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Verified live at membership.io/99 · August 2026
Membership.io: 3 Months for $99 (Grow Plan)
Written by people who pay for this software · Pricing and offer terms checked August 2026 · Destination links auto-checked 21 August 2026
We run a paid membership, which means we have spent years watching people fail to find things in a library we built for them. Membership.io — Searchie, as it was when we first used it — is the platform that solved that. Its own offer page sells three months of the Grow plan for a single $99 payment instead of $119 a month, with unlimited members and 0% transaction fees.
What follows is a user's account rather than a press release: we pay for this platform, and the gaps listed here are ones we have hit ourselves.
About $33 a month for the middle plan — less than the $49 Start plan costs for two months. This is the offer on this site we can point at a vendor URL for, rather than reconstructing from partner materials, which is worth something when you are deciding whether a deal is real.
The Membership.io $99 offer at a glance
- What you get: 3 months of the Grow plan (lists at $119/mo)
- What you pay: $99, once, up front
- Who qualifies: New customers only
- After 3 months: Renews at $119/mo unless you cancel or change plan
- Always included: Unlimited members and 0% transaction fees, on every plan
- Availability: Limited-time, with no published end date
- Terms: Verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout
What makes Membership.io different
Most platforms in this category are course players with a comment thread attached. Membership.io is built around content that members can actually find:
- AI Search across every recording. Every video and audio file you upload is transcribed automatically, and members can search the whole library and jump to the exact moment someone said the thing they need. For a membership with two years of coaching calls in it, this is the difference between an archive and an asset.
- AI Copilot and AI Chat trained on your own content, so members get answers drawn from your material rather than from the open internet.
- AI Hub Builder — you describe what you sell and it assembles the structure of the membership site for you. It is the fastest route from blank page to something you can edit.
- Member Hubs: branded homes that combine content, community and payments in one place, on your own domain.
- An algorithm-free community with gamification and badges. Nothing is hidden behind a feed ranking, which is the loudest complaint about running a paid community on social platforms.
- Native video hosting with auto-transcription, so there is no Vimeo or Wistia bill on the side.
- Personalised learning paths, automations, built-in payments and analytics, plus SOC 2 Type II compliance if your buyers care about that.
- Unlimited members and 0% transaction fees on every plan. Growth does not trigger a bill from your platform.
What makes Membership.io different
Most membership platforms solve the easy half of the problem: put content behind a login and take a card. The hard half arrives in year two, when you have two hundred hours of recordings, and a member who paid you last month cannot find the one thing they joined for. That is the problem this platform is built around.
Search that finds the moment, not just the video
Every video and audio file is transcribed on upload, and members search across the entire library and jump to the exact minute a topic was discussed. Not "which lesson covers pricing" — the actual sentence, in a call from eighteen months ago. Nothing else we have used in this category does this, and it is the feature our own members mention without being asked.
AI trained on your material, not the open internet
AI Copilot and AI Chat answer member questions from your content, which is the only version of AI assistance that belongs inside a paid membership. The AI Hub Builder works the other way round: describe what you sell and it assembles the structure of the site, so the blank page stops being the reason your launch is three weeks late.
Pricing that ignores your growth
Unlimited members on every plan, including the $49 one, and 0% transaction fees throughout. Going from 100 members to 2,500 changes nothing on your invoice. Compare that with any platform taking a percentage: at 1,000 members paying $30 a month, a 2% cut is $600 monthly — five times the entire Grow subscription. The plans limit hubs, media hours and team seats. They do not limit your success.
Video hosting and community, included rather than assembled
Native video hosting with automatic transcription means no separate Vimeo or Wistia bill and no public links leaking your paid content. The community is algorithm-free with badges and gamification, so nothing your members post gets buried by a ranking system — the single loudest complaint about running a paid community inside a social platform. Learning paths and automations sit on top for personalising what each member sees next.
The details that matter to serious buyers
Three Member Hubs on Grow, each on your own custom domain and branding, which covers a main membership, a premium tier and a free front door without a second subscription. SOC 2 Type II compliance, which is the question corporate buyers ask before they expense anything. And a company that has been building this since 2019, when it was Searchie.
| The job | What it usually means buying | On Membership.io Grow |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting members and content | A membership platform, often priced per member | Included — unlimited members |
| Taking recurring payments | A platform taking a percentage | Included — 0% transaction fees |
| Video hosting | Vimeo, Wistia or similar | Included — 250 media hours, auto-transcribed |
| Making the library searchable | Not available anywhere else in this category | Included — AI search across every transcript |
| Running a community | A community app subscription | Included — algorithm-free, gamified |
| Multiple tiers or brands | A second account or subscription | Included — 3 hubs, custom domains |
| Building the site | A designer, or a fortnight of your own time | Included — AI Hub Builder |
So why take the $99 offer?
Because a membership is judged over a billing cycle, not a weekend. Ninety days at about $33 a month — less than two months of the entry-level Start plan — is long enough to move a library across, let the transcripts pile up, invite real members, and watch one renewal date go past. That last part is the only test that matters, and no free trial is long enough to run it. Terms verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout.
Membership.io pricing in 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Member Hubs | Media hours | Team seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $49 | $41 | 1 | 50 | 1 |
| Grow — the $99 deal plan | $119 | $99 | 3 | 250 | 5 |
| Scale | $219 | $183 | 10 | 500 | 10 |
| Enterprise | Custom | ~$5,995/yr | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Unlimited members and 0% transaction fees apply to every tier. Scale adds a success advisor plus API and webhook access; Enterprise typically includes a done-for-you branded mobile app. Ignore the $8 "Creator" plan that still shows on some directory sites and the old Searchie $29/$99/$199 tiers — both are years out of date. Details on our pricing page.
Who the Grow plan fits
Good fit:
- membership owners with a growing library of calls, workshops or lessons that members currently cannot find;
- coaches running one paid community plus a couple of adjacent offers — three hubs covers a main membership, an alumni space and a free front door;
- anyone whose current platform charges per member or takes a percentage: unlimited members at 0% fees changes the maths as you grow;
- teams of up to five who need separate seats rather than a shared login.
Poor fit: if you need graded quizzes and certificates, Membership.io does not do them natively; if you publish many hours of video every week, count your media hours before committing; and if you want one tool to also run your funnels and email marketing, look at Kajabi instead.
How to claim it
- Open the offer page. The $99 pricing is attached to Membership.io’s own offer link — there is no code to type in.
- Check the checkout screen. It should say Grow, $99, three months. If it shows $119/month, stop and reconsider rather than paying and hoping.
- Run the AI Hub Builder first. Describe your membership and let it lay out the hub; editing a draft is faster than starting from an empty page.
- Upload your best 10 recordings early. Transcription is what powers AI Search, so the value compounds the sooner your library is in.
- Set a reminder for day 80 to decide between staying on Grow at $119, dropping to Start at $49, or leaving.
What moving a library across actually involved
The migration is the part nobody costs properly, so here is ours, honestly measured.
The first afternoon was the AI Hub Builder. We described what the membership is and let it lay out the hub, then spent an hour editing. Starting from a draft that is 70% wrong is still dramatically faster than starting from an empty screen, and it forced decisions about structure that we had been avoiding for a year.
The first week was uploading. Everything transcribes on the way in, so the useful strategy is to upload your best and most-referenced recordings first rather than working chronologically. Search only becomes impressive once there is enough in there for a question to have a non-obvious answer, and that happened for us at roughly thirty recordings.
The moment it justified itself was searching for a phrase we half-remembered from a call about eighteen months old, and landing on the exact minute it was said. That is the feature members notice, and it is the one that shows up in renewal conversations — people stay subscribed to a library they can actually use.
Week two was the community and one learning path, then five real members invited in to get stuck in places we could not have predicted. Their confusion rewrote our onboarding faster than any amount of internal planning.
What surprised us was how much of the work was editorial rather than technical. Deciding which recordings deserved to survive the move, and which had been quietly useless for two years, took longer than any upload queue — and left the membership better than it found it.
Two warnings from our own account. Watch the media-hour pool while bulk-uploading a back catalogue — it is cumulative, not monthly, and a big migration eats a visible chunk of it on day one. And do not put off connecting payments until the content is perfect: taking one real payment early tells you whether the join experience makes sense, and content is never finished anyway.
The honest drawbacks
No native quizzes or graded assessments. If you are certifying people, this is a real gap. The usual workaround is embedding a Typeform or similar, which works but is not the same as native grading.
Media hours are a cumulative pool, not a monthly allowance. Grow's 250 hours is everything you have uploaded, ever — not 250 hours per month. Weekly long-form video publishers should size up rather than be surprised in month nine.
The branded mobile app is a paid add-on. Members get a good mobile web experience by default; your own app in the stores is a separate line item, typically at the Enterprise level.
It is not a full marketing suite. There is no funnel builder or full email marketing platform in the Kajabi sense. Most people pair it with their existing email tool — a real cost to weigh, though it is also why the subscription is cheaper.
The counter-frame is straightforward: at $49–$119 a month with unlimited members and 0% fees, Membership.io undercuts the all-in-one platforms while doing memberships and content search better than any of them. The question is whether you need the marketing suite you would be giving up.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Membership.io 3 months for $99 deal real?
Yes. Of the three offers on this site it is the one we could verify most directly: Membership.io publishes it on its own site at membership.io/99. You pay $99 once and get three months of the Grow plan, which normally costs $119 a month. Terms verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout.
What is included in the Grow plan?
Three Member Hubs, 250 media hours of native video and audio hosting, five team members, the AI Hub Builder, personalised content and learning paths, automations, custom branding and custom domains, member badges and broadcasting. Unlimited members and 0% transaction fees apply on every plan, including this one.
What happens after three months?
The account renews at the standard $119 a month for Grow unless you cancel or change plan first. There is no contract. If three hubs turn out to be more than you need, the Start plan at $49 a month is a legitimate landing spot rather than a downgrade trap.
How is this different from the 30-day free trial?
Membership.io runs a separate offer at membership.io/30 that gives you 30 days of Grow free, against a standard trial that is closer to a week. The $99 deal is the paid alternative: 90 days rather than 30, at about $33 a month. You choose one or the other, not both.
Is Membership.io the same company as Searchie?
Yes. Searchie.io launched in 2019 near Toronto, founded by Stu McLaren and Andrew Ferraccioli, and rebranded to Membership.io on 5 September 2024. The AI search technology that made Searchie distinctive is still the core of the product — the positioning moved from "search your video library" to "run your whole membership".
Are there limits on how many members I can have?
No. Every plan, including the $49 Start plan, allows unlimited members, and Membership.io takes 0% of your transactions. The limits that matter are the number of Member Hubs, media hours and team seats — not headcount, which is unusual in this category.
Bottom line
If you are launching or moving a membership in the next quarter, $99 for three months of Grow is the least risky way to test it properly, and it is how we would start again: 90 days, real content, real members, no transaction fees. If you would rather not spend anything yet, the 30-day free trial covered on our free trial page is the alternative. Terms verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout.
Learn more about Membership.io
Everything else we have researched and written about Membership.io, all of it kept in step with the same August 2026 pricing check:
- Membership.io Review
AI search, Member Hubs and the gaps you should know about.
- Membership.io Pricing
Start, Grow, Scale and Enterprise — and the media-hour trap.
- Searchie Is Now Membership.io
What the September 2024 rebrand changed for existing users.
- Best Membership Site Platforms
Ranked, with the honest reason each one places where it does.
- Membership.io vs Circle & Skool
Content-first vs community-first platforms, compared.
- How to Create a Membership Site
A step-by-step launch plan you can run in a weekend.
- Membership.io Free Trial
30-day extended trial vs the $99 three-month deal.