# Memberships & Loyalty

### Membership or loyalty?

At a technical level the difference is purely semantic however a common way to separate between the two is a membership is often paid, loyalty is usually free to enroll in and you progress via interaction commonly either visits or spend.

### Membership

The **Membership** represents the overall program, this is where the name, marketing and branding material overall are stored. A membership at its highest level is a [product](/docs/concepts/products.md) with the type set.

#### Tiers

Within a membership program you'll configure the tiers you want to offer to your customers. There are some common setups such as:

* Free tier with higher paid for tiers
* Tiers based on usage such as spend
* Private tiers that can be assigned manually or automatically when specific logic is applied via a workflow.

The tier is where pricing is set, there is further marketing and branding material as well as tier specific terms if applicable.

#### Benefits

The organisation sets up a global list of benefits that can then be assigned to tiers, there are many types of benefits starting from simply some text increasing in complexity to automated, replinishable, single-use benefits.

### Member

A **Member** represents a [contact](/docs/concepts/contacts.md) that has an account with you, a contact does not need to be a member to be part of a membership or loyalty program.

### Subscription object

A **Subscription** represents a relationship between the [contact](/docs/concepts/contacts.md) and the membership tier.

This is where the state of a membership is held, pay careful attention to properties like `status`

{% code title="Example subscription" lineNumbers="true" expandable="true" %}

```json
{
  "id": 1081,
  "createdAt": "2026-04-11T16:30:55.309Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-11T16:30:55.309Z",
  "startedAt": "2026-04-11T16:30:55.309Z",
  "endedAt": null,
  "contact": 47355,
  "status": "Active",
  "product": 1,
  "tier": 12,
  "storedCreditAccount": 1709,
  "pricingPeriod": "Monthly"
  ...
}
```

{% endcode %}

Learn more about [activating a membership for a contact.](/docs/use-cases/add-a-membership-to-a-contact.md)

### Frequently asked questions

1. Can a contact have multiple subscriptions?\
   **Yes**
2. Do you support trials?\
   **Yes**

 


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