Membership Sites

Membership website builders: best in August – 2019

Membership in some online site is the ability to register through the dedicated web form. Forms may differ in the appearance and the collected information but, as a minimum, during the registration, a person submits actual e-mail belonging to him or her, a login & password. Registrations may have 1 step or several. If several, then the check of the submitted e-mail, entering some personal data, and more might be done. The specific registration rules are defined by the specific membership site.

Introduction to the world of membership website builders

A membership website builder is an online tool, which allows creating limited-access sites, information on some pages of which is closed for the general public – and opens only after the registration.

In some cases, the registration process may be combined with invitations from other members – submitting a code given to you by them during the process – so to avoid allowing unknown people to join your ‘closed club’, thus, keeping its restrictiveness further. Using any of the five below mentioned membership website builders, it is possible to easily create your site with the area for registration, where you can do any kind of form that is allowed by this or that tool.

It will be possible to make such things like automated billing from accounts of subscribers, define the access roles to the pages (and the list of such pages, too), and manage the users through the admin zones (including the possibility to change rights and delete the registration).   

What are the top-5 membership website builders

1. Wix
2. Wild Apricot
3. GoCentral
4. Weebly
5. uKit.

Review of Wix membership website builder 

This membership site platforms are a frequent choice in people for its general high power and several hundreds of templates, from which, it is easily possible to choose a few themes for the sites with the registration. You do not have to resort to any third-party solution in the question of how to create a membership website (but even if you decide to, there is always a way to integrate them through HTML code injection).

The advancements of membership website builder Wix:

1. App Market with many apps, free and paid.
2. The support in the regimen of 24/7/365.
3. You can backup and restore any time.
4. Many themes (paid and free).
5. Easy to start a registration page and the database of users with an admin role to manage everything.
6. Many payment channels.

The shortcomings of membership website builder Wix:

1. Only 1 admin role is allowed, which may not be suitable for large-scale sites with thousands of registrants.
2. Limited storage and bandwidth options, which will be exhausted pretty soon in the low-scale subscription plans.
3. The given power of membership site may not embrace everything you need in functionality. 

The cost of membership website builder Wix:

There are 7 plans in addition to 14 days of the try-and-buy period. $4.50 and $8.50 packages are limited in bandwidth and give insignificant storage. No limits for bandwidth start with $12.50 a month. Online stores offer 3 valuable options – from 17 to 35 USD a month – without the commission (you can start doing the trade in a VIP pack for $24.50 a month but there’ll be a financial transaction commission).

Review of Wild Apricot membership website builder 

Wild Apricot subscription website builder is a supreme tool, which is very pricey compared to the market. It STARTS with 40 dollars a month and ends with 600 dollars a month (considering the 10% discount when paid for a year, it’ll be $6,480 a year – significantly pricey). All its plans are completely equal in the number of functionalities that they offer. What differs is the number of a possible threshold of registered users on the site (they are called here ‘Contacts’):

• 100 (40)
• 250 (50)
• 500 (90)
• 2,000 (160)
• 5,000 (290)
• 15,000 (350)
• 50,000 (600).

The numbers in brackets show the monthly pricing for each plan. 

The advancements of Wild Apricot membership website builder:

1. Online store and mobile app for each user enter every subscription plan.
2. 30-days free trial period.
3. Any number of administrators to rule the crowd.
4. Recurring payments are possible to adjust.
5. An overwhelmingly powerful tool for subscription membership sites.

The shortcomings of Wild Apricot membership website builder:

1. Very pricey – it is possible to receive nearly the same functionality in general tools, like Wix.
2. Some web themes are outdated.
3. Not beginner-friendly dashboard without a wizard, which would help you deal with it.

The cost of Wild Apricot membership website builder:

It is already disclosed in the general section above.

Review of GoCentral membership website builder

GoCentral is another site-building tool offered by the company that most of you already know – Godaddy. 

The advancements of GoCentral membership website builder:

1. A new, more exciting version of a site from an old-known company.
2. It is easy to create members-only pages.
3. It is possible to make the registration of people in the standard procedure, as well as it is possible to download their registration data into a spreadsheet, thus, granting them access (somewhat similarly to Google’s way of granting access to some online sources).
4. The ease of the initial setup.

The shortcomings of GoCentral membership website builder:

1. Only up to 10 templates to use, which are not highly customizable, in fact.
2. No free run.

The cost of GoCentral membership website builder:

Its plans start with $5.99 a month and end with $19.99 a month. Every plan includes a possibility to make edits on the go, SSL certificate (security and sales-boosting thing), hosting on a subscription website builder, and friendliness to mobile screens. No plan, however, gives a possibility of the free 1-year domain name – you should always buy it elsewhere for an additional cost. But you can connect it to your site and have a nice-looking name.

In the higher-cost options of subscription, such things are added:

• Yelp business listing
• Social referrals
• Social media integration
• Sell on Amazon, Etsy, eBay
• SEO
• Product reviews
• PayPal button
• Online appointments
• Offer discounts and promotions
• Inventory management
• ‘Google My Business’ feature
• Email marketing
• Configure shipping & tax
• Built-in shopping cart
• Accept online payments
• Abandoned cart recovery.

Review of Weebly membership website builder

Weebly is a subscription websites builder with a comprehensible interface, which is managed and mastered easily. You can find here a lot of integration, organization abilities and plenty of tools of your direct destination – to make membership sites.

The advancements of Weebly membership website builder: 

1. Multiple administrators are allowed.
2. Drag-and-drop allows building forms easily. 
3. Any number of members in high-grade accounts.
4. Pretty cheap to start with.
5. Blogging platform – to speak freely to your subscribers and write blog posts. 
6. Paid Members App – another way to distinguish people from the crowd.
7. Integration with several payment channels.
8. A free-run option is possible.

The shortcomings of Weebly membership website builder:

1. Paid Members App costs extra money.
2. A free run and ‘Connect’ options will not allow you any power of actions. Only ‘Pro’, ‘Business’, and ‘Business Plus’ plans have what you’re looking for.

The cost of Weebly membership website builder:

Not considering the free option, the price distributed amongst the four packages of the subscription is from 5 to 30 Euros a month. The three high-cost plans (‘Pro’, ‘Business’, and ‘Business Plus’) allow sales with only attractive options in ‘Business’ and ‘Business Plus’ plans – for 20 and 30 Euros a month accordingly.