Getting started with Member Areas

Enable Member Areas on your site to require subscriptions for your content.

Create sets of members-only pages on your site with a Member Areas subscription. Your site visitors can gain exclusive access to your gated content by creating an account and paying for membership, if you've set a price. With Member Areas, you can:

• Monetize your content - Generate revenue by selling access to content like classes and seminars, audio or visual media, or community pages.
• Enhance your brand - Seamlessly manage your public and members-only content all in one place.
• Grow your audience - Promote your gated content and accept an unlimited number of members.

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Test Member Areas for free

You can test Member Areas, including creating member areas and the pages in them, by enabling this add-on for your site. To sell memberships to your member areas, you’ll need to subscribe to Member Areas.

When you’re ready to purchase a Member Areas subscription and promote your gated content, learn more about the available pricing plans in Member Areas pricing, billing, and invoices.

To check how Member Areas can look on your site, visit our demo site.

Enable Member Areas

How you enable Member Areas for your site depends on if you're building a new site or expanding an existing site. 

Build a new site with Member Areas

If you're creating a brand new site, choose one of the Member Areas templates from the template store. These site layouts already have Member Areas enabled. 

You can also choose any template that works best for your business and follow our steps to manually enable Member Areas.

Add Member Areas to an existing site

To enable Member Areas on an existing site:

1. Open the Member Areas panel.
2. Switch the Member Areas toggle on.

When you're ready to purchase a Member Areas subscription, click Select plan at the bottom of the Member Areas panel to select a pricing plan and subscribe. Keep in mind, only site owners and contributors with Admin permissions can enable Member Areas for a site.

Check out our Member Areas checklist for a list of all the actions you must take to set up and sell memberships to your member areas.

Commerce features

Regardless of your Squarespace website plan, you’ll have access to some Squarespace Commerce features after you enable and subscribe to Member Areas:

• Checkout on your domain - Direct your site visitors to a custom, secure checkout page on your domain when they purchase something, including memberships to your member areas. This Commerce feature will be enabled on your site automatically if you're eligible.
• Customer accounts - Your members will log into password-protected accounts to access the member areas pages they’ve purchased memberships to. Members can securely save payment methods, shipping addresses, shopping carts, and order information in their customer accounts, making for a faster checkout experience in the future.
• Custom tax rules - Create tax rules based on the billing postal code associated with a member's payment method. This calculates the tax rate they pay in addition to the membership price.
• Promotional discounts - Encourage membership sign ups by offering discounts on your member areas. You can customize each discount's name, promotion type, how it's applied, and when it begins and ends. If you’re on a Commerce Advanced plan, you’ll have access to even more discount features.

Payments

If your member areas have membership pricing for recurring subscriptions or fixed amounts, you’ll need to connect your site to a payment processor before you can start selling memberships to your gated content:

1. Open the Member Areas panel.
2. Scroll down to the Setup section and click Payments.

You can connect to Stripe, PayPal, or both. The best processor for you depends on where you’re located and which payment methods you want to accept. Learn more in Connecting a payment processor to Commerce. 

When connecting a payment processor, keep in mind:

• Members can't pay for member areas memberships with Apple Pay.
• Members can't use PayPal or gift cards to pay for memberships to member areas with subscription membership or fixed amount membership paid in installments. If you sell these types of memberships, you must connect to Stripe to accept credit and debit card payments.

After connecting a payment processor to your site, your Member Sign Up Blocks automatically update to display the currency associated with your payment processor, if that currency is supported by Squarespace. You can change your currency at any time in the Payments panel.

Note: All membership sales have transaction fees. Learn more in Member Areas pricing, billing, and invoices.

Glossary

• Member area - A set of gated pages on your site that contain related content, designed for a specific audience. Only visitors who sign up for a membership (and pay to access the member area, if applicable) can view this restricted content.
• Membership pricing - The amount a visitor pays to access a member area. Each member area has its own membership pricing, which can be free, a recurring subscription, or a fixed amount. Member areas with subscription or fixed amount pricing can have up to two pricing options.
• Member homepage - The first page in a member area that appears to members after they set up or sign into their Customer Account. You can customize the member homepage to include a welcome message and links to other pages in the member area.
• Access denied screen - The page that appears to visitors if they try to access a members-only page before they’ve paid for access, or while they’re logged out. You can customize the Access denied screen for each member area.
• Customer account - An account with a username and password visitors to your site create when signing up for a membership. Members can also save payment methods, shipping addresses, shopping carts, and order information in their customer account, making for a faster checkout experience if they purchase more memberships or products from your site. Learn more in Customer accounts.