How do you start a paid membership program on Shopify?

What do you need before you start?

You need three things: a Shopify store, products customers could buy more than once, and one perk worth paying for. You don’t need a big audience or a developer. A membership works best when it starts small, with your existing regulars, and grows from there.

Before you open the app, write down the answer to one question: why would a customer who already likes you pay to be a member? The best answers are simple.

• “I’d save money on what I already buy.”
• “I’d never pay for shipping again.”
• “I’d get first pick of things that sell out.”

If you can say it in one line, you can sell it in one line.

Step 1: How do you choose perks members will pay for?

Choose one perk that pays members back on every order and one that makes them feel like insiders. Money-back perks, such as a member price or free shipping, make joining an easy decision. Insider perks, such as early access or members-only products, make leaving a hard one.

The perks InCircle Memberships supports:

Perk	Best for	Why it works
Member discount	Products bought again and again	The fee pays for itself, visibly, on every order
Free shipping	Heavy or low-priced orders	Removes the reason customers wait and bundle
Members-only products	Limited or premium ranges	Gives members something nobody else can buy
Early access	Drops and seasonal launches	Rewards your best customers and sells stock faster
Gift with signup	Getting the first order	Makes joining feel generous from day one
Store credit	Bringing members back	Credit has to be spent with you
Digital downloads	Creators and educators	Costs nothing to deliver

Keep the list short. Three or four perks customers understand at a glance sell better than ten they have to read.

For perks by industry, see the playbooks for coffee roasters, pet brands and digital creators.

Step 2: How do you price a membership?

Price the membership so a regular customer earns the fee back in one or two orders. Work out what your perks save a typical repeat customer in a month, then set the fee comfortably below that. Members should feel they’re winning every time they buy.

A simple check, using your own numbers:

1. What does a regular customer spend per order?
2. What do your perks save them on that order (discount plus shipping)?
3. How many times a month do they order?

If the saving per month is clearly more than the fee, the price is right. If it isn’t, add a perk or lower the fee.

Offer a yearly option as well as a monthly one. Yearly members pay up front and are with you for the year. In InCircle you can also add a free trial, a signup fee, an introductory discount or a minimum commitment from the Starter plan. See pricing for what each plan includes.

Step 3: How do you create the plan and put it on your store?

In InCircle Memberships you create a plan, tick the perks, and add the join widget to your theme. You style the widget and the memberships page with a few settings, or from the Starter plan take their look straight from your theme, so there’s no design work. Customers join through your normal Shopify checkout.

Put the offer where customers decide:

• On product pages, showing what a member would pay for that product.
• On a memberships page, linked from your main menu.
• On locked content, where non-members see a prompt to join.

Then tell the customers you already have. Your existing regulars are the most likely first members, so email them before you spend anything on ads.

Step 4: How do you keep members once they join?

Keep members by making the membership useful every month and by making it easy to stay. Send members something first: a new product, an early look, a reminder of what they’ve saved. When someone tries to cancel, offer a pause or a discount before they go.

Three habits that protect membership revenue:

• Use the perks visibly. A members-only product each month is a monthly reason to stay.
• Offer a pause. Some cancellations are really “not right now”.
• Recover failed payments. InCircle retries failed payments automatically, so an expired card doesn’t end a membership.

There’s a full guide to this: how to reduce membership churn.

Which Shopify membership app should you use?

Use an app built for memberships rather than a subscriptions app adapted to the job, so perks and members-only access are settings and not workarounds. InCircle Memberships has a free plan to start on. To see how it compares, read InCircle vs Appstle Memberships or memberships vs loyalty points apps.