What Platform Should You Use for Memberships?
In the last episode, I compared creating a membership to training for a half marathon saying that you wouldn't start by running the full 13 miles. But there's another aspect to that. You also wouldn't run a half marathon in sandals. You would find shoes that work well for the way you run for your body type that could provide you the best support as you run a long distance. And just like finding the right sneakers to run a marathon or a half marathon, you want to find the right tool for your membership platform. And that's what I wanna talk to you about today.
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I'm your host, Joe Casaubona. And today, I want to talk to you about memberships, specifically membership platforms. In the last few years, setting up a membership has gone from hiring a developer to build a custom site to I barely need a dedicated website anymore.
So today, I want to look at a few options that are good for podcast memberships, as well as how you should determine what works best for you. Let's look at the first one, maybe the most well-known one,
Memberful. They are really trying to corner the market on podcast memberships and they're doing a great job. Rich features, lots of integrations, and it's free to start. When I first looked at this, I thought the only drawback in my eyes was the price which was $0 or 10% transaction fee or $25 a month and then a 5% transaction fee. I thought both transaction fees were higher than you should pay. But after going through the pain of setting up a bunch of different memberships on different membership platforms, I will happily pay the higher transaction fee if it means I don't have to think about all of the odds and ends and access and churning and all of this stuff that you need to think about when you set up a membership. Memberships are complicated and Memberful makes it a lot less complicated.
Number 2 is Patreon. They're one of the OGs for creator memberships. They pretty much only charge you when you make money. and they've been around for a long time. But while Memberfull makes their pricing structure really transparent, I feel like Patreon's is a little bit of a black box.
They were my first podcast membership platform, and they've added a lot of great features since then including private podcast feeds. But I could never figure out just how much per month they were charging me. Maybe it's because I wasn't doing enough volume, but I always felt it a little weird that I couldn't predictably say, oh, yes. I have this many members and I pay this much in transaction fees. So that's something to think about with Patreon.
The other thing with Patreon is that they say that they make it easy for discovery, but they don't necessarily. And that could be a drawback for you, especially if you're just starting out.
Okay. So now I wanna tell you about one that's not really podcasting per se, but I know a lot of journalists love it, and that's Substack. Substack does have really good discovery. They recommend newsletters based on what other people are reading, and they have the private podcast feature as well. So you can have a newsletter, a private blog, and a private podcast all in one. And I think that makes their 10% ish transaction fee really worth it. I would happily pay 50¢ on the $5 if it means I don't have to really think about where I'm going to publish my membership stuff.
Alright. Now, let's move into some that allow you to customize a little more but give you but require a little bit of duct tape. Right? And the first one is lemon squeezy plus transistor dot f m. Again, a little bit of duct tape to work properly. But since you can sell subscriptions and a members-only newsletter with Lemon Squeezy, you could use a tool like Zapier or Make to connect those purchases to a podcast host that supports private podcasts like Transistor or Hello Audio. When someone purchases via Lemon Squeezy, you can have a Zapier create a private subscriber. So, again, a little bit of duct tape there.
There's also Thrivecart, which is something that I use to sell my memberships now. Mine has far too much duct tape and too many twigs. I wouldn't recommend my process for you. But I use Thrivecart and I connect it to both transistor and to ConvertKit. So I have a lot of flexibility there. But, again, if I was starting today, I'd probably use something like Substack or a different platform to make it really easy for me to offer those private podcasts.
Speaking of ConvertKit, ConvertKit has ConvertKit Commerce, But if you're considering this route, be aware. It's only good. Really, I'm gonna say, like, even harsher than that, I'm gonna say it's only usable if you are selling a premium newsletter or a one-off product. If you need ConvertKit Commerce to connect to other things like Transistor or Patreon or Hello Audio, They do not do a good job of that because they don't tell you when subscribers churn which means that, theoretically, somebody could pay for 1 month and then be a member forever because ConvertKit just doesn't tell you. So you need to keep that in mind. I was using ConvertKit Commerce because it was so easy, but there are a few gaping holes in their feature set.
Lastly, you can try one of the many membership WordPress plugins. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention WordPress. but to be honest, I wouldn't recommend starting with it because that takes the most duct tape to get up and running.
f you really want to try WordPress, I'd recommend Paid Memberships Pro though Memberful also integrates with WordPress as does ConvertKit Commerce. The best thing you can do is write down the 4 to 5 features you need most. I'm gonna say it's probably recurring payments, membership levels, a private podcast feed, or maybe you wanted to integrate with your email service provider. And then evaluate some of the platforms I named, some of the ones that come up in your research, and see what works best for you. Just like running shoes, New Balance might work for some people, and Hoku might work for other people, but you might find that Nike is the best running shoe for you.
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Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey. Before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called My Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time, and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcast process templates, today.
