Platform for Taking Monthly Subscriptions and Offering Benefits?

January 7, 2019 5:24 AM

I need a solution to take regular, monthly online payments but to also manage a mailing list and some kind of member benefits page. Are there any solutions you could recommend? I am in the UK.
posted by parmanparman to Technology (5 answers total)

The simplest approach to this would be to open a Stripe account, which is your payment processor: they just take the money. A WordPress website would allow you to have a member benefits page. You can manage a mailing list with the MailChimp plugin, and the WooCommerce plugin would allow you to manage the subscriptions.

Shopify would also do this with Stripe but probably cost more per month.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:38 AM on January 7, 2019

Patreon perhaps?
posted by ellerhodes at 5:42 AM on January 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

Podcasts who have subscribers and post member only updates/episodes use patreon for this. For example, a uk based one.
posted by JonB at 5:55 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you're looking to get people to pay primarily for an email newsletter, Substack is apparently the new hotness.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:32 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Is this a business thing, a charity thing, etc? How much volume are we talking about?

I know Square can process subscriptions or recurring payments and allow you to send emails to your customers, and then website-hosting company Weebly does offer e-commerce via Square. But I can not say for sure if you can set up your membership page on Weebly and then use the e-commerce feature to manage subscriptions, but it might be worth looking into if you really want something that is all through one company. Since Square now owns Weebly, you'd think Weebly+Square could handle everything you want, but I haven't done this myself so you'd have to just ask them to know for sure.
posted by AppleTurnover at 12:08 PM on January 7, 2019