If your members need to search hours of recorded coaching calls, Searchie is a good buy. It transcribes every video, so members can search your whole library by keyword and find the part of a call they need. Searchie now goes by Membership.io, and plans start at $49 a month, or $41 billed yearly.
It is a poor buy for a first course with little video or for quizzes and email marketing, and risky if you might leave, because cancelling deletes any file you have not downloaded. This Searchie review weighs that searchable library against the cost of leaving, using Membership.io’s own pricing and help pages, its terms and all 28 Trustpilot reviews.
You typed Searchie into Google and ended up on a site called Membership.io. Same company. It changed its name in 2024, and most of what ranks for this search was written before that.
So the reviews you find quote prices nobody can buy anymore, like $29 or $7 a month. Some list a missing community feature that the product now sells on its cheapest plan.
Below are the 6 jobs a coach needs Membership.io to do, what its unhappy reviewers say, and what happens to your videos when you stop paying. Every Membership.io price and rule comes from its own pages, not older reviews.
Key Takeaways
- Same product, new name. Searchie became Membership.io in 2024, and searchie.io now forwards every visitor to the new site.
- Video search is the reason to buy. Every upload is transcribed, so members can search hours of calls by keyword.
- Plans cost $49, $119 or $219 a month. Billed yearly that is $41, $99 or $183, with 0% taken from your sales.
- Upload hours never come back. Start includes 50 hours, and deleting old videos does not free up any of them.
- Download everything before you cancel. Cancelling deletes your files. Pausing keeps them for $10 a month, but your member site goes offline.
Why most Searchie review pages read out of date
Most Searchie review pages read out of date because Searchie changed its name to Membership.io in 2024, and they still describe the older product and its older prices.
Choosing a platform from out-of-date reviews is one of the easier mistakes to make before a first sale. If you want to spot the others before you commit to a monthly bill, the Online Selling Mistakes Challenge covers 5 of them by email, free.
Searchie was founded near Toronto in 2019, with Stu McLaren and Andrew Ferraccioli as co-founders, and the company announced the new name in a September 5, 2024 press release. It promised that existing tools and features would carry on, and the old app.searchie.io login page now forwards to Membership.io’s login.
Google’s first page for this search holds 7 written reviews, plus a YouTube video and a Product Hunt listing. Only GroupApp, a rival platform, explains the new name, and 4 of the 7 give a starting price of $29 or $7 a month that no longer exists:
| Review on page 1 | Starting price quoted | Explains new name |
|---|---|---|
| Matt McWilliams | $99 a month (now Grow’s yearly rate) | No |
| Course Platforms Review | $7 a month (Creator plan) | No |
| Shell Creative (2023) | $29 a month (Basic plan) | No |
| GroupApp (October 2025) | $49 a month | Yes |
| Calan Breckon | $29 a month in the intro, current plans lower down | No |
| Suburbia Press | $29 a month | No |
| Eran Bucai (2022) | No price given | No |
Capterra and G2 both list Membership.io with 0 reviews and an $8-a-month Creator plan, the same plan Course Platforms Review prices at $7 billed yearly, which is gone from the pricing page.
What 28 Trustpilot reviewers say about Membership.io
Membership.io has 28 reviews on its Trustpilot page and a TrustScore of 3.6: 19 give 5 stars, 2 give 2 stars and 7 give 1 star, with nothing in between. A plain average of those 28 ratings is 3.8. The TrustScore is lower because Trustpilot does not calculate it as a plain average.
Trustpilot’s page data, which visitors do not see, tags 16 of the 19 5-star reviews as coming through a basic review link, a shareable link for leaving a review. All 16 were posted between July 23 and September 11, 2025, and on the page they look like any other review. Trustpilot lets businesses share basic links to invite reviews, and the tag says nothing about incentives. The other 12 reviews are tagged as organic, and 9 of those 12 give 1 or 2 stars.
The 5-star reviews are about people. 18 of the 19 praise the support team, several by first name, for fast and patient replies. The longest one is mostly about the community feature.
The low reviews are mostly about money:
- 4 describe a charge they did not expect, 3 of them after cancelling a free trial and 1 after a single click on a subscribe button.
- 2 use the word predatory, 1 about the subscription model and 1 adding that everything “requires an upgrade.”
- 1 calls the platform hard to use, with help by email only and a chat answered by AI.
- 1 complains about an $8,000 done-for-you migration where the reviewer’s own team did most of the work. Membership.io replied that the fee covered 60 hours of services.
The most detailed review, posted in March 2026, comes from a customer leaving after 6 years who says they spent over $10,000 on Searchie. They liked it early on for storing videos, transcripts and search. Then the complaints pile up: transcripts they call “quite horrible,” AI summaries they rewrite by hand, videos stuck in processing, replies from support that take days and upload hours that never refill. In capitals: “DELETING FILES DOESN’T FREE UP SPACE.”
Membership.io’s reply called those points fair and disagreed on 1, whether Searchie has community features.
Hosting and searching hours of recorded video
Searching inside video is the job Searchie was built for. Every audio and video file you upload is transcribed, so a member can search a word across every call instead of scrubbing through a 90-minute recording. Every plan also includes the AI tools: a chat that answers member questions from your own content (Membership.io calls it Wisdom) and a writing helper called Copilot. Both sit on the $49 Start plan in Membership.io’s help center plan chart.
Uploads run on a meter. Start includes 50 hours of uploads, Grow 250 and Scale 500, and those are totals for the life of the account, not monthly allowances. The help center says deleting videos does not restore hours, because hours are counted when a file is transcribed. Extra hours cost $9, $8 or $7 a month per 50 hours, depending on your plan.
Do you record several group calls a week? A coach who records 4 one-hour calls a week fills Start’s 50 hours in about 13 weeks. By the end of year 1 that coach has uploaded 208 hours, past Start and inside Grow. Our Searchie pricing breakdown works through the add-on costs.
So the plan you need depends on how many hours you record, and that number only goes up.
If your videos are short lessons rather than long calls, a plain video host may do the job for less. There are 21 video hosts for courses worth comparing first.
Building the member area: Hubs, courses and no quiz tool
A Hub is Membership.io’s name for a branded member site where your videos, courses and community live. Start includes 1 Hub, Grow 3 and Scale 10. The help center’s plan chart lists custom Hub domains on Start, while the pricing page puts custom domains under Grow, so ask support before you count on your own domain at $49. Every plan includes unlimited content playlists, and Grow adds restricted and personalized content, so different members see different lessons, plus achievement badges and content automations.
There is no quiz tool. Membership.io’s help center says it “does not currently have a quiz product,” and suggests linking to a Typeform or Google Form instead, and embedding that form inside a Hub page needs Grow. Need graded quizzes or certificates? Thinkific includes both from its cheapest plan, as our Thinkific review explains, and LMS options for courses compares more.
A branded phone app is available by invite request: the app builder is included with Scale if you publish to the app stores yourself. Membership.io’s mobile app page lists 2 paid options on top of Scale: $1,999 one-time for guided publishing, and $7,000 one-time to have it built for you. Either way you also need an Apple developer account at $99 a year and a Google Play account at $25 one-time.
Charging members, and the checkout jobs it leaves out
Membership.io takes payments through your own Stripe account. It charges no transaction fee of its own on paid plans, and Stripe takes its standard 2.9% plus 30 cents on each US card payment. You can set free, monthly, yearly and one-time prices for a Hub, with coupons, free trials, special pricing for founding members and plan upgrades from inside the Hub. Members can switch or cancel through Stripe’s customer portal if you turn it on.
There are 2 other ways in. A Kit automation can add a subscriber to a Hub when a tag is added or a form is filled in Kit, which needs a paid Kit Creator or Creator Pro account. Or you can connect an outside cart through Zapier.
Start costs $49 a month, Grow $119 and Scale $219, or $41, $99 and $183 a month billed yearly ($490, $1,190 and $2,190 a year):
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Hubs | Upload hours | Team seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $49 | $41/mo ($490/yr) | 1 | 50 | Owner only |
| Grow | $119 | $99/mo ($1,190/yr) | 3 | 250 | 5 |
| Scale | $219 | $183/mo ($2,190/yr) | 10 | 500 | 10 |
Membership.io’s payments help has articles on coupons, trials, founding-member prices and plan upgrades, and none on order bumps or one-click upsells after checkout. If you want a member to add a workbook or a 1-on-1 call at checkout, the help center documents no way to do it, so plan on a separate checkout for that offer.
CartMango, the checkout I run, is 1 option for that front step. CartMango adds order bumps and upsells and passes each buyer to Kit, where a tag or form can trigger Hub access. Test a purchase before launch so you know each step fires.
Emailing members beyond a welcome message
Membership.io sends operational emails only: Hub welcome emails, password resets, badge emails and community notifications. Its help center says that for automated sequences, funnels or broadcast campaigns, you need a separate email tool connected through Zapier, or Kit, which connects directly.
Grow adds 2 things here. You can send emails from your own domain, and you can broadcast a notification to everyone in the community. A 5-star reviewer describes sending email blasts to every community member, now from their own address. That works for announcements. It is still not a newsletter tool, and it cannot run a sales sequence.
Course Platforms Review reached the same conclusion, describing Searchie as a specialist tool you use on top of other platforms. If you would rather have email in the same bill, our comparison of 8 membership platforms notes which ones bundle email and where they cap it.
Keeping members talking: the community Google says is missing
Membership.io has a built-in community. The help center’s plan chart lists Private Community on the $49 Start plan, and its community page describes discussion spaces, posts and comments, direct messages, a member directory and moderation tools.
Search this keyword, though, and the summary Google writes at the top of the results says the opposite. Its cons list includes “Lacks native built-in community discussion forums or social feeds” and “Pricing starts around $99/month.” Both are wrong on Membership.io’s own pages, where Start costs $49 a month and includes the community.
The old claim comes from older reviews. Suburbia Press, in a review first published in 2022, answers its own FAQ by saying Searchie had no discussion groups. Shell Creative’s 2023 review says the same. And the 6-year customer on Trustpilot wrote in March 2026 that “It never has had any actual community features.”
Membership.io answered that review by saying direct messaging, community features and a white-labeled mobile app had been available “for well over a year.” So a long-time customer and the company disagree about the same feature. The help center’s community setup guide says the Discussions page is available on the Start plan or higher.
If the community is the main thing you are paying for, compare it with tools built around one. The Skool review and the Mighty Networks review cover 2 platforms built around community, and Mighty Networks is where that 6-year customer has run their community since 2019.
Leaving Membership.io with your videos intact
Cancelling a Membership.io account deletes every file you uploaded, so download your library before you cancel. Its help center page on cancelling says cancellation “results in the automatic deletion of all your stored data,” and the download guide adds that it can no longer retrieve data once an account has been cancelled. Neither page says how long after cancelling the files are deleted, so download first. What you can download depends on your plan: videos, audio and transcripts, file attachments, invoices and an export of your contacts. Do it while the account is active, and check the contact export opens before you move on.
Pausing is the middle option. Membership.io’s Pause plan costs $10 a month and keeps your files and Hubs for as long as you like. While paused, your Hub, widgets and embedded players stop working, and you cannot upload anything new. Your members lose access the day you pause, so move them to their new home before you pause if you are leaving for good.
Money does not come back either. The refund policy says all sales are final, and cancelling only stops the next charge.
The signup page now reads “Try it free for 14 days. No credit card required.” Even so, 3 of the 1-star reviews from 2025 describe a charge after cancelling inside a trial, so if you do add a card, write down the date the trial ends.
Searchie pros and cons
Searchie’s strengths center on the video library and the support team, and its weak spots are money and leaving.
Pros
- Every video and audio file is transcribed and searchable by keyword.
- The AI chat (Wisdom) and Copilot come with every plan.
- Membership.io takes 0% of your sales on paid plans.
- A private community is included from the $49 Start plan.
- 18 of the 19 5-star Trustpilot reviews praise the support team, though 16 of those 19 came through a basic review link.
Cons
- Upload hours are a lifetime total, and deleting videos gives none back.
- There is no quiz tool, and embedding an outside quiz needs Grow.
- Email is operational only, with no sequences or newsletters.
- Cancelling deletes your files, and all sales are final.
- 4 of the 9 low Trustpilot ratings describe a charge the reviewer did not expect.
How Membership.io compares, job by job
Membership.io does the library, member area and community jobs on its own, while CartMango does only the checkout job, so their prices pay for different things. Start costs $41 a month billed yearly and Grow $99 for the whole member site, while CartMango’s about $0.83 to $2.50 a month billed yearly buys only the checkout:
| Tool | Video library | Member area | Community | Checkout | If you leave |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Membership.io Start ($41/mo billed yearly) | 50 hours, searchable | 1 Hub, no quizzes | Private community | Stripe, coupons, trials, 0% fee | Files deleted. $10/mo pause keeps them |
| Membership.io Grow ($99/mo billed yearly) | 250 hours, searchable | 3 Hubs, quiz embeds | Adds badges and broadcasts | Same as Start | Same as Start |
| CartMango (about $0.83 to $2.50/mo billed yearly) | No, needs an outside video host | Not yet | Not yet | Stripe or PayPal, order bumps, upsells from $20/yr, 0% fee | Subscriptions keep billing |
CartMango is free right now with paid plans from $10 a year starting in November, and its course hosting and community are not live yet.
FAQ
Is Searchie the same as Membership.io?
Yes. Searchie Inc. renamed the product Membership.io in 2024, and searchie.io forwards to the new site. The Start, Grow and Scale plans kept the monthly prices Searchie charged just before the rename, as archived pricing pages in our Searchie pricing breakdown show. The old low-cost Creator plan is gone, which is why some directories still list a price of $8 a month.
Where do I log in to Searchie?
At app.membership.io/login. The old app.searchie.io address now forwards there, so an old bookmark still lands on the right page.
How much does Searchie cost?
Membership.io costs $49 a month for Start, $119 for Grow and $219 for Scale, or $41, $99 and $183 a month billed yearly. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial of Grow. Stripe’s card fee comes on top, and extra upload hours cost $7 to $9 a month per 50 hours.
Can you get a refund from Membership.io?
Usually not. Membership.io’s refund policy says all sales are final and that cancelling does not trigger a refund. Your account stays active until the end of the period you paid for, and you are not charged again.
Is Searchie good for beginners?
Not for a first course with a handful of videos. The main reason to pay, searching hundreds of hours of calls, does not exist yet when you have 10 short lessons, and Start still costs $490 a year. Eran Bucai’s review reached the same verdict back in 2022. It suits a coach or membership owner who already records weekly calls and wants members to stop asking where an answer was.
What does Reddit say about Searchie?
Very little about the platform. The top Reddit result is a 2022 r/applehelp thread about a “Searchie” browser extension slowing down a Mac, which replies call malware. The clearest mention of the video platform is a 1-word “Searchie.io” reply in a 2023 r/Entrepreneur thread asking for the best platform for a subscription-based mini course.
Adding order bumps before members reach the Hub
If you want order bumps or upsells, add a checkout in front of Membership.io, since its payments help documents prices, coupons, trials and upgrades but no bumps or upsells. CartMango is built for that step: CartMango adds an order bump on every plan and upsells from its $20-a-year plan, takes 0% of each sale, and sends every buyer to Kit, where a tag can open the Hub.
CartMango is free right now, and paid plans start in November from $10 a year. If Searchie’s library is the reason you buy, this Searchie review comes down to 2 habits: keep a copy of every file, and add a checkout in front of the Hub when you want bumps or upsells.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
- Searchie pricing, plan by plan: what each Membership.io plan costs on monthly and yearly billing
- Membership site platforms compared: 8 platforms priced at 100 members, and who keeps your subscribers
- Mighty Networks review: a community-first platform, with all its Trustpilot reviews sorted
- Heartbeat pricing: another community and course platform, priced on both billing cycles
- Best course platform: 6 course platforms priced live, with the cut each takes per sale