Terms

"For us, the concept of membership sits at the core of everything we do. You can't just moonlight as an organization with a membership. It has to be a focus," begins Dan Carson, our Head of Product. "If are serious about establishing a membership it is our opinion that we have the most comprehensive set of options. Although we initially used WordPress as the only way to access these options, this is no longer the case."

Dan explains we're not removing all of's capabilities, such as the ability to integrate into WordPress: "If that's how someone wants to build their member-only site, it's as feasible as it was before - we're just giving them a more straightforward on-ramp."

Streamlining navigation

"There are a bunch of users making use of third-party software However, it's not always simply because they'd like. This is because it was the only option available," Dan adds. "People might already have WordPress, but they've just created a basic site or use MailChimp, but don't utilize 50% of its features."

The people who need to sign up simply require an option to let people sign up and then be able to email them without all the faff of a cloud enterprise version. "Maybe they signed up with Mailchimp in 2014, and they are still using it as this is where they are. Are they really an ideal target for the direction Mailchimp will go?"

"We consider there to be people in the world who were if it were easy enough, they would reduce all the applications into a single location and make it more tightly integrated - as the tool still does all of the tasks they wanted it to do," Dan says.

Our email software will come with the functionality you need. He adds: "We're not trying to serve enterprise marketing teams. We're trying serve the those who are looking for a low-cost and easy way to reach out and publish content to their target audience."

We believe that it's less about the products that you're using, but much more about what you're striving to achieve. If you'd like users to join the newsletter of your choice, we'll make that easier and cheaper since you no longer require the expense of external tools.

This is dependent on the individual use case, of course. Many people desire the ability to integrate multiple combinations, while others are concerned that it's costly and difficult to manage, especially as a single company. "Previously we were kind of exclusively creating for one of the organizations. Now we're building for both of them," Dan says.

The management of access rights for members for Posts and Pages

For certain types of customer that you are, the version 2014 of MailChimp will be what you want; that's the one you fell in love with. "If I want a simple website, I may choose not to go with WordPress. Even Squarespace can be overkill for a subscription-based website. The site isn't tightly linked to membership in the core," Dan adds. Then we asked ourselves: 'What if you had an entire product designed around that?'.

This is our approach to podcasting, and for online communities too. "We're not going to be rebuilding Libsyn. We'll build the first version, which is simple to use and covers the majority of what you care about, integrated with everything else, in one place for the same price," Dan believes.

It is an innate law that the longer software is in existence and the longer it is in existence, the more it would like to grow. It wants to become more complicated and complex.

The addition of new features isn't necessarily a bad thing however it can be a bad thing for customers if the target customer that they're building for has changed and is not you. "People want products that do exactly what they need and isn't looking to become more than that. As with jazz, there are times when it's not the notes you have to play!" Dan laughs.

The process of making something easy is quite hard. Dan is in agreement: "It's about paring down to what's important in. One of the easiest things for us is to add everything to the site and make it a setting and customers can locate it on the settings section somewhere." But we aren't sure that's the kind of thing customers want. Instead, we'd like to combine all our knowledge gained over the past decade of creating membership software, taking the feedback from our customers and distill it to simple-to-use tools.

"It's easy to undervalue the power of basic tools. Making them easy to use is an unmet need. Many things are more complex than they need to be." Dan adds.

The dashboard is updated.

One of the most noticeable changes this quarter is the way we've organized the dashboard. Rather than having every option accessible at the top, with the capabilities separated by feature, we went back and thought, "Why not orient everything around what you're working on at any given time or moment?'.

The dashboard has been updated.

Based on our own experience and speaking with those who run membership businesses typically, you're doing work which falls under one of the following four areas that include designing and building your website and publishing content exclusive to your site, managing your members, or generating more revenue. Dan says: "Everything you're doing as an operator of membership is likely to fall into one of those four buckets. So we thought that was a logical approach to categorizing the benefits of ."

Website

This is for those who wish to develop a membership-based website. Historically you may have needed to make use of WordPress or some other custom. You can now utilize our website builder natively. This first section is for designing the site in the first place and then modifying the look. as well as setting up your public-facing web content. "You're making a place for people to go to," adds Dan.

Content

The second task is publishing the content. Modern-day membership businesses typically involves publishing exclusive content for members. This includes emails or posts, downloads, as well as podcasts. "The other aspect is to create content or sharing exclusive benefits. It's all about creating value that your members get from your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The final task is to manage your membership. "Part of running a successful member base is having a close connection to your members and that's a big reasons why they're backing your business," says Dan.

Member management - downloading invoices

"You need to be able to provide customers with customer support and also understand their past with you, and solving problems if they aren't functioning properly," he adds.

Revenue

"If you're creating a membership website with , you're looking for revenue. There are a million things involved in the process of creating your plan and determining what you should charge and evaluating the performance of your company to determine what's working," says Dan. This section includes discounting in order to increase retention as well as running campaigns to acquire customers and referral programs.

"We've developed a number of new features throughout the years. Not having them organized made it difficult to find the right things, especially for new people. We wanted to cut down on the learning curve," concludes Dan. This provides a better framework that we can build upon when we introduce innovative features. As we'll have more intuitive places to set things up - which allows people to discover and find this new feature, and you'll be able to benefit from these features immediately.

Website builder

The other major change this quarter revolved around the builder for websites. "We'd started to build these new tools last year and wanted to thread the needle of the new capabilities, however, we didn't want to disrupt existing techniques of using it ," says Dan. "We placed ourselves in the shoes of someone who was wanting to develop the membership-based website."

The process of signing up and getting into the product is much faster and we offer with a more sophisticated starting position, with basic settings, membership plans already designed and the layout of your site already designed. What you need to do is set up your Stripe account and launch your website in just a few minutes.

The creator of the website

Now, the editing experience is that of the modern WYSIWYG (What It is You see is What You Get) website builder, direct interaction with your membership website. "You can type directly on the page, move objects around, conceal and show elements, and you can see what it looks as soon as you open it," says Dan.

Dan states that this is just the start for future website-builder enhancements: "We had to redo the foundation of everything in this manner, and we are now able to step up the gas in terms of adding the new capabilities."

We've introduced the concept of blocks. Blocks are in essence content modules. At present, we've got the basic block of content as well as a banner title block which could be textual or an image accompanied by the button. Now this framework exists, we're working on new blocks, and creating various kinds of content for the page. The user will be able to arrange those in the right order on the page, and will be able to customize who is able to view these based on the members are signed up to.

Blocks to build with

Dan says: "It's everything you need to create a fully-featured website for membership. And it's all linked to subscriptions. Membership is the heart of everything." What you get is a web-building experience that's simpler to start with as well as more user-friendly and in line with the expectations of modern users.

Final: A fresh way to make use of

"We previously described the past that glue which holds the group in place," recalls Dan. "But in the event that the machine is essential to the business you run and you have parts that need to be glued together, it doesn't always sound like a positive. There are times when you need them to be welded together just like steel. But you would like that it be one component, and not two pieces that are glued together" adds Dan. These two pieces that were built simultaneously the membership element was integral at the start.

If you have an incredibly successful WordPress website or millions of members who are on your MailChimp list that you'd like to use to simply add subscriptions rather than start all over again, it's feasible. There's still a tool available that allows you to plug in and put it all together. We don't believe it's the only method people would like to build anymore.

" is for people seeking a platform for their community to gather together on the internet, as a central point for their audience and their members. Today, anything you could like, from creating a look that reflects your business and having all of your content all in one place could be what you build with this software ," Dan concludes.