Memberful

Memberful is a membership and subscription management platform designed for creators, publishers, podcasters, and online communities who want to add paid memberships to their existing website or platform rather than moving their entire operation to a new service. Acquired by Patreon in 2020 but operated independently, Memberful works as a layer that sits on top of your existing website — whether built on WordPress, Ghost, a custom site, or any other platform — and handles all the subscription billing, member management, and content gating. This approach lets creators maintain full control of their brand, website design, and member experience while Memberful handles the complex subscription infrastructure behind the scenes.

What differentiates Memberful from Patreon, Substack, or all-in-one platforms is its philosophy of working with your existing tools rather than replacing them. While Patreon requires creators to host content on patreon.com and Substack locks you into their publishing platform, Memberful lets you keep your own website, your own design, and your own domain while adding professional membership functionality. Memberful integrates natively with WordPress for content gating, Discord for automatic role assignment, Mailchimp and Kit for email marketing, and provides a robust API for custom integrations. The platform processes all payments through Stripe, giving creators access to Stripe robust payment infrastructure including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and support for 135+ currencies. Memberful also includes a built-in website and newsletter builder for creators who do want an all-in-one option.

Key Features: Fast and powerful checkout with Apple Pay and Google Pay support and coupons and discounts and custom fields and 15 language translations and global tax collection and gift purchase options, flexible subscription types including free and paid trials and free registration tiers and group plans and one-time payments and monthly and annual and weekly billing cycles and choose-what-you-pay options, member management dashboard with growth metrics and reporting and subscriber analytics for tracking membership health and revenue trends, built-in referral program for organic growth where existing members can invite others and earn rewards, automated retention discounts that offer targeted discounts to members considering cancellation to reduce churn, cancellation surveys that collect feedback from departing members to help improve the membership offering, custom transactional emails for personalizing the member experience at every touchpoint from welcome emails to renewal reminders, staff accounts for team members to manage the membership program without sharing login credentials, support for multiple content types including podcasts and newsletters and communities and courses and digital downloads all gated behind membership access, landing page and website builder with custom domains and dynamic paywalls and custom themes and branding and integrated comments for creators who want a built-in publishing solution, WordPress integration for adding membership gates and restricted content areas and member-only sections directly to an existing WordPress site, Discord integration for automatically granting and revoking roles based on active membership status, Mailchimp and Kit integrations for syncing member data with email marketing platforms for targeted campaigns, and full API access for building custom integrations and white-labeling the membership experience.

Pricing: Memberful offers a straightforward Standard plan at $49 per month plus a 4.9% transaction fee on membership revenue. This single plan includes access to all features including unlimited members, all subscription types, the website and newsletter builder, all integrations, the referral program, retention tools, and staff accounts. There is a free trial with no time limit — creators are only charged when they go live and start accepting payments. Stripe payment processing fees apply on top of the Memberful transaction fee. An Enterprise plan is available with custom pricing for larger operations that need volume-based pricing, premium success management, custom migration support, and dedicated implementation assistance. All plans include SSL security, high-availability backups, and unlimited member capacity.

Use Cases: Podcasters who want to offer premium subscriber-only episodes through their existing podcast hosting and website while using Memberful to handle subscriptions and Apple Pay checkout and member authentication, WordPress publishers who want to add membership paywalls and gated content sections to their existing WordPress site without migrating to a new platform using Memberful native WordPress plugin, online communities that use Discord as their primary gathering space and want to monetize access with automatic role assignment based on paid membership tiers managed through Memberful, newsletter writers who already have an established brand and website and want to add paid subscriptions without moving to Substack or Ghost by using Memberful checkout and member management alongside their existing email setup, course creators who want to gate educational content on their own website behind membership access with support for multiple tier levels and one-time payment and subscription options, and media organizations that need a white-label membership solution they can deeply customize through the API to match their brand while relying on Memberful robust subscription billing and Stripe payment processing infrastructure.