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Membership websites

A members’ area that earns its keep, built around your members.

Membership and subscription websites: gated content, recurring payments, member directories, downloads and client portals, on WordPress, built so you own the members and the revenue.

Talk it through How it’s quoted

★★★★★ Rated on Trustpilot & Google · Twenty years, trading since 2006

  • Recurring payments
  • Gated content and downloads
  • Member directories and profiles
  • Client portals and dashboards
Why build your own

Own the platform, the members and the margin

Renting a membership platform costs a percentage of every subscription forever and leaves your members on someone else’s system. A membership site you own costs what it costs to build, and the relationship is yours.

We build membership sites on WordPress and WooCommerce: tiers and recurring billing, content gated by level, member profiles and directories, downloads, communities and client portals where customers see their own records and files. The same platform, whether you run a trade association, a paid newsletter, a training programme or a client portal for a professional practice.

✓

Tiers and billing. Monthly or annual plans, trials, upgrades, pauses and dunning handled automatically.

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Content gated properly. Pages, posts, downloads, video and courses restricted by level, with secure file delivery.

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Members, not users. Profiles, directories, verification, badges and messaging where the community needs it.

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Portals for clients. Logged-in areas where customers see reports, invoices, files and progress, with roles and audit trails.

What we build

Membership models we build most

The mechanics overlap; the business model is what differs. Tell us yours and we will map it.

01

Paid content and newsletters

Articles, videos and resources behind a subscription, with previews that convert and content that keeps members renewing.

02

Associations and clubs

Member tiers, renewals, directories, events and members-only documents for trade bodies, clubs and networks.

03

Directories and marketplaces

Paid listings as subscriptions, claims, verification, featured placements and lead tracking for the listing owners.

04

Client portals

Customers and clients log in to see their own records, reports, files and history: inspections, projects, orders, support.

05

Communities

Forums, groups and messaging alongside the membership, on WordPress or XenForo where a full forum is the better fit.

06

Training and courses

Course libraries with progress, quizzes and certificates gated by membership; see our course websites page for the detail.

Recent work

Membership and portal work in use today

Professional services

A paid directory of engineers and consultancies

A publisher wanted a directory that paid for itself: listings businesses would buy, upgrade and keep renewing, with real leads to show for it.

Tiered listings sold through WooCommerce memberships, claim-your-listing flows, verified badges, featured placements, lead capture with notifications, reviews, faceted search and an analytics view so each listing can see the enquiries it generates.

  • Listings as WooCommerce subscriptions
  • Verified badges and featured slots as upsells
  • Lead tracking every listing owner can see
  • Import tooling for the existing database
Industrial services

An inspection reporting portal with client dashboards

An inspection company was running its reporting through forms, spreadsheets and email. Inspectors needed to work on site, sometimes offline; clients needed their reports, floor plans and history in one place.

A portal that turns form submissions into structured inspection records per company and site: an areas editor and floor-plan tool, signature capture, offline drafts that sync, branded PDF report generation, a private file library with previews and download permissions, client onboarding, and front-end dashboards for inspectors, managers and clients.

  • Inspectors work offline and sync later
  • Branded PDF reports generated automatically
  • Per-client dashboards with history and files
  • Bulk import of years of legacy records
Our managed clients

A branded client dashboard for managed WordPress sites

Clients on our care plans logged into a WordPress admin that told them nothing useful and made it easy to break things.

A full-width tabbed dashboard that replaces the default: a branded welcome, cache purge, security and Core Web Vitals overview, activity log, analytics and marketing tabs, automated housekeeping tasks and a native widget area for WooCommerce and other plugins, with silent updates from our own update server.

  • One screen that shows what matters
  • Cache purge and security checks without a developer
  • Activity log for accountability
  • Updated automatically across every client site
How it’s quoted

Quoted to the members and the model

A gated content library, a paid community and a client portal with its own data are very different builds, so we do not publish a single price. Once we know how members join, pay and what they get, we quote a fixed figure for the build with hosting, care and edits as one monthly amount after launch.

Fixed, in writing

A short call or our project brief, then a written quote with what is included. The figure does not move unless you ask for more.

What moves the price

  • Tiers, trials and how billing works
  • What members can see and do once inside
  • Directories, communities and messaging
  • Portals with their own records and reporting

Always included

  • Hosting, updates, backups and security
  • Content edits as you need them
  • Your design and theme are yours from day one
  • Training so your team can run it
Tailored to your budget

Contact us for a quote

Tell us roughly how the membership website needs to work and what you have already. We come back with a fixed price and an honest view of what is worth building first.

Contact us

Looking for something bigger? Complex portals, integrations and large platforms are built to order. See our custom web development service →

Straight answers

Membership Websites, answered

Can I take recurring payments?

Yes. Monthly and annual subscriptions through Stripe, PayPal or GoCardless, with automatic renewals, failed-payment handling, upgrades, downgrades and pauses.

Can content be restricted by membership level?

Yes: pages, posts, categories, downloads, video and course lessons can each be limited to specific tiers, with teasers for non-members so the content still sells itself.

Do members get profiles and a directory?

If you want them to. Profiles, searchable directories, verification badges and member-to-member messaging are all options; for trade bodies and networks they are usually the point.

Is it secure?

Members’ areas get the attention they need: hardened logins, secure file delivery so downloads cannot be shared by link, role-based permissions and audit logs, and hosting we run and monitor.

Can you migrate my existing members?

Yes. We import members, tiers and, where the old platform allows, payment methods and renewal dates, so nobody has to sign up again.

How much does a membership website cost?

It depends on the model. A gated library with one paid tier is a modest build; a portal where members manage their own records, or a community with directories and messaging, is bespoke work. Tell us how members join and what they get, and we will quote a fixed figure in writing before anything starts.

Build something members stay for

Tell us who the members are and what they get

From that we can say which model fits, what it takes to build, and what it costs, fixed in writing.

Contact usAll our pricing