How To Host Your Course Or Membership On Squarespace
If you’re like me, you may be wondering… do I need to use Kajabi, Teachable OR Squarespace to host my course or membership? There are so many Techy platforms out there so it makes it really difficult to decide which to use and what is best for your business.
Having ALL of your website content on Squarespace sounds like an amazing idea because an all in one feature is what everyone really wants..but for years I have been hosting my courses on Kajabi and my website and sales pages on Squarespace because of these three reasons:
Kajabi makes it super easy to add new workshops, courses, and coaching programs to sell individually.
Kajabi has an amazing user experience for students that includes gamification and being able to leave comments on different posts within your course (you can read my post here where I share a BTS of my tech stack for my courses)
Creating affiliate programs, communities, or other types of things to add to your courses is really easy in Kajabi!
Using other software like Flodesk for emails, or Thrivecart for checkout pages makes it easy to integrate with your Kajabi account if you prefer to use another software.. which is what I do! I personally don’t like Kajabi checkout pages because they don’t have an option to have multiple pricing options on one checkout page.
Now, because I am saying a few things I love about Kajabi, I really dislike their website design I find it SO clunky to use and EVERYONES courses look exactly the same. It’s hard to make a unique custom experience for your students. Which is why today I am writing this post on How To Host Your Course Or Membership on Squarespace Member Areas!
I wanted to write this post after doing some research and hosting my own membership on Squarespace member areas to further help you make an educated decision on what platform is best for you to use.
What Squarespace Member Areas is BEST for:
After thorough research, Squarespace member areas is best for someone who is selling an online course, membership or subscription service! It is not great for selling individual digital products (like a workshop that only has one video) it’s best for creating pages that have multiple videos and various different helpful tools and sections like a membership site would have.
If you offer yoga classes, workout classes, and monthly content then a member area would be perfect for you!
If you offer a course that does not need any sort of live or community aspect member areas would work for you too, just be in mind that you cannot connect member areas to other platforms like another email provider. You have to use the built in Squarespace email marketing - which in all honesty really worked fine when I tested it out!
If you do have a community aspect of your membership, you can always link to your community in the member area using something like circle, zoom links, or mighty networks.
All in all it’s a great option for hosting a library of content! If you want to have a membership or a library of workshops someone can sign up for, it’s a really great option!
What are the best things about Squarespace Member Areas?
Full customization
Squarespace Member Areas basically work the same as any other page on your website, you can add any content you want and customize it to your liking, even the layout of your videos, content, downloads and creative designs..the opportunity to have a badass member area that fits your brand is easy AF to do.
Having it on your own website
You have the ability to host your member area and sales pages all on Squarespace, making it an all in one go to option! It’s really easy to create a sales page and then add your member area checkout directly to your sales page. No external links or other checkout page websites.
Subscription payment options
Charge a one-time fee, or give members the option to choose a recurring fee schedule that works best for them. You can also offer FREE options too!
What Squarespace Member Areas looks like on the back end:
In early 2022 my design bestie Sian Richardson from Good As Gold and I hosted a design club membership on Squarespace member areas and it worked really well for us!
We had monthly content, and basically had a hub for all things inside of the membership. The only thing we really missed was a comment area, something to make it easy for people to comment and connect under each of our videos. But other than that it was SO easy to make our member area look badass and have everything connected to our squarespace site.
We had a waitlist page, a sales page that linked to the member areas, and then once someone signed up it gave them access and a login to our member area.
Here is a video of what that looked like on the back end:
Who would benefit from Squarespace member areas:
Anyone looking to sell a membership or subscription in their business
Anyone wanting to sell an online course
Anyone hosting a podcast
Anyone who wants to create a gate for access to their premium content
Why Squarespace Member Areas may not be right for you and what to use instead:
If you want the ability to have comments & communities, member areas may not work for you
If you want to be able to sell a standalone digital product like a workshop with one video member areas may not work for you
You have to use Squarespace commerce with your member areas in order for it to work, you can’t integrate another checkout platform like Thrivecart with Squarespace member areas.
If you want to use a third party email software like Flodesk - it doesn’t connect with member areas.
If these are things that are important to you I highly suggest Kajabi to host your courses and then using Squarespace for your sales pages and website! You can read all about my tech stack here in this post.
All in all - for now I am sticking with Kajabi for my courses and workshops and thrivecart for my checkout pages because of the three reasons I mentioned above and because of the ability to use an integrate a third party checkout like Thrivecart
If Squarespace adds these features to Member Areas I will definitely leave Kajabi for them!
Comments to “posts” or videos that are uploaded
A better checkout experience and the ability to customize a checkout page! Or just integration with third party like thrive cart!
The ability to sell an individual standalone workshop…that hosts only one video without needing an entire member area
The addition of gamification to cater to course creators! Being able to see the % of the course finished or check boxes next to videos you’ve already watched makes for a better user experience for students.
Being able to add an affiliate program or community would be a nice feature too!
So there you have it: a breakdown of member areas to help you make an educated decision on if Squarespace Member Areas is right for you. We hope this article has been useful to you, and that it helps you get more clients and make more money doing the work you love!
