Ghost's membership functionality allows you to build a loyal readership, offer exclusive content, and even generate recurring revenue through subscriptions. In essence, memberships transform your Ghost site from a content website with anonymous viewers, into a thriving, engaged community.

With memberships enabled, you can invite visitors to subscribe, provide different levels of access to your content, and get deeper insights into how your audience interacts with your site. Here's how to get started.

Choose membership settings

Set your subscription access from the SettingsMembership Access area within Ghost Admin. You can customize your access settings by clicking Edit.

Subscription access has three options:

  • Anyone can sign up member sign up and sign in is available to all visitors (default)
  • Only people I invite — if you'd prefer an invite-only community, use this option to prevent member sign up, imported members can still log in
  • Nobody — turn off all subscription and sign in functionality on your site

Next up, let's take a look at how to customize Portal to give your audience a method of signing up for your memberships.