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In this article, we’ll take a look at one of the most popular ways to turn your website into a membership site – MemberSpace.
MemberSpace claims that they give an easy-to-use solution to those who want to develop a membership aspect to their website. Here, we’ll give a MemberSpace review and see if the platform is right for you.
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MemberSpace Review Summary
What is MemberSpace? MemberSpace is a great tool for small business owners who can turn their SquareSpace, Weebly, Wix site into a membership site.
Pros:
– Easy-to-use
– Flexible pricing
– All the basic features to get started
Cons:
– Only basic features
– Not ideal for bigger businesses
– Hosting a membership platform on your website can slow your site down
Summary: MemberSpace is the perfect tool for small business owners to start and build a community around their work.
Why Membership Sites?
There’s plenty of ways you can earn revenue from a blog. You can use ads, affiliate marketing, or sell products. However, if you’re an online business owner, a membership site can be a great way to build a community and earn income from your content.
Basically, you gate some of your content that members can access for a monthly fee.
This is great for premium content. Or, you can even create online courses and gate those in your course.
The Problem…
The first problem that comes up when you’re looking at creating an online course or membership site on your own website is how you’re going to do it. The thing is, there’s plenty of different options if you need to create an online course or membership platform on a pre-existing website.
The thing is, it can get a bit funky adding locked pages and whatnot to your site. And, for most plug-and-play options, you need quite a bit of understanding about the deeper corners of WordPress (or whatever your site is hosted on).
Although, these options really depend on how you host your site. If you have a Squarespace or Wix site, it will be a lot more difficult to create a membership site. There simply aren’t the opportunities that you get on other CMS providers.
The Solution
MemberSpace gives users an easy-to-use way to create a paid membership platform on their site, no matter what it’s hosted on.
The Pros of MemberSpace
There’s a lot to like about MemberSpace. In this section, we’ll take a look at the best parts of using the platform.
MemberSpace Works on All Popular CMS Options
One thing that can be tricky when it comes to plugins and whatnot is that you can be locked in with your content management system (CMS).
For example, if your site is on Wix and you want to switch to WordPress (note, if you’re on Wix, you should definitely move to WordPress) your membership content may not switch over.
One of the benefits of MemberSpace is that they integrate with pretty much every popular CMS including:
- Squarespace
- WordPress (the .com version)
- Wix
- Weebly
- Duda
- Custom HTML options
They’re also soon to launch options for Shopify, HubSpot, Ghost, and Carrd. So no matter what CMS you use, there’s an option for you.
It’s Easy to Use
MemberSpace prides itself on being an easy platform to use. The thing when it comes to most high-tech solutions like membership platforms is all the headaches that come with it – not to mention the cost of developers who you’ll need to pay to fix those headaches.
MemberSpace on the other hand, is simple enough that anyone can run their own site.
MemberSpace Allows You To Drip Content
One thing that can be a bit of a mess when it comes to membership sites is the people who come in early, download everything they need, and then leaves before the free trial ends.
Or, imagine how overwhelming it would be to be a new customer to an older membership site and see hundreds of resources on the site. You wouldn’t know where to start!
A way around these problems is to drip some of your content out. When you “drip” your content, you release small parts at certain times, rather than everything all at once.
So, if you’re creating a membership site and a course on how to play guitar, you might drip your content out like this:
- Week One: Release introduction and lesson one
- Week Two: Release lessons two and three
- Week Three: Release lesson four
And so on…
MemberSpace will allow you to drip release your content so no matter when you register, you’ll still follow the same drip sequence.
Basically that means if one customer registers in December and another starts in June, they’ll have the same initial experience.
However, if you do drip content out, it’s best to make that known before people sign up for your program. Some people like to learn with everything out in front of them from the beginning. Others will log in for the first time and see a basically empty site and instantly ask for a refund.
The Best Squarespace Membership Site Platform
We kinda mentioned it before, but it deserves it’s own feature. If you have a Squarespace site, then MemberSpace is the best tool for membership or course creation platforms.
Squarespace doesn’t have a lot of options when it comes to membership platforms, but MemberSpace is easily the best on offer.
Amazing Customer Service
One thing I’ve noticed with my dealings with MemberSpace is customer service. It’s second to none.
However, I wasn’t sure if I was lucky or not, so I checked some other reviews online and I found that many had the same positive experience that I’ve had. Here are just one of the customer reviews.
Solid customer support is vital when it comes to tech platforms. The last thing you want is to log in for the first time, get stuck on something and feel like you’re on your own.
What Could be Improved
There’s no such thing as a perfect tool. Here are a few things that could be improved.
However, what you’ll see in this list is the problems that I find with MemberSpace are not unique; every close alternative will have similar limitations.
- Putting all the extra code on your site can slow it down. Site speed is incredibly important when it comes to creating a positive user experience and generating a good user experience is the key to a good membership site. However, this is the case with every other add-on
- MemberSpace is a good basic membership platform, but it’s just that – basic. Don’t expect all the features (forums and live video for example) that you’d get with Teachable or any other dedicated course creation platform
- Some other users have noticed a lack of customization with emails you can send to subscribers
Basically, if you find the above to be deal-breakers you should look to a platform that is specially designed for course creation and membership. There’s going to be more information about alternatives below.
MemberSpace Pricing
When it comes to pricing, MemberSpace has a few different options.
As you can see, there are different tiers you can use for your MemberSpace account. All of the tiers are based on lowering the transaction fee. The fee starts at 4% if you’re on the beginner plan, and goes all the way down to 0.5% on the Unlimited plan.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of transaction fees. However, one thing I will say is that MemberSpace also has free automatic lost payment collection. So, if a member’s card expires and payment doesn’t go through, MemberSpace will follow that up for you. Likewise, if someone gets to your checkout page and leaves. These little follow-ups can easily cover the transaction fee cost.
MemberSpace Alternatives
There are a few different alternatives to MemberSpace out there. If you’d like to check out to see how it compares to Teachable, check out our MemberSpace vs Teachable article. Otherwise, see how it compares to other platforms below.
MemberSpace vs MemberStack
MemberStack is a similar platform to MemberSpace. There are a few things that MemberSpace offers that MemberStack doesn’t like access to Wix and Weebly. However, if you’re a SquareSpace user, you can use either.
Basically, it just comes down to personal preference here. I like MemberSpace.
MemberSpace vs Podia
Podia is a great online course creation tool for beginners with an easy-to-use interface and a bunch of cool features.
Unlike MemberSpace, it’s a standalone platform, so you don’t have to put in on your pre-existing site. Some see this as a positive while others see it as a negative.
It’s important to know that Podia is an online course tool only. So the best option really depends on what you want to do. If you want to create a course (and was planning on using MemberSpace for that), I’d actually use Podia instead.
However, if you did want to use more membership features, then stick with MemberSpace.
MemberSpace vs Kajabi
Kajabi is a bit of an all-in-one platform when it comes to online businesses. You can create a website, blog, membership and course all with the one tool. However, it is far more expensive than any other option mentioned here. You’ll have to check out Kajabi for yourself to see if it’s worth it for you.
Final Verdict
If you’re a small business, who uses page builders for your site, then you’ll love MemberSpace. It has a bunch of features and integration that’ll quickly turn your site into a membership platform and let you start earning revenue.
