Introducing Free Membership Accounts

We're thrilled to announce an exciting addition to our platform: Free membership accounts! This fantastic new feature will allow you to grow & engage with your community like never before.

How do free accounts work?

On top of paid memberships, you can now offer a free option for supporters who aren’t quite ready to commit to a recurring monthly charge, but would like to stay connected and receive updates from you.

Free account users will receive updates on newly released public posts (when you create posts marked as viewable by “Everyone”) and can interact with them in the form of likes & comments. On their feed, they’ll also see members-only content in a locked state that will prompt them to upgrade their account to a paid membership.

Think of this almost as a free tier that can be used to keep supporters updated while also encouraging them to upgrade to a paid membership tier. 

What are the benefits of offering free accounts?

There are several benefits to offering free accounts on your membership site:

1. Community growth - You can speed up your community growth by offering a free option for supporters who’re not yet ready for a paid commitment. Providing good content and reminding them that they can unlock even more, such as members-only posts or direct messages, can be used as an upselling tool to convert them into paid members
2. Greater reach & engagement - With public posts and more supporters subscribed to your website, you’ll be able to reach more people and your engagement will automatically be greater
3. Win former members back - If a member cancels their paid subscription, their account will automatically become a free account. With this, they’ll be able to view public posts, which you can use to help win them back into a paid membership

How do I offer free accounts?

Free accounts are automatically enabled on your account. There are two groups that all automatically have access to your public posts: Former members, and people who begin checkout but don’t proceed with the payment.

However, you can control whether or not you promote this free account option by visiting the Memberships / Settings tab:

If you enabled Memberships after April 23, 2024 then this promotional option will be automatically enabled. If you enabled Memberships before that date, you’ll need to toggle it on manually.

Once you select the  “Show free account signup link” option, a “Start with a free account” link will be displayed above your Tiers in all the different locations (e.g. tiers section of your site, become a member page, etc).

Can I disable free accounts?

You can hide the promotion of free membership accounts, but they’ll continue to exist in your system as former members will automatically be granted free accounts. To hide the promotion, just visit the Memberships / Settings and select the “Hide free account signup link” option.

Get started today

We're so excited to see how you use this new feature. To learn more, head to our help center article. If you’re not already using Fourthwall to power your Memberships, now’s a great time to join Fourthwall and enable memberships!