Squarespace Members Area: The Ultimate Guide
A coupla years ago the Squarespace Members Area function was released, and with it a gated community space that allows you to add a pay-walled area on your Squarespace website, that people can pay (a one-off fee or a monthly subscription) to access.
It took away the need to create a workaround for protected/ paywalled content on Squarespace, allowed much improved options for video hosting (up to 50 hours of locally hosted video content on the pro plan) and the option to make sign-up free for members, and with it, an instant opportunity to create a fabulous password protected client space!
I’ve now set up a bunch of member areas for clients with various use cases & today I’m breaking down everything you need to know about Squarespace’s membership options in this post - Squarespace members area : The ultimate guide, covering how much Squarespace member areas cost, the pros and cons of the Squarespace Members Area offering vs other membership sites, how to enable and set up a Members Area on your Squarespace site and a few tips n hacks along the way. Let’s get to it!
This post may contain affiliate links. These are denoted by a *. If you make a purchase via one of these links I may get a small kickback. I only recommend products and services I use and love myself! Thanks in advance :)
Told ya this was an ultimate guide to Squarespace Member Areas… it’s got a lot in it!
Wanting to skip ahead? Here’s the contents…click to go straight to that part!
Oh and planning on offering a Course on Squarespace - you might wanna check out my Squarespace Courses step by step Guide instead!
Squarespace members area use cases
Before we leap in, you might be thinking - what is Squarespace member areas, and how might I use one. Over the last couple of years I’ve seen some great use-cases for Squarespace member areas. Here are a few of them!
Gated client space - perfect for hosting client onboarding and offboarding information that they can access on your website using their own account and log in. Allows you to automate the process, keep everything on brand & gives your clients a seamless experience.
Premium content - think like a paid for substack. You can have a members area for gated blog content, recipes, pdfs or whatever you can imagine that you consider to be premium. The monthly subscription option for members is a pretty cool way to have a continuous income stream, and members areas make it easy to add content, like premium blog posts regularly.
Paid newsletter - similar to the above, you can use your Squarespace member area, connected to your email marketing software to send a premium or paid newsletter to your community.
Group coaching or masterminds - Squarespace member areas work super well for a group-coaching style resource repository. You can add call replays, relevant documents, supporting trainings and even welcomes/ house keepings that can support your group facilitation.
Courses - from one-off lessons/ topics, to fully developed & built-out courses that include a range of modules, Squarespace member areas can be set up to create a well structured online course, however as of August 2023 Squarespace Courses is now in the game with extra course-specific functionality so I highly recommend checking that out instead if you’re planning on creating an online course on Squarespace!
Now there’s a quick health warning here, which is that although you can use Squarespace member areas for courses and community spaces, there are other platforms that were developed for those purposes. Because of that they have a more in-depth set of functionality related to running communities and courses than Squarespace member areas can offer (think inbuilt quizzes/ community chat spaces etc).
So if you don’t already have a Squarespace site you may wish to look into Teachable or Thinkific (for online courses), Circle (not to be confused with Squarespace Circle) for communities, or of course (pun very much intended!) the brand new Squarespace Courses!
If you’re already on Squarespace and those use-cases above float your boat, then the next question on your lips is probably how much is a Squarespace member area going to set me back…
How much do Squarespace Member Areas cost?
The Squarespace member areas function is an additional cost to your regular Squarespace website pricing. Starting at $9 a month for the starter plan when paid annually, increasing to $18 on the core plan and hitting $35 a month for the pro plan when paid annually.
Predictably these different Squarespace member area plan levels have different features that are reflected in the costs, so let’s talk next about how to choose the right Squarespace Members Area plan for you and your needs.
How do I choose the right Squarespace Members Area Plan?
Squarespace offers 3 types of members area plans.
The starter plan
Starting with the starter plan (makes sense right?!), this basic plan includes one member area, meaning you can have one “gated-off” space, so for example one course, or one type of client area, or one video vault.
To avoid confusion, within this area, you can have as much content as you’d like (including up to 5 hours of locally hosted video) and sell or give entry to as many people as you like, meaning you can build out a full course, or client training zone or community space including paywalled blog, trainings, documents etc.
If you’re wanting to start with just one member area, the starter plan probably makes sense - but there are a couple of catches which are important to know.
The first and most important thing is that Squarespace charges a transaction fee of 7% for the starter plan. 7%! That’s huge, and is in addition to any processing fees you might have for your stripe, square or paypal payment processors.
Now if you’re planning to grant free access to your area (for example for clients who are paying for a service via a separate invoice) then you don’t need to worry about this, but if you’re planning to sell access it’s worth knowing that by the time you hit around $300 of sales a month it becomes cheaper to be on the next plan up, the core plan (you also get a few other perks with this).
The core plan
The core plan includes everything you have in the starter plan but allows you to;
Create 3 different member area spaces, as opposed to just one - for example 3 different courses, or 3 different community spaces.
Host up to 20 hours of native video (as opposed to just 5 hours on the Starter member areas plan)
And pay a transaction fee of 4% as opposed to 7%
If you’re likely to hit more than $300 of monthly sales, want to host lots of videos (for example a Yoga studio training video vault) or have several different offerings the core plan is likely to be the right Squarespace members area fit for you.
But, once again, by the time you reach $600 of monthly sales, the pro plan becomes cheaper (when you count the transaction cost. So let’s look at what you get for the Squarespace members area pro plan.
The pro plan
Once again the principles of the plan are the same, but with the squarespace member areas pro plan you get:
The option to create 10 different member areas - meaning up to 10 different courses, communities or spaces
Up to 50 hours of native video content hosted on your Squarespace site.
A transaction fee of 1%
So if you’re planning to hit more than $600 of monthly sales, and need to host lots of video, for example exercise classes, or recorded weekly group coaching calls hosted on the platform or whatever, then you might find the pro plan is the best fit.
Other Squarespace member areas pricing issues to consider.
It’s worth bearing in mind that these costs are in addition to your standard Squarespace website subscription, so although you manage your members area on the back end of your site just like any other part of your site itself, you pay in addition for this paywalled functionality.
That said, if you don’t plan to sell access to your members area, you don’t need to factor in the transaction fees costs.
Oh, and a final important note on pricing that people often forget. By having a members area you may save on other software costs, for example Vimeo pro for hosting your videos privately (costs from $12/ month) so make sure to factor this in too. (Remember your video hosting limit isn’t restricted to your members area, and you can use it for videos anywhere on your squarespace site.
Next question…
How do I set up my Squarespace Members Area?
Well friend, this one is super simple. Now you’ve decided to go for it, building out your Squarespace Member Area is really simple.
From the main menu on your Squarespace site head to Commerce
Choose Memberships
Select “Add Membership”
Head back to “Pages” and you’ll see you now have a Member Area
Select the black button “Create Member Area”
Click set up Member Area
You can now name your Squarespace Member Area, and choose whether you want this to be paid or free, and whether you want to have a one-off cost (great for courses) or it be a subscription (great for masterminds/ premium memberships etc).
You can add multiple options here, including a one-off payment or a split payment plan to spread the cost - so make sure to check them all out before choosing which options you want to offer.
Once you’re happy click complete and you’ll see your member area is now set up.
The final step is to click the gear icon on the main part of your new member area and amend the global settings here. They’re pretty self explanatory, but make sure you check them & amend if needed.
Now it’s time to add some content!
How do I add content to my Squarespace Members Area?
To add content to your Squarespace members area you do exactly the same as when you add content anywhere else on your site.
Click the add page button
Choose from the different pages/ page collections and build out the space accordingly.
For a members are that is destined to be a learning space (like a course, or content that people will work through step by step) I love Video collections, Portfolio Collections or Blog Collections that allow you to organize your content in a smart way using pagination (those little next/ previous) tabs that folks can use to navigate forward & back. It makes it much easier to organise your content that way!
I particularly love this sidebar navigation plugin from Rache at Square Stylist which walks you through how to add a sidebar to your squarespace member area step by step. I’ve installed it on a bunch of client sites (including the one below for Property Investment Expert Edyta Tadeusiak & it really makes the whole process of navigating through your course material much simpler & easier for your members!
Example of member areas sidebar
You can of course also add ordinary pages, and manage the content in your squarespace member area in the same way as you manage any other content on your site, but the tip of using blog or portfolio collections to organise content is one of my best bits of advice!
Once you’ve added all your content and your member area is good to go, make sure to click the upgrade button to pay your member area subscription and you’re set!
How do people sign up for my member area?
So now your member area is all set up and ready to rock n roll, how do people actually sign up and pay you your hard earned $$?
There are 2 ways for people to sign up.
The first is simply to use the url for your member area content. Once people arrive on this page they’ll be prompted to sign up or sign in. At this point they pay (if you created a payment option) or create an account (if your area is free) and they’re good to go!
The second way people can sign up for your member area is via your store if you have one. To add your membership to your store follow these steps:
Head to pages
Find your Squarespace store (if you have one set up)
Click the plus button to add a product
From the options choose membership
You can then follow the steps for your membership to show up in your store.
Squarespace Members Area Hacks, Tips & Workarounds
So although Squarespace Member Areas is not the most robust course or community platform out there, if you already have a Squarespace site, it’s very possibly a great option for your first course, premium content or community space!
So how do you workaround the limitations? Here are a few tips!
Use a blog collection to organise your content in an easy to follow/ navigate way
Install this sidebar navigation from Square Stylist if you’d like to host a course that’s easy to navigate through (Or use Squarespace Courses instead - here’s my full step by step guide to creating a course on Squarespace!)
Create lessons by adding a video block, text content and a PDF download within one blog item
Enable comments on your blog posts to allow students to ask questions/ give feedback or interact with you despite the lack of community functionality.
Add a search bar within the blog in your member area to allow students/ members to search for content
Or even better, install the Universal Filter from Square Websites and tag/ categorize your “lessons aka posts” so that they can be easily found
Give students their own tracking sheet (a google sheet they can copy into their own google drive area) so they can track their progress through the course without the need for native progress reporting/ tracking (or use Squarespace Courses that has this built in!)
Use Square Stylist’s payment processor workaround to avoid Squarespace’s transaction fees and use your payment processor of choice!
Frequently asked Questions about Squarespace Member Areas
Likelihood you have at least some of these questions about Squarespace Member Areas on your mind, so if you don’t yet have an answer, lets get to it…
-
In addition to your monthly Squarespace website subscription Squarespace member areas cost from $9 to $35 a month when you select the annual plan.
-
Yep - you can have up to 10 member areas on one Squarespace website with the pro member areas plan (and as many members as you want for each one).
-
Go to commerce > memberships and walk through the steps. You should see a Member Area appear in your pages menu.
-
They’re super easy to set up if you already have a Squarespace website. The monthly cost is relatively low compared to other course/ membership platforms. You get a decent amount of video hosting time on all plans. You can use a few hacks & tips to add missing functionality (like a sidebar navigation for course content), and enabling blog commenting to allow your members to ask questions/ interact with you.
-
The downsides of Squarespace member areas are the high transaction fees, especially with the starter plan, the limited course related functionality (no quizzes/ progress maps etc) and lack of community spaces to interact with your members.
-
Yes - you can add a Member area on Squarespace 7.0, 7.1 and Fluid Engine.
Overview of Squarespace member areas
In summary, the Squarespace Members Area functionality gives you an awesome and super easy way to create gated and paywalled content on your existing Squarespace site, which is a fabulous solution to offering a course, client area or premium content.
All great ways to earn some passive income and better serve your community (and who doesn't want that!)
Need a hand setting up your Squarespace member area? Check out my Squarespace help options & get in touch.
New on the ‘Gram…
