[101] Squarespace Member Areas Review: Should You Build a Membership Site on Squarespace?
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This transcript was generated by Descript AI and may contain errors.
[00:00:00] I did something over this past weekend that I never thought I would do. I built a membership site using Squarespace. Now, to those of you who don't know me very well or haven't listened to this podcast in the past, that might seem like a pretty normal thing for someone who loves Squarespace to do, but here's the deal: I do not like the member area feature.
[00:00:21] I think it's clunky. I think it's messy. I think there is so much room for improvement. But really, my entire problem with the whole member area feature comes down to this: Squarespace lets us create a member area, but it doesn't give us enough control over the membership experience
[00:00:38] I'm definitely still not a fan, but it was the right choice for the specific project I was working on this weekend. And this is exactly the kind of conversation that I want to have more of in this podcast of mine, Think Inside the Square. Because technically, yes, Squarespace can do the thing, but whether or not you should use Squarespace to do the thing, that is the interesting question, and that's what we're gonna talk about today.
[00:01:01] I'm Becca Harpain, Squarespace expert and educator and creator of insidethesquare.co, and you're listening to episode 101 of Think Inside the Square. Now, before we go any deeper, I do wanna mention the term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace Incorporated. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace Incorporated.
[00:01:20] These are just my opinions as a Squarespace designer that I wanna share with the world because I've got a microphone and a laptop and the internet, so here we go. Oh, also, for a transcript of this episode, along with the links to any resources mentioned, visit insidethesquare.co/podcast. All right, now here we go for real.
[00:01:37] Over the last six years, I have created more than 500 Squarespace tutorial videos, and over the weekend, I moved a huge portion of that old content into a brand-new member area that I call The Archive. At its most basic level, a Squarespace member area, it's pretty straightforward. If you have content, you put that into the member area, and it acts like a folder.
[00:02:03] Someone creates an account, and then they have access to the content that's in that folder. That's the job. Squarespace does that job. They do it well. And because I'm using Squarespace for this content, I've control over the way the pages look, so it's going to match the design and style and aesthetic of my site. But I don't have nearly as much control over the member experience that I want as a designer. That is my problem with member areas.
[00:02:32] Now, right out of the gate, when I tested the sign-up experience for this membership, I got four emails almost immediately. "Verify your email address," "Your email's been verified," "Welcome to the membership area," "Here's your receipt." Four separate emails in my already overflowing inbox. Now, personally, if I sign up for something and immediately get four emails about the thing, I'm gonna be annoyed.
[00:02:56] But I understand why those emails exist. Yes, it is important to verify the account. Yes, you should definitely welcome the person. And yeah, you absolutely need a receipt. Every email has a purpose. But as the person creating the membership, I want more control over that experience. I want to be able to step back and say, "Okay, what should they actually receive after they sign up?"
[00:03:20] Maybe it's only two emails. Yeah, let's do the verification, and then the one that follows is, "Hey, it's been verified. Here's your receipt. Here's how you log in. Welcome to the program." That would be beautiful. But instead, Squarespace has several separate transactional things that it needs to communicate, so a brand new member of my new membership, they're gonna get a bunch of emails in their inbox before they even had a chance to look around.
[00:03:44] Yes, we can customize some of the messaging. Yes, we can kinda customize the style of those emails, but it's a lot more limited than what we can do in an actual Squarespace website.
[00:03:55] And as a designer, I find that to be really disappointing. I wish that there was a better way to manage that experience, but it's what we've got. And I didn't let that stop me from using a member area for my particular project this weekend. Now, there's one other part about member areas that I find kind of annoying, and I wish I had more control over it as the designer, as the curator of this experience, but we're just not there yet.
[00:04:19] And that is the actual interface of the member program itself. The sign-up process and the account panel, all of that looks like Squarespace. It's white and black and gray. It's got a basic sans serif font on there. It does the function it's designed to do, but we have no control over the design itself.
[00:04:39] There's no way to make that a branded, cohesive experience with the rest of the website content, and I hate it. I really wish I could customize it. I wish I could change it. I wish I could make it look better. But all I have control over is the content of the page inside the member area. If I was working on a larger project for someone that needed a much more curated experience, I would absolutely look outside of Squarespace for the membership functionality.
[00:05:07] In The past, I've worked with quite a few different clients who needed membership setups, and we always looked for an alternative to Squarespace because of the lack of customization we have on the member experience.
[00:05:18] But for my project over the weekend, for the archive, Squarespace was the right choice, and here's why. The content of this membership was a massive blog, a blog that was already built inside Squarespace. Pulling that content out of the blog and putting it somewhere else would have been a huge undertaking, and I want this membership to be easy.
[00:05:41] And I want it to be live, so leaving it inside Squarespace was the way to go But I did run into one other hiccup that I wanna mention. Now, it didn't stop me from choosing Squarespace for this project, but it definitely threw a hiccup into the process that I wasn't prepared for, and that is search.
[00:05:59] You see, the archive is an archive of hundreds of tutorials. I have over 400 blog posts in there. Everything I've made back for version 7.0 back in 2019 and 2020, all the way through tutorials that I recorded earlier this year. Hundreds of blog posts inside this member area, and I wanted people to be able to search for it before they signed up.
[00:06:22] I wanted someone to be able to say, "Hey, I'm looking for this really specific tutorial," or, "I wanna customize this specific thing," and they could search what's in the archive to find it out if I have exactly what they need before they open up their wallets. That's super important to me. But Squarespace made that difficult. You see, Squarespace wouldn't allow me to search content behind a paywall unless I was already behind the paywall. So I couldn't let someone search for content inside a member area once I moved it to the member area. Definitely a disappointment. So I actually vibe coded a custom search for those blog post titles, so we could look at the title, and if you click on the title for something you find, it'll pull up the page, and then you'll get the paywall.
[00:07:06] So I made sure that we could see what was the content inside the archive without actually having to be in the archive. That was a vibe coded workaround that I hadn't really considered until it was already Sunday, and I had already moved all my blog posts over, and it was time to get the archive ready for the world.
[00:07:23] So I definitely needed to vibe code a quick solution for that rather than relying on Squarespace features.
[00:07:29] Search first, pay second. But it's a good example of what I want this podcast to be about. Is Squarespace the right choice for this particular project?
[00:07:38] Reflecting back on some of the membership needs of some of my past clients, there were features that I didn't really need for the archive. Things like community features, tracking progress, the ability to send some specific onboarding emails or check in with people who've only made it halfway through things or didn't attend live events.
[00:07:56] Different membership setups require different information, All I really needed was a folder of content that people had to join the membership to access, and that was exactly what Squarespace was going to do for me.
[00:08:07] So if you need a beautiful dashboard or complex automations or personalized onboarding or a live interactive chat or community features, Squarespace might not be the right choice. But if you need a simplified version like I did, someone creates account, someone gets access to content, done. That's what Squarespace can do, and honestly, that's all I needed it to do
[00:08:29] Yes, I would have loved to have more control over the way the actual account setup works, the way it looks when someone logs in, and oh my goodness, the amount of emails people get. I would love to have control over that, but I didn't.
[00:08:41] And honestly, I'm okay with letting go of my need to control the design details for this specific project
[00:08:48] so this episode is definitely not a love letter to Squarespace. I don't like the member area feature, but it was the right choice for this project, and I want you to think about that the next time you're creating something with Squarespace. Instead of thinking, "Can Squarespace do this?" Your question should be, "What needs to happen for the user experience?"
[00:09:07] Think about it from that frame of mind. The user experience rather than the features. focusing on that for the archive made Squarespace the right choice. So have I changed my mind about member areas now that I'm actively managing one?
[00:09:21] Not at all. Am I gonna recommend it to my future clients?
[00:09:24] Probably not for more advanced projects, but for a project just like mine, Content that you wanna give someone access to, it was exactly what I needed
[00:09:33] So here's your soundbite for today. Squarespace lets you create a member area, but it doesn't give you control over the member experience. Now, sometimes that's a deal breaker, sometimes it doesn't matter at all, and the value you bring to this project is knowing exactly which situation you're in.
[00:09:49] And that, my dear Squarespacer, is exactly what I wanna talk more about on this podcast. Not just can Squarespace do this, but should we do this in Squarespace? Is it the right tool for the job? Now, if you feel like you don't have enough emails in your inbox and you would like four more of them, you can check out the new member area that I created over the weekend, the one that inspired this entire rant.
[00:10:10] It is available at tutorials.squarespace.com. And that wraps it up for this episode. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you're thinking about your Squarespace projects from a different perspective than you have before you tuned in. I'm Becca from Inside the Square, and I'll be back next Tuesday with another update on Should We Do This With Squarespace, and I hope you come back for more.
[00:10:31] Thanks for hanging out with me, and most importantly, have fun with your website. Bye for now.
I built a Squarespace membership site this weekend. Which is odd, because I really don’t like Squarespace Member Areas.
I think the experience is clunky. I think the design controls are limited. And I think there is still a whole lot of room for improvement.
But for this particular project? Squarespace was absolutely the right choice.
What Squarespace Member Areas actually do well
At its core, the Member Areas feature is pretty simple.
You have content.
You put that content inside a protected area.
Someone creates an account, pays for access if necessary, and now they can view it.
That basic job works.
And if your content is already inside Squarespace, there’s a big advantage: the actual pages can still look like the rest of your website.
You can use your existing layout system, your brand styles, and your custom CSS.
For my project, that mattered a lot.
I was moving hundreds of old Squarespace tutorials into an Archive, and all of that content was already built as Squarespace blog posts.
Moving everything to an entirely different membership platform would have meant a lot more work, another piece of software, another integration, and another thing to maintain.
For a simple Archive?
No thank you.
Squarespace already had the content. I just needed to put a gate around it.
Where Squarespace Member Areas still frustrate me… a LOT
The problem starts when we move away from the protected pages themselves and start looking at the full member experience. That’s where I want a lot more control.
The first thing I noticed was the email experience.
When I tested the signup process, my fake member account immediately got multiple emails:
Verify your email
Your email has been verified
Welcome to the membership area
Here’s your receipt
Every one of those emails has a purpose.
But as the person creating the membership, I’d much rather have control over how that experience feels.
The current system works, but it feels more transactional than curated.
And as a designer, that bugs me.
The account experience is very… Squarespace
The other big issue is the member interface itself.
The signup process, account panel, and logged-in experience are functional, but they look like Squarespace.
Not necessarily like your brand.
You don’t get nearly the same level of visual control that you have over the website itself.
For a premium membership, course, or high-touch experience, that could be a deal breaker.
If someone is paying thousands of dollars for an immersive program, I want the whole thing to feel cohesive.
The login.
The dashboard.
The account area.
The onboarding.
All of it.
For my Archive, though?
Someone pays a small amount, gets access to old tutorials, searches around, grabs what’s useful, and leaves when they’re done.
That does not need a cinematic onboarding experience.
It just needs to work.
The search problem surprised me
This one caught me off guard.
The entire point of my Archive is that someone can show up with a weirdly specific Squarespace problem and see if I already made a tutorial about it.
There are hundreds of posts in there.
Search is kind of super important.
Except Squarespace’s standard search functionality doesn’t let someone search the content behind the membership paywall before joining.
That created a pretty obvious problem. So I built my own workaround.
I created a public-facing custom search that lets people search the tutorial titles before they join.
They can see whether the Archive contains something useful, click the result, and then hit the paywall if they want to access it.
Search first. Find out if what you need is in the archive. If it is, sign up. If it isn’t get back onto your Google hunt. It works.
But it’s also a perfect example of why “Can Squarespace technically do this?” isn’t always the most helpful question. Sometimes it can do the big thing while still making the surrounding experience a little awkward.
So, should you use Squarespace for a membership site?
Maybe. 😅
Squarespace Member Areas could be a perfectly reasonable choice if all you really need is:
protected content
simple paid access
content that already lives inside Squarespace
minimal maintenance
But if you need things like:
advanced community features
progress tracking
highly customized onboarding
complex automations
a fully branded member dashboard
detailed member behavior tracking
Then I’d probably look at a dedicated membership platform instead.
The better question
So no, this is not a love letter to Squarespace Member Areas.
I still have complaints.
But building the Archive reminded me of something important:
The best platform is not always the one with the longest feature list.
Sometimes it’s the one that does exactly what your project needs without introducing a bunch of unnecessary complexity.
So the next time you’re evaluating a Squarespace project, don’t stop at: Can Squarespace do this?
Ask: What actually needs to happen for the user?
That answer will tell you a whole lot more.
If you want to hear the full rant, this is the topic of episode 101 of Think Inside the Square available above. And if you want to see the actual member area that inspired all of this, you can check out The Archive at tutorials.squarespace.com.
But most importantly, have fun with your website. 💛
