Add-on services overview
Four services sit alongside the builder. None is required, none changes what your app can do to a member who is looking at it, and each is bought separately from your builder plan.
They divide into two kinds, and the distinction matters when you are deciding what to spend money on.
Making a slow site feel fast
Section titled “Making a slow site feel fast”These three exist for one problem: a WordPress site that is slow enough to make a fast app feel slow.
| Service | Fixes |
|---|---|
| Media CDN | Avatars and photos loading slowly, from your own origin |
| Realtime | Chat and feeds that only update when a member pulls to refresh |
| Memberside Optimizer | A member directory that has become slow on a large site |
Start by looking at Site Health. If your latency is comfortably under 300ms across every endpoint group, none of these will make a difference your members can feel, and the money is better spent elsewhere.
Reach for them when a specific number is bad:
- Images slow, everything else fine — Media CDN.
- The directory slow, everything else fine — Optimizer.
- Everything fine, but chat feels dead between refreshes — Realtime.
- Everything slow — none of these. The site itself is the problem, and hosting or a heavy plugin is where to look first.
Reaching members who are not there
Section titled “Reaching members who are not there”| Service | Does |
|---|---|
| Push | Notifies members on their phones when your app is closed |
This one is not a performance service and no latency number will tell you whether you need it. Everything else in the product — including Realtime — only works for somebody who already has your app open. Push is the only thing that reaches the member who closed it last week and has had no reason to open it since.
If your community is quiet and you do not know why, this is the one to look at first, not last.
Terms & Conditions
Section titled “Terms & Conditions”Memberside → Services on your site also holds Terms & Conditions. It is not an add-on: it is free on every plan, needs no authorising, and unlike the four above it does change what members see. Switch it on and every sign-up screen in your app asks a new member to agree to your terms, privacy and cookie pages, and your site records that they did. See Terms & Conditions.
How they are billed
Section titled “How they are billed”Media CDN, Realtime and Push each have their own Starter, Growth and Scale tiers, billed monthly and separately from your builder plan. Optimizer is free on every plan, Free included. It is one of the services inside the Memberside plugin — the bridge between your site and your app, which also serves the REST API and holds your API keys — so there is nothing extra to install or subscribe to.
| Tier | Media CDN | Realtime | Push | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter — $9/month | 50 GB | 500 connections | 100,000 notifications a month | 10 |
| Growth — $29/month | 250 GB | 2,500 connections | 500,000 notifications a month | 25 |
| Scale — $79/month | 1 TB | 10,000 connections | 2,000,000 notifications a month | 100 |
Every paid builder plan already includes an allowance of all three, so many communities never buy a tier:
| Pro | Unlimited | |
|---|---|---|
| Realtime | 200 connections | 2,500 connections |
| Push | 25,000 a month | 500,000 a month |
| Media CDN | 1 GB | 1 GB |
A tier you buy replaces that included allowance rather than adding to it. Compare before you buy — see Add-ons and build packs.
They are separate subscriptions. Cancelling one does not affect the others or your builder plan.
Checking your usage
Section titled “Checking your usage”Memberside → Dashboard on your site has a card for each service you have switched on. Each card shows what you have used against your plan:
| Service | Measured against your plan | This site’s own figures |
|---|---|---|
| Media CDN | Storage | Members mirrored |
| Realtime | Peak connections this month | Connected right now, this site’s peak |
| Push | Notifications sent this month | Sent from this site, devices |
| Member directory (Optimizer) | Members indexed (no limit) | — |
The plan figure is your whole account, every authorised domain added together, because that is how the allowance is shared. The site’s figures sit underneath, so you can see which site is using it.
The badge turns amber when you are close to your limit and red once you reach it. It also shows when a service is paused, not connected, or did not answer.
Usage is checked when the dashboard opens and reused for two minutes. Refresh checks again straight away. The account totals for Realtime and Push are added up once an hour, so a notification you just sent appears in Sent from this site before it reaches the plan total.
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A card says Could not reach Memberside | Your site could not reach memberside.app | Press Refresh in a minute; the service keeps working meanwhile |
| A card says Not connected | The service is switched on but not authorised | Authorise it under Memberside → Services |
| Last updated is days old on Media CDN | The daily check has not run | Open the Media CDN panel and refresh it there |
| Realtime reads (this site’s share) | memberside.app has not sent the plan total yet | Nothing to do; the plan total appears once it does |
Connecting a site
Section titled “Connecting a site”Media CDN, Realtime and Push each need your WordPress site to authorise them. That is a different handshake from the builder’s application-password connection — it is an approve-and-exchange flow that issues a token scoped to that service.
See Authorising a site.
What they do not do
Section titled “What they do not do”They do not host your site. Your WordPress install stays where it is.
They do not cache your content. A post is still read live from your site. Media CDN serves images; it does not put your posts behind a cache that could go stale.
We never hold your push credentials. Your Apple key and Firebase service account stay on your own server; Push uses short-lived tokens your site signs with them. See Push.
Push does not write your notifications. It delivers what your site already raises — replies, mentions, messages. There is no composer, no audience builder, and no way for us to notify your members.
They are not required for any feature. Every screen in the catalogue works without them — though a member who has stopped opening your app will not see any of them.