Commerce · App Starter
Membership Template
A working membership business — plans, gated content, member portal, revenue view — generated into code you own.
Describe what your members get and what it costs, and Dual7 generates the membership site around it: plans mapped to benefits, content gated by subscription status, and a portal where members manage themselves. It ships as a full-stack app you own — no platform percentage skimmed off every renewal.
- 6 core entities
- No revenue share
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · Data model
What's inside: the data model
A membership business is a promise ledger: who pays what, and what they get for it. This starter generates six connected entities so the gate, the portal, and the revenue view all agree — because they read the same rows.
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
plans | Your offers — name, price, billing interval, and the set of benefits each level unlocks. |
members | The people — profile, join date, and status, with their full subscription and payment history attached. |
subscriptions | The living link between a member and a plan — active, past-due, canceled, with renewal dates. |
benefits | What plans grant — content access, downloads, event invitations — checked wherever gating happens. |
content_posts | Gated publications — articles, videos, downloads — each tagged with the minimum plan that unlocks it. |
payments | Every charge and refund against a subscription, the raw material of the revenue view. |
02 · Screens
Signature modules
Gated content
01Every post declares its minimum plan, and the gate is enforced where the content is served — not hidden by CSS a curious member can inspect away. Free previews, member-only archives, and tier-exclusive drops all come from one access rule your code makes explicit.
Plan management
02Create plans, attach benefits, and change pricing without stranding existing members — grandfathered rates are a field, not a support ticket. Upgrades and downgrades prorate sensibly, and every plan change lands in the subscription history.
Member portal
03Members see their plan, billing history, and benefits, and handle their own upgrades, card updates, and cancellations. Every self-service action is one less email in your inbox — and the cancellation flow can ask why, feeding the one report that improves retention.
Revenue view
04Monthly recurring revenue, growth by plan, churn, and failed payments — computed live from subscriptions and payments in your own database. When a number looks odd, you can trace it to the exact rows, because you own them.
03 · Process
How it works
- 1You
Describe your membership
Tell Dual7 what members get, at what levels, at what price — and what makes yours unusual: founding-member rates, annual-only tiers, a free community level.
- 2Vibe mode
Generate and shape it in Vibe mode
Get the working site in minutes, then iterate conversationally: add an annual discount, a gift-membership flow, a trial period. Every change is real code you can review.
- 3Governed mode
Launch through the governed pipeline
When real cards are on file, ship through Dual7's approval gates to your own infrastructure — member and payment data in your database, audit trail included.
04 · Fit
Who the Membership starter is for
Creators leaving the platform percentage behind
A platform that takes a cut of every pledge is a business partner you never chose. Generate the membership site once, connect your own payment provider, and the percentage you used to surrender becomes margin — at a thousand members, that's real money annually.
Publishers and analysts selling gated work
Paid research, premium articles, subscriber-only video — the gate, the archive, and the subscriber list are the business. Owning all three in one codebase means your paywall logic, your reader data, and your pricing experiments answer to you.
Associations and clubs managing dues
Annual dues, member levels, and a benefits list that took a board meeting to approve — membership organizations run on structure generic subscription tools don't hold. Start from a schema built for it and add your governance on top.
Product teams adding a members-only layer
When a company adds gated content or a paid community next to its product, the awkward choice is a second platform with a second login. Generated code slots into your stack instead — same auth, same design system, your database.
05 · Yours
Customize it, own it
Make it yours
Start from the generated structure and bend it to your model. Rename plans to tiers, circles, or levels and the screens follow. In Vibe mode, add what your membership needs conversationally — a founding-member badge, gift subscriptions, a pause option that preserves tenure, coupon codes for the podcast audience.
Bigger ambitions are ordinary code changes: drip-release content that unlocks by membership age, a referral program that credits a free month, team plans with one payer and many seats, or a private podcast feed per member. The generated app has no runtime dependency on Dual7 — the membership business runs on code you can take anywhere.
Why a starter, not a subscription
Membership platforms sit between you and your members and charge for the seat — a percentage of revenue, their checkout on your brand, your member list held in their CRM. This starter generates the whole machine as source code in your repository: plans, gates, portal, and revenue reporting on your infrastructure, with the member relationship stored where you can never be priced away from it.
What you take on is running the app your revenue flows through — a responsibility worth taking seriously. Dual7's governed pipeline is built for it: approval gates so a pricing change can't ship half-reviewed, an audit trail of every deployment, and regeneration when the model outgrows the original structure.
06 · Industries
Industry versions
Association Membership
Dues, categories, chapters, and renewals — the machinery of an association, in code your organization owns.
Creator Membership
Your supporters, your site, your full margin — tiers, early access, and a gated archive in code you own.
Education Membership
A paid learning library with live sessions and certificates — the ongoing-education model, in code you own.
Membership template — frequently asked questions
What do I get when I start from this membership template?
A working full-stack membership site in a codebase you own: plans with benefits, subscriptions, gated content, a self-service member portal, and a live revenue view. It deploys to your infrastructure with members and payment history in your database.
Does Dual7 take a cut of my membership revenue?
No — there's no revenue share and no per-member fee, because there's no platform between you and your members. You connect your own payment provider and pay only its processing rates.
How does content gating work?
Each post declares its minimum plan, and access is checked server-side against the member's live subscription status. Lapsed payments downgrade access automatically and restore it on recovery — the gate and the billing never disagree.
Can members manage their own billing?
Yes — the portal handles upgrades, downgrades, card updates, and cancellations, with proration handled sensibly. An exit survey on cancellation is a small addition to your code that pays for itself in the retention report.
Is this right for a gym or a church?
Those deserve their purpose-built starters: the gym starter models classes, sessions, and check-ins, and the church management starter models households, groups, and giving. This starter is the general engine for content- and benefits-based memberships.
Can I migrate members from an existing platform?
Yes — members, plans, and subscription states import into plain relational tables, and card details migrate at the payment-provider level, which is standard practice. Owning the destination schema makes the awkward edge cases fixable rather than fatal.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Membership on your terms
A working membership business — plans, gated content, member portal, revenue view — generated into code you own. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.