in installments over a period of many
months.
·
Tutors may build up domains and websites
on third-party hosting systems and then integrate MemberSpace for its online
learning capabilities.
·
MemberSpace is enhanced with tracking
and analytics to monitor the material sold, the learning process, and the
amount of money spent, especially if your audience is enlisted.
Rating:
Pricing:
A
MemberSpace
subscription costs $29 per month in addition to a 4 percent transaction charge
per member.
Visit MemberSpace >>> Try Free Trial >>>
6.
Podia
Podia
is a digital marketplace that enables you to develop and sell membership
content, online courses, digital downloads, and webinars, among other things.
·
It aids you along the whole sales
funnel, including sales page building, email gathering, EU VAT charging, and
payment processing.
·
The website builder allows you to
construct mobile-, tablet-, and desktop-friendly websites with auto-update
capabilities. It operates in the background without compromising corporate
secrecy and allows you to collect all membership payments free of transaction
costs.
·
You may also filter, sort, and export
all purchases, earnings, and customer information. You may take one-time
payments or specify several membership tiers, such as monthly/annual tiers or
trial periods.
·
It also enables you to monetise online
courses, digital programs, and periodic material via a subscription plan, as
well as a free email service.
·
Allow members to remark on and respond
to shared material.
·
Send email alerts when new material is
added.
·
Integrate videos, photos, and social
networking information into membership posts.
·
Connect membership to a Facebook group,
Slack, to unite like-minded individuals via community service.
·
Affiliate scheme for membership
promotion.
·
Add discounts with time and usage
restrictions.
·
Drip feed your material.
·
Option for integrated live chat.
·
Important posts are pinned to the top of
the page.
·
Plan updates in advance.
·
High-conversion checkouts for expedited
payments.
·
Customer help is available 24/7.
·
Combine multiple goods into a single
membership plan.
·
Create personalized pages or posts for
your members.
·
Based on membership level, certain
postings are restricted to "Premium Access."
·
Permit members to view "Public
Posts" via links or search engine indexing.
·
Podia has an email marketing platform
that allows you to send newsletters, develop drip campaigns, and segment
subscribers. You may also monitor your subscribers, email open rate, clicks,
and conversion rate.
·
Podia lacks functionality for learning
routes and the ability to charge a setup fee. However, it may be integrated
with complex technologies such as Zapier, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel,
PayPal, and more.
Rating:
Pricing:
Podia provides Three payment options:
Mover:
$33 per month
Shaker:
$75 per month
Earthquaker:
$166 per month.
Both
subscriptions include seven-day-a-week reports, live Q&A sessions,
messaging, email marketing, webinars, your own website, etc. In addition, they
provide a 14-day free trial period.
Go To Podia >>> Start With The Free Trial >>>
What exactly
is a membership site?
A
membership website is one that only its members have access to. There are
websites that need only a username and password and do not require money. Their
exclusivity is the one thing they have in common. Not everyone has access to
the data. You must be special in some manner, such as paying a price or
obtaining the necessary access credentials.
They
can be in the form of a blog or a forum, in addition to having both free and
paid member sites. Your format choice will be determined by your needs.
Reasons For Having A
Membership Site
It
is a fantastic idea to develop a membership website if you want to increase
your earnings. Here are some of the benefits of owning one.
Dominantly conquer your niche
competitors: If you have a membership site, you will
stand out from those that only give a few e-books to their consumers.
Increase
your revenue from your list: You've probably heard the phrase "the money's
in the list." You'll also want to make as much money as you can from your
list members. A membership website is perfect for this.
Boost client retention:
If your website has outstanding content and you respond to all requests
quickly, a membership site will improve consumer loyalty far more than selling
individual items. This is due to the client seeing you as more approachable.
Membership
websites that include a forum help to develop a sense of community. As a
result, members may not only connect with you, but they can also communicate
with one another. This is a fantastic selling point and an advantage for the
website's owner because it is another feature that will aid to increase
consumer loyalty.
Fantastic list-building technique:
If you want to develop a free membership site or offer free aspects of your
membership site, this might be an excellent way to grow your email list.
Create a passive income:
While internet marketing is a lucrative business, the money can be erratic. A
membership website is a wonderful method to not only generate more money, but
also to increase the stability of the money you do earn.
They don't have to be complicated:
Many people assume that membership websites are complicated. Perhaps not in
every case. There are some straightforward options, such as
autoresponder-delivered unique material.
Let's look at the numbers.
Assume you have a membership site with niche-specific, one-of-a-kind content.
If you charge $19.95 a month and have 100 subscribers, that's roughly $2,000 in
profit, and all you had to do to get it was update the site's content and make
sure it was working correctly.
How Do Member Sites Work?
When
a member pays, they are given access to the site. The technological obstacles
of developing and maintaining a membership site may vary depending on the
structure. You may save time by configuring it with an autoresponder. You can
also have a website with extra features such as a forum, blog, videos, and more
information.
You
must assess your consumer base and identify what they want. For example, if you
are in the health and fitness industry and run a weight loss membership site,
your customers may require different tools than if you ran a blogging
membership site.
Best Membership Website Builders:
Closing Remarks
Each
of our top six membership website builders has been subjected to rigorous
testing, with a focus on design, features, cost, and usability.
Each of these website builders offers a wealth of tools for creating a membership site. If you want to maximize your members-only section and connect with people through forms and online courses, we recommend CMS Hub. Wild Apricot is an attractive option for enhancing the visual appeal of a website without sacrificing an effective members' experience.
Our Top Pick:.
·
Wild Apricot: Overall Best >>>
·
Kajabi: Best
for promoting your site >>>.
·
Memberpress: Best for turning WordPress site into a membership site >>>
· CMS Hub: Best for organizations and small and mid-sized businesses >>>>