Tooling & Strategie
MemBirds, Plug&Pay or Gold Lemon: what do you actually need?
Pick a time that works for you.
A coach called me last week with the question: "should I choose MemBirds or Plug&Pay?" My answer was unsatisfying. Neither. Or both. It depends.
The question wasn't right, because these two platforms aren't alternatives to each other. They solve different problems. If you pick the wrong one for your problem, you buy a tool that doesn't help you. And if you put our agency Gold Lemon in that list, it gets even more complicated: we're not a platform at all.
In this article I explain honestly what each of these three actually does, what they're good at and what they aren't, and which one you need at which moment. No sales pitch. A functional comparison of three products you often hear mentioned in the same breath.
If you search for "MemBirds vs Plug&Pay" or "course platform or checkout tool" you get dozens of review sites lining these products up as if they have the same function. They say MemBirds costs €200 per month and Plug&Pay starts at €59 per month, creating the impression that Plug&Pay is the cheaper choice.
That's not right. You're comparing a car to a gas station. They both deal with fuel, but you need both if you want to get somewhere.
The same goes for Gold Lemon. We're not a SaaS tool you pick alongside the other two. We're an agency that builds the whole marketing system, including the choice of which tools you use. Often we recommend Plug&Pay. Sometimes MemBirds. Usually both, connected to our CRM and our content engine.
To understand why these are three different products, you have to look at the journey someone makes from stranger to paying client. That journey breaks down into five steps, and each of these three products works at a different point on that journey.
By the time someone clicks the Plug&Pay checkout, MemBirds and Gold Lemon should already have done their work. Gold Lemon to get that person to your page in the first place, MemBirds to have the content ready after payment. Plug&Pay is just that button in the middle.
MemBirds is a Dutch all-in-one platform for building a membership environment. Think: a website where your clients log in to take your course, watch videos, download PDFs, and discuss with each other in a community. Plus built-in payment options via Mollie and an affiliate system.
What MemBirds does well:
What MemBirds doesn't do: find clients for you. The assumption of every delivery platform is that you already have people who want to buy something from you. MemBirds doesn't build traffic. It doesn't build authority. It doesn't make sure you sit at the top of Google or that ChatGPT recommends you. That's not the point of a platform like this.
Price: around €200 per month. For that you get a full platform including unlimited members, which in a growing coach business is more favorable over time than tools that charge per user. Comparable Dutch alternatives are Huddle (cheaper, from €15 per month) and Kennis.shop. International alternatives: Kajabi, Memberspot, Teachable.
Wanneer MemBirds voor jou zinvol is: je hebt al klanten die cursussen of memberships afnemen, en je bent het zat om video's via Vimeo en Google Drive te delen, betalingen handmatig bij te houden en community-gesprekken op Facebook te laten verdwijnen. Dan bespaart MemBirds je uren per week en geeft het je klanten een professionelere ervaring.
Plug&Pay is a Dutch checkout and sales system from IMU (Internet Marketing Unie). It's not a webshop and not a learning environment. It's one specific thing: the payment page and everything around it to extract as much revenue from a visitor as possible.
What Plug&Pay does well:
What Plug&Pay doesn't do: it doesn't host courses, it doesn't build entire websites, and it doesn't drive traffic. If no one lands on your checkout, Plug&Pay delivers nothing.
Price: from €29 per month for the starter package. Most owners pick the middle subscription at €59 per month, which only really pays off once you have more volume. You connect your account to Mollie or Stripe for the actual payment processing, with the related transaction costs (with Mollie, for example, 29 cents plus 1.8 percent for iDEAL).
Wanneer Plug&Pay voor jou zinvol is: je hebt al een stroom mensen die jouw aanbod overwegen (of dat nu via je website, advertenties of netwerk loopt) maar de gemiddelde orderwaarde valt tegen. Een gerichte checkout-inrichting met upsells verdient de maandkosten binnen een paar transacties terug.
Gold Lemon isn't a tool. We're an AI marketing agency that builds the system in which tools like Plug&Pay and MemBirds play a role. Our work sits upstream of both: making sure people land on your site, your checkout, and your delivery platform in the first place.
Wat wij bouwen:
What Gold Lemon isn't: a SaaS you operate yourself. You don't get a login with dashboards to fiddle with. You get a system that runs for you, with a team that maintains it. That requires a different mindset than picking a platform.
Price: packages from €49 per month, with most service providers and coaches at €129 per month for the complete package with website, CRM, AI chat and content.
Wanneer Gold Lemon voor jou zinvol is: je probleem zit niet in hoe je aflevert of hoe je de checkout inricht. Je probleem zit in hoe weinig mensen überhaupt op jouw pagina komen. Of hoe vaak je koude acquisitie moet doen om aan trajecten te komen. Gold Lemon lost dat op door een systeem dat doorloopt, ook als jij met iets anders bezig bent.
Side by side, so you can see where the differences actually sit:
Important: the empty dots in this table aren't shortcomings. MemBirds isn't supposed to build websites and Plug&Pay isn't supposed to host courses. They're built for one thing and they do that well. But it does mean that one of the three on its own is rarely enough.
The right order depends on where your business is currently stuck. Three scenarios:
If you have two to ten visitors per day and your problem is silence, then Plug&Pay doesn't help. You'd be optimizing a checkout no one sees. MemBirds helps even less. You'd be setting up a platform for clients who aren't there. Here the answer is upstream: more visibility, more traffic, a site that converts. That's where an agency adds value.
If you have hundreds of visitors per week and don't yet have the conversion that should go with it, look at your checkout and your sales flow. Plug&Pay is built for that. Upsells and order bumps can raise your order value by tens of percent without you needing more traffic.
You're selling, but you're sharing videos via Google Drive, tracking payments in Excel, and your community sits in a Facebook group that's slowly dying. Then MemBirds (or Huddle, or Memberspot) is the answer. One place where your clients log in, consume content, and communicate with each other.
When I look at coach businesses that are seriously growing, I almost always see a stack of three layers. Not one tool. Three.
Gold Lemon vooraan voor zichtbaarheid en leadgeneratie. Plug&Pay in het midden voor de checkout. MemBirds of Huddle aan de achterkant voor aflevering en community.
What that means in practice:
That's not fantasy. That's how the best-running coach businesses have their system set up. Not one hero tool. Three layers doing what they're good at, connected into a whole.
There are providers claiming to do everything. Kajabi, for instance, or IMU with Huddle plus Plug&Pay as a package. That can work. It often works fine when you start small. But as you get more serious, you notice that all-in-one platforms are mediocre on every component. Their checkout is okay, their SEO page is okay, their community is okay. But not great.
Specialists beat other specialists. Plug&Pay knows checkout better than Kajabi. MemBirds knows member management better than Plug&Pay. And neither knows lead generation the way an agency working on it daily does. That's why with serious players you always see a stack, not a do-it-all.
Look first at where you're currently stuck. Not at which platform is hippest. Not at what a colleague uses. At your own bottleneck.
Are sales failing on too little attention? Fix that first. Downstream tools don't solve an upstream problem. Are sales failing on a bad checkout? Get Plug&Pay. Is your delivery stuck in mess? Bring in MemBirds or an alternative.
And if you're not sure where you're stuck, that's a signal in itself. Then a short strategy call is often the beginning.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll look at where your business is currently stuck and which combination of tools and system actually fits there. Also if that means one of your current tools can stay.