--- title: 'MemberPress.ai for community builders: charge for the community you already run' description: 'Your community already meets somewhere free, or on a platform you rent. MemberPress.ai sets up the paid side on your own WordPress site: a free tier, a member tier and a founding tier, and it watches the renewals.' image: https://memberpress.ai/og/for-communities.png url: https://memberpress.ai/for/communities/ --- For community builders # The community is real. The money side is still a spreadsheet and a rented platform. You started it because people kept asking for a place to talk about this one thing, and they came. Now some of them want to back it, and you want to pay for the time it takes. But charging means choosing a platform, pricing tiers, gating the good parts and chasing renewals, and every option you’ve looked at either takes a percentage of each sale on most plans or means building it all yourself. ![Illustrated portrait of Nadia Okafor](https://memberpress.ai/images/personas/nadia-okafor.webp) ## Where paid communities stall Paid communities stall on two jobs: deciding what members pay for, and then setting it up. A community’s value comes from the other members, not from you delivering something downward the way a course or a coaching program does. That makes the paid version hard to shape. What does a free visitor get to see? What does a paying member unlock? Is there a way for the members who love it most to support it at a higher level, without it feeling like a velvet rope? Each of those is a decision and a setup job: a tier, a price, a page that explains it, a rule about who can open what. The platforms that make it easy do it by hosting the whole community for you, on their terms. The alternative, a site of your own, usually means an evening of plugin settings you never get to. What it sets up ## Describe your community. It builds the paid side around it. MemberPress.ai builds the membership side of your community on your own WordPress site, from a conversation. Tell it who the community is for and what members do together, and it adds a starting setup to your site as drafts. That covers the tiers and pages, which stay drafts until you publish them. What it sets up: ### Three membership levels to start from. A free level for visitors, a paid member level, and an annual founding level for the members who want to back the community rather than get more out of it. What each level can open is yours to set, with MemberPress’s access rules. ### A way in for every tier. Setup drafts MemberPress’s own join, checkout, login and account pages for you to publish. Connect Stripe or PayPal in MemberPress’s payment settings and the paid tiers can take money. ### Renewals someone is watching. Once members start joining, it reads your own members and revenue and flags what you’d miss running it alone, like a renewal reminder that’s been switched off, and tells you what to change. MemberPress.ai sets up the tiers and runs who has paid and when they renew. It doesn’t host the conversation itself. Point members to wherever your community already talks. ## From a group that gathers to members who back it 1. ### Opal sets up your tiers. A free level, a paid level and a founding level, with the join and checkout pages drafted. Opal tells you what’s left before anyone can pay. 2. ### The money comes to you. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal in MemberPress, so whatever members chip in reaches you directly. 3. ### The first member who wants to back it pays. Publish the tiers and tell the people who already show up. The first one who wants to support the community joins a paid tier on your site. Then Opal keeps an eye on renewals from your own numbers, so you can keep running the community instead of chasing payments. The alternative you’re weighing ## Circle, Mighty or Skool, or a site you own Choose a site you own if you want to keep your member list, your payment gateway and the site itself as the community grows. Most community builders look at Circle, Mighty Networks or Skool, and they’re good at what they do. The community, the courses, events and payments all live in one place, Circle adds phone and desktop apps, and there’s no limit on how many members you have. For a community that’s mostly conversation, that’s a lot handled for you, and they host the conversation itself, which MemberPress.ai doesn’t. The trade-off is that the community lives on their platform, and most plans add a percentage of each sale to the plan fee, a smaller one on the bigger plans. MemberPress.ai runs on a WordPress site you own: your member list and your payment gateway stay yours, and the site is yours to keep however you grow. Your members keep talking wherever they talk now; MemberPress.ai runs who has paid and when they renew. ## A community builder weighing the platforms ![Illustrated portrait of Nadia Okafor](https://memberpress.ai/images/personas/nadia-okafor.webp) ### Nadia Okafor Founder · Studio Signal Nadia runs Studio Signal, a paid community for freelance designers. She was comparing Circle and Skool side by side against building her own on WordPress, and she didn’t want any tool changing her site without her seeing it first. Nadia has no interview of her own; this is Hana Tanaka, a member of a leadership cohort, the closest thing to a peer community in the interviews we have. [Watch Hana's interview (video)](https://memberpress.ai/videos/personas/hana-tanaka-interview-final.mp4) Read the transcript Hi, I'm Opal from MemberPress.ai, the AI that builds and runs your membership site. Today I'm with Hana, the very first member of Kwame's leadership cohort. Hi, I'm Hana Tanaka. I manage a small team and I joined Kwame's 12-week program. And what was day one like? Easy. I paid, I got my login, and the first module was waiting. Kwame's welcome was already up in the members area. And how does it fit into your week? I do a lesson on my lunch break and I check in with the cohort on Fridays. My membership lives in one place. That's what it looks like when a coach's site is up and running. Helping coaches get there is what MemberPress.ai is for. Tell him I said hi. [View the full profile→](https://memberpress.ai/personas/nadia-okafor/) ## Questions community builders ask Does MemberPress.ai host the discussion? No. It sets up and runs the paid side: the tiers and renewals. Keep your members talking wherever they talk now, and link to it from the members’ pages. Can I keep a free tier so new people can look around? Yes. The starting setup has a free level for exactly that, and you decide which pages it can open. What stops it changing my site without me? Setup adds its tiers as drafts, and they stay drafts until you publish them. After that, new tiers and membership changes preview as a dry run. Anything it writes for you, like a page, lands as an unpublished draft that nobody sees until you publish it. Refunds and subscription changes ask a second time. It works on your own site, on your own login. I already have members paying somewhere else. Do I start from scratch? Setup doesn’t move members over from another platform. It builds the tiers on your own WordPress site; bringing your existing paying members across is up to you, outside MemberPress.ai. ## Give your community a front door you own Connect your site and tell it what your community is about, once. Connect your own Stripe or PayPal, and the first member who wants to back it can pay. Then Opal keeps an eye on renewals while you run the community. [Connect your community’s site→](https://memberpress.ai/connect/) ## More on who MemberPress.ai is for [ ### Associations Dues, renewal season and the board’s questions, on a site the association owns. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/associations/)[ ### Certification programs A course, its exam and a renewal that bills on time, on a site the program owns. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/certification-programs/)[ ### Coaches Finish the coaching site you already paid for, and get to your first paying client. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/coaches/)[ ### Publishers Reader tiers and renewals that keep running, on a site you own. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/publishers/)[ ### Course creators Turn what you already teach into a real course, on a site you own. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/course-creators/) [Personas: meet every owner](https://memberpress.ai/personas/)