Paywalls and pricing plans

Set prices for access to your gated content.

Last updated January 31, 2025

Pricing plans are the fees customers pay to gain access to your digital products. When you add a course page, videos page, monetized blog, or member site to a pricing plan, you place the content behind a paywall.

To create a pricing plan, you’ll describe the digital products included, list the benefits of signing up, choose the enrollment dates, and set the price (if applicable). Then you can preview and style your paywall on a page-by-page basis.

Note

This guide outlines the pricing options that visitors pay to access digital products on your site. To learn how you pay for your digital products plan, visit Digital product pricing, billing, and invoices.

Before you begin

  • Ensure your site has at least one course page, videos page, blog page, or member site.
  • If you intend to charge customers for access to your content, connect Squarespace Payments or a third-party payment processor like Stripe or PayPal. Customers can only use PayPal for fixed amount one-time payments. If your pricing plan uses fixed amount installments or subscriptions, ensure you connect Squarespace Payments or Stripe so customers can use credit and debit cards.

Pricing plan basics

You use pricing plans to sell digital products, such as videos pages, course pages, blog pages, and member sites. When you add a digital product to a pricing plan, that product is hidden behind a paywall. Only visitors to your site that have signed up for the pricing plan can view and interact with the digital product.

When creating a pricing plan, keep in mind:

  • You can have up to 500 pricing plans on your site.
  • Pricing plans can hold 10 digital products or fewer. To reach 10 digital products, you can add any combination of course pages, videos pages, blog pages, and member sites to your pricing plan.
  • You can add a course page, videos page, blog page, or member site to a maximum of six pricing plans.
  • Course, blog, and videos pages added to a member site are included in the member site's pricing plan. To use a different pricing plan for your course, blog, or videos page, remove the page from the member site and add it to a pricing plan.
  • When a visitor purchases a pricing plan, they create an account and become a member of your site.

Pricing plan structures

The structure you choose for your pricing plan determines how your customers sign up and purchase it. You can choose from subscription, fixed-amount, or free plan structures.

  • Subscription - Visitors pay for membership on a recurring basis (weekly, monthly, or yearly) for access to the digital products. Members only maintain access to this digital product as long as they continue to pay the recurring subscription cost.
  • Fixed amount - Visitors pay a fixed amount for membership, either in a one-time payment or in installments, and get indefinite access to the digital products.
  • Free - Visitors can access a digital product’s gated content free of charge after creating a customer account.

If you select a subscription or fixed-amount pricing structure, you can offer up to two pricing options to your members. Here's how the two pricing options appear in a digital product block:

Digital product block showing two fixed price plans.jpg

Digital product block showing two fixed price plans.jpg

Tiered pricing

We recommend using a tiered approach when selling more than one pricing plan. Tiered pricing engages customers and helps them access your content and support you regardless of their finances.

For example, if you want to offer a variety of content about gardening, you can make:

  • One free plan for access to a videos page, with short videos on succulents and their upkeep
  • One fixed-amount plan for access to the succulent videos page and a course about growing an herb garden
  • One subscription plan for access to the succulent videos page, the herb garden course, and a member site with multiple pages about growing vegetable gardens

Fixed-amount installments

You can sell long-term access to your content using fixed-amount installments. A new member immediately gains access to your digital products upon paying the first installment. They'll need to continue making payments on schedule to maintain access. After they've made their final payment installment, they'll have access indefinitely.

It's not possible for your members to cancel installment payments after signing up. If a member needs to stop making payments, you cancel their membership for them.

Note

If a visitor purchased your fixed-amount installment plan prior to December 4, 2023, they can cancel their membership. To support your members in canceling, visit How members cancel their memberships.

 Add a pricing plan

A pricing plan includes one pricing structure (free, fixed amount, or subscription).

To add a pricing plan:

  1. Open the Pages panel.
  2. Click the blog page, course page, videos page, or member site you want to add to a pricing plan.
  3. In the Selling tools section, click Add a pricing plan, then click Create pricing plan.
  4. In the Details section, review the Name and Description of your digital product.
  5. Enter up to five Benefits included that outline what your pricing plan offers. Benefits must be 60 characters or fewer.
  6. In the Pricing section, select a pricing structure.
  7. If you’re charging for access to your digital product, enter the Price. Select the number of payments for fixed-amount plans or the frequency of payments for subscription plans.
  8. In the Sign up limits section, you can select a Start date and End date during which your visitors can sign up. If you add enrollment dates, we recommend listing them in the Description field as the dates won't display in the digital product block.
  9. In the Included products section, click Add digital product to include up to 10 digital products in your pricing plan.
  10. Click Create. In your Pages panel, the digital product displays a Paywall label after you add a pricing plan. Free pricing plans also show the paywalled label as they require a customer account to access.

While creating your pricing plan, a preview of a digital product block appears to the right.

Digital Product Block preview in the pricing plan panel.jpg

Digital Product Block preview in the pricing plan panel.jpg

Add fixed-amount installments

To set up the pricing as a series of installments:

  1. Click the Payment dropdown menu, then select the number of payment installments.
  2. Enter an amount in the Price field.
  3. If you selected multiple payments, a third field automatically populates with For X months, with X being the number of payments you chose in step one. To change the installments to a weekly frequency, click the dropdown menu and select For X weeks.

If you want new members to pay the entire pricing plan cost in one payment, leave the Payments field set to 1 Payment and enter your amount.

Fixed amount pricing with only one option for digital product pricing plans.jpg

Add a second pricing option

If you create a member area with a recurring subscription or fixed-amount membership pricing structure, you can offer members the choice between two pricing options. To do so, create your first pricing option, then click Add another option and use the fields that appear to set the second pricing option.

Keep in mind:

  • Both pricing options need to have the same structure, meaning you can offer two recurring subscription or two fixed-amount options for the same member area.
  • If the first option for a fixed amount membership has 1 Payment, the second option needs to be a series of installments.
Fixed amount two pricing options in the pricing plan panel.jpg

Review and change a pricing plan

To review and change a pricing plan:

  1. Open the Content & Memberships panel.
  2. In the side panel, click Products to display a list of all of your pricing plans.
  3. Click the beside the plan you want to change. A dropdown menu appears with the following options:
    • Edit pricing plan - Open the pricing plan to change the price, description, and other settings.
    • Manage members - Open the Contacts panel to view your members and help them with their accounts
    • Delete - Remove the pricing plan from your site to no longer offer it to your visitors
  4. Change the pricing plan’s details, pricing, products, or sign-up limits.
  5. Click Save in the top-right corner.

Changes you make to a pricing plan only affect new members who purchase their plan after the change goes into effect. Existing members who paid a fixed amount still have access to your gated content. Your members with ongoing membership payments (subscriptions or installments) continue to pay the amount and frequency they agreed to when signing up.

Changes you make elsewhere on your site, like to your site's currency or tax rates, also don't affect existing members. Only members that sign up after you make the changes are affected.

If a member on a free or subscription membership wants to change to a new version of the pricing plan, they can cancel their membership and sign up again. We don't recommend that fixed-amount members cancel and sign up again as this causes them to pay twice for the same content.

Delete a pricing plan

When you delete a pricing plan, your members lose access to content included in the plan. If you added a course, blog, or videos page to the plan, and it isn’t added to any other pricing plan, the page becomes public.

You can’t move members from one pricing plan to another. They need to sign up for the new plan on their own. We recommend contacting members of a pricing plan before you delete it.

To delete a pricing plan:

  1. Open the Content & Memberships panel, then click Products.
  2. Find the pricing plan you want to delete, click the in its row, then click Delete.
  3. In the pop-up message, click Delete.

Sell your pricing plans

Visitors can only purchase your pricing plans using a paywall or digital product blocks. You can add a digital product block to any page, blog post, or content area on your site.

We recommend creating a public sign-up page. You can use a Digital Products section layout or build your own using digital product blocks.

It's not possible to offer your digital products at a sale price. You can create a discount code for your digital products.

Customize a paywall

When you add a blog page, course page, videos page, or member site to a pricing plan, the content is hidden behind a paywall. Visitors see the paywall if they aren’t:

  • Logged into their customer account
  • A member of the pricing plan

The paywall includes the following details:

  • Headline - Create a headline for the screen, stating the name of the digital product and welcoming your members.
  • Description - Use this field to remind visitors that pages are only accessible to members of your pricing plan.
  • Log in link - Members click this button to sign into their customer account and access their digital products.
  • Pricing plans - Display the pricing plans that include the course, blog, videos page, or member site. Visitors can review the available pricing plans and sign up to gain access.

When logged into your site and editing your paywall, it's not possible to click the log in or sign up buttons. To test the buttons on your paywall, visit your site in a separate private browsing window

Squarespace paywall with two pricing plans and login button.png

Change the details on a paywall

To customize the details on a digital product’s paywall:

  1. Open the Pages panel.
  2. Click the blog page, course page, videos page, or member site with the paywall you want to edit.
  3. In the Selling tools section, click Paywall.
  4. Customize the Headline and Description message.
  5. For course, blog, and videos pages, set whether the paywall hides the entire page and all its content, or only individual lessons, posts, or videos. Keep in mind, if you check Lessons Only, Blog posts only, or Videos Only, your overview page and any content on it is visible to public visitors, but they can't access the individual lessons, posts, or videos.
  6. Click the eye icon to Hide or Show the pricing plans that include this course page, blog page, videos page, or member site. 
  7. Click the pencil icon to edit the pricing plan.
  8. Click Save.

Public preview for potential customers

If you set a paywall to hide individual lessons, posts, or videos, you can set specific items to display as a public preview. This way, potential customers can get a sense of your offerings before making a purchase. To do this:

  1. Ensure your paywall is set to Lessons only, Blog posts only, Videos only, or Video player only, depending on the page type.
  2. In the side panel, hover over the lesson or video you want to make public.
  3. Click ..., then click Set as Public Preview.

The lesson or video will now be visible to any visitors to your overview page. To remove the public preview, hover over the item again, click ..., then click Remove as Public Preview.

Keep in mind, if your paywall hides the entire page, your overview page won't be visible and potential customers won't be able to view the lessons or videos set to public preview.

Style a paywall

How you style the paywall depends on your site’s version.

Colors

To style the paywall’s colors in version 7.1, open site styles, then click Colors. The paywall uses the default color theme. Click the theme to make style changes:

  • Headline color - Follows Heading (large)
  • Description color - Follows Paragraph (medium)
  • Pricing option picker color - Follows Background under Button
  • Pricing option picker font color - Follows Text under Button
  • Button color - Follows Background under Button
  • Button font color - Follows Text under Button
  • Sign In link color - Follows Paragraph (medium)

Text

All text elements on the paywall take their style from your site-wide fonts. You can re-size the paywall’s fonts using the following tweaks:

  • Headline size - Follows Heading 2
  • Description size - Follows Paragraph 2
  • Pricing option picker font size - Follows your font’s Base Size.
  • Button font size - Follows your font’s Base Size.
  • Sign In link font size - Follows Paragraph 2

To learn more about button style tweaks, visit Styling buttons.

To style the paywall in version 7.0, open the paywall you want to customize, then open site styles to find the following style tweaks:

  • Headline font - Follows Heading 2
  • Headline color - Follows Heading 2
  • Description font - Follows Body text
  • Description color - Follows Body text
  • Button font - Follows Font under Buttons
  • Button color - Follows Button color under Buttons
  • Button shape - Follows Shape under Buttons
  • Button style - Follows Style under Buttons

To learn more about button style tweaks in version 7.0, visit Styling buttons.

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