Memberful was founded in 2013 by Drew Strojny, a former NFL player who transitioned into tech, to help creators, publishers, educators, and others sell memberships and build a recurring income stream for their businesses. By August 2018, the platform was acquired by Patreon.
What is Memberful?
Memberful is a membership platform that allows you to sell subscriptions, distribute content, and build a community with your audience on your own website or app. Creators can launch paid communities while retaining ownership of their content and membership lists. You’ll be able to have your own branded website without paying for external hosting.
How does Memberful work?
Memberful works by allowing you to build a hosted membership site on the platform. You’ll be able to create landing pages, offer protected downloads, share secure and private posts, share exclusive and private podcasts, offer member-only newsletters, and build a community for members to join.
Since it’s hosted on your own website, you’ll have to bring in your own members. If you’re a content creator with followers on social media, you can share links in your Stories or in your bio link to attract new members to join your paid community.
What you need to know about selling on Memberful
Memberful has high transaction fees on top of its monthly subscription. The Standard plan costs $49 per month plus a 4.9% transaction fee. Fortunately, they have an unlimited free trial until you go live. Once you go live and start accepting payments, the fees kick in. Still, you’ll be giving up a lot of your earnings with the fees set at those prices. Overall, there are Memberful alternatives that offer better rates or even no monthly subscription fees.
It’s not an all-in-one platform. You’ll need third-party integrations to use the tools, such as WordPress or Discord. You also won’t have any native built-in tools for community, course, or even website building.
One downside to selling on Memberful is that you can only use Stripe as your payment processor. You’ll be able to accept payments from Apple Pay, Google Pay, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. However, you won’t be able to accept PayPal, which is one of the most popular payment gateways on the market.
You won’t be able to sell other types of products that go well with membership sites. For example, there are no built-in tools for selling digital downloads, courses, coaching services, physical products, software, and more. Overall, if you have a built-in community, you’ll likely want to upsell them other products to help you generate more revenue from your existing audience.
Is Memberful the best platform to sell memberships?
No, Memberful isn’t the best platform to sell memberships; Payhip is. Payhip allows you to sell more than just memberships on your website; you’ll also be able to sell digital downloads like ebooks, courses, coaching services, software, and physical products. Plus, you’ll only pay a 5% transaction fee, with no monthly subscription. Plus, on this all-in-one platform, you’ll be able to fully customize your website and access marketing tools. On top of that, you can choose from over 100 payment gateways, including PayPal. To start selling memberships and more, sign up for free today.