# How to Vibe Code Your Own Memberstack (and Stop Paying for It)

> Membership Platform for Webflow, WordPress & Any Site

- Site: https://memberstack.com
- Category: Authentication & Payments Infrastructure
- Verdict: **Solid side project** (68/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 2-3 weeks part-time

## Verdict

Build your own authentication and subscription wrapper in Next.js rather than paying for this, unless you need to inject it into external no-code site builders.

If you are building a native full-stack SaaS app, assembling Next.js, better-auth, Postgres, and Stripe with an AI agent is completely viable in a couple of weeks. However, replicating Memberstack's exact value proposition—injecting secure authentication and gating snippets via script tags into arbitrary third-party Webflow or WordPress sites while managing multi-tenant Stripe subscriptions—introduces heavy cross-origin token and CORS engineering debt.

### What you can't replicate

- SOC 2 Type 1 compliance certification
- Native zero-code integration plugins across Webflow and WordPress ecosystems
- Years of edge-case hardening around Stripe webhooks and multi-currency billing

## What it does

Authentication, payments, and gated content that drop into the site you already have, with built-in member data tables and email campaigns.

### Core features

- User Authentication (Email/Password, Magic Link, OAuth)
- Stripe Billing & Subscription Management (Webhooks, Invoices)
- Content Gating & Element Visibility Rules
- Custom Member Data Tables & JSON Profiles
- Email Campaign Management & Broadcasting
- Client-side JavaScript SDK & DOM Bindings
- Admin Dashboard for User Management
- Multi-environment Test and Live Modes

## The business

### Pricing

- Free: $0 — Free until you launch in sandbox mode.
- Basic: $29/mo — For early-stage membership sites.
- Professional: $49/mo — For growing membership communities.
- Business: $99/mo — For established scaling businesses.
- Established: $499/mo — For high-volume operations.

### Funding

Unknown raised.
- Pre-seed (January 2020)
- Y Combinator (Summer 2020)
Investors: Y Combinator

Founded 2018.
Team size: Small boutique team.

## The hard parts

- Stripe Webhook State Machine (handling prorations, retries, and failed payment edge cases robustly across plans)
- Cross-domain token validation and secure cookie sync for external site builder injection
- Building a reliable drop-in client-side SDK that safely evaluates permissions on static or decoupled sites
- Transactional email deliverability and automated bounce/unsubscribe management at scale

## How to vibe code Memberstack

### Prerequisites

- Node.js (free): Required runtime for local development and package management.
- GitHub (free): Source control and integration with Vercel for continuous deployment.
- Stripe Account (free): Required for setting up test-mode products, subscriptions, and webhooks.

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Best-in-class terminal coding agent for scaffolding multi-file full-stack apps and debugging complex webhook routes.
- Cursor: Ideal for fine-tuning frontend SDK components and CSS injection styling.

### Stack

- Frontend: Next.js
- Backend: Next.js API Routes / Server Actions
- Database: Neon
- Auth: better-auth
- Payments: Stripe
- Other: Resend, Tailwind CSS, Vercel AI SDK

### Hosting

- Vercel (Hosting the Next.js admin dashboard, embeddable JS SDK script bundle, and backend webhook endpoints.): $0-20/mo
- Neon (Serverless Postgres database storing member profiles, custom data tables, and subscription state.): $0/mo

### Build guide

1. **Project Scaffolding & Database Schema** — Initialize a Next.js project with TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and connect Neon Postgres using Drizzle ORM.

```
Create a new Next.js project with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS. Set up Drizzle ORM connected to Neon Postgres. Define database schemas for users, memberships, plans, data_tables, and webhook_logs with strict foreign key relations and indexes. Write a migration script and verify local database connection.
```

2. **Authentication Integration** — Configure better-auth for secure email/password and social login flows stored in the database.

```
Install and configure better-auth in the Next.js app to handle email/password sign-up, login, and Google OAuth. Implement secure session cookies, token refresh cycles, and password reset flows. Ensure auth endpoints properly sync user records to the Neon users table upon registration.
```

3. **Stripe Billing & Webhook Handlers** — Implement Stripe Checkout sessions and robust webhook endpoints to manage subscriptions and plan states.

```
Build Stripe integration endpoints using the Stripe SDK. Create API routes to generate Checkout Sessions for recurring membership plans. Implement a secure webhook receiver route (/api/webhooks/stripe) that handles customer.subscription.created, customer.subscription.updated, and customer.subscription.deleted events, safely updating user plan tiers and statuses in the database with signature verification.
```

4. **Client-Side SDK & Content Gating** — Build an embeddable JavaScript SDK and React package that reads membership state and toggles element visibility.

```
Develop a client-side JavaScript SDK bundle that can be injected via script tag. The SDK should check active session cookies, fetch user permissions from the backend, and evaluate data attributes (e.g., data-ms-content='protected') to show or hide DOM elements dynamically. Also provide React wrapper components for gating content cleanly.
```

5. **Admin Dashboard & Member Data Tables** — Create an administrative dashboard interface to manage members, assign custom fields, and configure data tables.

```
Build a responsive admin dashboard in Next.js allowing site owners to view list of members, search by email, manually assign plans, update custom fields, and manage custom data tables (dynamic CRUD schemas). Protect all admin routes with role-based access control checking admin status.
```

6. **Email Campaigns & Notifications** — Integrate Resend for transactional emails and automated member communication broadcasts.

```
Integrate the Resend API to handle transactional emails (welcome emails, password resets, payment failures) and build an email campaign composer interface in the admin dashboard. Allow filtering recipients by plan or custom attributes, previewing templates with merge tags, and dispatching batch emails securely via background tasks.
```

### Cost vs paying

**Starting costs (one-time):**

- Custom domain name (optional): $12/yr
- Total: ~$12 one-time

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Vercel Hobby/Pro hosting: $0-20/mo
- Resend email API usage: $0/mo (free tier covers 3k emails)
- Total: ~$0-20/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $49/mo
- Build time: 40-60 hours
- AI tool credits: $20 (Claude Pro)
- Break-even: 0 months (built for learning and custom control)

## Sources

- [Memberstack Homepage](https://memberstack.com)
- [Memberstack Pricing](https://memberstack.com/pricing)
- [Memberstack Features](https://memberstack.com/features)
- [Memberstack About Page](https://memberstack.com/about)
- [Memberstack Changelog](https://memberstack.com/changelog)