New Update For Memberships
Last updated: January 27, 2023
At Payhip, we have several different product types to help you run your business – from digital products, physical products, memberships, coaching, courses and bundles.
We introduced memberships back in 2018, and it unfortunately hasn’t got much attention from us for quite a long time. All our energies and focus have been poured into the other product types. This of course means that we’ve been embarrassed by the lack of features included in memberships – it simply wasn’t a good fit for a lot of sellers.
However that ends now, today we’re excited to announce a brand new version of the membership system!
Here’s a video overview of what it looks like to sell memberships with Payhip
What’s new in memberships?
It’s been entirely rebuilt from scratch to help you sell any type of membership to your customers.
With memberships you can now add “Posts” which let you share content with your members in a flexible & interactive way. Some of the post types we support are:
- Text Posts
- Video Posts
- Image Posts
- Link Posts
- Poll Posts
- Embed Posts
Of course you’ll also be able to upload any files you’d like with each membership post. You can also allow your members to comment on posts, building up a community around your membership.
One of the standout features included in memberships is scheduling posts. You’ll be able to draft all your posts in one go, and then schedule the posts to be automatically published later on at a date & time of your choosing.
There’s a lot under the hood which we haven’t mentioned here! We’re excited to be finally releasing the new and improved memberships!
What about my existing members?
If you’ve previously setup a membership product and already have existing members on the old system then nothing would change for them. Your existing members can continue to login to their old accounts and access things the same way they use to.
However you’ll notice now that when you try to add a new membership product you’ll be shown the new system and new members can take advantage of the update.
Next steps
We would encourage you to give the new membership system a go, to get started simply add a new membership product type. We’d love to hear what you think!
Payhip
The easiest way to sell courses, coaching, digital downloads, memberships and physical products.
Comments
56 Comments
Can the old membership be migrated to the new membership, or no?
Hi Dana, unfortunately we can’t migrate the old membership members to the new membership.
I have members who do monthly challenges with me – they sign up each month, along with new members. I create a new product each month for people to sign up under. You’re saying the old members (who already have a login) won’t be able to access the new membership features. If not – What will it look like for them? Will they even be able to sign up for it?
Hi Deanna, hope you don’t mind me jumping in for Abs.
To answer your question: Yes, the old members won’t be able to access new membership features unless they signup for the new membership. Old members can only see the old membership product type. They’ll need to signup with a different email address to access the new membership products. Basically, your existing members will end up with two accounts (old + new) and they just have to log in to their new account going forward to purchase the new challenges each month. Feel free to send us an email at contact@payhip.com if you need further clarification.
This is a great addition to the already amazing payhip platform!
what i’m looking forward to though and i’m sure allot of other payhip users are waiting for is for Payhip to support PayPal subscriptions! Can’t wait for it !
Hi Houd, thank you for the very kind words. I totally agree, this too is definitely important for us and we will eventually implement recurring payments via PayPal.
What a great addition PayPal will be. Stripe is not supported in several countries, mine included. So, thank you. I look forward to it.
We are interested to use payment based on PaPal too. I have all my content, and migrating a lot these next months, except for my membership that still I am using BuyMeACoffee.
In particular, my country does not include in the list authorized of Stripe.
The account is associated but it is not active for that reason .
Hi Oscar, we’ll add you to the list of those who requested for this feature. Payhip is only able to support Stripe for recurring payments at the moment. It’s going to be a bit difficult for us to implement PayPal for subscriptions, but it’s something we definitely plan to work on in the future for sure. 🙂
Thank you for this update. It will be a very important part of my offering. When did this update become functional?
Hi William, this update was released today. 🙂
That’s brilliant!
Now I’d love to see one more thing for memberships. Automated posts! That go out days/weeks etc after they become a member.
Thank you Burk! 🙂
Do you mean scheduled posts: https://help.payhip.com/article/257-membership-scheduling-posts – or posts that go out based on each members signup date?
This looks great, really nice to see these updates coming in to Payhip! Nice work.
P.S. On the docs page https://help.payhip.com/article/249-add-membership-products the line “while the course is still in Draft mode.” — I think “course” should be “membership” here.
Thank you for the kind words Martin! 🙂 And great catch, I have just fixed that now.
Thank you, Abs and Kahin, for this upgrade. Though I’m not selling memberships at this time, I’m going now to blog about this.
Thank you Sandi! 🙏🏻 🙂
Question – I wanted to use PayHip for memberships, but I discovered that my clients couldn’t change their pricing tier themselves, and that if they cancelled, they had to make a whole new account with a different email address. Have these issues been fixed?
Hi Alexis, clients no longer need to use a different email with the new subscription model. They only need to cancel their current subscription before they could resubscribe or change to a different tier. However, if you have existing clients that are subscribed to a membership created using the old subscription model then that would be the case. If you need further clarification, please send us a message at contact@payhip.com.
Great development! I was wondering if you could also look into adding an audio player widget preview in the future. Don’t know if I’m describing it correctly but what I’m basically trying to say is an audio player widget which enables customers to preview products that are in audio format from the product’s list section.
🙂
Hi Ric, there might be a way for you to achieve this using the Embed Code option and adding it as a new section on your page. If you have all your audio previews uploaded as a playlist in a platform such as SoundCloud, you can then embed its iFrame code so that it appears as a widget that enables your customers to get a sneak peek of your audios.
If that’s not what you’re looking for exactly or if you want to know more about the embed code option, send us a message at contact@payhip.com.
As a publishing business owner, and a content creator for several media platforms. I have often considered subscription or membership options for those interested. I don’t have a PATREON or large enough following on other platforms to allow for this, so I am pleased that PAYHIP offers this as part of their usual items. I have long been a proponent of PAYHIP, and this is yet another reason to recommend this platform to others looking for
e-commerce and better services from the web. I have tried all the others, and mostly the cost and lack of ability to upload or sell specific file types or materials have precluded me from continuing with them. PAYHIP has made it as simple and EASY as possible with most every file format available for use or sale.
I have two online businesses that I use here as the main focus of sales and merchandise locations (IE redirects to this page/site) and multiple Facebook pages that also direct here. It is the easiest and most convenient method of e-commerce I can find, and I highly recommend it to others looking to start out in e-commerce.
Hi Robert, thank you so much for your kind words and for all your support! We’re happy to hear that we’ve made the process simple and easy for you to sell your digital products online. That’s exactly the experience we want our sellers to have with our platform.
Thanks again for the recommendation! 🙂
Hi this sounds great will check it out today! Has this new update fixed the email issue please?
Can existing students who have a Payhip account to access the courses they have purchased from us, use the same email address to purchase a membership once we have set it up? Only before this wasn’t possible and they needed to use a different email address.
Hi Sarah, Yes! 🙂 Existing students can use the same email/account to access your membership. We now have a buyer area so they can access all previously purchased products (courses, memberships, digital products, coaching).
Please allow users to review courses. I have a course in Payhip but I don’t see an option for customer to leave a review.
Customers can review products but not courses. It would be very beneficial. Thanks
Hi Juan 🙂 – thank you for the feedback! This is definitely something we will be improving, it’ll take some time but it will happen in the future.
Can we have memberships without linking them to our Stripe or PayPal directly? I mean enable it through PayHip natively, without worrying about VAT taxes and all that business. Just like we do when selling digital products.
Hi Shadi 🙂 , unfortunately a PayPal or Stripe connection is always required, it’s how we’ve built the platform. Other methods of holding onto money and releasing payment has proved to be risky for us.
This is amazing!!! So very excited to to try it out. Kudos!!
Thank you Anita!! 🙂
Whaaaaaa 💛 Have you guys been stalking me on Twitter and Facebook? I just suggested someone (who already has a Payhip site) that their membership for a novel runs through blog posts.
Just wanna say that I’m such a fan of Payhip and you guys have been doing such amazing work between last year and this year. Thank you!
Thank you so much Kelly! 🙏🧡 We try not to stalk too much on Twitter and FB!
This means a lot and it’s what keeps us going!
Once I start a membership program I’ll definitely be using payhip.
Personally I’m not that bothered about PayPal integration…I don’t trust PayPal.
However I would like to see more payment options such as Wise and Crypto options.
As CBDCs roll out across the world over the next year or two an alternative option away from CBDCs (Central Banks Digital Currency) is something I’d personally look for
Hi Mike, we are exploring more payment options and it is our goal to have as many options as we can implement. I have added another vote for Wise and Crypto! 🙂
Thank you so much for all your work!
I would like to ask if the membership system can offer an exclusive discount for members, for example, a 20% discount on any product in the shop.
It is very important for my membership system to offer exclusive discount to members and I would like to ask for your help.
Thanks again!
Hi Yi, that’s something we haven’t thought about yet but it’s a great idea! I’ve added it to our feature request board. 🙂 For now, you would have to create a 20% coupon manually and give these to your members.
Awesome, thanks for all the great work. Supporting crypto payments would be great, and many developing countries don’t have access to Paypal or stripe.
Thank you, Agnes! 🙂 We’re looking for other payment options at the moment so I’ve added Crypto to the list.
Hi, I wanted my members to be able to download products for free (that none members would have to buy). With the old one it looked like you could do this by ticking each product so they could access it. But on the new membership I can’t find anywhere to add downloads for my members or a way to link them to existing products for free.
Hi Alicia, you can still attach files with the new membership by selecting the “Text” post type. However, if you’d like to stick with the old approach that we had with the old memberships product, it might be best for you to set up a bundle product instead. This lets you specify all the digital products (and their files) that your customers should have access to. They can log in to their account and have access to all these free products as a bundle.
GREAT
Hi, I am so excited about the new membership feature! I hadn’t used the old one before because I didn’t have my member forum ready to go. I logged in today to see how to start and wow, here you are with new features that sound great! Perfect timing! I’m not sure if this feature exists or not, but can there be subscription time limits so that they have access for a specific period of time? I’m wanting to set up coaching memberships.
Hi Deidre, glad to hear your excitement over our new update! Please feel free to test it out and give us your feedback. We’d be happy to hear them. We’ve taken note of your request with regards to having subscription time limits. While it’s not something that can be implemented right away, we’ll let you know if or when this becomes available. 🙂
Sensational! Please, please make a membership YT tutorial video. It would be so helpful to see an example in action.
Thank you Annette! We are working on this right now 🙂
Hi there.
Stripe doesn’t support my country either. Please support PayPal for memberships, too.
Thanks!
Jamie
Hi Jamie, it’s on our to-do list and also one of the features we look forward to implementing eventually. 🙂
Hi,
These new membership updates have come at just the right time for me setting on up! I was just wandering though if there was a way of limiting the amount of spaces available on tiers? If not will this be something you do in the future?
Also I love the fact that I can create posts for content which people can comment on. I was just wandering whether there were any plans to add the feature for customers to create their own posts so they could share what they have created from the content without the need to have a separate Facebook group?
Many thanks!
Hi Isobel, we’re happy to hear that! Both are great suggestions and we plan on building something similar in the future. However, there’s no definite timeline as to when we’re able to support such features, unfortunately. We’ll let you know should anything changes about this.
Hi! Is there any way to mark certain digital products as available to members for free? Ko-fi has an option similar to this. It would save the hassle of re-posting each download one by one for members.
Hi there, there’s a new approach with the memberships since it now requires you to upload files to your membership posts. If you’d like to stick with the old approach with the subscriptions (or the old membership product), then it might be best for you to set up a bundle product instead. This lets you specify all the digital products that your customers should have access to. 🙂
can members be added to the membership program manually?
For example, if you would like to offer certain customers a free membership?
or if we received payment through a different payment channel e.g. employee benefit program.
This would be a very important feature for us.
Hi Kimmo! Thank you for contacting us via email. We’ll be providing you with a response soon. 🙂
Hi!
Stripe doesn’t support my country. Have you considered integrating Payoneer for the millions of LATAM freelancers and businesses looking for options through selling memberships and digital products? I would love to hear about it.
Thanks!
Tania
Hi Tania! We definitely get a lot of requests for Payoneer so I’ve added you as another vote for that. I can’t say if/when we might be able to work on that, but please know that it’s on our radar! For now, for one-off payments (rather than subscriptions) you can also use PayPal. See: https://help.payhip.com/article/173-how-do-i-get-paid
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