Create a membership

A membership is recurring access. Members pay every month or every year, and while they do, the courses and downloads you choose are open to them in their customer account. A membership does not hold content of its own: it is a door to things you have already made.

Before you start

• The courses and downloads the membership should open, made under Products. See Build an online course and Sell a digital download.
• Stripe connected under Settings › Payments. Memberships are billed as Stripe subscriptions.

Steps: create the membership

1. Open Products and choose the Memberships tab.
2. Press Create New. The New Membership form opens on Details.
3. Type the Name, for example "Coach Ana's Training Club", and a Description saying who it is for.
4. Open Pricing. Under How often members are billed, choose Monthly or Yearly.
5. Enter the Price (USD), the amount charged each month or each year.
6. Press Save product.

Steps: choose what it unlocks

1. Click the membership in the list.
2. In What this membership unlocks, tick what members get. The groups are Courses, Downloads, Pages (published pages, grouped by site) and Blogs.
3. Press Save. The card says how many things are ticked. Undo puts back what was saved before.

Steps: sell it

1. Open Sites › Funnels and click the funnel that should sell it. See Create a funnel if you need one.
2. Under the sales page or checkout step, press Sell something here.
3. Choose the membership under Sell, leave As on Primary, and press Attach.
4. Publish the step, then join once yourself to check the whole path.

You can also sell it from a store: open the store's Products tab and press Stock it beside the membership. Bought from a store, it renews just as it does from a funnel page, as long as it is paid for on its own. A basket that mixes the membership with anything else, or a monthly membership with a yearly one, is refused before Stripe opens, and nothing is charged.

What happens next

• Each new member appears under Sales › Subscriptions, and their first payment under Sales › Orders. Stripe charges the renewals.
• Members find the membership in their customer account under My library, with what it includes.
• Access closes when the subscription ends, is refunded or is disputed. While Stripe retries a failed renewal, the member keeps access. See Subscriptions and recurring payments.
• To change the price, open the membership and edit Details and price. Changing the price does not change what anybody has already paid.

Things to know

• Courses and downloads open only for members. Pages and blogs are listed in the member's account for easy reach, but they are not hidden from anyone else: anybody with the address can still open them.
• Cancelling a membership is done in your Stripe dashboard. There is no cancel button in the app.

For agencies

Create the membership inside the client's account with Sub-accounts › Open, so members pay into the client's Stripe account.

Troubleshooting

Members say the membership is empty. Nothing is ticked in What this membership unlocks, or it was not saved. Tick what it includes and press Save.

A page I want to include is not in the list. Only published pages are offered. Publish the page first.

"Couldn't save what this membership includes." Wait a moment and press Save again. If it keeps failing, reload the page and contact support.

A member was charged once and never again. They probably bought it through a store basket before store baskets could start subscriptions. That purchase was a one-off payment, so Stripe has nothing to renew. Ask them to buy the membership again; one bought now, from a store or a funnel page, renews.

A shopper was told "A subscription has to be paid for on its own". Their basket held the membership together with something else, or a monthly membership with a yearly one. Nothing was charged. They check out the membership by itself, then the rest of the basket.

A member cancelled but can still open a course. Access closes when Stripe ends the subscription, which may be at the end of the paid period.

A course is open to people who are not members. They may have bought the course on its own. Check the course's buyers under Sales › Orders.

Related

• Subscriptions and recurring payments
• What your customers see in their account
• Fix buyers who cannot get into what they bought