You’ll see that I left the technology talk til last, because everything we’ve spoken about up until now will make an impact on the tools and plug ins that you use to great your membership site.
If you haven’t seen episodes 1 through to 6 yet, I recommend you go back and have a look, as the concepts we talk about in those videos will make a difference to your choice here.
I’m also not going to give you one “right” answer here.
There are lots of possibilities for you to use.
Instead I am going to share with you some of the tech that I use, and have had experience in, and allow you to make your own decisions.
What I’m running:
– Wishlist Member
The Get Real Business Academy runs on wishlist member, and I’ve been using the plugin for about 3 years now.
It’s incredibly stable and that is one of the things that I like the best about it. With the popularity of membership sites at the moment, the market is flooded with new membership plugins all the time. However these plugins tend to come and go, and don’t always have the support you are looking for.
Wishlist member has been around for a while now. It is well supported, and easy to install. It is reliable, and for me, that is one of the biggest things I want from a plugin that makes a huge impact on my business.
– Member press
I use memberpress on a range of clients sites, and also find it very easy to use.
It works slightly different to wishlist, by setting up a range of rules for your membership levels, rather than setting the requirements for each page.
In the beginning, this might take you a little longer to get your head around, but in the long run, it can make a big membership site easier to handle.
Other options:
As I mentioned, there are hundreds of membership plugins at the moment, but here are a couple that you can go and check out.
AccessAlly – this really is in a field of it’s own. AccessAlly is a complete solution, allowing you to build a membership site that has inbuilt assessment, tracking, upselling, cross selling, bookmarking, gamification and much, much more.
Things to consider:
If you are fairly wordpress savey, most of these plugins are fairly easy to install.
A lot of membership plugins don’t tend to play nicely with other plugins though, and you may wish to host your membership site on a sub domain, to limit the issues with this.
If you don’t feel confident, it is worth talking to your web developer, asking for their opinion, and considering what will fit with the other plugins and services that you already offer.
Lastly:
If you don’t want to add your membership site to your own website, or don’t have your own website yet, you can consider a couple of other options.
Sites like Teachable or Thinkific allow you to host a range of courses, which would allow you to give clients access to a “membership like” experience.
Or, a site like Kajabi does everything for you. It will allow you to build a website and sales pages, host all of your content and run your membership site from one spot. It’s more expensive than some of the other options, but you get more bang for your buck, so to speak.