Websites · Glossary
What is a membership site?
A membership site is a website where some content, courses or community spaces are open only to members. People join a free tier or pay for a tier billed monthly or yearly, sign in, and the site checks their tier on every gated page. When a paid membership lapses or is cancelled, access closes at the end of the period.
A membership site is a set of access rules tied to a recurring payment. The videos, lessons or forum are only half of it; the other half is knowing, on every page, who is entitled to see what today.
Nuwan Madhusanka · Co-founder
5 min read · Published
| Access | Who has it | What they get | How the site checks it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Anyone who joins with an account | Sample lessons, newsletters, some posts | A joined record for the person |
| Paid tier | Monthly or yearly subscribers | The full library and new content | Active subscription, period end in the future |
| Course access | Members of the tier the course belongs to | Lessons in order with progress ticks | The course's tier against the member's tier |
| Community access | Usually paid members | Posts, replies and member profiles | Same tier check on every post and reply |
What makes a site a membership site
Three things: accounts, tiers and gates. Accounts let a person sign in so the site knows who is asking. Tiers describe what each kind of member gets, such as a free tier with sample lessons and a paid tier with the full library. Gates are the checks on each page, lesson or post that compare the person's tier with what the content requires. Everything else is packaging. A yoga studio's on demand classes, a professional association's resource library, a writer's paid essays and a coaching group's private forum are all membership sites, even though one looks like a video catalogue and another like a discussion board. What they share is that the business is selling continued access rather than a single item, which changes how pricing, cancellations and support work compared with a shop.
How tiers and access checks work
A paid tier is normally a recurring price at a payment provider, monthly or yearly, and a subscription record that says which tier a person holds, its status and when the current period ends. When a member opens a gated lesson, the site asks one question: does this person have an active subscription to a tier that includes this content, with a period end still in the future? A free tier is simpler, often just a row saying the person joined. Courses add structure on top: a course belongs to a tier or to every member, lessons sit in order, a few are marked as free previews to show non members what they would get, and a progress record ticks off what each member finished. Renewals and failed payments are handled by the payment provider, which tells the site when a status changes so access follows automatically rather than by hand.
When membership fits a business
Membership suits businesses whose value keeps arriving: new classes each week, a growing library, a community where members help each other, or regular expert content. It fits poorly when the product is a one off, such as a single course people finish in a weekend; selling that once is usually clearer and earns more goodwill than a subscription people forget to cancel. A rough check is whether you can name what a member gets next month that they did not have this month. If you can, recurring billing matches the value. Pricing usually starts with a monthly option for people who want to try it and a yearly option at roughly ten months' price for committed members. A free tier helps when people need to sample the teaching style or the community before paying, and it doubles as a mailing list of interested people.
Common mistakes
Gating content only in the page layout, so a lesson's text or video address is still readable by anyone who looks at the network requests. Hosting member videos on public links that circulate once shared. Making cancelling harder than joining, which breeds chargebacks and, in many countries, regulator attention. Launching with no free previews, so visitors cannot judge quality before paying. Building a large library before anyone has paid, rather than starting small and adding what members ask for. Forgetting the yearly members' renewal date and surprising them with a large charge without a reminder. And treating the community as an afterthought: a forum with no posts from the owner in its first weeks looks abandoned, and members judge the whole membership by it.
Where it shows up in OneCraft
Ask for a membership site when generating a site and the AI builds it into the site's own database from its memberships guide: paid tiers as rows of a plans table with their benefits, an optional free tier people join from the membership page, courses and lessons with free previews, locks and Mark complete, and an account page with Manage billing. Lesson videos are YouTube or Vimeo links. The gate is a database rule that checks the person's subscription status and period end, and the AI checks lesson access as an anonymous visitor and as a signed in person before the step can finish. Paid tiers use Stripe on the owner's connected account, with a platform fee of 2, 1 or 0.5 percent depending on the OneCraft plan; the free plan cannot take payments. A phone app gets a Learn tab with the same screens.
Questions people ask
Should a membership site have a free tier?
A free tier works when people need to try the teaching or the community before paying, and it gives the business a list of interested people to talk to. Keep it clearly smaller than the paid tier, such as a few lessons or read only access to the community, so it shows the value without replacing the reason to upgrade.
What happens to a member when a card payment fails?
The payment provider usually retries the card over several days and marks the subscription past due. Good practice is to keep access during the retries, tell the member how to update their card, and close access only once the subscription is cancelled. Cutting access at the first failure punishes members whose card simply expired.
How do I stop members sharing one login?
You cannot stop it entirely, but you can make it less attractive. Personal progress, a profile name shown in the community and a billing page tied to the account all make a shared login awkward. Some sites limit active sessions. Most small membership businesses find that pricing fairly loses less than policing hard.
Do I need a separate course platform for a membership?
Not always. A site with accounts, tiers, ordered lessons and progress covers most small course needs. A dedicated course platform adds things such as quizzes, certificates, drip schedules and affiliate tools. Start by listing what members will actually use in the first six months and choose the simpler option if it covers that list.
Can I move existing members from another platform?
Usually, but payments are the hard part. Member details can be imported, while active card subscriptions normally have to be recreated, which means asking members to subscribe again at the new site. Give notice, keep the price the same and set a date. Some payment providers can migrate subscriptions between their own accounts on request.
Make one with websites
The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match your own.
Create a website with OneCraftRelated questions
- What is a billing portal?What is a billing portal? A hosted page where a subscriber updates their card, changes plan, downloads invoices or cancels, without emailing the business.
- What is a client portal?What is a client portal? A private signed in area where each client sees project status, files, approvals and invoices. Compared with email and shared drives.
- What is row level security?What is row level security? Database policies that decide which rows each signed in person can read or change, with common policy shapes and how to test them.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .