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Your Patreon Fee Just Cost You $14,400 This Year

If you're a creator pulling $10k/month through Patreon, you've already paid enough in platform fees to build your own membership site.

Custom membership platforms for creators, educators, and communities monetizing access. Gated content with tiered subscriptions, community forums, course delivery, Stripe Billing integration, and member management dashboards. Built to replace Patreon, Teachable, and Circle with a platform you own -- higher margins, full data ownership, and your brand front and center.

$250B+
Creator Economy
Membership is the core monetization model
5,000+
Sites Built
12+ years experience
2.9%
Stripe Fee Only
No platform revenue share
95+
Lighthouse Score
Performance target
What Happens When You Build Your Own Membership Platform -- And Stop Renting

Your subscriber hits checkout, and instead of Patreon's interface, they see your brand. Your platform ships with tiered access controls, drip scheduling, and a searchable content library that keeps your members engaged past month three. You control the data -- emails, engagement patterns, churn signals -- not a third party. Your revenue flows through Stripe directly, no 8% haircut. Your community forum lives on the same domain as your courses, so members stop juggling logins. When a new feature request arrives, your dev team builds it in days, not years of waiting for Patreon's roadmap. But here's the trade: you own the uptime, the security patches, the mobile experience. If your platform stalls during launch week, you lose trust and trial conversions. That's why your membership site needs architecture that scales from 50 to 5,000 members without breaking.

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Patreon takes 5-12% of revenue on top of payment processing fees
Risk: Losing thousands per month to platform fees that compound as your membership grows
Members scattered across Patreon, Discord, and email with no unified experience
Risk: Fragmented community experience where members miss content and engagement drops over time
Cannot customize the membership experience beyond platform templates
Risk: Your brand looks like every other Patreon page and you cannot differentiate the member experience
No ownership of member data — platform controls the relationship
Risk: If the platform changes terms, raises fees, or shuts down, you lose access to your paying community
Course content hosted on Teachable while community lives on Circle
Risk: Paying for multiple platforms, managing multiple logins, and members dropping off between tools
No built-in SEO — membership content is invisible to search engines
Risk: Missing organic discovery of your membership from people searching for topics you teach

What Your Website Could Look Like

Custom-designed for your industry. No templates. No stock photos.

Membership Platform Development website mockup
Membership Platform Development -- Gated Content, Tiered Subscriptions & Community Forums for Creators

How We Build This Right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

Tiered Subscription System

Stripe Billing-powered tiers with free trials, coupon codes, proration, failed payment recovery, and self-service member portal for billing management.

Gated Content Delivery

Role-based access control unlocking specific content, features, and community areas per membership tier. Content gates enforced at the server level, not client-side.

Community Forums

Threaded discussions with topic categories, member profiles, moderation tools, notifications, rich media posting, and tier-based access to exclusive areas.

Course Delivery System

Video hosting via Mux, lesson progress tracking, quizzes, completion certificates, drip content scheduling, and course-specific landing pages for SEO.

Live Events & Recordings

Event registration, calendar sync, Zoom or Google Meet integration, tier-based access, and automatic recording publication to the member content library.

Revenue Analytics Dashboard

MRR tracking, churn rate, lifetime value, tier distribution, payment failure rates, and member growth charts for data-driven membership optimization.

What We Build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Patreon skims 8–12% of your monthly recurring revenue plus processing fees

Guided setup flow with profile completion and content recommendations cuts new member churn by 40%

Your members bounce between Patreon for content, Discord for chat, and email for announcements

Searchable archive with tags and bookmarks keeps members engaged with back catalog instead of scrolling chronologically

Your membership page looks identical to 200,000 other creator pages with no brand differentiation

Drip scheduling releases lesson two on day seven so new members don't abandon after overwhelm

Platform owns your subscriber data and can change terms or raise fees without warning

Member directory with bios and interests builds network effects that increase retention past six months

You're paying Circle for community and Teachable for courses while members juggle separate logins

Custom referral links track invites and auto-deliver rewards through Stripe without manual payout work

Your best tutorials are invisible to Google because platform content isn't indexed for discovery

Progressive web app delivers offline access and push notifications without App Store fees or review delays

Built on a Modern, Secure Stack

AstroNext.jsSupabaseVercelStripe BillingMux VideoResendWebSocket

Our Development Process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

01

Membership Strategy Discovery

Week 1-2

We audit your current membership model, content library, community needs, and revenue goals. Define tier structure, features per tier, and migration plan from existing platforms.

02

Platform Architecture & Design

Week 3-4

Design the member experience — content library, forums, course pages, and dashboards. Stripe Billing configuration and content gating architecture.

03

Build & Integration

Week 5-9

Custom frontend with Supabase auth and RLS for content gating, Stripe Billing for subscriptions, Mux for video hosting, and forum functionality.

04

Testing & Migration

Week 10-11

End-to-end subscription flow testing, content gating verification, forum functionality, and member data migration from existing platforms if applicable.

05

Launch + 30 Days Support

Week 12-14

Go live with member migration support, Stripe webhook monitoring, community moderation setup, and post-launch retention optimization.

Social Animal

Ready to discuss your your patreon fee just cost you $14,400 this year project?

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Membership Platforms from $8,000

Fixed-fee. Stripe Billing included. No revenue share. 30-day support. See all packages ‚Üí

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Related Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

Custom membership platforms start at $8,000 for creators needing gated content, tiered subscriptions, and basic community features. Advanced builds with course delivery, community forums, live events, and custom member dashboards range from $14,000 to $20,000. Every project is fixed-fee with no hidden costs or revenue-sharing.
Patreon takes 5 to 12 percent of your revenue plus payment processing fees. A custom membership platform on your domain gives you full revenue control (only Stripe's 2.9% + 30 cents), complete brand ownership, member data you own, custom features Patreon does not offer, and SEO benefit from all member traffic hitting your domain. The platform pays for itself within months for creators with 500+ paying members.
We build tiered membership systems with Stripe Billing — free, basic, premium, and VIP tiers with different access levels. Each tier unlocks specific content, features, and community areas. Members can upgrade, downgrade, pause, or cancel from their dashboard. You control what each tier includes and can add or modify tiers without developer help.
Yes. We build threaded discussion forums with topic categories, member profiles, moderation tools, @mention notifications, rich text and media posting, pinned announcements, and search. Forums can be gated by membership tier — free members see public discussions while premium members access exclusive areas.
Yes. We build course delivery systems with video hosting, lesson progress tracking, quizzes, completion certificates, and drip content scheduling. Courses can be included in membership tiers, sold individually, or bundled. Each course has its own landing page optimized for conversion and SEO.
We use Stripe Billing for all subscription management — recurring charges, free trials, coupon codes, proration on plan changes, failed payment retry logic, and dunning emails for expiring cards. Members manage their own billing from a self-service portal. You get a revenue dashboard showing MRR, churn, and lifetime value.
Yes. We build live event systems with registration, calendar integration, and access control by membership tier. Events can be Zoom, Google Meet, or custom WebRTC-based. Recordings are automatically published to the member content library after the live event ends.
A standard membership platform takes 8 to 10 weeks including Stripe Billing setup, content gating, and basic community features. Builds with course delivery, advanced forums, and live event systems take 10 to 14 weeks. We phase launches — start with core membership and add features in subsequent sprints.
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