How to Build a Duda Membership Site

Duda is a great choice for web designers, developers, and agency professionals juggling multiple client sites. There’s no limit to the types of sites that you can create for your clients with Duda — and that includes membership sites.

What is a Membership Site?

Membership sites enable creators and business owners to build additional revenue streams. These sites are much more flexible than a traditional e-commerce model.

Many membership business owners sell access to continually updated content streams, including content libraries, private podcasts, and paid newsletters. However, membership sites are also great for selling one-on-one coaching, digital magazines, mastermind groups, and more.

Why Build a Membership on Duda?

Duda makes it simple to create membership sites for clients. You can give each site unique membership plans, pages, and permissions. It’s easy to update and manage members-only content on each site through your Duda account.

Offering fully-managed membership site capabilities to your clients can help to differentiate your agency or web development business from competitors.

There are two ways you can build Duda membership sites: using Duda’s own Membership app, or with a third-party tool like MemberSpace.

Option 1: Build a Membership with Duda Membership App

The Duda Membership app is available directly through the Duda App Store. Because it’s a native Duda product, it’s a very straightforward way of adding membership functionality to your clients’ sites.

With Duda’s Membership app, you can:

• Password protect on individual top-level pages
• Set up automatic or manual member approval
• Customize plan signup forms
• Enable Google signup and login for plan members

The Membership app is fairly new, though, and there are some limits to its capabilities.

• There is one set signup page per client site
• It’s not currently possible to protect dynamic page content, store pages, and blog posts
• Protecting a top-level page does not automatically protect all its sub-pages

It’s also important to note that you cannot _un_install the Duda Membership app once you add it to a client’s site. You can remove the password protection on individual pages, but the member login page will remain live on the site.

Option 2: Build a Membership on Duda with MemberSpace

If you’d like to build membership sites with more features and customization options, you’ll need to use MemberSpace.

It’s very easy to make Duda membership sites with MemberSpace. Simply connect Duda and MemberSpace by adding a bit of code to each site header, and you’re all set.

When using MemberSpace with Duda, you can:

• Protect any page on a Duda site, including blogs
• List all plan signup information on one page, or separate landing pages
• Connect a variety of leading third-party tools with Zapier
• Add community forums with a Circle SSO integration
• Automatically protect every sub-page under a protected top-level page
• Reduce manual work with member email notification workflows
• Set up coupon codes, discounts, and one-time sign-on fees
• Add a double layer of protection to individual content files
• Customize every aspect of member pages and dashboards

Every MemberSpace plan includes support for unlimited Duda sites. If you plan to hand off your client’s site to them after completion, you can transfer ownership of the associated MemberSpace plans as well.

If you prefer to maintain management of your clients’ sites and membership accounts, that’s no problem. With MemberSpace, plan and member management is separate from website administration. This means that you can give your clients admin access to manage their member plans and approvals, without the need for them to utilize the Duda website back end.

Which Option is Best for You: Membership App vs MemberSpace?

If your clients need simple password protection on static, top-level pages, the Duda Membership app will work for your needs.

However, if you’re in need of more robust membership management features, MemberSpace is a powerful yet efficient option. See how easily it integrates with your custom Duda site designs by signing up for a free 14-day trial — and check out our complete guide to building a Duda membership site for more information.