# What is a membership tier? A priced level of benefits and access

A membership tier is a product level with its own price, benefits and content-access rules; details depend on the publisher’s offer.

A publisher might offer a basic subscription and a higher-priced tier with additional reporting or services. Price and tier name do not, by themselves, configure which pages an account can open.

## Checking the promise attached to each tier

Illustrative offer: Basic is $5 per month for the archive; Premium is $10 per month for the archive plus a monthly briefing. A test account checks that each tier receives only its promised access and briefing. The example is a product design, not a claim about Ghost’s default setup.

## A tier is a package, not a permission record

Test the benefits after an upgrade, downgrade and expiration, as well as a new purchase. A tier describes the product promise; an entitlement describes the access an individual account has actually been granted.

## Test the offer as a reader would

Use one account for each tier and try to open the same premium article. Include a recent upgrade and a scheduled downgrade. The test should establish what each reader can open today and when that access is supposed to change.

## Related terms

[Entitlement](https://digitalpublishingnews.com/dictionary/entitlement/)

[Paywall](https://digitalpublishingnews.com/dictionary/paywall/)

## Continue reading

[Ghost membership tiers: set prices and test who can read each article](https://digitalpublishingnews.com/articles/ghost-tiers-access-model/): It maps Ghost’s configured tier benefits to the articles each tier can open.

## Sources

https://ghost.org/help/tiers/

https://ghost.org/help/tiers/

Editorial method: https://digitalpublishingnews.com/how-we-use-ai/

Canonical: https://digitalpublishingnews.com/dictionary/membership-tier/