A membership site charges a recurring fee for ongoing access to content, services or community. For the right kind of business it is the single best thing you can add to a website — predictable monthly income, deeper customer relationships, a way to monetise expertise you are giving away anyway. It is also wrong for plenty of businesses. This piece sets out who should consider one, what to charge, and what it actually costs to build.
Who a membership site suits
A membership model works when you have something members want repeatedly, not once. The Devon businesses we have built membership sections for fit a clear pattern:
- Yoga and pilates studios — class booking, on-demand video library, members-only pricing for workshops
- Coaches and consultants — gated resource libraries, monthly group calls, certification tracking
- Accountants and bookkeepers — client portals with secure document upload, monthly market commentary, on-call advice
- Paddlesport and outdoor pursuits clubs — fixtures, safety briefings, volunteer rotas, equipment booking
- Independent artisans and creators — early access to product drops, behind-the-scenes content, members-only commissions
If your business is one-off transactional — a plumber, a takeaway, a barber — a membership site is probably the wrong tool. A loyalty scheme inside your existing website will do more.
We are ready to talk things through!
Contact HereWhat to charge
There is no single right number, but the brackets we see working in South Devon are:
- £5–£15/month for content-only memberships (recipes, training videos, exclusive blog posts)
- £15–£40/month for content plus light interaction (Q&A calls, community forum, basic resources)
- £40–£150/month for higher-touch coaching, B2B advisory, or client portals with real service backing
- £150+/month for done-with-you or done-for-you tiers — typical of consultancy and professional services
Annual billing at a 15–20% discount lifts retention dramatically. Most platforms make tiered pricing easy.
The software we use
We build membership sections on Restrict Content Pro for WordPress. It handles membership levels, content restriction, recurring payments via Stripe or PayPal, drip-feed content release, and member account pages. It is included as standard with the websites we build, so there are no plugin licence fees on top of the build cost.
Where Restrict Content Pro is not enough — for example a course-based offering with quizzes, certificates and progress tracking — we layer LearnDash on top. For event-based memberships (a lecture series, regular workshops) we add The Events Calendar Pro.
What it actually costs to set up
A working members-only section on top of a new WordPress and Divi 5 site sits inside our standard build. For an existing site we are adding membership functionality to, the work is typically a one-off configuration job covering Restrict Content Pro setup, payment gateway integration, member registration and login pages, the first restricted content area, and member-onboarding email sequences.
Then there are the monthly running costs you should plan for: card payment fees (Stripe is 1.5% + 20p for UK cards, 2.5% for international), hosting and SSL, and the ongoing time cost of producing whatever content keeps members renewing. That last one is the killer. Plenty of membership sites die not because the platform broke but because nobody had the bandwidth to keep producing the goods.
Honest pros and cons
Where it works: recurring revenue smooths your cash flow, members give you a captive audience for new offers, the data you collect (what they watch, what they download, what they ask) is genuinely useful for shaping the rest of your business.
Where it bites: retention is hard, churn compounds quickly if content slips, and you are now in the customer service business as well as your original business. Plan for at least 4–6 hours a week of member admin and content production from day one.
A short FAQ
Do I need a separate site? No. A members-only section sits inside your existing WordPress site behind a login.
Can I take payments without Stripe? Yes — PayPal, GoCardless and bank transfer all work, but Stripe handles recurring billing with the least friction.
What if I want to migrate later? Member data, content and billing can all be exported. We have done it in both directions.
We are based in Newton Abbot. If you are a Devon business considering a membership site, call or WhatsApp 07887 988780 for a straight conversation about whether it is the right fit. Builds start from £250 for the website, and ongoing support is £300 per month.