This article goes over common questions regarding the Membership product. Learn more about creating and managing membership tiers.
Student Experience
Can students self-manage their membership like they can with a subscription?
Yes, students will have the ability to upgrade, downgrade, change between monthly or annual pricing, or cancel their subscription from their account. For assistance, students can use our student guides.
Can a student be on multiple tiers at one time?
No - students will only be able to enroll in one tier at a time.
What happens when a student's payment fails?
If your student's payment fails, Teachable will automatically make 3 attempts to charge the student's payment option on file. If all attempts fail, your student will automatically be unenrolled from the membership.
Will my students keep access when I add or remove products from an existing tier?
If new products are added to an existing membership tier, all existing members within that tier will be enrolled in that newly added product. Similarly, if a product is removed from a membership tier, then the members in that tier will be unenrolled from that product.
Is there a logged-in membership homepage for my students?
Yes - any student enrolled in a membership tier will see a ‘My Membership’ tab on their account. This ‘My Membership’ tab will house the membership tier experience that you create.
What happens when a student upgrades their membership?
Students who upgrade to a higher tier will be charged at a prorated rate based on the amount they have already paid for that billing cycle.
If a student upgrades to a higher tier, and the prorated amount owed for the new tier is greater than $0.99, the student will be navigated to a checkout page to pay the amount owed. If the prorated amount owed for the new tier is less than $0.99, then the student will not be charged for the upgrade during that billing cycle - they will be charged the full price of the higher tier at their next billing cycle. Students will keep their progress on any products that are included in both products.
What happens when a student downgrades their membership?
If a student downgrades to a lower tier, they will retain access to the higher tier until the end of their billing cycle. Students will keep their progress on any products that are included in both products.
Can a student reactivate their membership once they've cancelled?
Yes - after a student cancels their membership, they will see a 'Renew' button on their previous membership tier. If they click 'Renew', their membership tier will be reactivated at the billing date, price, and cadence as before.
Membership Pricing
Can I edit the price of a tier?
If you edit the monthly and/or annual price on a membership tier, all new members will pay the updated price. Any existing members will continue to be charged at the tier price set at the time of their purchase.
Is sales taxes applied to memberships?
If the criteria for charging sales tax are met (jurisdiction and gateway requirements), sales tax will be applied to your students’ membership tier purchase. This tax will be applied to all recurring charges. Learn more about taxes on Teachable.
Do coupons work with memberships?
School-wide coupons can be applied at checkout for membership tiers. Please be on the lookout for membership-specific coupon functionality in the future.
Do I need to make changes to my sales page if the price of a membership tier is updated?
No. If your tier is published, it will automatically display on your Membership sales page. Any changes you make to your published tier(s) will be auto-updated on your Membership sales page (updates to price, content etc.).
Membership Content
Can I connect my community and membership products?
Yes - you can now include and sell your community within new or existing membership tiers. Navigate to the 'Product access' page of any tier, and you will see an option to add community to that tier. If community is included on a membership tier, enrolled members will see a 'Learn with others' button that routes to the community product from their 'My membership' tab.
Can I create a community that is exclusive to members?
Yes - community access and community content can be gated to 'members-only', 'course specific', or 'all access'. If you want to create a community that is exclusive to your members, select the 'members-only' community access type, and add your community to desired membership tiers.
Can I add exclusive content to a membership without having a pre-existing product?
At this time, you will need to add pre-existing products to your membership tiers in order to add content. In the future, we will allow you to connect your Community product, and to share announcements within your membership tier(s).
Can I drip content in a membership tier?
Content can be added and removed at any time from a membership tier, and that change will be reflected for the enrolled members. That means that, at this time, you can drip content manually to students. We are interested in applying auto-drip to this product in the future.
Membership Administration
How many membership tiers can I have?
The Membership product is only available for paid plans on Teachable. Basic plan users will be limited to one tier, while Pro and above can create unlimited tiers. The caps for membership tiers are entirely separate from the caps for other product types - in other words, creating a tier on a Pro plan does not count towards the product limit for Courses or other product types on a Pro plan.
Can I filter reports by membership level?
Yes, transaction and user reports can be filtered by tier. When setting your filter, you can find the name of your tier under ‘Products’. Learn more about filtering users in your school.
Can I manually enroll someone in a membership?
At this time, manual enrollment into tiers is not available. Please be on the lookout for migration tools and manual enrollment tools in the future.
Can I hide memberships from the “All Products” page and make it private?
For initial launch, the membership product will not be displayed on the ‘All Products’ page. We’ll look to follow up with this shortly after launch, and that will include the ability to hide the membership from the ‘All Products’ directory. At this current time, the membership product will not display on the ‘All Products’ page.
Can authors be associated with membership tiers? How do authors receive commission?
At this time, authors cannot be added to the membership product. Similarly, author commissions will not apply for any sales of membership tiers. We look to follow up with author commissions and payouts soon.
Subscriptions and Memberships
How do I migrate my students from an existing subscription to a membership tier?
At this time, students will need to cancel their existing subscription and sign up for a membership tier. Be on the lookout for a tool in the near future that will allow you to migrate your existing subscribers directly onto a membership tier - when migrated, subscribers will continue to pay the price, currency and cadence of their original subscription, but with access to the membership tier they were migrated to.
What's the difference between a subscription and a membership?
Memberships are a product and subscriptions are product pricing plans.
Memberships offer a number of new features and benefits that bundles + subscriptions lack. Students can upgrade and downgrade between tiers, creators can build a separate membership experience for their students (similar to a course curriculum), prices can be edited (without deleting a pricing plan), and sales pages are optimized for the membership model.
Additionally, in the future, creators will be able to pair their community products with membership tiers.