Elements vs Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform for podcasters, video creators, musicians, artists and game developers, made by Patreon Inc. Fans pay a creator monthly or yearly through membership tiers, or make one-time purchases, and get posts, audio, video, livestreams and newsletters in return. Creators talk with members in chats, DMs and comments, sell digital products, and reach fans through Patreon's apps and its discovery features. Patreon runs the payments: it takes PayPal, Apple Pay and other methods, handles chargebacks and fraud, and says "We take care of most applicable tax collections and remittance for you." Patreon is free to start. When a creator earns, Patreon keeps a share of that income, "plus payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees, and applicable taxes."
Elements is not a membership platform. It is an integrated app environment for building web apps with an AI agent, and a membership is mostly parts it already has. Tiers are Stripe subscriptions. Members sign in and are rows in Postgres beside your posts. Chat and comments update live, and member emails go out through a provider such as Postmark on a schedule. A creator can describe that membership to an agent and run the result on a server they control.
Patreon owns the platform, the fan app and the payments, and charges a share of income that rises with each new member. A membership you build is a fixed monthly bill instead of a cut, and the same database can hold your shop and your sponsors. What you give up is Patreon's fan accounts and apps, and the tax collection Patreon does for you. Whether that trade makes sense depends on how much you earn, and on how much of your income comes from fans who found you on Patreon.
What Patreon Gives You That Is Hard to Build
Patreon is more than software for charging members, and some of what it does, an app you build cannot reproduce.
- Fans who already have an account. Many fans have a Patreon account and a saved payment method, so joining another creator takes a few taps. On your own site, each fan signs up and enters a card.
- The apps. Members follow their creators in Patreon's mobile apps. Your app is a website, read in the browser or the inbox.
- Tax collection and remittance. Patreon collects and remits most applicable taxes for you. With your own app, Stripe Tax calculates and collects tax where you are registered, and registering and filing are yours.
- Payment methods and risk. Patreon takes PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo and Sofort, supports 16+ currencies, and handles "chargebacks, disputes, and fraud." With Stripe, you get Radar and a wide set of payment methods, and disputes come to you.
- Media and podcasts. Patreon hosts video, livestreams and audio. Elements stores uploads in Postgres, which suits images and downloads, not a large video library.
- No upkeep. Patreon ships the app and the features. Once the membership is yours, so is its maintenance, even if an agent handles most of it.
What Building It Looks Like
A membership is a small set of parts: members, tiers, payments, posts, email and a place to talk. How each Patreon feature translates:
| Patreon feature | In an app you build with Elements |
|---|---|
| A creator page with posts | Your posts in Postgres, shown on pages written in Elements HTML and rendered on the server (html, database) |
| Membership tiers, monthly or yearly | Stripe Checkout in subscription mode, with each tier a plan row carrying its own price and each subscription's status kept in your database (subscriptions) |
| Posts locked to a tier | A page that checks the member's subscription before it shows the post (session) |
| Member accounts and sign-in | Sign-in and sessions, with members as rows in your own database (authentication recipe) |
| One-time payments and digital products | Stripe Checkout for one-time payments (payments), with files uploaded and stored in your database (file upload recipe) |
| Email newsletters to members | Newsletters written as Elements HTML emails and sent by an SMTP service such as Postmark (email) |
| Scheduled posts | A background job scheduled for the publish time, queued in your database (jobs) |
| Chats and comments | Messages pushed live to every member who has the page open (live comments recipe, chat rooms recipe) |
| Member analytics | A dashboard that updates live as people join, using a LiveTable (livetable) |
| Change tier, cancel and update a card | Cancel from your app (subscriptions), and Stripe's customer portal for cards |
| Sales tax and VAT | Stripe Tax, for the jurisdictions where you are registered |
| Fraud screening | Stripe Radar |
| Fan accounts across creators, the apps and discovery | No equivalent. This is Patreon's network, and it stays with Patreon. |
Stripe's per-product fees are at stripe.com/pricing. Because the memberships, the shop and the CRM can all be tables in the same database, a fan who buys a download, a sponsor in your pipeline and a paying member are the same kind of row, in one list of people.
The Demo: Letterhearth
Letterhearth is the nearest demo to a Patreon page: a paid newsletter an AI agent built with Elements from one prompt, where members pay $8 a month by card and everyone else reads the free posts. Members join with an email address and can upgrade or cancel themselves. Non-paying readers see the opening paragraphs of each paid post, then an invitation to subscribe. The creator writes posts in markdown, marks each one free or paid, and publishes now or schedules for later, and publishing emails the post. Subscriber counts and revenue update live.
Letterhearth shows one paid tier. Patreon creators often run several, and in an app you build each tier is another plan row with its own price, and each post records the tier it needs; that is a change you would ask your agent for, not something the demo already does. Start from the prompt on the demo page, and your agent builds Letterhearth on your computer for you to reshape into tiers. For one-off sales, Bytestall sells downloads by card with a link that works five times, and for sponsors, Dealwren is a CRM with contacts, companies and a deals board. All three can be one app.
Adding It Up
This is an example, not a customer. A creator runs a membership on Patreon, sells downloads alongside it and tracks sponsors in a CRM.
| Subscription | How it charges |
|---|---|
| Patreon | A share of membership income, plus processing and payout fees |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Per seat, by plan |
Patreon's processing and payout fees come on top of its share, and Stripe's card fees apply to your own app, so card fees are a cost either way. Add up what you pay now, at your current income and at the income you expect. Your own app costs $100 a month for Elements (pricing), plus a server (DigitalOcean pricing) and an email provider (Postmark pricing). Stripe Billing charges a fee on recurring charges (pricing), and Stripe Tax, if you use it to collect tax where you are registered, charges a fee on each transaction (pricing).
Patreon's share grows with each member, while Elements' cost does not. A small membership usually costs less on Patreon; past some income, your own app costs less, and the gap grows with every member. Email grows with your list, and a larger list needs a larger plan, or a provider that charges per email sent, such as Amazon SES (pricing). The subscriptions overview works through this and other cases.
When to Keep Patreon
- Your membership is free or small. Patreon charges nothing until you earn, and on a small income its share costs less than running your own app.
- Your members came through Patreon. If fans find and join you inside Patreon's apps, leaving asks each of them to sign up again somewhere new.
- You want tax handled for you. Patreon collects and remits most applicable taxes. With your own app, registering and filing are yours.
- You publish video, livestreams or podcasts. Patreon's hosting and distribution take real infrastructure to replace.
- You would rather not run software. Patreon does the upkeep.
Questions
How does Patreon charge?
Patreon is free to start. Its pricing page says it keeps a share of the income you earn on Patreon, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees, and applicable taxes. Its rates are at patreon.com/pricing.
At what income does my own membership app cost less than Patreon?
When Patreon's share of your income is more than your own app costs to run: Elements at $100 a month, a server, an email provider, and Stripe Billing's fee on recurring charges. Patreon's share grows with each member and Elements' cost does not, so the comparison moves toward your own app as income grows. Patreon's rates are at patreon.com/pricing.
Can my own app have several membership tiers?
Yes. In an Elements app, each tier is a plan row with its own price, sold through Stripe Checkout in subscription mode, and each post records the tier it needs. The Letterhearth demo shows one paid tier, so more tiers are a change you would ask your agent to make.
Who handles sales tax and VAT if I leave Patreon?
You do. Patreon collects and remits most applicable taxes for its creators. In your own app, Stripe Tax calculates and collects tax where you are registered, for a fee on each transaction listed at stripe.com/tax/pricing, and registering and filing stay with you.
Can I move my Patreon members to my own app?
Patreon lists exportable email lists among its features, and an agent can import yours into your app's database. Patreon runs members' payments itself, so the payments do not move with them: each member would subscribe again in your app. You can run both for a while and invite members over.