Patreon Acquires Memberful
At Patreon, we’re building a world-class membership platform that enables creators to own the relationship with their fans. We feel that creators should decide how and when they engage with their fans, where they build their community, and how they run their business. And, for some creators, that also means managing a fully branded membership program on their own website. That’s why, today, we’re thrilled to announce that we have acquired Memberful, adding a self-service white label membership solution to our growing product portfolio.
Patreon and Memberful share a mission to fund the creative class and we both understand there are a variety of platforms and business models available to achieve that goal. Together, we’ll now be able to offer a wider range of options for building and managing a successful membership program.
Ben Thompson interviews the two CEOs:
Long-time Stratechery members may recall that three years ago — a year into the Daily Update — I ripped out the old buggy membership system and installed a new-to-the-market SaaS product called Memberful. It was one of the best decisions I have made, and over the years I have recommended Memberful to the many folks that have asked me about the software I use to run their own subscription site.
I realize that this is a bit inside baseball, but I’ve been using Memberful for the membership programs for both Six Colors and The Incomparable for a couple of years. In fact, the above paragraph describes me perfectly: I didn’t want to use Patreon, I wanted to build two membership programs myself and integrate them directly with my two sites. Memberful let me do that.
Update (2018-08-09): Stephen Hackett:
I wasn’t shocked by the news. Memberful is a great product, but isn’t a huge company. In fact, according to TechCrunch, it has only about 500 paying users. As you may know, I use Memberful here at 512 Pixels, and it’s what powers the Relay FM membership as well. As such, I approach this news with two thoughts.
First, if this lets Memberful continue to grow and expand, that’s good for everyone who uses it. The acquisition does come with a price increase for new customers, and I hope that doesn’t slow growth. A healthy Memberful means it is more likely to stick around and not be absorbed into Patreon.
