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The Best Membership Site Platforms & Software (2023 Reviews & Rankings)
With the best membership site platforms and tools, you can build a profitable online community for sharing your expertise.
Membership sites are those where people subscribe to receive content periodically, and in return, they pay a certain fee for this content. You can imagine membership sites as gated access for online classes and materials and the only way to gain access is through a paid membership.
Membership sites offer many benefits for creators and users.
One of the biggest reasons for creators to run membership sites is to get a steady revenue from it.
Moreover, membership sites offer a platform for creators to share their knowledge with their world and gain a reputation as a respected source of information.
For users, it provides an opportunity to expand their knowledge incrementally instead of cramming down everything in one go. Due to these many benefits, membership sites are popular.
As a creator, you might wonder how to create a membership site in the first place. The good news is all that you need is knowledge and content as there are many software platforms to make your dream a reality.
In this article, let’s look at a few of the best membership site platforms and software, so you can decide the one that best meets your needs.
Table of Contents
Kajabi - Best Overall
Kajabi is a comprehensive platform for building and selling any kind of digital content including courses, memberships, drip content, webinars, study materials, and more, without ever worrying about coding and broken integrations.
The highlight of Kajabi is its automations which make it easy for users of all technical levels to create and sell membership sites.
Let’s now look at a few areas of Kajabi’s automation.
Funnels
Kajabi comes with a wide range of sales and marketing funnels for membership sites. All that you have to do is select a membership site template and choose from the many opt-in forms, checkout pages, and other landing pages that Kajabi offers. Simply add your content and start selling through the existing marketing automation. Setting up doesn’t get easier than this.
Email Marketing
The existing automations in email marketing greatly reduce your marketing efforts. At the outset, you can automate audience segmentation based on specific actions taken by different users. Based on this segmentation, you can automate the process of sending appropriate emails, and boost the conversion rates through them.
Analytics
Analytics is an important part of assessing the performance of your marketing sites. Kajabi offers in-depth analytics on the source of your visits, the conversion rates of different campaigns, and other pertinent information that can help you to customize your efforts for improved results.
Overall, Kajabi is a good choice for effortlessly creating and selling membership sites. Make sure to leverage its automations for successful marketing.
Our Kajabi review has more details on the platform.
Pricing
Kajabi pricing includes three different plans:
- Basic – $119/month billed annually or $149/month billed monthly.
- Growth – $159/month billed annually or $199/month billed monthly.
- Pro – $319/month billed annually or $399/month billed monthly.
Mighty Networks - Best Flexibility
Mighty Networks is one of the most flexible platforms available today for creating membership sites and engaging with your members.
The highlight of this platform is that it allows open and closed membership communities to give your audience wide choices on what they want to join. Note that open and closed membership communities can be paid or free, depending on your revenue model.
Here’s a look at some more features of Mighty Networks.
Interactive for Members
Mighty Networks goes beyond just providing content to members and strives to create an interesting and interactive environment for your members. This is why it offers a Facebook-style interface where members can see posts, updates, videos, and any other material posted by authorized users and members. They can even use this forum to interact with each other. All these features are sure to keep your members interested in your portal.
Stay Engaged with Members
You can create any type of posts such as videos, polls, courses, updates, images, and more to stay engaged with your audience. Furthermore, there’s no limit on the kind of digital content you can create and sell. Some examples of content are webinars, on-demand courses, mini-courses, study material, and just about anything you want to share and sell.
Customization Options
With Mighty Networks, you can customize the look and feel of your website. It also offers many templates and themes as a starting point, and from hereon, you can change every element to meet your business needs and member preferences.
Overall, Mighty Networks is a good choice for creating membership sites and keeping an entire community engaged through it.
Pricing
Mighty Networks pricing includes these three plans:
- The Community Plan – $33/month paid annually or $39 paid monthly.
- The Business Plan – $99/month paid annually or $119 paid monthly.
- Mighty Pro – Request a quote.
Thinkific - Best User Experience
Thinkific is a popular choice for generating steady revenue through membership sites. Its strength lies in the intuitive and simple user experience it offers for your viewers.
Needless to say, such an experience will bring more members to your sites and will keep them well-engaged.
Moreover, it is easy to set up and doesn’t require extensive knowledge and experience, thereby making it ideal for anyone to quickly build membership sites.
Here’s a look at the features that make Thinkific a good choice to build an engaged audience.
Member Dashboard
Thinkific’s user interface is designed with the student/member in mind. In particular, the member dashboard provides a glimpse into all the activities that an individual has done in the past including enrolling in courses, attending webinars, and more.
User Interface for Creators
Thinkific’s user interface is designed not just for members but also for creators. Such an intuitive interface and a streamlined dashboard ensure that you are always on top of your earnings and progress. Further, you can better understand how your students are faring, their preferences, and other information that can help you to improve your offerings and through it, your revenue.
Interactive
The other big thing about Thinkific is its Facebook-style feed that tells a member what’s going on within his or her community. It provides a glimpse into what other members in his or her network are up to, and any new courses or digital content in the offing. This feed is customized based on a user’s preference and past behavior.
In all, Thinkific is a streamlined platform that strives to provide an enjoyable creating experience for creators and a memorable learning experience for students.
Our Thinkific review has more info on its various features.
Pricing
Thinkific pricing includes four different options:
- Free
- Basic – $39/month billed annually or $49/month billed monthly.
- Pro – $79/month billed annually or $99/month billed monthly.
- Premier – $399/month billed annually or $499/month billed monthly.
Kartra - All-in-One Membership Platform
Kartra is an online digital content platform that focuses extensively on membership sites.
It comes packed with many features such as easy content creation, sharing, selling, marketing, and more.
You can even run multiple membership programs, each customized for a different audience.
Here are some features that make Kartra a comprehensive choice for membership sites.
Extensive Control
Kartra gives creators like you complete control over the content and progress of your membership sites. You can set up drip content with just a few clicks, prohibit downloads, lock video controls, include a paywall for your content, and more. This means you’re always in control of what’s happening on your membership sites.
Marketing
This platform comes with a host of marketing features that enables you to share your knowledge with the world and earn from it. A noteworthy aspect is its automation capabilities. You can create many funnels with multiple landing pages, opt-in forms, and more to attract audiences to your site. You can even leverage multiple channels like paid marketing, organic search, etc, to increase your membership base.
Email Marketing
Like other marketing capabilities, your email marketing can also be automated using funnels and filters. This makes it easy to stay engaged with your members, track their learning progress, add tags, send personalized messages, and more. All these measures help you to boost revenue without a ton of effort.
Overall, Kartra is a platform that’s best geared for membership sites.
Our Kartra review has a lot more details on the platform.
Pricing
Kartra pricing includes four different plans:
- Starter – $79/month billed annually or $99/month billed monthly.
- Silver – $149/month billed annually or $199/month billed monthly.
- Gold – $229/month billed annually or $299/month billed monthly.
- Platinum -$379/month billed annually or $499/month billed monthly.
Podia - Best Value for Money
Podia is a budget alternative to some of the other options we discussed in this article, but nevertheless, it comes packed with a ton of features to build and sell high-performing membership sites.
This robust platform has no limits on the membership sites you can create and sell.
In other words, you can create unlimited membership sites with unlimited members and membership levels. Each site can have its own content, pricing, content, and community.
Below are more features that help you get the most bang for your money.
Social Integrations
You can link your membership site with popular social media sites like Facebook or even Slack as an incentive for your paying members to interact within a closed group only. They also get a custom feed that they can comment on or like, to give a social media feel to the interface.
Seamless Checkout
Another highlight of Podia is it supports a one-click and seamless checkout process that greatly increases the conversion rate for your buyers. Moreover, it allows you to upsell, cross-sell, and bundle your offerings for a wider reach. You can even offer discounts and coupons to promote your membership sites. It supports giving a free trial to users to get a glimpse of your content before they pay a membership fee.
Furthermore, Podia accepts payments in many forms, and you can charge your clients monthly or annually as well.
Control over Content Delivery
Podia gives complete control over your content delivery, so you can decide what content you want to provide and when. With Podia, you can publish members-only content to bring more visitors into your membership base. Likewise, you can pin posts, schedule content in advance, provide a sneak peek into upcoming content, and more. You’re only limited by your imagination and business goals.
In all, Podia makes it easy to create aesthetically appealing and feature-rich membership sites where you have complete control over content delivery, marketing, and billing. Also, all these features are available at affordable rates, thereby making Podia a great value for your money.
Our Podia review has a lot more details about all of its pros and cons.
Pricing
Podia pricing includes a few different plans:
- Free
- Mover – $33/month billed annually or $39/month billed monthly.
- Shaker – $75/month billed annually or $89/month billed monthly.
- Earthquaker – $166/month billed annually or $199/month billed monthly.
Final Thoughts
To recap, membership sites present a wonderful opportunity to earn a steady income by sharing your knowledge and experience with the world.
However, choosing the appropriate software platform is essential to get your site up and running quickly and with minimal effort. Also, built-in marketing and sales features can come in handy to promote your membership site and build your user community.
The above-mentioned membership site platforms are the best in the industry today. Besides custom membership sites, you can also use the platforms mentioned in this article to run online courses and deliver other forms of digital content.
That said, each of these platforms comes with its pros and cons, so make sure to pick the one that best matches your goals.
Have any questions about our guide to the best membership platforms? Let us know by commenting below.