Membership platforms sort by what the membership gates. Content: Memberful and MemberStack bolt paid access onto sites you already have; Kajabi packages courses, community and email as one rented stack. Community: Circle owns the modern community-membership space; Patreon owns creator patronage with the audience built in. Software or anything with rules: when the membership gates an actual product — tools, dashboards, member directories, booking rights, tiered features — that's a custom app, and describing it to Greta builds the membership logic, member area and admin exactly to your rules. The platforms rent you their model of membership; the build path encodes yours.
"Membership site" hides three different businesses: paid content, paid community, and paid software. The platforms are genuinely excellent at the first two and quietly terrible at the third — and the third is where most of the interesting margins live.
How we compared
What the membership can gate (content, community, features, real product logic), payment and tier flexibility, ownership of members and data, and cost shape as membership grows. Pricing checked September 2026; every platform here adjusts tiers — verify live.
At a glance
| Platform | Gates | Best for | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memberful | Content on your site | Writers, podcasters with existing sites | % + monthly tiers |
| MemberStack | Content/pages on no-code sites | Webflow-style stacks | Monthly tiers + % |
| Kajabi | Courses + community + email | All-in-one course businesses | Higher monthly tiers |
| Circle | Community | Modern paid communities | Monthly tiers |
| Patreon | Creator patronage | Creators with audiences | % of income |
| Greta | Whatever your rules say | Membership as software | Free tier; $20/mo ($5 welcome) |
The platforms, honestly
Memberful and MemberStack solve the same problem for different stacks: your site exists, some of it should be paid. Memberful is the WordPress-and-newsletter world's favorite; MemberStack speaks Webflow and no-code. Both are clean, both take their cut, both end where your ambitions exceed "gate this content."
Kajabi is the all-in-one bet: courses, community, email, landing pages, one subscription that replaces four tools. The price of one-stop is the ceiling of one-stop — its course model is its course model, and businesses that outgrow the template feel it everywhere at once. Circle made community membership feel current — spaces, events, paid tiers — and is the right answer when community is the product. Patreon remains the default where the audience already lives on the creator's channels and the membership is patronage plus perks; its percentage is the cost of its checkout familiarity.
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When membership is actually software
The tell: your "membership site" sentence contains rules. "Members get three bookings a month." "Tier 2 opens the analytics dashboard." "Members appear in the directory unless they opt out." "Lapsed members keep read-only access for 30 days." Platforms make you contort those rules into their model; a custom build encodes them directly. Describing the rules to Greta — tiers, what each gates, what lapsing does, what admins see — generates the member portal, the gating logic and the admin panel as a real app, with billing wired to Stripe or a merchant of record per our billing software comparison. The entitlement model guide maps tier rules precisely; the free tier (30 credits a month, 5 a day) builds the first version, $20/month flat after ($5 with the current welcome offer).
The honest counter: if your membership is "paywall my posts," Memberful will have you live by Friday and no build competes with that. Build when the rules are the product.
FAQ
What's the best membership site builder? By what you gate: Memberful/MemberStack for content on existing sites, Kajabi for course businesses, Circle for communities, Patreon for creator patronage, and a custom build when membership gates software or rule-driven access.
Can I build a membership site without coding? Yes — platforms cover content and community without code, and AI app builders now cover the custom tier: describe tiers, rules and member views in plain English and the app generates. The skill is writing your rules down precisely, which the platforms never made you do.
How much does a membership site cost to run? Platforms: monthly tiers plus percentages that scale with revenue (September 2026 shapes — verify live). Custom on flat pricing: the build effort up front, then hosting that doesn't take a percentage of your members.
How do I migrate members off a platform later? Member emails and subscription states export; the payment relationships re-anchor with your processor (members re-enter cards unless the platform supports payment migration — ask before you commit). It's the classic platform trade: speed now, friction at the exit.
