Patreon Acquires Memberful
Will add branded membership service to product portfolio
At Patreon, we’re building a world-class membership platform that enables creators to own the relationship with their fans. We feel that creators should decide how and when they engage with their fans, where they build their community, and how they run their business. And, for some creators, that also means managing a fully branded membership program on their own website. That’s why, today, we’re thrilled to announce that we have acquired Memberful, adding a self-service white label membership solution to our growing product portfolio.
Patreon and Memberful share a mission to fund the creative class and we both understand there are a variety of platforms and business models available to achieve that goal. Together, we’ll now be able to offer a wider range of options for building and managing a successful membership program.
About Memberful
Memberful is a service for independent creators, educators, and publishers who prefer to have complete control over their membership program, including building and maintaining their own website, providing customer service, and integrating with best in class third-party tools like WordPress and MailChimp. Memberful creators retain full control of their brand and maintain a direct connection with their audience.
“We built Memberful to make selling memberships easy, while at the same time giving creators complete control of their brand — so they can maintain a direct relationship with their audience,” said Drew Strojny, Founder, Memberful. “Patreon deeply understands the importance of those direct relationships, and by joining forces, we’re able to provide better service, roll out a more comprehensive product, and tap into a larger ecosystem of tools and services.”
Choosing the right platform
Patreon is probably right for creators who:
- Want an all-in-one membership program hosted on Patreon in addition to their own website
- Want a robust set of tools for engaging with their patrons
- Value high-quality customer service for them and their patrons
- Value community with other creators
- Want all payment processing, chargebacks, refunds and fraud prevention handled by Patreon
To learn more about Patreon’s product, email us at: creators@patreon.com
Memberful is probably right for creators who:
- Want 100% control over their brand
- Want to build and manage their own website or membership program exclusively through their own website, and have the technical resources to do so
- Want to manage their own customer service for their members
- Want to use their own payment processor account
To learn more about Memberful’s product, email us at: memberful@patreon.com
What’s going to change for current Memberful creators?
The Memberful platform and brand will remain independent, the current product roadmap will continue at a faster pace, and existing creators using Memberful will not experience any immediate changes to the service. The Memberful team will continue supporting independent creators and building the Memberful service as part of Patreon. As it will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Patreon, Memberful currently has a different pricing model than Patreon that is built around three tiers which will remain unchanged for existing customers.
Patreon is building a world class membership platform for creators who want independence. Creators who are serious about their long-term creative career want to own the relationship with their fans, not relinquish control to platforms with ulterior motives to please advertisers. Together with Memberful, we’re building technology that will empower creators to take control of their career.
Want to join our growing team? Check out our open roles.
