Program tiers.
Paid levels, each its own membership with its own price and registration page, and usually a free entry level that collects an email.
For coaches and consultants
You meant to launch it in January. It’s still a half-built site.
It usually goes like this. You had a real plan, you bought the tools and paid for the year, and then client work filled every week. The site sat there with a theme, a login page and good intentions, not because anything was broken, but because building a membership site takes the hours you spend coaching.
Where coaching sites stall
Coaching sites stall in the setup: every offer needs its own price, page and access rule. A coaching business online is several offers stacked together: something free that starts the relationship, a monthly program people stay in, and a cohort that starts on a date.
That is a lot of setup for one person, and every evening spent on it is an evening not spent on clients. So the launch slides a month, then a quarter. Meanwhile the people who asked “do you have a program?” found someone else’s.
What it sets up
Say how you coach. It builds the offers around it.
MemberPress.ai finishes the site on your own WordPress install from a conversation. Tell it who you coach and how, and it adds the setup to your site as drafts: the offers and the Join, Checkout, Login and Account pages, with an empty course on Free, and they stay drafts until you publish them. On paid, the course outline with lesson briefs arrives afterwards as a draft. What it sets up:
The cohort’s course.
On the paid plan, describe what the cohort covers and it drafts the course outline, then the lessons, as drafts you edit before the cohort starts. It doesn’t import your files or recordings.
Pages for clients, drafted.
On the paid plan, ask for a welcome page or a resources page and it arrives as a draft. You choose who can open it with MemberPress’s own access rules.
Not sure what to charge for your top level? Ask. It suggests pricing that fits a program like yours, and it reads your own numbers once members start joining.
Rather follow it as a plan for one week, with who does each step? Get your coaching program taking payments.
From a half-built site to your first paying client
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Opal sets up your offers.
Your program levels and the Join and Checkout pages land on your site as drafts. Opal tells you what’s still left before anyone can pay.
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You connect the payments.
You connect your own Stripe or PayPal in MemberPress’s payment settings, so what clients pay goes straight to you.
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Your first client pays.
Publish the pages, send the link to the person who asked if you had a program, and they join on your site.
After that, Opal keeps helping. Ask who renewed, who dropped off and what’s working, and she answers from your own numbers and points to what to fix next.
The alternative you’re weighing
Kajabi, or a site you own
Choose a site you own if you want your client list and payment gateway to stay yours as the business grows. Plenty of coaches look at Kajabi, and it does a lot well. It has 1:1 and group coaching built in, with a scheduler clients book through, a client dashboard and live video inside the platform. It is also the website, the email tool and the checkout, so there is one bill and one login.
The trade-off is that the business lives on Kajabi’s platform, and its plans set limits on how many products and contacts you have, so the plan you need grows with you. MemberPress.ai runs on a WordPress site you own, with your client list and payment gateway staying yours. Keep the calendar and video tools you already use for sessions; MemberPress.ai handles the offers, the access and the numbers.
A coach with the site half-built
Kwame Mensah
Founder · A leadership coaching program and cohort
Kwame runs a leadership coaching program and a paid cohort for people stepping into management. He bought MemberPress with a clear plan and paid for the year, then client work took every free hour and the site stayed half-built, with no developer to hand it to.
Watch Kwame's interview (video)
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal from MemberPress.ai, and today I'm with Kwame, a leadership coach who runs his coaching program on MemberPress.
We'll talk about life before MemberPress, and what changed once it all lived in one place.
Kwame, tell everyone a little about yourself.
Hey, I'm Kwame Mensah.
I'm a leadership coach.
I run a coaching program and a small cohort, and I've been with MemberPress a little over a year.
Kwame, before MemberPress, how were you running your coaching program?
Honestly? A booking link, payment links, shared docs, and a lot of email.
So what did MemberPress give you?
One home for everything.
My course, recurring payments, and a members-only area.
No more stitching tools together.
So what got in the way?
Time.
WordPress is like buying a car in a box.
Every part I wanted was in there, but I was building it on nights and weekends.
That's the kit, not you.
Lots of coaches have more parts than hours.
Which is why I'm talking to you.
Next time: what's next.
Switching from Kajabi
Kwame Mensah on a cohort that keeps coming back
Kajabi worked well for one offer at a time. Kwame's members come back at different stages, so he needed lessons that open on their own schedule.
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal.
This is Kwame.
He runs a leadership coaching cohort, and before MemberPress, he ran it on Kajabi.
For about eight months, yeah.
Everything in one place.
Landing page, emails, checkout, the course.
I liked that.
So why leave?
It worked great for one offer at a time.
But my cohort isn't a one-time thing.
People come back every quarter at different stages, needing different content unlocked at different times.
I was fighting the tool to do something it wasn't built for.
What did a day look like back then?
Manually moving people between funnels so they'd see the right lesson.
Every cohort, by hand.
And the first month on MemberPress?
Honestly? Slower than I expected.
I had the tool, but I still had to figure out what my cohort actually needed before I could build it right.
That part was on me, not the software.
What changed once you did?
Access rules do what I was doing by hand.
Someone joins, they get week one.
Four weeks later, week two unlocks.
No spreadsheet, no me remembering who's where.
A year in, what's different?
Hana was my first paying member.
She's still here.
The cohort runs itself between sessions now.
So when we're actually together, we're coaching.
Not me explaining which folder to open.
Kwame Mensah, leadership coach, formerly of Kajabi.
What's the one thing you'd tell someone still on it?
If you're selling one course once, Kajabi's fine.
If people are going to stick around, you need something that's actually yours.
Questions coaches ask
I already started building the site. Do I lose that work?
No. You connect the site you have and MemberPress.ai builds on it. Setup adds its offers and pages as new drafts next to what you already made, and they stay drafts until you publish them. After setup, new offers and membership changes preview as a dry run.
Does it book my coaching sessions?
No. Keep the scheduling and video tools you use now. MemberPress.ai sets up and runs the offers and the memberships, and on the paid plan drafts the pages that link to wherever you meet clients.
Can I run a cohort and a monthly program at the same time?
Yes. They are separate memberships with separate prices, so someone can join the cohort, the monthly program, or both. MemberPress’s access rules decide which materials each one opens.
Can I run it from ChatGPT or Claude instead of wp-admin?
Yes. On any plan, connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI assistant to your site’s own endpoint and run the site from there; ChatGPT needs a one-time setting on your site before it can sign in. Connecting Claude or ChatGPT to your MemberPress.ai account for the advisor is on the paid plan. The same approvals apply either way.
Launch it this month, not next quarter
Connect the site you started and tell Opal how you coach, once. Connect your own Stripe or PayPal, and your first client can pay on your site. After that, Opal answers from your own numbers and tells you what to fix next.
More on who MemberPress.ai is for
Associations
Dues, renewal season and the board’s questions, on a site the association owns.
Read more →Certification programs
A course, its exam and a renewal that bills on time, on a site the program owns.
Read more →Communities
The paid front door, the tiers and the renewals for your community, on a site you own.
Read more →Publishers
Reader tiers and renewals that keep running, on a site you own.
Read more →Course creators
Turn what you already teach into a real course, on a site you own.
Read more →