Squarespace Memberships: How to Set up a Paywall for Your Business
Got a skill you want to monetize? Squarespace Memberships makes it easy to build an additional revenue stream and turn prospective customers into loyal fans.
In this article we’ll share how Squarespace Memberships works and how to create an online paywall for your business.
What is Squarespace Memberships?
Squarespace Memberships is an extension you can use to create and manage subscription-based content on your website.
You can create exclusive members-only content, whether that’s newsletters, videos, or blog posts.
You can also create tiered content so different customers can access different things. For example, you can build a free tier to tempt people to check your content out, and a paid-for tier if they want more.
The best thing is that Squarespace Memberships works no matter what industry you’re in. You can sell fitness subscriptions, show people how to cook, or build a free community around your school!
Want to uncover more cool Squarespace extensions? Here are some of our favorites.
How to Get Started With Squarespace Memberships
Ready to create your very own paywall for your Squarespace site? Here’s how to set up a basic membership platform.
Note: Squarespace Memberships is only available on Business plans and above.
Go to the Squarespace website you want to set memberships up on and select Content & Memberships from the sidebar. This will take you to the memberships dashboard.
Click on the black Create button in the top right corner of your dashboard. From here, choose the type of membership site you want to build:
Course: Text, image, or video-based lessons
Video on demand: Videos customers can buy a subscription for or pay for individually
Member site: A paywalled section of your site that only certain people can access
Blog: Paywalled blog posts for paying subscribers
(You can mix and match content – so you can have videos, courses, and blogs in the same membership site if you want.)
Name your Squarespace Memberships site and choose a template for your homepage. Once you’ve created your homepage, you can add additional pages like video libraries, blog posts, and course pages.
You can also build and edit a Paywall page, which appears to people who aren’t logged into your site.
Once you’ve created your pages, you need to determine your pricing. Click on Pricing Plans to set this up.
Here you can create different pricing tiers and specify what you want to include in each tier.
Tiers can be free, or you can charge a recurring or fixed amount. If you want to accept payments, you will need to connect a payment processor to your site if you haven’t already done so.
You can have as many pricing options as you want, although in our experience, it’s best to keep things simple—you don’t want to confuse your customers!
From the pricing dashboard you can view and download a list of members, including what tier they’re on and when they subscribed. You can click the Create Campaign button to send them an email newsletter if you use Squarespace Email Campaigns.
Is Squarespace Memberships Free?
Squarespace Memberships comes free of charge with all Squarespace plans, although there are some limitations.
You only get 30 minutes of video storage and there’s a 9% transaction fee on any products you sell. This fee is on top of any PayPal or Stripe fees you pay.
Alternatively you can pay extra for more video storage and a lower transaction fee.
Are There Any Other Ways I Can Set Up a Squarespace Paywall?
Yes. If you don’t want to use Squarespace Memberships you can password-protect any page on your site. You can then give the password to any customer who buys your products or services.
This is a better option if you want to manually approve who gets access to your content, as this isn’t a choice on Squarespace Membership sites.
To set up a paywall in Squarespace, go to the page you want to password protect and click on the cog icon to access settings.
Under General settings, scroll down to Password and choose the password of your choice. Click Save when you’re done.
If your password is set up correctly, your web visitors will see the following lock screen.
You can customize this lock screen by going to Systems Pages and Lock Screen.
To remove the password, go back to page settings, delete the password, and click Save.
Ready to Create a Paywall for Your Squarespace Site?
Squarespace Memberships is a fantastic way to make a little extra money and build a community around your brand.
Plus, you can integrate it with Squarespace Emails to keep customers up to date with new updates and developments.
If you want help setting up Squarespace Memberships, whether on your existing site or a brand-new website, we offer ongoing Squarespace support.
Our skilled team will build and manage your Squarespace Memberships site for you, implementing custom CSS coding to make it stand out from the rest.
Book your 15-minute call today and take the first step towards a stunning Squarespace site!
