When do you I use a Membership Level vs a Product

You may be trying to decide if you need to use different membership levels and or products for your club. Here are a few scenarios to help explain the difference between membership levels and products and how they can work.

You can have multiple membership levels within your membership system and within each membership level you can have multiple products. I will try below to explain the differences between both and help you decide what is best for your club.

Let’s Start With What is a Membership Level?

A membership level encompasses the setup and settings for your memberships. For each different membership level you have the ability to;

• create completely different membership sign-up forms with different fields
• members are stored in different member databases, so can be easily exported or communicated with separately
• membership levels have their own automated membership emails (renewal reminders, welcome messages etc)
• give members different roles which means you can
  • allocate them different permissions
  • as well as give them different page access
  • different percentage discounts in the Events Module
  • different access to document categories in the Document Library Module

Now What is a Membership Product?

A membership product lives beneath a membership level and can have the following attributes  

• Different Name
• Different Duration (i.e. 1 month, 1 year, Perpetual) 
• Different Prices 
• Different Availability (i.e not publicly available, but only can be given by the Membership Coordinator) 
• Different Type (renewal only, signup only or automated subscription product) 

What Situations Would You Choose to Use Level over a Product

Having limited levels is the best option to manage your club but there are certain situations where you would need to choose to use a different level over a product.

1. When you need to give different access
2. When you have different form field requirements
3. When you need to have different emails sent to the membership group
4. When a member can be part of two different membership groups

Here are some scenarios below to help you decide what is best for you,

 

Scenario 1

A member can only be a member of 1 product per level. A membership level can have several products. For example under “general membership” you could have a 

• “1 year adult subscription”, 
• and another could be a “2 year adult subscription” 
• and a third could be “1 year student subscription”

So, if John Smith had a 1 year Adult subscription, he could not also have a 2 year adult subscription or a 1 year student subscription.

The same member can be in different membership levels. For example, if John Smith can be a “general member” as well as a “sailing member”, then these two must be different membership levels and NOT products.

 

Scenario 2

If you need to collect different information on the membership application form for different membership types then they need to be different membership Levels. For example David is a “Sailing Member” and his sailing license number and expiry date need to be collected, as well as his contact details. 

Sally is a “General Member” where only her contact details need to be collected. Therefore a Sailing Member and a General Member need to be different membership Levels. The different levels allow level specific communication to members, for example the welcoming email can be specific for each member level. It also enables easy editing of emails.

 

Scenario 3

If certain members require different access to pages within the website, access to different documents and events or are entitled to different % discount rates then they must be in a different level. For example, Tracey is a Bronze Member and is entitled to a 10% discount on certain merchandise and Kathryn is a Gold Member and is entitled to a 25% discount on any merchandise and can attend an exclusive event. Therefore, Bronze Members and Gold Members must be in a different Level.

 

We know you want to get the setup of your Membership system right from the start. Hopefully this article helps explain the best way to use Membership Levels and Products. If you are still not sure please contact our support team.