How to create a membership site, from the shape of the offer to the platform bill

Published prices, verified

Creating a membership site in five steps

1. Decide what renews. Write down what a member gets in month six that they did not have in month one. If the answer is nothing, you have a course with a subscription price, and it will churn. New content on a schedule, a community that gets more valuable as it grows, or a tool people use weekly are the three shapes that hold members.
2. Choose gated content or community. Gated content (a library, a newsletter archive, templates) needs a paywall and a membership plugin or platform; it scales without your time. Community needs a space, moderation and your presence; it retains better and costs more of your week. Many memberships combine both, and the platform you need is different for each: several vendors in the table serve one shape well and the other only nominally.
3. Pick the platform on its published price and cut. At 50 members paying $20 a month you turn over $1,000; a 10% cut is $100 and a $49 plan with a 4.9% cut is $98. At 500 members the same two platforms cost $1,000 and $539. Use the verified table to run your own member count, and read the vendor's page for what the cut applies to (subscriptions, one-off sales, or both).
4. Set the price and the tiers. Monthly memberships between $10 and $50 are the bulk of the market; annual plans at ten months' price improve cash flow and retention. A founding-member price that stays fixed for early joiners is the launch device that works most often, because it rewards the people who trusted you first without discounting the product.
5. Launch to a list, then to the public. Open to your email list first with a closing date, deliver visibly for a month, then open publicly with testimonials from the founding cohort. A membership launched cold to social traffic rarely reaches the member count that makes the platform bill sensible.

Which platform shape fits which membership

Newsletter-first memberships (a paid weekly issue with an archive) fit the newsletter platforms in the index, where the paywall is native and the cut, where there is one, applies to subscriptions. Course-plus-community memberships fit the all-in-one platforms that bundle courses, a space and payments under one plan. Community-only memberships fit the community platforms, which price on features and members rather than on a cut.

Membership layers for an existing website (a Webflow site, a WordPress site) are their own class: the platform supplies the paywall, the login and the billing, and your site supplies everything else. Their entry plans are low and their cuts fall as you upgrade.

The running costs a membership carries beyond the platform

Card processing (about 3% plus a fixed fee per charge) is charged by Stripe or PayPal on every platform, on top of the vendor's cut; a platform that advertises 0% is quoting its own cut, not the total. Email sending is included by some platforms and metered by others, and a membership that emails members weekly should check the vendor's own limits before choosing.

The cost that matters most is churn. A membership losing 8% of members a month must replace its whole base every year; the platform bill is small beside that, which is why the first step is what renews and the platform comes third.

Common questions

How much does it cost to create a membership site?

The platform is the verified entry plan in the table plus its cut on what members pay, plus card processing. At small member counts a cut-based platform is cheaper; as members grow a fixed plan with a low or zero cut wins. Run your own count against the table.

Do I need a website to start a membership?

No. The newsletter, course and community platforms in the index host the whole membership on their own pages. A membership layer for an existing site is the option when you already have one and want to keep it.

What should a membership site charge?

Most monthly memberships sit between $10 and $50; annual plans at ten months' price retain better. Price on what renews for the member, then check the platform cut applies to subscriptions at that price.

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