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Mar 15, 2023
My copywriting business completely changed when I started to focus on community.
Sure, I was doing good work and having a nice time before, but building a name for myself and nurturing a group of loyal followers has opened so many doors. It’s boosted my industry authority, led to bigger and better projects and has helped me secure a reliable and stable income.
It all started when I quit my job and moved to Spain to freelance. All of a sudden, I was getting countless emails a week from people who wanted to do the same. I love helping other people out, but it was becoming a huge time-suck trying to respond to each and every question.
So I had a brainwave: Create a course that answered all these questions and helped people do what I did. Simple.
I began my search for a membership site where I could host my course. At the time (we’re talking five years ago), I received a lot of recommendations for Teachable. It served its purpose, but there are now a ton of new options available that have lots more features and are geared toward different industries, memberships, and content formats.
In this article, I’ll be reviewing some of the best membership website builders, highlighting which kind of creators they’re best for, and laying bare their pros and cons. Whether you’re looking to offer online yoga classes, writing courses, private coaching sessions, paid newsletters, or downloadables, there’s a membership builder for you.
When I started creating courses and memberships, there weren’t a lot of options. Website builders weren’t really offering membership add-ons and, if they were, they were clunky and not particularly geared toward the new wave of online businesses.
There were plenty of dedicated membership sites, though—Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia, and Teachery were all options, but Teachable seemed to fit my needs and budget best at the time.
These platforms were created specifically for hosting courses and memberships, so their interfaces have everything you might need, but they can often be limited behind the scenes. For example, the backend of Teachable looks pretty much the same for every membership site, bar the branded colors and logos you can upload yourself.
This is the backend of my Pitch & Prosper course—the only thing I have control over is the button and accent color and logo.
It’s the same for most of these other dedicated platforms. They have everything you need to create complex membership programs, but they fall short when it comes to making them look the way you’d like them to look.
It can also be a headache hosting your membership separately from your website and having to constantly switch between the two. At least if you have your website and membership program in the same place, you’re able to get a comprehensive view of your analytics, conversion rates, and other key metrics that would otherwise be spread out over different platforms.
If you want full control of the backend of your membership program and want to keep all your metrics in one place, a website builder might be a better option. Here are my top picks.
Squarespace is a popular website builder among the creator and entrepreneur crowd because you can build a beautiful, functioning site without an iota of design or development acumen.
Grow Well Coaching uses Squarespace’s Members Area for its coaching programs.
The drag-and-drop interface and the library of pre-made templates are an attractive selling point for creators who want to get set up quickly–or for those already using Squarespace for their sites–but it comes at a price. Squarespace takes 7% of each transaction for creators on the Starter package (less if you pay more each month). It’s not cheap, but that’s the price you pay for a quick and easy setup.
I use Squarespace for one of my sites (Copy Revival) and can confirm it’s pretty robust for creators who don’t need complicated backends and who just want a site that looks good (lightyears apart from my WordPress site that I’ve had to hire a handful of designers and developers for over the years!). The Members Area add-on makes it easy to sell courses, programs, classes, and paid content behind the scenes.
Passero Cooking School runs its classes through Squarespace.
Creators who are already using the platform (it’s far less hassle migrating across and you can keep members in one place) and who provide simple courses and programs, like virtual classes and one-time resources. It doesn’t quite have the functionality for complex, multi-module courses yet.
Read our Squarespace review and get started for free.
Wix was voted our best website builder for 2023 for multiple reasons. There are plenty of templates that cater to a wealth of industries, there’s a super simple drag-and-drop interface, and it’s easy to grapple with the editor even if you’re not particularly internet savvy. I actually helped my mum set up a Wix site for her offline business. Calling her a tech-phobe is a massive understatement, so it’s a testament to Wix that she’s now able to manage and update the site herself without any problems.
Wix helps you customize your membership program based on your unique needs.
Wix’s membership feature is fueled by the Wix Bookings app. Integrating it with your existing Wix site (or with a brand new Wix site) lets you set up a membership site in the backend and sell either packages or ongoing membership bundles.
Creators who are selling classes or products that can be bundled together. For example, fitness instructors selling blocks of online classes, or coaches offering a set number of sessions. In fact, my mum could probably make good use of Wix’s membership add-on for her psychotherapy sessions.
HERoines uses Wix to promote and host its member events.
Read our Wix review and get started for free.
I use Weebly for my main website (LizzieDavey.com) which I set up about 10 years ago when Weebly was ahead of its time. Today, it feels a little clunky, but it’s still eager to keep up with the bigger names. The good thing about Weebly is it’s cheap. I pay $10 a month for a handful of features, so there’s that.
The backend of Weebly’s membership feature.
There are also some useful features, especially for creators who want an uncomplicated and simple backend. For example, you can segment members into groups based on their loyalty levels (I would love this option in Teachable) and it’s also really easy for members to sign up (again, something I would love to have on Teachable, which adds barriers to entry by asking students to create a Teachable account first).
Creators who want cheap and easy! Weebly has a barebones membership site which would be a good fit for downloads, one-time resources, and hosting live classes. Despite it being super simple to use, it’s probably not the best option for larger, more complex offerings like courses and masterminds.
Our Table uses Weebly to run its community membership program.
Read our Weebly review and get started for free.
WordPress is the don of website creation and I’ve created my fair share of sites there over the years (Freelance Magic is a WordPress site). It takes a little more getting used to than the drag-and-drop options out there, but it is far more robust and has much more powerful capabilities than the others. In fact, it’s my go-to site builder when I want to create an all-singing, all-dancing website that I know will get increasingly complicated over time.
My favorite part? The plugins.
Plugins are what make WordPress so flexible since they often require very little design and development acumen but can help you customize your site in any way you want.
DPM offers its audience different membership tiers through the MemberPress plugin.
If you want to create a membership program on WordPress, you’ll need a trusty plugin. MemberPress is the most popular. Once you’ve integrated it with your WordPress backend, you can run courses, sell subscriptions, send paid newsletters, and create a members-only portal for your site. This is fantastic if you already have a WordPress site (which many people do!) since you can just tack on the plugin and go.
Creators who are already using WordPress or who need a complex builder to suit their membership needs. But the sheer range of plugins means that pretty much anyone who wants to create a membership site of some kind can do so fairly easily with WordPress—it might just take a bit of time to play around with the options until you find something that works well for you.
Read our WordPress review and get started for free.
HubSpot is inherently a CRM, but it offers a wide range of marketing automation tools, as well as its own website builder. You can customize your site by segmenting members into different sub-groups and delivering content specifically for them—kind of like account-based marketing.
The membership feature is powerful, particularly if you’re selling B2B services and products. For example, you can provide updates to different segments and different times, like sellers, leads, and internal stakeholders, which means you can personalize the entire lead generation experience from start to finish.
The Room uses HubSpot CMS Hub as a place to bring together its brands and influencers.
B2B brands with different audiences. The segmentation capabilities are really what set this apart from the other membership sites here and it’s great for delivering marketing materials to leads (ABM style!) and nurturing existing customers in different segments.
Read our HubSpot CMS Hub review and get started for free.
Wild Apricot is the wildcard here (pun very much intended). It’s a lesser-known membership site but competes with the big guns thanks to its selection of powerful features.
Unlike the other sites listed here that cater to all sorts of online businesses, Wild Apricot has carved a niche for itself as a membership site for offline organizations–we’re talking non-profits, business associations, charities, and community organizations that run regular events and have a healthy number of members (the backend lets you welcome and manage up to 15,000 members). It also has handy localization features for promoting events in your area and it lets you easily recruit members and run online courses and classes too.
Clarksburg Wine Growers & Vintners uses Wild Apricot to build a community.
Compared to the others here, Wild Apricot is more of a traditional membership site, complete with a renewals feature, event reminders, and easy communication between members.
Local organizations, businesses, and charities that run events, live classes, and workshops for lots of members. Think local street parties, marathons, and local interest events that want to provide an online element to a mostly offline audience.
Get started with Wild Apricot.
Memberspace is less of a standalone website builder and more of an add-on to existing websites. It’s ideal for creators without a lot of design and development experience because it doesn’t need any coding—plus, you can integrate it with the CMS you’re already using without the hassle of switching over.
Ladies of Real Estate uses Memberspace to host its collection of downloadable templates.
The best part is it was built specifically for creators, publishers, and educators, so it has lots of ideal features for these types of businesses. It also has a pretty robust ecosystem for upsells, cross-sells, and tiered offers so you can create a complex and comprehensive membership program (and make more sales while you’re at it!). I’d love a simpler way to add upsells and different levels of membership on Teachable.
Most use cases! The robust features can support small creators selling membership libraries, paid newsletters, and one-off live classes, to bigger brands selling complex courses with multiple levels of membership.
Cave Day uses Memberspace to host its members-only work sessions.
I use GoDaddy for some of my domain names, but it also has a website builder. If you do a little bit of research, you’ll see that it’s received some flack in the past for being too restrictive, but the latest version aims to quash those negative reviews with a modern interface and a totally free plan.
The membership option is only available at a basic level. So, while it does enable member accounts, you can only create private pages and give permission to certain people rather than host courses and live events. Great if you’ve got a simple idea in mind, but not so great if you have big plans for your membership program.
Women Working in Technology uses GoDaddy to share its workshops and events.
Creators who are already using a GoDaddy website or who only need a basic membership site for an affordable price. If you simply need a private page to direct paying customers to, this can be a great cost-effective option.
Read our GoDaddy review and get started for free.
There weren’t a lot of options when I was looking for a membership website builder five years ago. Today, you have a ton of choices—so it’s important to choose wisely!
Consider the type of membership program you want to run and use that to determine what features you’ll need and what platform is the best fit for you. For example, I needed a membership site where I could run multi-module courses, but you might need something a little simpler if you’re selling one-off classes or paid-for downloads.
There’s a reason Squarespace and Wix are our top picks. Both builders offer highly-customizable membership areas that make it easy to add content with drag-and-drop interfaces and beautiful templates. Look for builders that can grow with you, too. It can be a headache having to migrate everything you’ve worked so hard to build onto another platform if you suddenly feel restricted by the features available to you.
Please let me know if you have any feedback about creating a membership site!
