Setting up a paid membership feature on your website can bring your budding site to a grinding halt. We have years of experience with creating paid membership websites, so we know how complicated it can be. We're breaking that trend.

With Membersify, we have stripped out as much of the complexity as possible to give you a truly turn-key solution to getting your content monetized. What used to take weeks or months now can be done in hours or even minutes. Let's take a look at how it works.

Membersify plugin

The Membersify plugin is free and will need to be installed on your system in order to use the Membersify framework. It can be found on the Downloads page and can be installed just like any other plugin.

API keys

A set of API keys are generated for every site you register on your Dashboard. These keys are used by the Membersify plugin to process payments, create memberships, etc.

Membership plans

Membership plans represent the membership levels in your system. For example, you could have Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels, at different prices. You can configure different settings for each plan, like the emails that are sent when the user purchases a plan, or when a plan is canceled or expires, among numerous other options.

With Membersify, you set the pricing you desire. You can set up the plans to be a one-time payment, where the user pays once to get access for however long the period is (or even set it to never expire). You can also set up recurring payments, where the user will be automatically charged each period until they cancel. With recurring payments, you can optionally configure a trial period and price, even a free trial, after which the user will be automatically charged the regular amount.

Access control

The Membership plans grant the user access to a membership level on your site. The next thing to do is configure what the different levels can see and do on your site. There are many different possibilities here, depending on how you want your site to work. For example, members of a certain level might have access to specific content that is not available to other membership levels or the general public. Or you may want your members to be able to post articles or content on your website. There are a number of tutorials on how to set up different membership systems on the Tutorials page.

Merchant account not needed

Gone are the days when you needed to file for a merchant account with your local bank in order to accept credit cards online. This process alone was a barrier for entry for a number of business models and for people who are just starting out working from their home. They are expensive and can take weeks to get set up and running. That is why we opted to go with Stripe for processing payments. Not only is Stripe one of the cheapest payment processors on the market, but they are also the most user-friendly, both for you as the merchant and for your customers making payments.

To get started with Membersify, you need to link a Stripe account which will be used for accepting payments on your web site. If you don't already have a Stripe account, we will guide you through the creation process, which only take a few minutes and is free. To begin accepting payments with your account, you simply need to link a checking account to your Stripe account, and payments will automatically be transferred to your account after 7 days according to Stripe's policy, giving you quick access to your funds.

As we mentioned before, we will guide you through the Stripe account creation and linking process, so don't worry about this now if you aren't sure what to do.

Security first

While it is always best to use SSL certificates when running a membership site, it isn't needed for processing payments with Membersify. Credit card details are sent directly to Stripe without ever touching your server. This means you don't need to worry about the costly and time-consuming PCI Compliance rules for accepting credit cards online. You also won't have to worry about being hacked and explaining to your customers that their payment information was compromised. Rest easy knowing that your data is secure.

Safe in the Cloud

All of the membership, plans and payments are stored securely in the cloud on Membersify. If for any reason your site crashes and membership data is lost, you can quickly and easily restore it from your account on Membersify.

Pricing

There is no out-of-pocket cost to getting started with Membersify. The plugins are free and open source, and you never pay a monthly fee for using Membersify. We simply charge a low fee for processing the payments and managing the memberships so that you don't have to worry about it.