This guide covers billing plans for Member Areas and important details about managing your subscription. You’ll manage billing for Member Areas directly through your Squarespace account. We charge the same card you use to pay for your site.
Note: This guide is about how you pay for a Member Areas subscription to create member areas on your site. For information on how your visitors pay for memberships to access the member areas you create, visit Membership pricing.
Before you begin
- You need an active Squarespace website subscription to purchase Member Areas and allow members to sign up for member areas. If you haven't built your site yet, visit Getting started.
- Only site owners and contributors with Admin permissions can purchase a Member Areas subscription for a site.
- Customer accounts, checkout on your domain, and other Commerce features are automatically included with Member Areas plans.
Member Areas plans and pricing
Member Areas is available on all Squarespace plans at an additional cost. For current pricing by billing plan, visit our Member Areas page.
This table reviews the differences between Member Areas plans. You can change your billing plan at any time.
Starter | Core | Pro | |
Number of member areas | 1 | 3 | 10 |
Transaction fees | 7% | 4% | 1% |
Additional video storage (version 7.1 only) | 5 hours | 20 hours | 50 hours |
Video storage
Every version 7.1 site, regardless of plan, comes with 30 minutes of video storage for files uploaded directly to videos pages and section backgrounds. The amounts in this table reflect the additional storage each Member Areas plan includes.
If you reach the limit set by your plan, you can upgrade your Member Areas subscription or delete video files to free up storage space. To check your video storage availability:
- Start the process of adding a section background video or adding a video to a videos page.
- When selecting where to add a video from, click Select from library, then locate the Video storage progress bar in the top-right corner of the window.
- Click Close.
Selecting the right Member Areas plan
Selecting the right plan ensures you have the right number of member areas to organize your gated content. The Starter plan is ideal for creators with a single audience, while the Core and Pro plans allow for unique collections of members-only pages. All plans are available in annual or monthly billing cycles and you can change your plan at any time. On an annual billing cycle, the average monthly cost is lower.
Member Areas transaction fees apply to every membership sold through your site. If you expect to sell many memberships, we recommend the Core and Pro plans for their lower transaction fee percentages. For example, the difference between a Core and Starter plan billed annually is $108 USD per year. If you’re on an annual Starter plan and sell more than $3,600 in memberships per year ($300 per month), you’ll pay more in transaction fees than the difference between the plans. In that case, you’ll save by upgrading to the Core pricing plan.
Regardless of your pricing plan, there’s no limit to the number of members who can purchase access to your member areas.
Subscribe to Member Areas
You can create member areas and add pages to them without an active Member Areas subscription. Only after you’ve subscribed, however, can visitors to your site sign up and purchase memberships to your gated pages. You need to have an active website subscription to sign up for Member Areas.
To subscribe to Member Areas:
- In the Home menu, click Settings, then click Member Areas.
- Click Select plan at the bottom of the Member Areas panel.
- If your site is on a trial, you'll choose a website plan first. Choose either a Monthly or Annual billing cycle, then select the website plan you want for your site. If you have an offer code, you can enter it during this step.
- In the Member Areas plan panel, click either a Monthly or Annual billing cycle.
- Select the Member Areas plan that fits your needs.
- If prompted, enter your payment information, then click Save and continue.
- Click Confirm and purchase.
Note: If you subscribe to a Commerce plan and already use PayPal as a payment processor, a warning message may appear at checkout regarding PayPal. If this message appears, reset your PayPal connection to continue offering PayPal at checkout.
Subscribing when your site is on a free trial
To subscribe to Member Areas, you need to upgrade your trial site to paid. When you click to select a Member Areas plan, we'll ask you to select a website plan first. You'll proceed through the checkout process as described above.
We'll issue two different charges for these subscriptions. One charge is for your website plan and the other is for your Member Areas plan. Here's what happens if one of these charges fails:
- If the website plan charge fails, our system cancels the Member Areas charge.
- If the Member Areas charge fails, your website still upgrades to paid.
In either situation, you can restart the subscription process in the Member Areas panel.
View and manage your subscription
After you subscribe, view and manage your subscription from the Billing panel:
- In the Home menu, click Settings
- Click Billing.
- Under Subscriptions, click Member Areas.
From here, you can:
- Review your Member Areas subscription details, including your plan, billing cycle, and the next auto-renewal date.
- Review your invoices for individual Member Areas subscription charges.
- Disable auto-renew. By switching the Renew automatically toggle off, your subscription will expire when your billing cycle ends.
- Cancel your subscription immediately.
Change your billing plan
You can change your Member Areas billing plan at any time. For detailed steps and important information, visit Changing your Member Areas billing plan.
Failed charges
If we can’t authorize the renewal charge, your subscription will be past due. We’ll try to charge the credit card on file over the next 15 days. You can update your card at any time during this grace period to manually prompt a charge.
If we still can’t charge your card after 15 days, we'll pause your Member Areas subscription for 30 days. As long as your website subscription remains active during this period, you can resubscribe to Member Areas to reinstate your member areas and reactivate each member's membership. If you resubscribe after 30 days, you'll need to recreate your member areas and all members will have to resubscribe individually.