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Bearss
09-06-2013, 06:05 PM
Hi,

I need help on how to set up a paid membership access website. I don't know any programming languages, but I know I can use different kinds of software (Content management system?) to do the job.

I have also talked to CCBill, but I am not sure how it integrates with a website. Does anyone have any experience with CCBill?

What kind of software's are recommended for building a paid membership access website?

I hope you can give me some help.

From
Bjørn

vangogh
09-06-2013, 07:02 PM
Welcome to the forum Bjørn. You won't need to program a membership site yourself. I can't speak for all content managements systems, but those I know generally have extensions to add membership systems.

The CMS I know is WordPress and there are quite a few membership plugins for it. Some are commercial and some are free. The commercial plugins run anywhere from $50 to $100. Here's the results of searching the WordPress repository for membership plugins (http://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=membership). These will be free. If you search google for WordPress membership plugins you'll be able to find some of the commercial plugins. Commercial plugins will likely offer more features, but naturally you have to pay for those features.

I've never worked with CCBill. Odds are many of the membership plugins will be able to connect to it, though sometimes it's as an extension to a plugin and costs a little more. Most will work for free with PayPal and then charge a little something extra to use another merchant.

Remember that while I'm giving advice on WordPress other content management systems probably offer the same kind of thing. I'm just not familiar enough with them to offer specifics.

I hope that helps.

Brian Altenhofel
09-06-2013, 09:18 PM
In Drupal you can do it with the Content Access (https://drupal.org/project/content_access), Commerce (https://drupal.org/project/commerce), and Rules (https://drupal.org/project/rules) modules. Looks like a module for CCBill would either have to be written or ported to Drupal 7 to work with Commerce, though (if you're stuck on CCBill).

zooron_sam
09-08-2013, 12:29 AM
CCBill is not the only company that can help you with your subscription billing also try googling "subscription billing", companies like recurly.com, stripe.com, zuora.com or chargify.com can all help you out and there might already be a plugin for wordpress/drupal built.

ajointventure
01-25-2014, 04:13 PM
Perhaps you could elaborate a little more on what you are providing your potential customers in exchange for a fee. What features and tools will be provided? What type of content are you providing? If you can give us a better idea of what you intend to offer, a better CMS could be suggested. (For example I use Social Engine)

Gabe
01-26-2014, 12:35 PM
I recommend going with BuddyPress. It's free and built on WordPress, the most popular website platform. The community is large so there are plenty of free plugins/add-ons for it, but if you're willing to pay for some premium add-ons WPMU DEV (http://premium.wpmudev.org) has built a whole community around it.

Whether you go the free or the premium route, it'll be cheaper than hiring a developer for custom work. Sure, you may need to get your hands dirty to do some customization, but you'll have more monty in the bank for other things (i.e. marketing).

RickGrantham
01-26-2014, 03:14 PM
I personally use "Easy Member Pro". There is a cost to it, but it is EASY :)

As people sign up for different items (or subscriptions), it handles everything for me.

I have also heard a lot of good things about Kajabi, although I have never used it.

Rick

Harold Mansfield
01-26-2014, 03:31 PM
For WordPress, I've used this on a few occasions. It's pretty robust and there is a paid version with more options.
WordPress › s2Member Framework (Member Roles, Capabilities, Membership, PayPal Members) « WordPress Plugins (http://wordpress.org/plugins/s2member/)

Of course more info on what kind of membership site would be helpful. Free memberships? Pay for access? Pay for content? Are you just building a mailing list?

As far as CCBill is concerned, never used them for an ecommerce or membership site. And I have nothing bad to say about them. Just understand that it isn't the only payment processor in town. You'll see that a lot of "out of the box" solutions come with Pay Pal integration standard.

phowey@talkroute.com
01-26-2014, 11:18 PM
Wordpress combined with WooCommerce Subscriptions is probably the easiest and cheapest.

How complex are your subscriptions?

For example, Talkroute has recurring billing for our service plans and required custom development. The service plans are based on usage amounts (excluding the unlimited plan) and if a user goes over their allotted usage, the subscription auto renews, changes the start date, and resets their minute counter. It is actually more complex than that but that is the basic summary.

If you are just selling a simple subscription (like monthly access) than the wordpress/woocommerce suggestion will be perfect. If your subscriptions have numerous variables, you will need to hire a developer.

vangogh
01-30-2014, 12:26 AM
Wordpress combined with WooCommerce Subscriptions is probably the easiest and cheapest.

Definitely one way to go. There are actually quite a few easy and inexpensive WordPress solutions out now. There are a handful of good membership plugins, a handful of good shopping cart plugins, and a few created to work together. WooCommerce is certainly one of the solutions where both are created to work together. I've used Woocommerce, though not in combination with a subscription mechanism. The general shopping cart is relatively easy to work with. The costs add up a bit depending on which extensions you need, though they're hardly a lot.

FlyPizzaGuy
01-31-2014, 04:36 PM
Would this be a social website that offers interactive features or something of the sort? The reason being I mention this is because Paid Membership websites these days take quite a bit of time consumption in time, money, programming, networking, social interaction, Internet Appearance and a few other things just to name a few. I have a domain I am adding things together right now and also in the process of going the full nine yards like you are mentioning what it takes. So this hopefully will give you a general idea on what your startup costs will be also. Unless you know all this stuff yourself. Then you can cut costs and time by assembling the computers(if you go this route) together unless you are going to be paying for web hosting. Then your going to be working off of a budget. Then things start to get pretty case specific. Hope this gives you an idea on what the pros and cons are on running a Paid Membership website even with commerce.

Of course this is just a rough draft type of lineup one would go by if they were going this direction.

vangogh
02-04-2014, 12:15 AM
because Paid Membership websites these days take quite a bit of time consumption in time, money, programming, networking, social interaction

Very true. I build websites for a living and I know setting up a membership site, especially when combining it with a few other things can be a lot of work. It's doable for anyone. There are plenty of tools available that eliminate some of the more technical work, but even skipping the technical stuff there's a lot to consider in how you'll set up the business side of things. Will people pay each time they want to access something? Will the membership be for a certain time frame? Will you have different levels of membership with different privileges to access content? You can even set up things so that people are automatically moved from one level of membership to another after a certain amount of time has passed.

Harold Mansfield
02-04-2014, 10:13 AM
I have to agree with the difficulty of membership sites. I've also built more than a few membership and community sites and people greatly underestimate how hard they are to grow. For every membership site that I've built, there was a person on the other end saying, "If I can just get [insert number] members to sign up, that's [insert arbitrary number] a month in revenue", and then they proceed to assume how excited people will be to sign up for their website.

First off, paid membership sites are pretty old school web unless you have something terrific to offer. And by terrific I mean something that not only is unavailable elsewhere, but that people want bad enough to put their information down and pay to get it. There are very few sites that fit that bill these days. And in comparison to excellent websites that offer free content, open source products, free classes and tutorials and so on....it's hard to justify paying to access a website these days.

Mailing list? Sure.

Second, even if you are successful getting a few curious people to sign up, you have to work really hard to keep them. Usually once people get what they want, they loose interest in paying for content every month.

However, in the case of organizations that need to provide members only information it makes better sense. I also see sites that offer some kind of lessons or tutorials do well, but they are very well put together.

vangogh
02-05-2014, 01:51 AM
I don't want to leave the impression that you can't build a membership site. I'm planning one for myself at some point, but it is going to be harder to get going that it might seem at first. There really is a lot to decide in how to set it up and you do have to create something worth paying for each month. That usually means ongoing content creation.

Most content management systems likely have extensions or plugins at this point to add membership capability so it's doable even if you can't write the code yourself. However, there's usually a few different pieces you have to tie together so it's a little more than click a few buttons and you're set up.