A membership website is an ideal way of getting a community of people together. The website owners can share tutorials, media, or any kind of ideas for the chosen ones who join the membership websites. The creation of a good platform with complete support for managing the subscriptions, permissions, and membership is the perfect method to get more customers or clients into the funnel of your business sales.
By offering a lucrative scheme of membership, you can convert the visitors into potential customers, increasing the likelihood of their return to the website, browsing the site for more, and hence boosting the sales. Membership websites can also be an additional line of revenue if you ask for subscription fees. Moreover, a membership website can offer special webinars, newsletters, reports, free shipping, online conferences, a special invitation to the events, discounts, and many more to their associates.
To put up a platform for membership on a website, you will require a dedicated multipurpose CMS website builder with the necessary extensions and features. Most of the membership website builders will simplify and automate the tasks like registration of the new members, processing of the recurring payments, updates of the members’ profile, and many more.
Now to the question is how to create the best membership website with minimum efforts? Well, we are here to answer this question for you and help you to choose the right website builder available in the digital kingdom.
What to look for in a Membership Website Builder
The best membership website builder will not only save your money but also your time and effort. It will create a professional website fast without compelling you to hire an expensive web designer. So before making a final decision in choosing the membership website builder, below are some useful checklists that should be looked for.
- Requirements
Make complete lists of the features that need to be incorporated into the website. Blog, membership plans, and stores for selling products or services are some of the most demanding facilities that an owner wants on their membership website.
- Templates and Customization
To enhance the chances of being your website an exclusive one in the visitor’s eyes, always select that website builder which has multiple templates and many layers of customization features. Customers always get more attracted to those membership websites which do not look exactly like other websites.
- Usability of the Builder
An ideal website builder should be easy to implement and straightforward. It should include an ample number of videos and guides on how to create the best membership website in the shortest possible time.
- Mobile-friendly Website Builder
Since more users are accessing the websites through the mobile, website owners are designing their membership websites with keeping mobile-friendly customers as their top priority. This means you have to select the best mobile-friendly membership website builder that will comply with this twist. Avoid using the templates that do not suit well on the mobile screen. This will also create an adverse effect on the SEO of your website.
- Payment Methods
The total number of payment systems that should be integrated into the membership website builder is extremely vital. Multiple alternatives to payment options will make your customers or visitors feel that your membership website is more user friendly and reliable.
- Should be Able to Insert Your Code
If you are a professional web developer and want to insert your writer programming codes in CSS and HTML, then you should go for those website builders which include this facility.
- Total Number of Administrator Accounts
The total number of administrator accounts is one of the most important aspects of membership website builders. If you have a user database of more than 900 plus members, then it is always best to set up more than one admin account.
List of the Best Membership Website Builder
We have compiled the below list of the finest 5 membership website builders that will suit all your requirements after careful analysis of each one.
Wild Apricot
Wild Apricot is ideal for those owners who want to create a membership website with an unlimited number of admin accounts. This website builder includes various features like membership database, event calendars, registration forms, etc. There are more than 30 mobile-friendly membership related themes in this website builder. The template can be customized by adding a logo, altering the color scheme, or replacing the images or videos. This website builder also allows the user to insert their CSS and HTML code.
Wild Apricot also offers a 30-day free trial so that once the users get familiarized with the features, they can go for the paid version. Each plan of this website builder comes with an SSL certificate and free online customer support. All the features included in wild apricot are particularly targeted towards the member companies and makes it easy for the users to have everything under a single roof.
Unique features that make Wild Apricot, a good choice for your Best Membership website builder?
Let us have a quick look into the unique features of Wild Apricot that makes it the top membership website builder.
- Simple to set up member-only pages
- Multiple payment options like Authorize.net, PayPal, Square, and native payment processors of Wild Apricot are also present in this website builder.
- The website will be available in both OS of Android and iOS for both the admins and the members.
- Widgets like member directories, donation forms, and event calendars can be quickly added to the website.
- Online store for selling the merchandise of the business
- Ready emailing system and membership database make communication easy with the members.
Sub Hub
Sub Hub is one of the simplest builders for developing a membership website. Multiple payments of credit cards, membership levels, set up of recurring subscriptions, drip content, and promo codes can be offered in any template of the membership-related theme in Sub Hub. Sub Hub is mainly popular for offering membership for the online courses, research studies, and premium content of the educational field.
Most of the features offered in the membership centric templates make the management easy and hassle-free for the administrators. There is no necessity to download any third-party plugins that may be a cause of issue for the users. This membership website builder also has numerous payment processors from different countries incorporated into the themes for international companies.
Exclusive features that make Sub Hub, a good choice for your Best Membership website builder?
Below are some of the exclusive features of Sub Hub that make it one of the perfect choices as a membership website builder.
- Only one account of the administrator is allowed.
- Membership forms can be created through third-party widgets.
- Membership features like content for members only page, management of membership, community form, event boards, and recurring subscriptions are included.
- The Pay Per View feature allows the members to spend their money only on those contents which they want to read.
- Various payment processors like PayPal and Stripe are present.
- Member Engagement with a searchable directory of the members, Forum discussions, DISQUS comments and updates from MailChimp newsletters
MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the most premium plug-ins of the renowned website builder which is WordPress. With MemberPress, it is easier to manage and create membership subscriptions and start selling digitally downloaded products. With this plugin, access to various pages, videos, posts, tags, communities, categories, and feeds are given to the members based on the status of their membership.
Options for user flow, content dripping, and other features are present in this plugin. It also provides support for the integration of multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, and MailChimp. MemberPress also allows generating unlimited product pages, coupon modules, different levels of membership, and product groups. The report feature in this plugin goes deep into the business to analyze the problems and reports back to the user to optimize them.
Special features that make MemberPress a good choice for your Best Membership website builder?
The special characteristics of MemberPress that distinguish it from the other website builders are as follows.
- Easy set up to get a WordPress website up and running.
- Authoritative Access Laws give you a fine control on what content the members will see and what products they can purchase. MemberPress restricts the access of pages to the children below a particular age, tags, categories, or any other file present in the WordPress installation.
- Community Forums that is protected by the password set up by the members
- Unlimited Coupons can be generated that makes promotions and giveaways easy. The admin can also control the validity and usage numbers of the coupon.
WishList Member
WishList Member is a fully functional plugin that can transform any WordPress site into a membership website. After the activation of the plugin, the content can be protected with just one click. This website builder can integrate with almost 20 payment providers. It also allows the user to check out the statistics of the total number of members and other data on the dashboard.
Features like the unlimited number of membership levels, and distinguishing each level into a trial, free or paid membership are built-in inside WishList Member. The main motive of this website builder is to enable the members to view the private content, to sell a product or services online, and to allow the users to register themselves to access the premium content.
Reasons that make WishList Member a good choice for your Best Membership website builder?
Let us take a quick glance at the special features of the WishList Member that makes it an ideal option for the membership website builder. They are:
- Easy protection of the content with just a click at various membership levels
- Integration of the famous payment providers like Infusionsoft, PayPal, Clickbank and Stripe for accepting recurring or one-time payment
- Email providers like Keap, AWeber, Sendlane, Constant Contact, GetResponse, Interspire, Maropost, ActiveCampaign, and MailChimp are included for unsubscribing, tagging, and subscribing.
- Trouble-free drip content from one subscription level to another.
- Membership statistics enable convenient viewing to check out the total number of members, in which level they are in, active, canceled and expired memberships and many more
- Secure RSS feeds that allow the members to read their favorite content in the RSS reader.
Memberful
Memberful is software that is implemented to design a community that will drive revenue. The activity of the members, free trials, creations of coupons, and more are some of the most notable features of this website builder. Memberful can be easily integrated into WordPress to create a membership website. You can combine this software with other website builders also, but there will be no single sing in. This means the user can sell membership on the website but he has to share the members-only content either through the email newsletter or the discussion forums.
There is a free plan of Memberful which includes a transaction fee of 10%. In the case of premium plans, the amount drops to almost 4.9%. The download of any files, physical items, integration of analytics, and coupon codes are some of the outstanding facilities of Memberful.
Distinctive Features of Memberful that makes a good choice for your Best Membership website builder?
The distinctive features of Memberful are described below which makes it one of the most favorite membership website builders among the users.
- Dunning and transactional emails with renewal reminder, notification for credit card renewal, password resets, receipts and mane more
- Customized branding through uploading a logo and choosing the colors of the website
- Send gifts to the members by setting up a delivery date and a personalized message.
- Tracking of the Analytics and Conversion rates via charts and metrics
- Upgrading and downgrading of the membership level by the members to alter the subscription plans on their own.
Conclusion
We hope that through this article, we have helped you to clear all your confusion regarding membership website builders. There are numerous ways to craft a membership website builder. By designing a membership website with the user experience and visitor engagement in mind, you will be able to drive more traffic and thus more revenue to it. This is pretty much all we have to say about the membership website builder. Thank you and keep reading!
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