Which membership plugin should we use?

It is a smaller decision than it is made to sound. Paid Memberships Pro, MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro and WooCommerce Subscriptions all gate content and take recurring payments competently, and the differences between them rarely decide whether a membership works. Our BuddyX theme ships with built-in Paid Memberships Pro support, so that is often the shortest path when the site is community-shaped, but we will fit the engine to your billing model rather than the other way round.

Is a community really necessary? We just want to sell content.

You can sell content without one, and some libraries do fine. But content on its own tends to renew once, because a member who has finished what they came for has no reason to still be paying in month four. Something that changes between visits is what makes the subscription make sense, and other members are the most reliable version of that.

How much churn is normal, and can you reduce it?

It varies far too much by price and audience for a benchmark to mean anything, so anyone quoting you a number without seeing your data is guessing. What is consistent is that a large share of cancellations are involuntary, meaning a payment failed rather than a member decided. That portion is recoverable with engineering, and it is where we start because it is measurable.

Can you migrate us from Kajabi, Patreon or Circle?

Yes. Members, tiers, renewal dates and billing history have to carry across, and mid-cycle subscriptions must neither double-bill nor lapse while the switch happens. The content is the easy half. We have a page specifically about leaving Kajabi if that is where you are.

Do you handle members-only access properly?

Yes, and it is a deeper subject than a plugin setting. Content can leak through REST endpoints, RSS feeds, media URLs, search results and embeds long after the pages themselves are gated. Our private community page covers how that is closed off end to end.

Membership builds are estimated against scope rather than sold at a list price. A single-tier content library and a multi-tier platform with a community, cohorts and a migration from a hosted plan are very different projects. The section above sets out what moves the number.

Platforms Memberships

Anyone can put content behind a paywall. Keeping people behind it is the build.

A membership site is a subscription business wearing a website. Gating the content is a plugin setting. Onboarding, a reason to come back, and recovering payments that fail by accident are the actual project.

Start a project See our work

Built by the team behind the community layer most memberships are missing.

Why members left · last 90 days 108

Payment failed, never retried 41 38%
Ran out of things to do 27 25%
Too expensive 19 18%
Never really started 14 13%
No reason given 7 6%

The largest slice is people who did not choose to leave. That part is recoverable with engineering.

Why this matters

Memberships do not fail at the paywall. They fail in month four.

Almost every membership project is scoped as a content problem: gate the library, take the payment, launch. That part works, which is why the trouble arrives later, when the first cohort has read what it came for and the renewals start declining. Retention is not something you add once churn shows up in a report. It is decided by what got built, and it is far cheaper to design in at the start than to retrofit against an audience that is already leaving.

Where memberships leak

Five stages, and what goes wrong at each.

A member moves through the same sequence on every membership site. Each step has a well-known failure, and each one is fixable in the build rather than in a marketing campaign afterwards.

Signing up

A checkout with more steps than the pitch

Every extra field is a percentage of signups. Account creation, payment and access should be one continuous action, and the receipt should not be the first time somebody sees what they bought.
The first session

Paid, then left alone in a dashboard

The subscription is usually decided in the first ten minutes, not at renewal. A new member needs to reach the thing they paid for immediately, and to be told what to do second.
Coming back

Nothing changed since last visit

Content alone renews once. What brings people back on a Tuesday is other people: a discussion they are part of, a cohort moving at their pace, an event in the calendar. This is the part most membership builds skip and the part that decides the renewal.
Renewing

A card expired and nobody chased it

A meaningful share of lost members never chose to leave. Failed payments, retry schedules, dunning emails and card updates are unglamorous engineering that recovers revenue you have already earned.
Leaving

Cancelled, and no idea why

A cancellation with a reason attached is data. Without a reason captured at the moment of leaving, and a way to reach those people later, churn is something you watch rather than something you fix.

Involuntary churn

Recovering payments that failed by accident

Expired cards, bank declines and retries. Smart retry timing, dunning sequences that read like a person wrote them, and a card-update flow that does not require logging in through three screens. This is the cheapest revenue in a subscription business.

Recover members who never decided to leave.

Plans

Tiers people can actually move between

Upgrades mid-cycle, downgrades at renewal, proration, trials that convert, annual against monthly, and a grandfathered price that survives a pricing change. Each is simple alone and they interact badly when they are added one at a time.

Design the pricing model before building it.

Onboarding

A first session that reaches the thing they paid for

A sequenced welcome, a profile worth completing, a first action that produces something, and an email track keyed to what the member has actually done rather than to how many days have passed.

The first ten minutes decide the renewal.

Retention

A reason to return that is not more content

Discussions, groups, cohorts, events and member directories. We build this layer for a living, which is the honest reason a membership build belongs with us rather than with a shop that will install a paywall and stop.

People renew for other people.

Community platform development

Measurement

Reporting that shows retention, not just revenue

Membership engines report money in. What you need to run the business is cohort retention, churn by tier and by reason, lifetime value against acquisition cost, and which content correlates with members who stay.

Know which cohort is leaking before it leaves.

Migration

Moving off a hosted platform without charging twice

Members, their tier, their renewal date and their billing history all have to arrive intact, and mid-cycle subscriptions must not double-bill or lapse during the switch. That sequencing is the whole risk in a migration of this kind.

Nobody should notice the platform changed.

Leaving Kajabi specifically

What it costs

Membership pricing follows the billing model and the community, not the page count.

A single-tier content library and a multi-tier platform with cohorts, events and a migration off a hosted plan are the same sentence and very different projects. Here is what moves the number.

What moves the number

How many ways to pay One tier and one price is quick. Tiers, trials, annual against monthly, upgrades mid-cycle and proration interact with each other, and that interaction is the work.
How much community A discussion area is modest. Cohorts, events, directories, messaging and moderation is a community platform with a paywall in front of it.
Where members are now Starting fresh costs nothing here. Bringing members, tiers, renewal dates and billing history off a hosted platform without double-billing is a project of its own.
What it has to talk to CRM, email, analytics and accounting. One record per member across all of them is worth doing and is rarely as simple as the integration list implies.
How much you measure Revenue reporting comes with the engine. Cohort retention, churn by reason and lifetime value by tier is reporting we build.

Small, well-defined work is usually better handled as an hourly block than scoped as a project, and we will say so rather than inflate it into one.

Rough idea to delivery

You send the details What you want built, roughly, plus budget range and timing. The form asks for all of it
Within 4 business hours We read it and reply. Nothing is scheduled before we know what it is about
Then the call Free discovery, booked once there is enough on the table to make it worth your hour
Within 48 hours of the call A written fixed-price quote you approve before anything starts

Get an estimate

Quick enquiry

Building or fixing a membership site?

Tell us roughly what you have in mind, including whether members are already paying somewhere else. If churn is the problem rather than the build, say so and we will start there.

Prefer the full form? Start a project

Which membership plugin should we use?

It is a smaller decision than it is made to sound. Paid Memberships Pro, MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro and WooCommerce Subscriptions all gate content and take recurring payments competently, and the differences between them rarely decide whether a membership works. Our BuddyX theme ships with built-in Paid Memberships Pro support, so that is often the shortest path when the site is community-shaped, but we will fit the engine to your billing model rather than the other way round.
Is a community really necessary? We just want to sell content.

You can sell content without one, and some libraries do fine. But content on its own tends to renew once, because a member who has finished what they came for has no reason to still be paying in month four. Something that changes between visits is what makes the subscription make sense, and other members are the most reliable version of that.
How much churn is normal, and can you reduce it?

It varies far too much by price and audience for a benchmark to mean anything, so anyone quoting you a number without seeing your data is guessing. What is consistent is that a large share of cancellations are involuntary, meaning a payment failed rather than a member decided. That portion is recoverable with engineering, and it is where we start because it is measurable.
Can you migrate us from Kajabi, Patreon or Circle?

Yes. Members, tiers, renewal dates and billing history have to carry across, and mid-cycle subscriptions must neither double-bill nor lapse while the switch happens. The content is the easy half. We have a page specifically about leaving Kajabi if that is where you are.
Do you handle members-only access properly?

Yes, and it is a deeper subject than a plugin setting. Content can leak through REST endpoints, RSS feeds, media URLs, search results and embeds long after the pages themselves are gated. Our private community page covers how that is closed off end to end.
What does it cost?

Membership builds are estimated against scope rather than sold at a list price. A single-tier content library and a multi-tier platform with a community, cohorts and a migration from a hosted plan are very different projects. The section above sets out what moves the number.