ecommerce with subscription

Subscription limit access to products

[cirquedurosey]

Hi There,

I am looking to start an ecommerce store that has a subscription in order to access the products at the website. Is there any ecommerce solutions that offer a similar feature to this.

IE. you pay xx per month and with that your login is able to access the rest of the website, not just the static front page.


Regards,

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, cirquedurosey!

Hmmm.. anyone else selling these products without needing to subscribe to see them? If so, your chance is slim.

On the other hand, maybe subscription before you buy is normal in whatever niche you are going into. If you can then sell without subscribing first, then you may have an advantage.

Because you are not talking subscription at the time of checkout. You are talking subscribing before I can even see what you have for sale. So it either better be really good and you can communicate this to me, or everybody else is doing it for the same product selection/niche for whatever reason.

[LifeinAsia]

Basically, you are just talking a membership subscription to be able to access the site. Anyone who has a paid membership can checkout.

So what you want is something that sets up access restrictions to the site (basically a paywall)- completely separate from the eCommerce side of things.

Once that is in place, then you should be able to use any eCommerce solution behind the paywall implementation.

[cirquedurosey]

With a paywall wouldn't users then have two accounts. One for their subscription to the site, and then another account registered to the ecommerce store.

[LifeinAsia]

I don't see any reason why they can't be tied together. A subscription to the paywall service is one of the items the eCommerce store sells.

Of course, that sets up the paradox of needing to be a member to buy a subscription, but not being able to buy a subscription without being a member...

To fix that, you can have 2 levels of membership: guest/member (or whatever you want to call them). Guests are limited to purchasing subscription, members can buy anything on the site.

[LaurLaurentiu]

Full disclosure: I work at Bigcommerce. I'm stumbling into this thread a little late. However, @mcotten brings up some great points. One big advantage of our platform is that we handle all the backend complexities - including security, hosting, maintenance, etc. This allows you to focus on what you do best running your store. In addition if you are looking for a fully responsive site, we have several free and premium responsive themes that you can integrate right off the bat.
You can find them here: [bigcommerce.com...]