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Outside of paid subscriptions, offering free registration is like rolling out the welcome mat to potential members. By offering a no-cost membership tier, your business can cast a much wider net, bringing in curious visitors eager to explore your offerings. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to enable free registration, customize your free registration form, and share content with free members.
Growing a list of free members can be a game-changer for your community. Operator outlines strategies for using a free tier to grow your audience, boost engagement, and increase conversions to paid plans. Check out our guide for how to effectively leverage free members alongside your paid audience!

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Why offer free registration

Our free registration feature enables your members to sign up without any cost or obligation for a paid subscription. This group of free members can be targeted in our WordPress integration, hosted website and newsletter, as well as our email newsletter integrations. Free members will appear in your dashboard with a full member profile but without card details or membership to a paid plan.
Free registration member profile

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Enable free registration

To enable this feature, navigate to Website → Forms → Free registration and toggle on Allow free registration.
Free registration toggle

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Customize your free registration form

To customize the free registration form text, navigate to Website → Forms → Free registration. You can edit the title, subtitle, and button text.
Free registration customize
You can also redirect free members to another URL after sign-up under Website → External website → Custom redirects → After free registration redirect.
Free registration redirect
You can also create custom fields for your users to fill out right after creating their free account.
Free registration custom fields

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How to subscribe free members

Add the free registration URL to a button or link on your own website, or our Memberful hosted site, so members can sign up for free.
Free registration URL
If you’re looking to subscribe members and don’t have a sales page, use our hosted member website with our built-in custom subscribe page. This allows your members to sign up for free alongside your paid plans and standalone downloads.
Free registration subscribe page modal

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How to target free members

If you’re using Memberful along with our WordPress plugin, you can protect certain pages and posts for All members - inactive, active, and free.
WordPress plugin all members
If you’re using our hosted member site, you can create pages and posts that are protected for all members, including free members, or send a targeted newsletter to free (and inactive) members.
Free registration audience
If you’re using any of Memberful’s email newsletter integrations like Mailchimp or Kit, you can target free members with a newsletter using the “Free registration” signup source. Since members never lose this designation, make sure you build a segment that excludes those members who are subscribed to a paid plan. e.g. Free registration = True and is not subscribed to = Monthly plan
Mailchimp free registration group
Please note that you can’t give free members access to members-only podcasts or private downloads.

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Track your free members

To view all free registered members who don’t have an active subscription, navigate to the members tab and choose the filter: Free signup (never subscribed).
Free registration filter
Members are automatically removed from the free signup list after upgrading to a paid plan. You can also view or export a list of your free members to monitor them.
Provide free access for paid members using other Memberful features. Learn more.

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How free members can subscribe to paid plans

After enabling our custom subscribe page, you can guide free members to purchase paid plans on your subscribe page by clicking the subscribe page link in their member account page.
Redirect to subscribe page
Related help docs:
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