Pick the Best Membership Site Builder to Create Your Membership Site

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If you’re looking for a way to reward your community for their support, you might have thought of setting up memberships with exclusive content.

To do that, you’re going to need a membership website builder, but with so many platforms, it can be tricky to choose the right one.

For that reason, we present to you our top 3 membership website builders and some best practices to optimize your website.

Let’s dive right in!

1. Why should you have a membership site?

Source: Freepik.com

For starters, it’s a source of recurring income that allows you to monetize your content or services online and become financially stable.

You can build an online community and grant exclusive access to reward your most loyal members.

Your members will be the most engaged people in your community, and because they are willing to invest in you, they are more likely to buy from you again.

This makes your membership site a great space for testing new products and services.

Memberships are also very scalable — the more members you get the sooner you can outsource work.

However, the biggest reason why you should create a membership is that it’s an amazing way to build authority and engage with your audience.

With membership sites, you offer support to your members regularly, so you can use this opportunity to build trust, display your expertise, and build long-lasting relationships with them.

1.1. The difference between memberships and subscriptions

Memberships and subscriptions are very similar, but they have one key difference — you don’t have to pay for a membership.

With a subscription website, you have to pay a recurring fee in exchange for a service or product.

Membership sites, on the other hand, are linked to building a community and can have subscription fees, but it’s not mandatory.

For example, take a look at the biggest streaming service in the world, Netflix.

To get access to its service, you need to pick a plan and pay a monthly subscription fee.

You can use the platform for as long as you keep paying — it’s a transactional relationship, nothing more.

Netflix subscription plans

A membership, on the other hand, focuses on giving its members a sense of belonging.

Members can interact with each other, share ideas, form relationships, and help each other grow.

For example, Copyblogger’s membership platform, Copyblogger Academy, offers their members access to training, a monthly masterclass, job opportunities, and channels to contact the Copyblogger team.

Copyblogger Academy’s benefits

Copyblogger Academy helps its members in a more personal way by promising a transformation in their ability as content writers in exchange for a monthly subscription fee.

Copyblogger Academy’s pricing

This is how they can build and grow a solid community with very active members that become their advocates.

Now that you know the difference between these two business methods, there are a few steps to take before you create your first membership site.

2. Set up the foundation for your membership

If you want to get the best out of your memberships, you’ll first need to set up a solid foundation.

To do that, follow these 3 steps:

1. Pick a membership model

2. Create gated content

3. Select a membership software

Keep reading to learn more about them in detail.

2.1. Pick a membership model

Decide what type of membership you want to have before planning its content.

It’s important you do this first — that way you’ll know if you need multiple membership levels or not.

There are 2 types of memberships:

Remember to pick a membership site builder that’ll allow you to set up the type of membership that you have in mind for your business.

After deciding the type of membership to create, you can move on to the most important part — creating the gated content.

2.2. Create gated content

Gated content is the backbone of membership websites and it’s what attracts and keeps new members.

Never launch your membership before creating the content, or you’ll frustrate your members when they don’t get what they paid for immediately.

The exclusive content can be:

Online courses
Members-only pages
Documents
Services
Events
Products
Discounts
Special promotions
Coupon codes

Offering a preview or a free trial can help get non-members excited about the members-only content and motivate them to become one.

Now, there’s one last thing you need to do before you start creating your membership — decide what type of tool you’ll use.

2.3. Select membership software

There are 3 ways to build membership sites:

1. A membership plugin — WordPress users can manage their membership site directly from their dashboard by using membership plugins

(If you pick this option, you’ll need to get a domain name and web hosting for your WordPress membership website.)

2. A membership platform — Many digital platforms come with membership features and a capable content management system

3. A website builder — Some website builders have plans that include built-in membership functionality

There are a vast number of tools available to build a membership website, but there are 4 features that must never be missing:

Segmentation — You should be able to divide members from non-members and manage members based on their tier
Members area — It should let you build your own dedicated page for all your members so that you can directly engage with them
Gated content — Members-only content is the main way for you to profit from your membership
Online payments — Unless you’re giving free memberships, you’ll need a way to integrate a payment gateway

Without these features, it’s going to be very difficult to run a successful membership site.

For that reason, we made a list of our top membership website builders that’ll help you make the most out of your memberships.

3. The 3 best membership site builders

These platforms have the tools you’ll need to build a membership website for your content and community.

3.1. Systeme.io

systeme.io logo

Systeme.io is the best option if you want an all-in-one platform where you can build your own website for your membership.

It also lets you create and offer members-only content, and manage your community, without the need for third-party apps.

Our advanced membership features include:

An intuitive drag-and-drop builder — To build your membership platform in minutes
Segmentation — Divide your members into different groups based on membership tiers
Sell all kinds of products — Offer and sell physical or digital products to your members
Create gated content — Set up different tiers with distinct prices and benefits for your members
Offer dripped access — Use our drip feature to time the moment your members will receive the content

Before selling your membership, you’ll need:

A systeme.io account — To use our platform
An established product — To offer to your members
A sales funnel — To sell your membership (Click here to learn how to build a sales funnel with systeme.io)
An order form — To collect payments

Once you have that in place, follow these steps:

1. In your sales funnel, click on your order form, then click on the (+) button in "Resources"

systeme.io’s sales funnel builder

2. Choose "Membership course" as the resource type, then click on the title of the course you wish to sell

3. Choose the type of access:

a. Full access — Give access to the entire course upon the first payment

b. Drip content — Members get access to your course according to the time you have configured

4. Finally, click on " Save" to save your sales funnel settings

Now, you can use our platform to sell your memberships and online courses and grow your online community.

Interested? Then let's talk about the pricing plans.

We offer 4 plans:

systeme.io’s pricing plans

1. Free — $0/month, for up to 3 sales funnels

2. Startup — $27/month, for up to 10 sales funnels

3. Webinar — $47/month, for up to 50 sales funnels

4. Unlimited — $97/month, for unlimited sales funnels

You can make sales pages with our funnel builder, so the more sales funnels you can build, the more sales pages you can design for your memberships.

Use our Free plan to try our features — it doesn’t matter which plan you pick, you’ll always get unlimited members and storage space for your video courses.

Remember, it’s a Free plan, not a free trial, so you can take your time with us and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

Or, you can sign up now and start experimenting with our membership site features!

3.2. Wix

Wix logo

Wix is a great membership website builder for beginners thanks to its easy interface and drag-and-drop editor.

It’s our second best membership builder because it comes with many dedicated membership features that make setting up your website really simple.

With Wix, you can:

Create a complete members-only area with forums, member cards, and pages
Build different membership pricing plans for members to choose from
Share files and online courses between members
Access the Wix App Market where you can find many apps to integrate into your membership site
Open an online store and sell physical and digital products to your members

However, to receive online payments you’ll need to pick one of their more expensive Business plans.

Another downside is that it doesn't have dedicated membership templates, so you’ll have to customize one yourself.

Wix’s pricing

Wix’s pricing can be broken up into 2 sections: Website Plans or Business and Ecommerce Plans.

We’ll be focusing on the latter.

Their Business plans include:

Business Basic — $17/month for 5 hours of video content
Business Unlimited — $25/month for 10 hours of video content
Business VIP — $35/month for an unlimited amount of video content hours

Wix doesn’t have a free plan and there’s a limit to how many video hours you have unless you purchase the Business VIP plan.

However, all plans will give you secure online payments, recurring payments, unlimited bandwidth, customer accounts, and a custom domain (free for 1 year).

3.3. Squarespace

Squarespace logo

Squarespace is a premium solution for growing an online community and promoting members-only content.

It’s also one of the best membership website builders thanks to its features that make creating a members-only area a simple task.

Squarespace gives you access to:

Dedicated membership templates — Speed up the website creation process
Easy customization — Set up your membership website to receive credit card payments, offer discounts, manage members, and create content for members and non-members
Social media integration — Announce new offers, blog posts, and products to your members with this social share feature
Community forum integration — Build a members-only area or a community forum, but you’ll need to integrate third-party plugins at an extra cost

Like the previous options, you can set up an online store and sell products to your community.

Squarespace’s pricing

Squarespace offers 4 plans:

1. Personal — $19/month

2. Business — $33/month

3. Basic Commerce — $36/month

4. Advanced Commerce — $65/month

If you want a members-only area and ecommerce features, you’ll need to upgrade from the Personal plan, since it doesn’t give you access to any of them.

4. Conclusion

Having a membership site is one of the best ways to monetize your content, build your community, and become an authority in your niche.

However, before building a membership website, you have to select a membership website builder that’ll let you design the place where you’ll run and manage your community.

Of the recommended platforms, systeme.io is the only one that lets you build your membership website for free.

We also have many integrated tools that’ll make running and marketing your memberships an easier process.

You don’t need to pay to get started, just sign up for our Free plan and see how our all-in-one platform can help you build your membership website.

Don’t delay — sign up now!

Other posts about building your membership site:

- Build an Online Community and Influence Your Audience in 5 Easy Steps

- Memberium: Worth the price?

- OptimizePress: Still the Best Choice?

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