Terms

"For us, membership is an integral part of what we do. You can't just moonlight as a membership; it has been a primary focus" starts Dan Carson, our Head of Product. "If are serious about membership We believe that this is the greatest combination of attributes. We started out with WordPress as our primary way to access these capabilities, this isn't the case."

Dan says that we're not going to eliminate all of's capabilities including integrating into WordPress: "If that's how you want to construct your member-only site, it's as possible as it was prior to us - we're simply giving them a more straightforward on-ramp."

Streamlining the navigation

"There are lots of individuals making use of third-party software however, not just because they'd like to. This is because it was the only choice," Dan adds. "People may have WordPress however they've created a basic site or use MailChimp but they don't even use 50% of the features."

These people simply need an option to let users sign up, and later be able email them with no nonsense cloud enterprise edition. "Maybe you signed them up for Mailchimp in 2014, and they continue to use it since this is where they are. Are they really an ideal target for the direction Mailchimp is headed?"

"We believe there are some in the world who, if it was easy enough, could reduce all the tools into a single place and make it more tightly integrated - as in the sense that it could still do everything they required it to accomplish," Dan says.

Our email tools will have the functionality you need. He adds: "We're not trying to help enterprise marketing teams. We're trying to serve authors who need a cost-effective and straightforward method to share information and distribute content to their target audience."

It's for us less about the products you have, and more about what you are doing. If you want people to be able to sign up to newsletters, we'll make that easier and cheaper because now you don't require the expense of other tools.

It's dependent on everyone's individual usage scenario, naturally. Many people desire the ability to integrate multiple Integrations, but some worry it's expensive and more difficult to manage, especially as an individual user. "Previously we were kind of only developing for one of these organizations. Today, we're building both groups," Dan says.

Controlling access for members for Posts and Pages

If you're a particular type of customer that you are, the version 2014 of MailChimp will be the one you're looking for; it's the version that you've fallen in over. "If I want a simple website, I may choose not to go with WordPress. In fact, Squarespace could be too much for a subscription-based website. And it's not tightly connected to membership at its core," Dan adds. Then we asked ourselves: 'What would happen if there was an entire product built around this?'.

This is our approach to podcasting or online communities too. "We're not going to be creating a brand new Libsyn. We're going to be building an easy version to use and covers 80% of what you care about, integrated with all your other stuff all in one location for the same cost," Dan believes.

It seems to be the law of nature that the longer software exists, the more it wants to develop. It wants to become increasingly complex and complicated.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing however it can be unfavorable for customers when the person they are building to isn't you anymore. "People are hungry for products that do exactly what they need and isn't seeking to do other than that. In jazz, often it's not the notes you perform!" Dan laughs.

Making something simple is actually extremely difficult. Dan is in agreement: "It's about paring down to what's important in. It's easy for us would be to add everything to the site and then make it a setting and customers can locate it on a settings panel somewhere." However, we aren't sure that's the kind of thing customers want. We want to bring together all of our experience over a decade of developing the tools for membership, including customer feedback, and distill that down to simple-to-use tools.

"It's easy to undervalue the power of basic tools. Making them easy to use is an unmet need. The majority of things are much more complicated than they ought to be." Dan adds.

The brand new dashboard

One of the most noticeable changes this quarter is the way we have reorganized the dashboard. Instead of having all options accessible at the top as well as the features divided by feature, we went back and thought, "Why not orient everything around what you're trying to do in the moment?'.

The new dashboard

Based on our own experience as well as talking to people who run membership businesses typically, you're doing work which falls under the four categories including designing and building your site or publishing exclusive content and managing your members or generating more revenues. Dan says: "Everything you're doing as a member-based business is bound to be in the four buckets. We thought it was an appropriate method of organizing the functions of ."

Website

It is designed for users who would like to build a membership website. It was common to use WordPress or something specific to. Now you can use our native website builder. This first section is for designing the site in the first place and then modifying the look. and setting up your public-facing web content. "You're creating the place for your audience to and visit," adds Dan.

Content

The other is to publish the content. A modern-day membership business usually involves publishing exclusive content for members, such as emails or posts, downloads, and even podcasts. "The next step is to develop special content or sharing advantages - it's about generating the value members get from your membership," Dan explains.

Members

The third task is managing your members. "Part of running a successful member base is having a close connection to your members and that's a big reason why they're supporting the organization," says Dan.

Members management - download invoices

"You must be able to provide the best customer service for these individuals, including understanding their history along with solving problems if they aren't functioning properly," he adds.

Revenue

"If you're creating a membership site, you're trying to create revenue and there's a million things involved in this: creating your plan knowing what charges to make, and monitoring the health of your company to determine what's working," says Dan. This is a section that covers discounting for retention as well as running campaigns to acquire customers as well as referral programs.

"We've introduced a variety of functions over time. Not having them organized made it difficult to locate things, particularly for new people. We wanted to lessen the time to learn," concludes Dan. This will provide a solid foundation for us going forward in the future as we develop new features, as we'll find more intuitive ways to set things up - which makes it much easier for people to discover and find this new feature, and you'll be able to benefit from these features immediately.

Website builder

The other major change this quarter was around the web builder. "We'd began to create these tools earlier in the year and wanted to make sure that we were introduction of this capability without affecting the existing methods of use ," says Dan. "We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who was wanting to develop a membership website."

Now, the process of signing up and getting into the product is much faster; we provide you with a more sophisticated starting position, with default settings, membership plans already made and the design of your website designed. What you need to do is create your Stripe account and you could begin your website within just a few minutes.

The website builder

The editing process is like contemporary WYSIWYG (What you see is What You get) website builder, directly interacting with your website for membership. "You are able to type directly onto the webpage, change things around, hide and show elements, and you are able to see the layout like immediately," says Dan.

Dan states that this is only the start for future website-builder improvements: "We had to redo the basis of everything in this way, now we can step on the gas in terms of expanding the capabilities."

We've discussed the idea of blocks. Blocks are in essence content modules. Right now we have a basic content block and a title banner that can be text or an image that has a button. The framework is now in place, we're working on new block types and putting different types of content to be displayed on the page. The user will be able to place them in the right order on the page, and will be able to customize who is able to view these based on the membership plan people are paying for.

J4UXZCXXVRVFxqRpCLFE Building using blocks

Dan says: "It's everything you need to build a full-featured website for membership. And it's all connected to subscriptions. The membership component is the basis of the whole." The end result is a web-building experience that's easier to get started as well as more user-friendly and in line with the expectations of modern users.

Final: A fresh way to use

"We previously described the past as the glue which holds the group together," recalls Dan. "But if a machine is integral to your business and has parts that are glued does not always seem like a positive. Sometimes you want them to be welded together just like steel. But you want it to be the same piece, not two separate pieces that are glued together" says Dan. The two parts were built simultaneously: membership was integral since the very beginning.

If you're a person with an incredibly successful WordPress site or a million members in your MailChimp list and you want to add subscriptions rather than start again, that's still perfectly possible. The tool is still available for you to add subscribers, and then piece it together. However, we do not believe that's the only option people have to build anymore.

" is a place for those who want a place where their members can come together online, a hub to their customers and members. In the present, all you need, including making it look like your business and having all your information at one location could be what you make with it ," Dan concludes.