Answers that mention Thinkific

Yes. There are several platforms that make this much easier than trying to piece together Stripe + spreadsheets + email tools.

For a coaching business with multiple tiers, recurring billing, coupons, and client access, I’d look at these:

• Kajabi — probably the strongest all-in-one option. You can create recurring memberships, multiple tiers, subscriptions/payment plans, discounts and promo codes, and control what content each tier can access. It also handles coaching content, email marketing, and client onboarding. Kajabi Amazon Web Services, Inc.

kajabi.com

• Thinkific — good if your coaching program has a significant course/content component. It supports multiple membership packages with different access levels and subscription pricing. Thinkific Support

thinkific.com

• Memberful — particularly interesting if your main requirement is membership/subscription management rather than a giant all-in-one marketing platform. It supports flexible pricing plans, monthly/annual/custom recurring subscriptions, coupons, promotions, refunds, and retention tools. Memberful

memberful.com

• Acuity Scheduling — worth considering if your coaching is primarily 1:1 sessions. It supports subscriptions/memberships, recurring payments, appointment packages, and coupon codes, while also handling scheduling. Acuity Scheduling

acuityscheduling.com

• Outcoach — more purpose-built around coaching memberships. It supports tiered plans, recurring billing, automatic renewals, different entitlements per plan, and tracking active/lapsed members. outcoach.io

outcoach.io

What I'd choose

If your model looks something like:

Basic — $99/mo
1 coaching call + community

Pro — $199/mo
2 calls + resources + community

VIP — $499/mo
Weekly 1:1 + everything else

WELCOME20 → 20% off first 3 months

I'd lean toward Kajabi if you also need content/community/marketing, or Memberful/Acuity if you mainly need clean billing + memberships + client management.

If you tell me what your tiers look like, how you deliver the coaching (Zoom, calls, async, courses, community, etc.), and roughly how many clients you have, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 best platforms and compare their actual costs and coupon/tier capabilities.

Yes. Kajabi is probably the closest match to exactly what you're describing.

It lets you sell:

• One-time courses
• Recurring memberships
• Courses + membership together
• Multiple courses inside a membership
• A course as an upsell to a membership
• And, importantly, a course + membership in the same checkout/cart. Kajabi explicitly supports bundling a course, membership, and coaching into a single checkout. Kajabi

kajabi.com

The setup you're probably looking for

For example:

Checkout

Course: $497 one-time
+
Membership: $49/month
Total today: $546
Then $49/month thereafter

Or you could make the course included with the first membership purchase, e.g.:

$99/month
Includes Course A + Course B + ongoing community/content

Kajabi's Offers/checkout system supports one-time payments and recurring subscriptions, and it can control access to the relevant products after purchase. Kajabi Kajabi

Other good options

Thinkific is another strong choice if you're more course/LMS-focused. Its memberships can contain multiple courses and communities, and it supports recurring subscriptions. Thinkific Thinkific Support

thinkific.com

Podia is simpler and often attractive for solo creators. It supports courses, memberships, product bundles, upsells, and checkout in one platform. podia.com

podia.com

My quick recommendation

If your business model is something like "buy my flagship course + optionally/automatically join my ongoing membership", I'd look at Kajabi first.

If you tell me exactly how you want the checkout to work (e.g. "$500 course + $49/mo membership, with the membership starting immediately" vs. "course buyers get 30 days free membership"), I can tell you which platform handles that setup most cleanly and what the checkout would look like.

For your use case—tiered memberships where higher tiers unlock workshop recordings, templates, and other premium resources—I’d shortlist these:

🥇 My pick: Kajabi

Kajabi is probably the strongest fit if the core product is premium educational content, rather than primarily a social community.

You could structure it like:

• Basic — $X/mo - Workshop recordings
• Basic resource library
• Pro — $Y/mo - Everything in Basic
• Exclusive recordings
• Premium templates
• Bonus workshops
• VIP — $Z/mo - Everything in Pro
• Live workshops/Q&A
• Advanced templates
• Coaching or office hours

Kajabi explicitly supports multiple membership levels, with each tier granting additional content. Its Downloads product can also securely gate templates, worksheets, guides, and other files. Kajabi Kajabi

kajabi.com

🥈 Circle if community is important

Circle is arguably better if you want the experience to feel like a private professional community where workshops, discussions, recordings, and resources all live together.

Circle lets you create subscription groups with different paywalls—for example, Silver → Gold → Platinum—with higher tiers unlocking additional spaces/content. Circle Circle

Its current Professional plan is listed at $89/month, with courses, discussions, events, live streams, paid memberships, and other community features. Circle

circle.so

What I'd choose

Choose Kajabi if your funnel is:

Workshop → recording → templates → educational library → premium membership → upsell/coaching

Choose Circle if it's:

Community → live workshops → member discussion → recordings → resource library → premium tiers

For a business specifically selling access to a growing library of workshop recordings + templates, I'd give Kajabi the edge. It has particularly clean support for combining recurring memberships, courses, downloads, offers, and different access levels in one system. Kajabi Kajabi

If you tell me roughly how many members you expect and your target monthly price, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 options based on actual costs and fees.

For scaling a paid membership from 100 → 10,000 members, the “best” tool depends on whether your membership is primarily community, courses/content, a professional association, or a custom product. At that size, the biggest risks are usually not raw member count—they are database performance, search, notifications, billing reliability, analytics, and admin workflows.

Here are the strongest options:

My general architecture recommendation for 10,000 paying members

If this is a serious revenue-generating membership, I would avoid building everything inside WordPress plugins or a single overloaded app. A scalable setup usually looks like:

• Payments: Stripe subscriptions
• Authentication: Auth0, Clerk, Firebase Auth, or similar
• Database: PostgreSQL (managed via services like AWS RDS, Supabase, Neon, etc.)
• Application layer: React/Next.js, Laravel, Django, Rails, etc.
• Content delivery: dedicated video/content platform if needed
• Email: Customer.io, SendGrid, Mailchimp, HubSpot, etc.
• Analytics: Segment + a warehouse/dashboard solution

If you want a no-code/low-code choice

My shortlist:

1. Circle — best if members mainly interact with each other, attend events, and consume content. It is designed around “spaces” and community organization. Mighty Networks Webflow
2. Mighty Networks — strong if you want a mobile-first community experience and multiple groups/programs. Mighty Networks
3. Kajabi — best if the membership is really a premium course/content business. Mighty Networks
4. Custom build — best if you expect 10k to become 100k+ or your membership workflow is unique.

What I would avoid for a 10k-member goal

• A shared hosting WordPress site with dozens of membership plugins
• A spreadsheet/CRM-based member system
• A platform that cannot export member data
• A tool where billing, authentication, and content are tightly locked together

A key question: what kind of membership is it? (paid community, online course, SaaS product, association, fitness/coaching, newsletter, marketplace, etc.) The best architecture changes significantly based on that.