Best Patreon Alternatives, Competitors & Similar Software (2023)
Patreon is used by musicians, podcasters, writers, and other creators to get paid for their work.
Patreon is a membership platform where content creators can connect with fans and supporters. It lets you publish/share your creations, build a loyal following, and earn a monthly income by giving subscribers rewards and perks.
Patreon has made it possible for creators to use the platform to share their work with the world affordably and easily while also making it possible for them to make a living off of their art.
However, Patreon may not be the right platform for everyone. Some people may be turned off by the fees, while others may not like the censorship issues. In the meantime, creators have many Patreon alternatives that allow them to experiment with much more and build a healthy online community.
Reasons to look for Patreon alternatives
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Having your own app has many advantages, one of which is building your brand to differentiate yourself from your competitors. So, even if you have a mobile app, it's not your branded app because it has Patreon's name. And with 6 million active users on Patreon every month, finding your content will be difficult.
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Several Patreon users have reported censorship issues. When you're not given the freedom to express what you want, it can hold you back from doing your best work. In addition, Patreon has strict restrictions for people within specific niches.
- Patreon charges a 5% membership fee on all revenue creators make, with another 5% on other expenses. Additionally, while they provide some community features, they are pretty basic and lack many engaging features that can help you create an interactive and collaborative space for your members.
Patreon is a platform that allows you to sell your art online, but it falls short when it comes to creating a supportive community. While it's a great resource for artists, it doesn't allow you to connect with your members like a community-based platform.
6 Best Patreon Alternatives
Graphy Community Platform
Gumroad
Memberful
WildApricot
SendOwl
SquareSpace
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Gumroad
Gumroad is a digital marketplace for independent artists and creators selling digital services like books, memberships, and courses.
Gumroad Features
- Gumroad offers a robust analytics dashboard that provides you with an array of data about your sales, including - How much you've sold over the last week, month, or year.
- Your customers can enjoy full content access as long as they are subscribed. You can also create discount codes for your products.
- Gumroad offers email marketing tools that will help you send automated messages. Workflows help save time and energy, automating email campaigns and sequences after your customers purchase a product.
Gumroad Pricing
- Starts at $10/mo.
- Free version available.
Pros
- It's possible to accept any payment format, including different foreign currencies, create software licences, and sell similar products in various forms.
- It has a user-friendly interface that is simple to set up and can quickly go live with a product.
- With Gumroad, you can set up a simple storefront with a profile image of your brand - and upload some text to describe the products you'd like to sell.
Cons
- There are limited options for customization when it comes to email design, and all you can do is format the text and add a call-to-action button; that's it.
- There are no trial capabilities, A/B split testing, or other forms of payment processing.
- When you sell products on Gumroad, you'll be charged a fee for every transaction on the platform.
Memberful
Memberful is a membership site platform that enables you to sell and deliver digital and physical goods, community subscriptions, and online courses. Members can easily pay and stay subscribed with its tools.
Memberful Features
- WordPress Plugin - It allows you to make private posts on your WordPress website. This is ideal for creating members-only content.
- Discord Plugin - You can create a chat forum for members-only. Memberful invites paid members to your Discord server and removes their access when their subscription expires.
- Track your performance - You can track your performance and earn new members using conversion analytics and activity metrics, Gift purchases, Group subscriptions, Coupons, Discounts, Referral programmes, Free trials, etc.
Memberful Pricing
- Starts at $25/mo.
- Free trial available.
Pros
- Memberful offers reasonable prices compared to its other competitors. It is budget friendly and a good investment in building
- With the free plan, you have access to a variety of advanced features.
- Tens of thousands of third-party applications are compatible with memberful integration.
Cons
- Besides hosting costs for your WordPress site, Memberful charges fees between 4.9%-10% on each transaction.
- Memberful works with WordPress, but you have to add extra plugins to handle SEO, which can take a great deal of work.
- In comparison to other solutions, they have fewer features to offer.
WildApricot
With WildApricot, associations and non-profit organizations can automate and simplify membership management tasks. WildApricot allows you to add, edit, manage members, and collect dues and payments.
WildApricot Features
- Member application process – WildApricot offers membership management software that can automate the application process to give your new members a great first impression.
- Events – You can create a detailed event listing with descriptions and images and get an online event registration form. You can list events in a calendar on your WildApricot site or existing website.
- Email marketing - With WildApricot, you can send prospective members announcements or offers using modern email templates that match your brand.
WildApricot Pricing
- Starts at $60/mo.
- 30-Day free trial is available.
Pros
- You can easily customize your member database with WildApricot. You can use it to keep track of all sorts of information, and it's easy to use.
- WildApricot provides up-to-date member directories. You can also store membership information in the cloud, making it accessible to your team.
- WildApricot's drag-and-drop website builder creates a website easily, sells digital products and services, and quickly gets your business online.
Cons
- WildApricot does not give you the freedom to create a website that matches your brand strategy.
- WildApricot does not provide any specific functionality for course building, so you may have difficulty formatting your courses and displaying student progress. In addition, WildApricot does not host videos or digital files.
- You can only add a certain number of members, emails, and invites unless you spend some extra money.
SendOwl
SendOwl allows creators to sell their digital products and manage the entire order and payment process, from creation to delivery. In addition, it gives businesses control over their e-commerce operations by offering features like customizable sales workflow, flexible shipping options, automated invoicing, invoice management and analytics integration.
SendOwl Features
- SendOwl provides a shopping cart processing system so that your customers can purchase and add more products to their virtual shopping carts at their own pace.
- You'll be able to reward your valued loyal customers with thoughtful perks, like giving access to a private chat room, forum, or community.
- Affiliate marketing - Ask your brand advocates to help grow your customers base by making recommendations and referrals to their friends. In return, they’ll receive rewards for being instrumental in the growth of your business.
Sendowl Pricing
- Starts at $9/mo.
- Free trial available.
Pros
- The SendOwl delivery system offers fast and safe delivery, so you don't need to worry about getting your products to your customers on time.
- You can have your extensive affiliate program to increase the sales of your recent course or any other product.
- The checkouts and email templates can be customized to match your brand.
Cons
- It takes a great deal of time to understand SendOwl's complex features and go through a learning curve.
- There is no discussion forum where your members can ask any questions on Sendowl.
- The absence of community groups on SendOwl makes your website uninteresting and reduces member engagement.
SquareSpace
Squarespace is a platform that offers you multiple tools to create and manage your website. From creating and editing content to adding products (such as ebooks, online courses), managing payments, and more, you'll be able to do it all in one place.
Squarespace Features
- Engagement Analytics - Track engagement with an activity log, form & button conversions, popular content and site search keywords.
- Social Media Links - Showcase your social media links, giving your visitors quick and easy options for following you on all major networks. Breakaway’s design builder provides a variety of styles that let you keep up a unified look across every social network.
- Squarespace’s custom WYSIWYG engine supports custom designs - so whether or not you are a professional web developer or designer, you will be able to customize your site to match your vision and make it work for your business.
Squarespace Pricing
- Starts at $19/mo.
- Free trial available.
Pros
- They have great templates, design and color palette, type family are a useful feature.
- There is no requirement of technical know-how or design skills to create a solid website. The high-quality templates, with predetermined styling, ensure that even a simple website looks clean and elegant.
- You can edit websites using your web browser without any special software. This also allows you to train my clients easily since it's drag and drop. Usability is a big plus especially with smaller clients.
Cons
- There is no autosave option after you make any changes and always asks to save it manually. No site history feature either.
- Their template score low ratings by Google’s page speed tool, which could lead to a poor user experience on smartphones and possibly harm your search engine rankings.
- It is not for larger businesses as they require customizations and functionality.
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
What you should do now
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