How to sell memberships

A membership gives people a way to pay for something they want to keep coming back to. It might be a new template each month, a community built around a shared interest, a weekly class or a club that's ready to move beyond cash and goodwill. For the person running it, it can mean a more predictable income and a closer relationship with the people who support what you do.

There's more to setting up a membership than selling a one-off product. Payments need to repeat each month or year, members need access to what they've paid for, and you need a way to handle failed payments, cancellations and changes to someone's subscription.

This guide compares membership platforms with running payments through your own checkout page, covering pricing, member access, cancellations and the costs of each approach over a year.

Quick answer: To sell memberships, you need a way to collect recurring payments and give members access to what they've paid for. You can use a platform such as Patreon, Ko-fi, Memberful or Payhip, each with its own fees and features, or take payments through your own checkout page using a tool like Checkout Page, where payments go through your own Stripe account and members manage their subscriptions through a customer portal. Neither option requires you to have a website.

Where to sell memberships

A membership might give people access to exclusive content, a community, regular classes or a club. The best way to sell it depends on what members are paying for, where they'll access it and how much of the administration you want to handle yourself.

Platforms such as Patreon, Ko-fi, Memberful and Payhip offer membership pages and recurring payments. Patreon and Ko-fi also let you publish members-only content, while Patreon offers a discovery feature that can help potential members find you. On other platforms, you'll generally need to bring your own audience. Fees and features vary by platform and plan.

Alternatively, you can take payments through your own checkout and manage membership access separately. This gives you more control over the joining experience, including monthly and annual pricing, multiple tiers, trials and founding-member offers. With Checkout Page, payments go directly into your own Stripe account, and members can manage their subscriptions through a branded customer portal.

Don't overlook tax responsibilities

When you charge for a membership, someone has to handle any sales tax or VAT on the payments. The business that does is the merchant of record: it charges the member, issues the receipt and is responsible for registering for, collecting and paying over the tax.

Patreon takes that role for payments made through it. Payhip handles EU and UK VAT and certain other taxes. Memberful and Ko-fi connect to your own payment account and leave tax to you.

From your own checkout you're the merchant of record. Checkout Page can calculate and add tax at checkout through Stripe Tax, but registering and filing stay with you. Our guide to what a merchant of record is explains the distinction.

The table below compares all five on fees, payouts, branding and who handles tax.

Fees checked on each platform's pricing page: Payhip on 14 October 2026, Ko-fi on 16 October, Patreon and Memberful on 19 October. Processing fees are extra unless stated.

If your members are already on Patreon or Ko-fi, meeting them there is the easier start. If you have an email list, a site or a community of your own, a checkout page keeps more of each payment and lets you sell the same members other things later. Some run both, with the platform for discovery and their own checkout for the people who found them directly.

For ideas on what a membership can be built around, see our list of subscription business ideas.

How to sell memberships from your own checkout

The steps below are demonstrated using Checkout Page and would be much the same on other checkout tools: decide what members get, create a product with a recurring price, set up what happens after payment, test it, share it.

Step 1: decide what members get, and how often

Write down what a member receives and when. A new template on the first of the month. A members-only call every other Thursday. Access to a private community and an archive. The clearer this is, the easier the checkout page is to write and the fewer questions you'll get later.

Keep the first version small enough to deliver on a bad month. A membership that promises four things and reliably delivers two loses members faster than one that promises two and delivers them every time.

Step 2: create a checkout page with a recurring price

In your Checkout Page dashboard, create a new checkout page for the membership. Give it a title, a description that says who it's for and what members get each month, and a couple of images that show the kind of thing they'll receive.

Add a recurring price rather than a one-time one, and choose the billing interval. If you want to offer both, add a monthly price and an annual price to the same product, so the member picks at checkout. Tiers work the same way: add each tier as its own price, with a short description of what it includes.

Step 3: set the price, and any trial

Set the monthly amount first, then the annual amount if you're offering one (the next section covers how to pick them). If you'd like people to try before they commit, you can add a free or paid trial of a set number of days; the first full payment is taken when the trial ends.

A founding-member price is another way to start. Offer the first group a lower rate that stays with them for as long as they remain a member, and raise the price for people who join later.

Step 4: set up what happens after payment

Use the confirmation message and the confirmation email to tell new members exactly where to go: the link to the community, the calendar invite for the call, or the folder with this month's files.

If the membership includes downloads, upload them under Details → File downloads. Members can find them again in their customer portal, and by default access to those files ends when the membership does.

The portal is also where members look after their own membership. They can update the card on file, see when the next payment is due, and cancel without emailing you. You choose whether a cancellation takes effect immediately or at the end of the period they've paid for.

Step 5: run a test payment

Switch the page to test mode and join your own membership with a test card. Go through it as a member would: pay, read the confirmation screen and email, follow the link, log in to the portal. Then cancel from the portal, so you've seen that side too.

Once you're happy, switch test mode off. While it's on, the page accepts test cards rather than real payments.

Step 6: share the checkout

Publish the page and share it where your audience already is. Checkout Page gives you a few ways to do that: a link to the hosted page for your newsletter, link in bio or the post where you announced the membership; embed code for your own website; an Add to Framer option if your site is built there; and a QR code for anything printed or shown on a screen. Whichever you use, say plainly what members get and when the next thing arrives. A short note from you about why you're starting it tends to do more than a list of features.

How much to charge for a membership

Price according to value. Start by thinking about what the membership offers: a template that saves hours of work, a weekly class and access to a specialist community all provide different kinds of value. Compare five or six similar memberships on platforms such as Patreon and Ko-fi to see what people charge and what members receive at each level.

Choose monthly or annual billing. Monthly pricing is a simple starting point, particularly when you're building an audience. You can also offer an annual option at a discount, often equivalent to ten or eleven months' payments. Members save a little, while you receive more income upfront and have fewer payments to manage.

Keep your tiers manageable. Two or three options are usually enough: a basic tier with the core offer, a higher tier with extras such as feedback, community access or a call, and perhaps a discounted founding-member rate while you're getting started. Each tier should give people a clear reason to pay more without creating so much extra work that it's difficult to deliver.

Handle price increases carefully. If you raise your prices later, consider keeping existing members on their original rate or giving them plenty of notice before the change takes effect. Either approach can help maintain trust, particularly among long-standing members who have supported your work from the beginning.

How members get access, and what happens each month

When someone joins, they make their first payment and receive a confirmation email with instructions for accessing their membership. Their subscription then renews automatically each month or year, unless they cancel, and future payments are charged to their saved payment method.

What happens next depends on what you're selling. For a community, the confirmation email might include an invitation link. For downloadable resources, it could point members to a library of files. For classes or live sessions, it might include a booking link or calendar details.

With Checkout Page, you handle recurring payments through your own Stripe account, and members can manage their subscriptions through a customer portal. You'll still need to decide how members access the content, community or events included in their membership, and whether that access needs to be updated manually or through an integration when someone joins or cancels.

What happens when a payment fails

Cards expire and get replaced, and some payments fail for no reason anyone can see. When a renewal fails, Stripe retries it over the following days and the member gets an email asking them to update their card, which they can do in the portal. This automatic retry-and-remind is called dunning, and it recovers many failed payments without you doing anything.

If the payment still doesn't go through, the subscription is marked as unpaid and you can decide what to do: get in touch yourself, pause the membership, or cancel it from your dashboard. Members who cancel on purpose keep access until the end of what they've paid for, if that's how you've set it, and their last payment is their last.

What it costs to sell memberships

Whichever route you choose, there are three kinds of cost: a cut of each payment, a monthly plan, and card processing. With a membership, all three repeat. The platform's percentage comes off every renewal, the plan is charged every month whether or not anyone joins, and the processor takes its fee on each payment.

Patreon's 10% comes with its own processing, currency and payout fees on top, which it doesn't publish as a single rate. Ko-fi, Memberful and Payhip charge their percentage and then your payment provider charges processing; on a US Stripe account that's 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card payment, though rates vary by country and payment method. Selling from your own checkout, you pay Stripe directly: card processing on each payment, plus Stripe's Billing fee of 0.5% on recurring payments, and your checkout tool a monthly plan.

Here's how one member at $9 a month works out over a year ($108 in payments), before any monthly plan cost.

Rates checked 14 to 19 October 2026. Card processing is Stripe's US rate on twelve $9 payments; it varies by country and card type. The own-checkout row includes Stripe's 0.5% Billing fee, which applies to subscriptions created through Checkout Page. The Memberful, Ko-fi and Payhip rows show card processing only, since whether that fee applies depends on how each platform sets up the subscription. Patreon doesn't publish its processing fees as a single rate, so its total isn't shown.

Your costs depend on the checkout tool you use. Checkout Page is free up to $3K in monthly sales. Paid plans are a monthly price based on your sales volume. Stripe's processing fees apply. On the free plan, your pages pause once you pass $3K in a 30-day period and reopen when the period resets or you upgrade.

Small fee differences add up as you grow. With 100 members, using your own checkout rather than a platform that takes 5% of sales could save around $500 a year. Annual billing can reduce processing costs too: a single $79 payment costs $2.99 in Stripe fees, compared with $7.27 across twelve monthly payments. Use the Stripe fee calculator to work out the costs for your own membership.

Sell more than memberships

A membership doesn't have to be the only thing you sell. You could run a paid workshop that's included for members, offer a bundle of past resources to newer subscribers, or sell a PDF guide alongside your regular monthly content. These one-off purchases give people another way to buy from you, whether they're already members or just discovering your work.

With Checkout Page, you can create separate checkout pages for memberships and one-off products from the same dashboard, while keeping your customer information in one place. If the membership is the main thing you sell, our page on how to sell memberships online covers the plans, trials and portal in more detail.

If you'd like to try it, you can start selling memberships on the free plan and upgrade once your sales pass $3K a month.

How to sell memberships FAQ

How much should I charge for a membership?

Price it on what a month of it is worth to one member, then check five or six comparable memberships on Patreon and Ko-fi. A monthly price is the easiest for a new member to say yes to; add an annual price at ten or eleven months alongside it. Start with one or two tiers.

Can I sell memberships on Shopify?

Yes, though not with Shopify alone: you'd add a subscription app from its app store, which has its own monthly fee and takes a cut of each payment. If your membership isn't tied to physical products, a checkout page embedded on your site, or shared as a link, is usually the simpler route and keeps the member's details with you.

How do I sell a subscription?

Create a product with a recurring price on a platform or a checkout page, set the billing interval and any trial, write a confirmation that tells the subscriber where to go, run a test payment, then share the link. The subscriber's card is charged each period automatically, and they manage or cancel the subscription themselves in a customer portal.

What's the difference between a membership and a subscription?

Technically nothing: both are a recurring payment for ongoing access. In practice, a subscription usually means a product that arrives regularly, such as a newsletter or a box, while a membership means belonging to something, such as a community, a club or a class. The setup, billing and cancellation work the same way for both.

Do I need a website to sell memberships?

No. A checkout page is a hosted page with its own link, so you can take members from a social post, a newsletter or a link in bio, and the membership itself can live in a community tool or a calendar. If you have a site, you can embed the checkout on it. Patreon and Ko-fi need no website either.