How to Create a Membership Site on Shopify

A membership site has a simple deal at its heart. Members pay every month or every year, and in return they get something everyone else doesn't. On Shopify, your store can be that site. Members sign up through your normal checkout, and what they get is your members-only content: a library of files, new releases on a schedule, or a set number of downloads.

This guide shows how to create a membership site on Shopify with Content Vault, for a membership built around digital content. It covers which subscription type fits your membership, a full setup with a price, how members get their files, and how to protect them. Each step says which Content Vault plan it needs.

Can You Create a Membership Site on Shopify?

Yes. Shopify runs the checkout and takes each renewal payment. What it doesn't do on its own is decide which files a member can download, send new content to members, and end access when someone cancels. That's the job of an app.

Without one, a common workaround is to join apps together: a subscription app for the billing, a download app for the files, and often a third app to lock content when someone cancels. That's several apps to keep in sync.

Content Vault does the billing, the file delivery and the access rules in one app. In Content Vault, a membership is a subscription with files connected to it, and members get the files connected to their plan. Those can be PDFs, videos, audio, templates, ZIP files or any other file, or a link to something you host elsewhere. On the Plus plan, uploaded video and audio can also stream instead of downloading.

Members subscribe through your normal Shopify checkout. They manage their membership from their customer account page in your store, not a separate portal. So Content Vault suits a membership whose value is in what members download and use: a pattern library, a collection of guides, class recordings, templates or sample packs.

Which Subscription Type Fits Your Membership?

Content Vault has three subscription types. Each one gives members their content in a different way.

Your membership	Content Vault type	What members get
An all-access library	Library Access	Every file in their plan, right away
A members' club with regular releases	Content Drip	New content on a schedule you set
A download membership for a big catalogue	Content Pass	A set number of downloads that refills on a schedule

An All-Access Library: Library Access

Library Access gives members every file connected to their plan as soon as they subscribe. It's the type the help center suggests for membership sites and resource libraries. It fits:

• A library of patterns, guides, recipes or worksheets
• Recorded classes and workshop replays
• A resource hub you add to every month

The library grows with you. A file you connect to the plan later reaches members who are already subscribed.

You can also sell levels. For example, a Basic plan with your core files and an All-Access plan with everything, each with its own price and its own files. Files reach only the plan you connect them to, so a new file that belongs in both levels needs connecting to both.

A Members' Club With Regular Releases: Content Drip

Content Drip releases new content on a schedule: every month on a day you choose, or every set number of days. Each release can hold one file or several. The help center lists memberships among its uses. It fits:

• A monthly members' pack or issue
• A program that unlocks a new lesson every week
• A club where everyone gets the same month's release

By default, each member starts at the first release and moves through the series from their own signup date. Our course guide sets up a weekly program this way. With Send content by month of subscription turned on, everyone gets the same month's release, like a magazine, and new members don't get earlier months. The help center suggests that setting for monthly memberships.

A Download Membership: Content Pass

Content Pass gives members a download allowance, such as 5 downloads every 30 days, across the files you link to it. The allowance refills on its own schedule. The help center calls it a Shutterstock-style plan and lists usage-based memberships among its uses. It fits a big catalogue where each member wants only part of it, like stock photos or a large template library.

Content Pass has fewer settings than the other two. It has no per-file or IP download limits, and no pause or skip settings (members can still pause, or skip an upcoming order, from their account page). If you want those, choose Library Access or Content Drip.

Not Sure? Run Two

You can run more than one subscription. For example, a library membership for your back catalogue plus a monthly club for new releases. Pay As You Go, which has no monthly fee, allows two subscriptions, so you can test both. The help center's Which subscription type should I choose? compares the three in more detail.

How to Set Up a Membership: A Worked Example

Say you design sewing patterns. You have 60 PDF patterns, and you add two new ones every month. You want a membership that gives members every pattern for $12 a month, or $120 a year for members who pay up front (two months free). You also want each PDF stamped with the member's name, and an IP address limit so members can't pass their download links around. Both need the Starter plan ($29 a month), so this example uses Starter.

Step 1: Create the Product

In Shopify, create one product for the membership, such as "Pattern Club Membership", and give it a price of $12. You only need one product, even with a monthly and a yearly plan. Members pick their plan on the product page.

Step 2: Create a Library Access Subscription

Go to Apps → Content Vault → Subscriptions and click Create new Subscription. (In your Shopify admin, Content Vault is listed as Digital Subscriptions.) Choose Library Access. Give the subscription a name, which only you see, then click Select product and add your membership product.

Step 3: Add a Monthly and a Yearly Plan

Each plan is a tier with its own name, price and billing frequency. Plan names are what members see, so keep them clear, like "Monthly" and "Yearly". Click + beside the plan tabs to add the second plan.

• Monthly: bill every 1 month. It uses the product's $12 price.
• Yearly: bill every 1 year. Tick Show advanced pricing options and set a fixed price of $120.

Step 4: Choose What Members Can Do

Each plan has three panels of access settings:

• Customer options: whether members keep their files after they cancel or pause (off by default), whether they're asked for a cancellation reason, and whether they can skip or pause from their account page (both on by default).
• File delivery: where members get their download links, such as a download email and links on the Thank You page. These are on by default.
• Download protection: optional limits, covered below.

These settings are per plan, so set them on both Monthly and Yearly. In the Customer tagging panel, you can also turn on Tag customers on Shopify. Each member then gets a Subscriber tag and a Subscribed - <plan name> tag, which are removed when they cancel or their subscription ends. The tags are handy for segmenting emails, discounts and customer lists by plan.

Step 5: Save, Then Connect Your Patterns

Click Save subscription, then click Configure files for the Monthly plan in the dialog that opens. Click Upload files to add your patterns, or Select files to pick ones already in your file library. Later, the plan's Connected files panel opens the same page.

One thing to watch: each plan has its own file list. Connect your patterns to the Yearly plan too, with Select files, or yearly members won't get them. And each month, connect the two new patterns to both plans.

Step 6: Turn On the Widget and Go Live

Check that the Subscription widget app embed is on, under Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds. That's what lets people choose a plan on the product page. Also make sure Shopify's customer accounts are on and Content Vault's checkout and customer account blocks are added, so members can manage their membership from their account. See Steps 4 and 5 in the install guide: turn on customer accounts and add the checkout and customer account blocks. Then click Set active on each plan and confirm.

Before you announce the membership, do a quick test checkout (a discount code helps) and check that the download email arrives.

The full walkthrough, with a screenshot of every panel, is in Setting up a Library Access subscription. For a club with regular releases instead, see Setting up a Content Drip subscription, or Setting up a Content Pass subscription for a download membership.

What the $12 Membership Costs to Run

Content Vault charges a fee on every successful subscription payment, including the first order. It's never charged on a failed payment. Here's what the fee comes to on one $12 payment:

Plan	Plan price	Fee per payment	Fee on a $12 payment
Pay As You Go	Free to install	4.95% + $0.25	About $0.84
Starter	$29/month	1.95% + $0.15	About $0.38
Scale	$49/month	0.95% + $0.10	About $0.21
Plus	$99/month	0.50%	About $0.06

Shopify's own payment processing fee applies on top, as it does on any order. On Starter, a $120 yearly payment carries a fee of about $2.49. On fees alone, Starter works out cheaper than Pay As You Go once you take about 64 payments of $12 a month, and it includes the PDF stamping and IP limits this example uses. Starter, Scale and Plus each come with a 10-day free trial.

As your library grows, storage can decide the plan: Pay As You Go includes 1 GB, Starter 10 GB, Scale 150 GB and Plus 500 GB, and every plan has unlimited bandwidth. See How does Content Vault pricing work? for the full plan details.

How Members Get Their Content

With Library Access and Content Drip, a new member gets their download links in two places, both on by default:

• A download email when they subscribe
• The Thank You / Order Status page

Each new Content Drip release also sends a New drip released email. With Content Pass, members download from the product pages of the files in their pass, and each new file they download counts against their allowance.

Members manage their membership themselves. From their customer account page, members can cancel. On Library Access and Content Drip, they can also pause or skip while those options are on, which they are by default. Content Pass members can pause, or skip an upcoming order, from their account page too.

Any file type works. Upload PDFs, videos, audio, slides, templates or ZIP files. A plan can also deliver a link instead of a file, such as a video class you host on YouTube or Vimeo. When a member opens it, their browser goes to that address, so they keep the link.

Video and audio can stream (Plus). On the Plus plan, you can set an uploaded MP4, MOV, MP3 or WAV file to Stream instead of Download, so members play it in the browser. Other files are always downloads, and a link to a video you host elsewhere works on any plan. See Setting up video / audio streaming.

Updating a file is easy. On the Files page, open the file and click Replace. The new version replaces the old one everywhere it's used. You can also tick a box to email a new download link to customers who downloaded the old file and still have access. See How to manage files.

Emails can match your brand. You can edit every email template and add translations. On Starter and up, emails can also come from your own email address.

How to Protect Members-Only Content

With Content Vault, signing in to the customer account isn't what protects your files: the links in a member's download email work without signing in. And once a file is on a member's device, nothing can stop them from copying it. What you can do is make sharing harder, and with PDF stamping, traceable. Content Vault gives you four layers.

1. PDF stamping (Starter and up). Content Vault writes the member's details onto each PDF at the moment they download it. A stamp can use four variables: their name, their email, their plan's name and your store name. The stamp is visible text on the page, so if a pattern turns up online, it shows whose copy it was. You choose its size, position, font, color and which pages it goes on. Stamping works on PDFs under 100 MB.

Each template also has a Lock PDF option that tells PDF readers to block copying and printing. Treat it as a deterrent, since not every PDF reader honors it. The steps are in Setting up PDF stamping & watermarks.

2. Download limits. On Library Access and Content Drip subscriptions, you can cap how many times each file can be downloaded (on every Content Vault plan). You can also cap how many IP addresses can download one member's files (Starter and up). The IP limit is the main defense against a member passing their download links around. Start generous, though: an honest member might use a phone, a laptop and a work computer. Streams don't count toward either limit. More in How to limit file sharing.

3. Fraud detection (Starter and up). The paid plans add the IP limit, the option to cancel a subscription when its payment retries fail, and holding orders that Shopify flags as fraud.

4. Access that ends with the membership. Each plan has one setting for what happens when a member cancels or pauses. Either they keep the files they already have, or they lose access when their paid period ends. Either way, they get no new files.

None of this is DRM, and a determined member can still share a file. On Plus, streaming helps with video, since a streamed file plays in the browser instead of downloading, but it isn't DRM either. For a membership of PDFs, a stamp with the member's name and email plus a sensible IP limit does the most to stop casual sharing.

What Each Plan Includes for a Membership

Feature	Plan needed
Library Access, Content Drip and Content Pass	Every plan (Pay As You Go: up to 2 subscriptions)
Unlimited members	Every plan
Download email and Thank You page links	Every plan
Download limit per file	Every plan
Analytics	Every plan
PDF stamping	Starter and up
IP address limits and fraud detection	Starter and up
Emails from your own address	Starter and up
Video and audio streaming	Plus

Tips for Keeping Members

• Make day one count. Members decide early whether a membership is worth keeping, so have your best files in the plan from the start.
• Add new files on a schedule. A library keeps its value when it keeps growing. Pick a rhythm, like two new patterns on the 1st of each month, and stick to it.
• Tell members what's new. Use the Subscribed - <plan name> tag from Tag customers on Shopify to email members when new files land.
• Offer a yearly plan. It gives members a reason to commit, and you get the year's payment up front.
• Launch with a discount. A plan that uses the product's price can take a percentage off for a set number of billing cycles, like 20% off the first 3 months. Fixed-price plans can't.
• Raising prices later. When you edit the price set on a plan itself, like the Yearly plan's $120, or the Shopify product's price behind a plan, like the Monthly plan's $12, existing members keep the price they signed up at. New members pay the new one.
• Try a free trial. You can also give new members a free trial.
• Ask why people leave. On Library Access and Content Drip, members are asked for a cancellation reason by default. You'll find the reasons on the Customers page.
• Watch your numbers. The Analytics page shows MRR, churn rate and your most-downloaded files on every plan, so you can see which files members use most.

Related Guides

• How to sell ebook and PDF subscriptions: a monthly club with Content Drip, step by step
• How to sell design asset subscriptions: a download pass with Content Pass
• Content drip marketing: how to plan a release schedule that keeps subscribers
• Native vs custom checkout: why members should pay in your store's own checkout
• Moving from Patreon to Shopify: how to bring an existing membership across, step by step

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Frequently Asked Questions

What do members get in a Content Vault membership?

The files connected to their plan: PDFs, videos, audio, templates, ZIP files or any other file, plus links to content you host elsewhere. On the Plus plan, uploaded video and audio can stream instead of downloading.

Is there a limit on how many members I can have?

No. Subscribers are unlimited on every Content Vault plan. Pay As You Go limits how many subscriptions you can create to two, not how many members join them.

Can new members get everything I've already published?

With Library Access, yes: they get every file connected to their plan right away. With Content Drip, each member starts at the first release by default. With Send content by month of subscription turned on, they don't get earlier months.

Can I offer monthly and yearly memberships?

Yes. Add both as plans of one subscription, each with its own price and billing frequency. Members choose their plan on the product page.

Can I offer different membership levels?

Yes. Each plan has its own price and its own files, so a Basic plan and an All-Access plan can unlock different files. A file reaches only the plans you connect it to.

What happens when a member cancels?

You choose for each plan. Either they keep the files they already have, or they lose access when their paid period ends. They get no new files either way.

How much storage does a membership need?

It depends on your files. Pay As You Go includes 1 GB of storage, Starter 10 GB, Scale 150 GB and Plus 500 GB. Every plan has unlimited bandwidth, and there's no limit on the size of a single file. If you reach your limit, new uploads are blocked, but existing files keep working.

Can I also sell single files to non-members?

Content Vault sells subscriptions only. For one-time sales, our sister app ABC Digital Downloads handles single downloads.