Membership Level vs Product: When Do I Use Each?

Some things in life are just confusing, and many people get them mixed up. For example, people always seem to struggle to tell the difference between Llamas and Alpacas. 

I grew up on an Alpaca farm, and we had a few Llamas, too. So, this confusion has been something that has bugged me my entire life. That's not an exaggeration, either. When I was just one year old, my great-grandparents took me to a petting zoo. While there, we saw some alpacas, and a random woman remarked, "Oh, look at the llamas." In response, I turned in my great-grandmother's arms and yelled, "Al-pac-a!" at the woman, clearly disgusted that she could be so misinformed.

Obviously, I don't remember this happening, but I stand by little me's actions. That woman clearly had it coming. 

For reference, Llamas are much bigger, uglier, and angrier than Alpacas, and their wool is nowhere near the same quality. However, the easiest way to tell them apart is by their ears. Llamas have large banana-shaped ears. 

 

 

For an extra point of reference, here is a picture of them next to each other. 

 

Believe it or not, this article isn’t just about me yelling about the difference between different kinds of Camelids. I promise I’m not even going to mention Guanacos and Vicuñas. Instead, we are talking about something else people often get confused about: membership levels vs. membership products. 

What Are Membership Levels & Membership Products?

The first step to erasing all the confusion around this topic is to break down what membership levels and products are, so let’s start with membership levels. 

What Is A Membership Level?

Membership levels are the different levels of membership that you offer at your club or association. Each membership level can be customised to have different levels of access, different permissions, receive different discounts, collect different information on the signup form and a whole lot more. 

For example, your club might have a standard membership and a premium membership, or a sailing club might have a social membership and a sailing membership. Different membership levels also allow you to tailor your communications for each level. You can set up email campaigns, group chats, and events for which only certain membership levels can see and register. 

These different membership levels allow you to control the following: 

• What information the membership sign-up form asks for
• What information you collect from people who join those levels 
• What access those members have within the website
• What automated communications they receive
• Change event ticket prices & merchandise items by membership level
• The name of the membership

To make this more clear, here are a few examples of this in practice: 

1. A hobby club might provide a standard and advertising memberships. The advertising membership allows members to post advertisements in the club's classifieds section.

2. A professional association could offer individual and corporate memberships. The corporate membership enables those who sign up to include their organisation name, and enables the ability to add their employees as secondary members.

3. A club might have a standard and premium memberships, but premium members get a 15% discount on all club merchandise and event tickets. 

To keep this simple, I only used examples of clubs using two different membership levels. However, you are not limited to only two member levels. Member Jungle's cheapest package includes three membership levels, and our most expensive package has 50 membership levels available. You don't need to use all of them, but you can set up and customise as many membership levels as your package allows and your organisation needs. 

As an example of this in action, one of Member Jungle's customers is a lawn bowls club that uses multiple different membership levels. They have social members, such as men bowlers and women bowlers. Their social membership level is the cheapest, and it grants members cheaper food and drinks in the club. The bowling memberships do the same as the social ones but also give members cheaper access to play games, lawn bowls, and hire equipment. From this, you can easily see why potential members would be more incentivised to pay for the more expensive bowling membership. 

You may be wondering why the bowling club has different membership levels for men bowlers and women bowlers. However, this is actually pretty simple. Having different membership levels for men and women bowlers allows the club admins to organise via those levels. This means that if there is a change to the men's bowling night, they can write up an email and just send it to the men's bowling level and not bother others with it. If there is going to be an event just for the women bowlers, they can just send the event emails out to just the women's bowling membership level and lock it down so people must be a part of that membership level to attend. 

What Are Membership Products?

The simplest way to explain membership products is that they are what members buy to get access to a membership level. Therefore, each membership level will have at least one membership product. Membership products vary in price, length of membership and availability. 

For example, let’s say a club has only one membership level, which is their standard level. They have one membership product, which, when purchased, gives people access to that membership level; this product costs $100 and gives purchasers access to that level for one year. They can also set up a second membership product that also gives access to that level, but it is only available to renewing members and costs $80 for one year. I hope that makes sense, but don’t worry; we will talk about it in more detail. 

Different membership products allow you to control the following:

• How much it costs to join
• The duration that someone will remain a member 
• The availability of that product (not publicly available)
• How someone signs up for it (anyone can purchase it, or renewing members only)
• Number of secondary members available 
• Number of data set entries available 

Here are a few examples of membership products in action; however, for these, I will just use one membership level in the example to keep things simple:

1. A standard membership level, with one product called “one-year membership” for $100 and another product called “two-year membership” for $175. Both products give members access to the same membership level, with the same permissions and information, but they do so for different lengths and different prices. 

2. A “probationary membership” that all new members must join. Allowing the organisation a probation period to ensure that their new members will actually be an active part of the community. Then, once that year is up, those members can see a renew-only membership product of “full membership”.   

3. A standard membership level, with one product called “one year membership” for $100 and a second membership product called “lifetime membership” for $1000, which makes that member a member for life. However, the lifetime membership cannot be selected by members; it can only be given to them by your membership coordinator. 

4. A standard membership, with one product called “one year membership” for $100, and another product called “trial membership” for $30 that only makes them a member for one month. 

Obviously, I only used two different membership products in each example, but you can have unlimited membership products per membership level. So, you can have all of those above membership products and a whole lot more available for a single membership level. 

So, in summary, membership levels control access, permissions, communication, information collected and the name of the product members purchase. While membership products control length, price, access to purchase and the name of the product that members buy. 

 

When To Use A Membership Level Versus A Membership Product 

If what you want to do is control the access members have, what subgroups they are involved in and what information you collect from them, then you should be using membership levels. 

If you are trying to control the price, length, availability and name of the membership your members are signing up for, you need membership products. 

Remember, each membership level needs at least one membership product, as it’s the membership product that members actually purchase. Chances are you will have many more membership products than levels, though if you only want one product per level, you will have the same amount of each. If you have more levels than products, something has gone wrong, and it needs to be fixed. 

So, I realise that everything has gotten a bit complicated, so let’s do a quick little quiz to cover when you should use products and when you should use levels. 

Question 1. 

Your classic car club needs to collect license and rego details from members when they sign up. However, you want members to be able to sign up even if they aren’t registering a car with you. So you need to collect different details for each group. 

To do this you need:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership products 

Question 2. 

You want to give your members various options on how long they sign up to be members for, i.e. six months, one year, five years etc. 

To do this you need:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership products 

Question 3. 

Certain members need access to different pages, documents, and sections of the website that other members aren’t able to see and/or edit. 

To do this you need:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership products 

Question 4. 

You want to give particular members discounts on certain things like event tickets and courses. 

To do this you need:

1. Membership levels
2. Membership products 

Answers

All right, those were the questions, and you can see the result from our little quiz below. 

Q1. a

Q2. b

Q3. a

Q4. a

Membership Level Vs Membership Product: How Naming Works

Both membership levels and membership products control the naming that members see. The membership level controls the overall name of the membership and what is displayed on their digital membership card. On the other hand, the membership product controls the name of the product they purchase. 

You can see this in practice in the below image.

 

 

As you can see, the membership levels in this example are “Corporate Memberships” and “NSW Annual Membership”, while the membership products are the smaller options with prices underneath each. 

A member can select the NSW Annual Membership level and then select the product Annual Individual for $100. They then purchase that product and become a member of the NSW Annual Membership, which is what will be displayed on their membership card. 

In theory, that is all you need to know about the difference between membership levels and membership products. Hopefully, this has helped clear up the difference between them and helped you know which to use no matter what you’re doing. 

However, before we wrap up, what about one last quiz? Can you tell the difference between Llamas and Alpacas now? Also, if you don’t care, I don’t blame you, so just skip over it.  

Question 1.  

Question 2. 

Question 3. 

 

Alright, well, there we go; the answers are: 

Q1. A. Llama, B. Alpaca 

Q2. A. Llama, B. Alpaca

Q3. A. Alpaca B. Llama

Also, if you were wondering why one alpaca looks so odd, there are two breeds of alpacas: Suri alpaca and Huacaya alpaca. Suris have longer, almost dreadlock-like hair, hence why it looks so different from the others. 

Make Sure You Are Using Member Jungle To Its Full Potential

If you still have any questions about membership products versus membership levels, please reach out to the Member Jungle team, and we will be more than happy to help you with any questions you have. 

If you want to find out more tips and tricks about Member Jungle to ensure you are getting the best out of the system, read How To Get The Most Out Of Your Member Jungle Subscription.