How to choose between Memberful and Patreon. What’s the difference?

Both Memberful and Patreon offer membership software, but Memberful is focused on building a decentralized white-label membership solution that lives on your website and integrates with your favorite third-party tools and services; while Patreon is more focused on providing an all-in-one solution.

Patreon is probably right for creators who:

Want an all-in-one membership program hosted on Patreon in addition to their own website
Want a robust set of tools for engaging with their patrons
Value high-quality customer service for them and their patrons
Value community with other creators
Want all payment processing, chargebacks, refunds and fraud prevention handled by Patreon

Memberful is probably right for creators who:

Want 100% control over their brand
Want to build and manage their own website or membership program exclusively through their own website, and have the technical resources to do so
Want to manage their own customer service for their members
Want to use their own payment processor account

Click here to learn more about Memberful’s features.

How Memberful works

1. Design your plan.

Set a price and renewal frequency.

Whether you’re selling content, services, or newsletter access, just set your price and go. Memberful works alongside your site — seamlessly adding memberships while integrating with your favorite tools. Unlike Patreon, customers never leave your site.

2. Add your buy link.

Integrates with your site and brand.

Integrate Memberful into any site — WordPress or otherwise. You add a simple link to your page. Once clicked, it opens a payment form that looks like a natural extension of your site.

3. Your customers sign up.

And stay on your site. Easy & intuitive.

Customers click your buy link and are shown a professional payment form.

Everything is secured with Stripe. And iOS users can use Apple Pay® to buy instantly. Plus it's all just one screen. No hidden steps.

Click here to see the checkout live →

Used by the biggest creators on the web — like Zen Habits.

“I’m not technical, but it’s hard to sidestep the tech needed to run a subscription business. Memberful works out of the box — and it solves such a massive headache in such a beautiful way. It’s invaluable to me. And it’s easy. Connecting to Stripe, WordPress, and Mailchimp took me only a few minutes.”

Leo BabautaFounder, Zen Habits2,000,000+ readers

Professional Features

Set up in a few minutes.

Copy, paste, done.

Add a purchase link (example) on your website. Customers complete their purchase, and you get paid. They can then manage their profile and payment information. We handle the hard stuff: recurring billing, transactional emails, protecting content, and file downloads.

Your content. Your brand.

Customers stay on your website.

You own your content, your website, and your brand. The Memberful keeps your customers on your site, providing an integrated checkout and account management experience. You can even personalize the transactional email Memberful sends on your behalf.

Safe and secure.

PCI compliant + 256-bit SSL.

Your customers can safely pay you with any major credit card from anywhere in the world. Sensitive credit card data never touches our servers and we don't store it either. We also keep offsite geo-redundant backups of important data. Learn more about Memberful security.

Easy member management.

Save time. Get things done.

Memberful makes it easy to manage the day to day work involved with running your subscription business. Quickly search for members and orders, view member profiles, suspend or refund orders, create new plans, add staff, create coupons, email your members, and more.

How big creators use Memberful

The Mythical Society

Access to exclusive Rhett & Link content and products.

Semper curiosus? Rhett & Link, hosts of Good Mythical Morning, invite you to venture into unprecedented dimensions of Mythicality. Get access to behind-the-scenes content, intimate vlogs, ultra-unique products and more.

Filmmaker.MBA

Learn how to launch your film.

Keith Ochwat and Christopher Rufo have produced three documentaries for PBS and made filmmaking into a sustainable full-time career. Students learn the fundamentals of direct distribution.

Stuck in Customs

Your daily dose of travel inspiration.

Trey Ratcliff is a world-reknown photographer. Director JJ Abrams calls his photos "other-worldy, mind-blowing creations". Passport Members get access to ad-free content, eBooks, video tutorials, live Q&A with Trey, and more.

Memberful

Comparing Patreon and Memberful

Learn more about which solution is right for you.