Is Squarespace the Best Membership Site Builder? (Complete Review)

Both let you:

Before you pick a method, be aware that Member Areas is pretty new compared to MemberSpace, which has been the go-to plugin for Squarespace users since 2015.

After this, you can simply customize the design of your membership website and add members.

That’s all you need to know to set up a membership area with these tools, but before you choose one, let’s look at their pros and cons.

Even though these membership platforms are pretty similar, they have some advantages and disadvantages that you should consider.

First, let's take a look at Squarespace Member Areas:

Now, let's look at MemberSpace:

Now that you know how to set up a membership site on your Squarespace website, as well as the pros and cons of both membership options, let’s look at the features they offer.

Below we’ll compare the most essential features of Member Areas and MemberSpace, and their prices to see which adjusts better to your needs and budget.

This is the backbone of your membership, without it, there’s nothing you can offer your members.

Your membership content has to be protected behind a wall that only allows members to see its content.

Even though both tools let you create members-only content, Member Areas loses in content protection.

With Member Areas, members can access your membership offerings and share them with non-members by simply sending them the link.

MemberSpace will require users to log in and become a member the moment they try to see the content.

Also, Squarespace won’t host your videos, so you’ll need to use YouTube or Vimeo, which can also influence your content’s safety.

We recommend picking Vimeo because YouTube content can also be shared with non-members by sending them a link. Any video that isn't "Public" on Vimeo is only visible to its owner and members.

Non-members don't have access to it.

You get the same benefits with both membership platforms.

For example, you can create:

Payment plans are a great feature because they can make a paid membership more accessible.

MemberSpace lets you offer unlimited payment options per plan, while Member Areas only lets you have one.

To accept payments, both tools let you use Stripe, but only Members Area integrates with PayPal.

If you want to offer a free trial or have prerequisites for member approval, you’ll have to pick MemberSpace because these options aren’t available in Member Areas.

Squarespace Member Areas is also limited when creating different membership plans.

Every time you want to have an offer in a different membership plan, you’ll need to re-create your content instead of simply sharing access.

This will increase the number of member areas and also your billing.

This feature lets you give special discounts and coupons to specific members or memberships tiers.

You can use this as a way to reward specific paid members that have been supporting you for a while or to motivate new visitors to become members by offering a discount on their first month.

This will make the membership fee less intimidating to new visitors.

Luckily, MemberSpace and Member Areas have this feature, so you can create discounts and promotions for your members with either of them.

With this feature you can engage with your members, give them free value, inform them about updates, and launch email campaigns to promote new membership offerings.

Member Areas can connect with Squarespace Email Campaigns, so it has some email marketing capabilities, such as:

Squarespace’s email features come at an extra cost and is very limited in terms of customization in comparison to MemberSpace — which gives you more control, but requires HTML coding knowledge.

If email customization is your top priority, Member Areas is the better option in this category.

To have a membership site in Squarespace, you’ll first have to purchase one of the above plans and then purchase a membership site tool:

All plans include:

All plans have:

Keep in mind that:

Now, all you have to do is choose the option that gives you the benefits that you’re looking for.

Before you decide to build your membership website on Squarespace, you should keep reading to see some of the most frequently asked questions from users.

If you want a platform that has all the features to build, launch, and maintain a successful membership website, then we have a Squarespace Member Areas alternative for you — systeme.io!

To build a membership site with systeme.io, you’ll need:

Once you have all the pieces together, you can sell your membership.

To do that, follow these steps:

Now that you know how to set up membership sites with systeme.io, let’s look at what it’s going to cost you.

You get unlimited storage and students in all of our plans, so you can build your membership pages for absolutely free.

And since it’s a Free plan and not a Free trial, you don’t have to be in a hurry to see how everything works — take your time and migrate to us when you’re ready.

By taking a look into Squarespace’s membership features we learned that Member Areas is still behind MemberSpace.

This means that if you want to use the best membership tool you’ll need to pay for the Squarespace platform and the plugin to do what systeme.io can do for free.

As an all-in-one alternative, systeme.io offers you everything you need to build your membership in one place and at one price without any third-party tools.

You won’t even need to pay from the beginning — you can set everything up, test our tools, grow your community, and then upgrade to get more benefits.

Sounds great, right? Sign up and see it for yourself!