If you’re a new small business with a limited budget, opting for free membership site platforms can be tempting. But if you plan to establish and grow your online business, choosing the right membership portals is crucial – and these are not usually free.
Why Avoid Free Membership Site Platforms?
Free membership site platforms are best avoided as they often come with limited features and restrictions that can prevent your community from growing, which in turn, restricts your business success.
Here’s why you should think twice before opting for a free membership website platform:
Limited Features
One of the biggest reasons to avoid free membership site platforms is the lack of advanced features. Essential tools like subscription payment plans, email integrations, and lockout funnels are mostly unavailable or severely limited. Without these tools, managing your members and monetizing your site is more difficult.
For example, subscription payment plans are crucial for generating your recurring revenue, while email integrations help maintain regular communication with your members. Trying to do these things manually is time-consuming and inefficient.
Limited User Capacity
Most free membership site platforms also limit the number of users you can have. This limit can cause a big problem as your community grows. The user limit is usually pretty low when using a free platform and when you reach this limit, you will have to upgrade to a paid plan or move to a different platform altogether. This can also be time-consuming and disruptive to your members’ experience.
Hidden Costs
While free platforms often start off as ‘free’, they can quickly become expensive as you grow. At first, they might seem like they are saving you money. But, you probably have to pay to use essential features that are locked behind paywalls or require expensive add-ons.
As your membership base grows, the costs of maintaining and upgrading your site can add up. In the long run, you might end up spending more than you would have if you had chosen a paid platform from the start.
Time Investment
A good friend of mine had an interesting saying: “Cheap is the worst kind of expensive.”
While you might think that initially free platforms will save you money, they often cost you significantly in terms of your time. Setting up your site, finding ways to work around missing features, and constantly managing limitations can take a lot of time.
In business, time is money. The time you spend dealing with these issues is time you could be spending on marketing, new sales, and communicating with your members. This time lost can far outweigh any initial savings. If it takes you 6 months longer to reach $200,000 per year in revenue because you opted to piss around with a free option, that choice actually cost you $100,000 in lost revenue… and you likely have to spend more time each month navigating the free solution when a high quality paid option would have done those little time-sucking jobs for you.
Your focus should be on growing your business, not on struggling with a platform that doesn’t meet your needs. In the end, cheap is the worst kind of expensive.
While free membership site platforms might seem like a cost-effective solution, they come with many limitations and hidden costs that can limit your growth. Investing in a paid platform will provide you with more features, security, customization options, and control. Ultimately, a paid platform offers a more professional platform for your membership website.
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