9 Best Membership Website Builders (3 Are FREE) in 2025

Membership websites can help you monetize content and build online communities. However, not all website builders have the right tools to support a seamless membership experience. Some platforms lack advanced e-commerce tools and AI automation, while others don’t let you create discussion forums.

To complicate things further, some website builders don’t have built-in membership features. Instead, they’re available through third-party apps. But when a builder has a ton of integrations, how do you know which one to choose?

If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. I’ve tested dozens of website builders to find the ones that give you the optimal combination of membership features, ease of use, and price. Wix stood out from the rest with impressive e-commerce functionality, AI tools, and a range of free membership features. Start building your membership site with Wix right now, or keep reading to learn more about the top alternatives.

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What We Look For in the Best Membership Website Builders

For this review, I looked for intuitive, user-friendly website builders with the following membership features:

• Forum features. Some builders have built-in forum features, while others offer third-party tools or standalone forum templates. These are fantastic for membership sites, as forums allow your members to interact with each other, helping you build a thriving community.
• Ability to offer subscription payments. I’ve only highlighted platforms that make it easy to receive recurring payments and create various levels of member access. I also prioritized builders that offer a variety of payment methods and e-commerce tools to help you easily sell your content or products.
• Cost-effective options. Many communities, clubs, and nonprofits will want a budget-friendly builder, so I’ve highlighted free or low-cost plans that include the option to build members-only areas.
• Easy to use. With some website builders, you’ll have to use third-party plugins to incorporate membership features into your site. I prefer the kind that has these functions built in. My list includes a mix of builders with built-in features you can easily access and those with third-party integrations that are effortless to set up.
• Marketing tools. You’ve set up your membership website – now’s the time to spread the word around. All the builders I picked have effective marketing features to help you attract prospective members, from social media integrations to email marketing tools.

1. Wix: The Best Membership Features Available on Any Plan

Wix lets you use the Wix Members Area feature on all of its plans, including the free plan. From your dashboard, you can view your members and assign them different membership levels.

If you’re running an online store, you can add the Wix Stores app, which automatically adds the Members Area to your site. Your customers can sign in and view their past activity, including orders, saved credit cards, and product wishlists. Pairing a Members Area with social apps like Wix Chat or Wix Blog can also help improve the user experience for your visitors.

With features like forums and invitations to members-only events, Wix’s free plan is a good starting point if you want to grow your community. However, you’ll need a premium plan to accept payments. Wix’s Core plan lets you collect recurring payments and build an online store, making it an affordable way to sell content or products.

Features

• Diverse templates. With over 2000+ templates to choose from, chances are you’ll be able to find one to customize for your membership website. From blogs and podcasts to conferences and coaching services, there are templates for practically everything (there are over a dozen for forums alone!).
• Plenty of payment options. Wix supports 80+ payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize. You can also use its native tool, Wix Payments, to accept all major credit and debit cards, as well as Klarna, Apple Pay, and more.
• AI website builder. Wix’s AI-powered website builder generates a complete website based on the information you provide. It can automatically add features like an online store and event management to help you launch your membership site faster.
• Free Spaces for members. With Wix’s free Spaces mobile app, your members can stay updated on events, chat with each other, and invite others to join. It’s an excellent tool for growing and engaging your community.

Read our expert Wix review to see more great features.

2. Shopify: Robust Tools for Selling Membership Products

Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce builder, which makes it an excellent choice if you’re selling subscriptions or membership merchandise. Shopify’s entry plan gives you access to advanced features like unlimited contacts, selling on social media, and email marketing, offering great value.

You can install the free Shopify Subscriptions app to sell products and subscriptions on a recurring basis. The app also lets you apply different discount types to your products or subscription plans, like fixed-amount discounts or “buy X, get Y” deals.

Shopify’s plans fall on the pricier side, and its 3-day free trial isn’t particularly generous. But if you’re serious about online selling and growing your community, Shopify is a worthy investment. Plus, if you use Shopify Payments, you can greatly reduce your transaction fees.

Features

• Shopify Magic. Shopify’s suite of AI tools generates SEO-friendly product descriptions and enhances your images to help you create a compelling membership website quickly.
• Shopify Email. Shopify’s native email marketing tool features pre-built templates designed with your store’s colors and branding, helping you promote your brand image. You can send up to 10,000 free emails per month to stay in touch with your community.
• Purchase options. The Shopify Subscriptions app gives your customers more flexibility. They can preorder items or set up a subscription to receive products on a monthly basis.
• Shopify Inbox. This free tool lets you chat with your customers as they shop and give recommendations or offer discounts, creating a more personalized experience.

Find out more about Shopify in our expert review.

3. BigCommerce: Customizable Checkout for Member Sign-Ups

BigCommerce offers customizable checkout options to personalize your members’ sign-up and payment experience. You can modify checkout fields, add custom forms, and offer discounts or upsells based on membership tiers.

BigCommerce integrates with WordPress, letting you easily create and manage content. You can publish blog posts to reach potential members and drive more traffic to your site. You can also create gated content for your community.

The feature-packed Standard plan will likely be enough for most membership websites. You get unlimited products and users, multi-channel selling, and reporting tools, among other things. However, you’ll need to upgrade if you want features like customer groups. You can always take advantage of BigCommerce’s 15-day free trial to see if it’s right for you.

Features

• Extensive app store. BigCommerce has over 1,200 free and paid apps covering everything from shipping options and order management to social media, email, and CMS tools. 
• Customer segmentation. This feature makes it easy to sort your site’s members into groups, such as for pricing, promotions, or product access, creating differentiated experiences on your site.
• Persistent cart. You can enhance your members’ shopping experience by saving their shopping cart to their account. If they switch devices, the items in their cart will remain there.
• Multi-currency selling. BigCommerce integrates with payment gateways like Apple Pay and Google Pay, accepting payments in over 100 currencies.

Our expert BigCommerce review has more on features and pricing.

4. Squarespace: Plenty of Membership Features for Selling Content

Squarespace allows you to embed a variety of content, from online courses to paid newsletters, video series, podcasts, and more. You can upload videos, audio files, or downloadable documents to your website and then turn them into members-only content.

Squarespace also provides free marketing tools to help you attract potential members. For instance, with the Bio Sites feature, you can create a one-page mobile site that links to your membership website, social media, videos, and more, all in one place.

All in all, Squarespace is a great platform for membership sites – with a couple of caveats. Unless you upgrade to a plan with e-commerce functionality, you’ll have to add Digital Products (starting price is $9.00 per month) to collect payments for membership fees or members-only content. That said, the Basic Commerce plan offers good value. You’ll get promotional pop-ups, product reviews, and the ability to sell on Facebook and Instagram.

Features

• Flexible payments. You can set up your website to accept one-time or recurring payments, as well as offer free membership trials. This feature is ideal for selling classes and content subscriptions.
• Audience management. For a reasonable fee, you can collect unlimited email subscribers and send a set number of targeted newsletters on all plans.
• Public previews. Offering a public preview is an effective marketing tool you can use to demonstrate your expertise and entice potential members to sign up.
• Tiered pricing. Squarespace lets you customize your paywall with a headline, welcome message, and two pricing plans. Visitors can review the plans and choose the option they prefer.

See what else this builder has to offer in our expert Squarespace review.

5. HubSpot: Bundled Solution for Membership Websites

HubSpot has a simple drag-and-drop editor and hundreds of mobile-responsive themes to help you quickly build a membership website. You can accept recurring payments via Stripe and connect a custom domain for free, but you’ll be stuck with HubSpot’s branding.

You also get marketing tools for free, although they are somewhat limited compared to those of other platforms on this list. For instance, HubSpot allows you to send 2,000 free emails per month, while Shopify lets you send up to 10,000 free emails per month.

To access features like gated content, video hosting, and AI tools, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan in the Content hub, and it’s not exactly cheap. Still, the free plan is a good way to test the waters. If you like it, you can easily upgrade and even mix and match features from different hubs, provided you have the budget to do so.

Features

• AI blog. HubSpot’s AI blog generator creates complete posts based on your topics and suggests keywords for ranking higher on search engines. This can help you attract more site visitors and turn them into members.
• Social login. Members can sign in using Google or Microsoft accounts, making the login process faster and more secure.
• Product library. HubSpot’s free plan lets you add up to 100 products and integrate Stripe for payment processing – a rare feature among free platforms.
• Multiple communication channels. You can create a Shared Inbox to manage email and chat conversations, and integrate chat apps like Facebook Messenger and Slack to improve community engagement.

Our in-depth HubSpot review has more on the platform’s features.

6. Ecwid: Set Custom Pricing for Members

Compared to Shopify, Ecwid’s 70+ templates and features are on the conservative side, but it’s still a decent alternative for selling recurring subscriptions and digital products. I particularly like Ecwid’s wholesale pricing groups feature, which lets you offer special discounts to select members.

You can use Ecwid to build a website from scratch or add an online store to an existing website. One downside is the lack of built-in content restriction features. That said, if you’re already using WordPress, you can connect your Ecwid store with membership plugins like MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro to offer exclusive content access.

To sell subscriptions and offer wholesale pricing, you’ll need to upgrade to Ecwid’s Business plan. This plan also lets you create up to 3 promotions and send automated marketing emails. Ecwid is a solid option for smaller teams. However, Shopify’s Basic plan is overall cheaper than Ecwid’s Business plan and offers more features.

Features

• Customer management dashboard. You’ll get a dedicated dashboard with customer information you can edit. You can filter through member profiles and view all orders from a specific member.
• Apple Wallet order tracking. Members receive push notifications about order updates, allowing them to easily track their purchases in Apple Wallet.
• Mailchimp integration. Ecwid lets you sync your site with Mailchimp’s email platform to build an email list and send personalized offers tailored to members’ previous purchases.
• Pay what you want. This flexible pricing option allows your members to set their own prices for your products, which can prove particularly useful for collecting donations.

Curious to learn more? Read our in-depth Ecwid review.

7. SITE123: Easy Way To Build a Private Membership Site

SITE123 lets you create a gated Client Zone to offer your best customers exclusive benefits when they sign up. You can also restrict your entire website to “members-only access” with a single click.

The catch for “members-only” site access? This applies to your entire site. Any non-members who access your website will be prompted to sign up for an account. This is ideal for certain community websites. For example, you can create a space to post information for apartment residents or students. It also makes SITE123 a safe platform for clubs, associations, and nonprofits to discuss private business.

To use the Members Only feature, you need to subscribe to either the Professional or Gold plan. Admittedly, these plans are pricier, but they also give you access to e-commerce features and more marketing emails, making them well-suited for growing your community.

Features

• Extra security. Choosing the “confirmed members only” option allows you to vet all new members before giving them access to your site.
• Forum insights. Site admins can monitor comments in the forum dashboard and see member engagement with different topics by day or week.
• Recommended discussions. Visitors will be shown relevant forum threads based on their past engagement. They can also jump to the discussions they want to see using the forum search feature.
• SEO tools. SITE123 gives you control over meta tags, sitemaps, and 301 redirects so potential members can find your homepage on Google.

See how user-friendly this builder is in our SITE123 review.

8. Webador: Offer Exclusive Membership Perks To Build Loyalty

Webador may not offer all the advanced features you get with Wix, but what it does provide are easy-to-use membership features that help you drive customer loyalty, which can help you build a steady revenue stream.

To create members-only content for your Webador site, all you have to do is set up a “hidden,” password-protected page for products or services you sell and then restrict access to visitors unless they sign up for your membership plan. For example, you might want to offer paid access to an exclusive product catalog. Or you could design a membership program that offers free product samples or reward points.

Webador has a limited app market, but you can still add extra functionalities like custom signup forms and promotional pop-ups. You’ll need to sign up for the Pro plan or higher to add third-party apps and custom code. Even so, Webador’s higher-tiered plans are cheaper than what most similar website builders have to offer.

Features

• Free domain. Webador’s domain price is included in your plan, which can save you money in the long run.
• Tools to analyze performance. You can track and analyze your website’s performance to help you understand your audience, optimize your member offerings, and boost signups for members-only features.
• Cheap e-commerce. On the Business plan, you can sell unlimited products and digital content. Plus, Webador won’t charge you extra transaction fees.
• Social media buttons and feeds. Webador allows you to add X (Twitter) feeds, Facebook Like and Share buttons, and more. This can increase engagement with your visitors and enhance your membership site’s online presence​​.

See more about features in our expert Webador review.

9. IONOS: Build a Basic Membership Site for Cheap

IONOS MyWebsite is a decent beginner-friendly builder, particularly because it offers some of the lowest-cost website builder plans on the market. You can make a membership website for only $6.00/month. If you’re just starting out and you don’t have a huge customer base yet, IONOS’s cheap plans are fantastic.

With that being said, you get what you pay for. IONOS’s membership features are limited to password-protected pages. While you can sell memberships on your website, you’ll have to manually email new customers to give them the password. There’s no exclusive members’ area either, which isn’t ideal if you want to build a community.

Depending on your business, the lack of a dedicated members’ area might not be a dealbreaker. IONOS is good for small businesses that want to lock information, such as scheduling links or unlisted YouTube videos behind a password. However, if you want to sell courses or have different membership tiers, you’re better off with Wix.

Features

• Sell via social media. You can connect IONOS to your Facebook and Instagram business tools. This allows customers to add items to their shopping cart directly from your Facebook or Instagram posts.
• Plenty of payment options. IONOS connects to 50+ different third-party payment systems, including PayPal and Stripe. You can also set up manual offline payments to allow your customers to pay via bank transfer, over the phone, or in cash.
• Custom website solutions. For a larger monthly fee, if you need more membership features IONOS will build a custom website for you, offer training for you, and provide unlimited maintenance and updates.
• Automated SEO. IONOS integrates rankingCoach to assist you in enhancing your SEO through text and video tutorials. It also conducts automatic keyword research and suggests new keywords to boost your search result rankings.

See more pricing information in our in-depth IONOS review.

How To Build a Website With a Member’s Area

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to know anything about code to build a membership website. All you need is a great website builder, a few hours of free time, and a can-do attitude. Oh, and my handy step-by-step guide:

1. Make a membership plan. Before you start building a website, choose a membership model that works best for your needs. You’ll need to decide on the type of content you’ll offer, whether you plan to have different levels of user access or time limits, and how much you’ll charge for it.

2. Pick a website builder. Overall, I recommend Wix. While other builders lock membership features behind more expensive plans, most of Wix’s e-commerce tools are immediately available (or upgradable) to all users.

3. Add membership features. Keep your members chatting with a members-only forum, or add an online store to sell membership subscriptions and digital products.

4. Connect payment methods. Based on your business plan, you might have to gather monthly fees from your members. Therefore, you’ll need to introduce various payment options that let members organize and handle their regular payments.

5. Choose your domain name. A memorable domain name improves your brand’s (or club’s) legitimacy. Most website builder plans offer free domain names, so make sure you take advantage of this!

6. Promote your membership website. You can use social media and email marketing to reach your audience. Getting started can be challenging, but you can try offering discounted membership prices for a limited amount of time or specific age groups, such as students.

These Are the Best Membership Website Builders for Growing Your Business

Membership websites make it possible to enhance revenue and cultivate strong relationships with your customers. All website builders on this list can help you achieve that, but the best one for you will depend on your needs.

If you want to build a versatile membership website, Wix is my top recommendation. It offers the broadest range of membership features and the largest selection of themes, meeting the needs of almost any membership website or business.

On the other hand, if you want to focus on selling subscriptions and products, go with Shopify. You’ll be able to offer flexible purchase options to your members and connect with them through Shopify’s built-in marketing tools.

Or, if you want effective tools to manage your community, BigCommerce is a great option. With just a few clicks, you can create member groups and personalize their shopping experience.

FAQ

What is the best membership website builder?

This completely depends on your unique needs and the kind of website you’re building. However, Wix tops the list because it has the largest variety of membership options on any plan. Other notable features are its ease of use, customizable design, and accessible pricing.

What can I do with my membership site?

The possibilities are endless: you can publish blog posts and podcasts, provide downloadable files, or sell subscriptions and products. If you’re running an online shop, you can also offer member features like coupon codes and exclusive discounts.

How can I make a membership website for free?

You can make a membership website for free with Wix. Even though these free membership plans have some limitations (for example, your website will feature the website builder’s branding, and you can’t choose a custom domain name), you can still use them to create a fully functional website.

Are membership websites profitable?

Membership websites are a great way to make money online, but as with any business, you need to carefully consider how much it costs. You’ll have to pay to build and host your website as well as regularly provide new content to keep your members happy.