Membership platforms we compare

Gated member areas built into Squarespace, so a site you already pay for can sell courses, memberships, and subscriptions.

The membership feature has no standalone price. What you pay is a Squarespace website plan, and the plan you choose changes the transaction fee. We could read the fee tiers but not the plan prices from the pricing page, so any total we produced would be part guess.

What we do know about cost. Transaction fees on digital content and memberships are published as 7% on Basic, 5% on Business, 1% on Commerce, and 0% on Premium. The website plan price sits on top of that and was not retrievable, so the real monthly cost cannot be stated here.

Who it suits. People whose site is already on Squarespace and who want to gate part of it without adding another tool. The 7% fee on the entry plan is the thing to check: at $2,000 a month that is $140, which buys a lot of upgrade.

Paid plans and member areas inside Wix, aimed at people whose website is already there.

Same shape as Squarespace: the membership feature is part of a website plan rather than a product with its own price, and the plans page did not yield readable figures. Quoting a membership cost without the site cost underneath it would be misleading.

What we do know about cost. A paid Wix premium plan is required to accept payments. Plan prices and any transaction fees could not be read from the official plans page during research, so no cost is recorded.

Who it suits. Existing Wix users who want to charge for part of their site. Worth pricing directly against a dedicated tool, because you are paying for a website builder first and a membership system second.

An all-in-one course and community platform with funnels, email, and live sessions, sold at aggressive introductory rates.

The pricing page runs a limited-time 50% discount for the first three months and presents monthly and annual figures in a way we could not reliably separate into a regular monthly price and an annual equivalent. Recording either number as the normal recurring price would have been a guess.

What we do know about cost. Post-promotion figures shown when checked were $47, $97, and $277 a month for Starter, Pro, and Premium, with $0 transaction fees and a branded mobile app add-on at $197 a month. Which of those are monthly versus annual-equivalent could not be resolved.

Who it suits. Course creators comparing all-in-one platforms on price. Worth a direct look, because the headline numbers undercut Kajabi substantially, but read the billing terms carefully before committing.

Paid monthly memberships attached to a YouTube channel, with perks delivered inside YouTube itself.

This is not a platform you run a membership on; it is a feature of an audience platform you do not control. Eligibility depends on YouTube Partner Programme status and channel rules, and access can be withdrawn. Scoring it against tools you actually own would be a category error.

What we do know about cost. There is no subscription. Creators receive 70% of membership revenue after applicable taxes and fees, so YouTube's effective take is 30%, the highest in this catalog. Transaction costs are currently absorbed by YouTube.

Who it suits. Video creators with an established YouTube audience who want memberships where their viewers already are. Conversion is usually better than sending people elsewhere; the 30% cut and the total lack of portability are the price.

Paid tiers inside a Discord server, letting an existing community charge for roles and access without leaving Discord.

Monetisation is a feature of a chat platform you do not control, gated behind Discord's eligibility rules, and the economics change depending on which device a member subscribes from. It belongs in the catalog for people already running a Discord, not in a ranking of platforms you own.

What we do know about cost. No subscription. Discord takes 10% of server subscription revenue on a 90/10 split, with payment processing charged separately. Subscriptions started in the Discord iOS app carry Apple's additional 30%, so the same member can be worth materially less depending on where they subscribe.

Who it suits. People who already run an active Discord and want to charge without moving anyone. The 10% is competitive; the catch is that Discord owns the relationship and the mobile economics are much worse.

A paywall in front of an existing Slack, Discord, or Telegram community, handling signup and access removal.

The pricing page could not be retrieved from any official URL we tried during research. Without a price read at source we will not record one, and without a price it cannot be compared on cost.

What we do know about cost. LaunchPass publicly describes a free tier with a percentage of revenue and paid tiers with lower percentages, but no figure was verifiable at source, so none is recorded.

Who it suits. People running a paid Slack, Discord, or Telegram community who need billing and access control without moving the community anywhere. That is a narrow job it does well, and few of the platforms here do it at all.

A customisable community platform aimed at companies building customer and product communities.

Entry pricing starts at $399 a month for up to 10,000 members and rises to $1,500, and the feature set targets company and customer communities rather than creator memberships. That is a different buyer with different procurement, security, and governance needs, which this tool deliberately does not serve.

What we do know about cost. Starter is $399 a month, or $4,788 a year. Growth is $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year. Premium is quoted. There is no revenue share, because monetising members is not what it is for.

Who it suits. Companies building a customer or product community with SSO, custom CMS, and design control. If you are a solo creator, this is not the shape of tool you are looking for, and the price says so.

A WordPress community and course stack with an optional branded mobile app, sold as a set of annual licences.

Re-attempted on 2026-07-29 and the official pricing page again refused automated retrieval. Figures found elsewhere describe promotional first-year rates and separate app pricing, and BuddyBoss's own material makes clear that introductory and renewal prices differ. Recording a promotional price as the recurring price is exactly the error this audit set out to remove, so it stays catalog-only until the matrix is confirmed at source.

What we do know about cost. The pricing is licence-based and renewal-sensitive: a first-year rate followed by a higher renewal, with the branded mobile app sold as a separate monthly cost. Neither the current plan matrix nor the renewal figures could be verified at source.

Who it suits. WordPress operators who want a full community with a branded app and no revenue share. It is a genuine option for that job and one of very few, which is why it stays in the catalog rather than being dropped.

A premium podcast membership platform used by large publishers, handling private feeds, billing, and retention.

Publishes no pricing at all and routes every enquiry through a demo. Without a verifiable cost it cannot be scored honestly against Supercast or Memberful, both of which publish theirs.

What we do know about cost. No public pricing. Cost is quoted per publisher, which usually signals a platform priced for larger shows and networks rather than individual podcasters.

Who it suits. Established podcasts and networks with enough subscribers to justify a sales conversation. Individual podcasters will find Supercast or Memberful easier to evaluate because they publish their rates.