No black boxes.
Most membership platforms hope you never ask how they work. We would rather show you. Here is the reasoning behind the decisions that make Sembr what it is, including the trade-offs we made and the things we have not built yet.
Your data is yours. Always.
You can export everything (members, payments, events, the whole record) as JSON, CSV, or SQL, any time, without asking us. If you ever leave, you leave with all of it. There is no export fee, no "contact sales to get your data," no waiting period.
The trade-off we accepted: building real export for every object is more work than a token "download CSV" button, and it makes leaving easy. We think a platform you can walk away from is a platform worth staying with.
We are independent, on purpose.
Sembr is built and owned by Kingsbury Creative, a founder-led Canadian company. No venture capital. No private equity.
That matters more than it sounds. Most of the legacy platforms you are comparing us against were bought by holding companies whose job is to raise prices and trim support once you are locked in. We cannot be told to do that, because there is no one above us telling us to.
The trade-off: we grow slower than a venture-funded competitor, and we will not be the loudest name in the category. We are fine with that.
Why our pricing is what it is.
We charge what it costs us, not what we can extract. Most platforms price by member count because it scales their revenue. We price by organization because that matches the value we deliver. We still have to cover infrastructure, and infrastructure scales with activity, not contracts.
Essential ($129/mo annual, $169/mo monthly) covers up to 500 members, where most membership organizations sit. At this scale our cost is dominated by support and the database, both fixed.
Growth ($249/mo annual, $299/mo monthly) covers up to 2,500 members. Email, smart-automation usage, and storage scale here. Roughly 98% of mid-sized organizations fit this tier without ever needing more.
Enterprise (custom) is for organizations above 2,500 members or with custom integration, SSO, or compliance needs. We size each one to its actual footprint, not a list price.
If a Growth org grows past 2,500, you can add +500 members for $25/mo (or $250 annual). That price is built from the actual variable cost at that scale:
| Cost | Per +500 members |
|---|---|
| Email (Resend, ~12 sends/member/year) | ~$5/mo |
| Smart automation (typical usage) | ~$3-7/mo |
| Database + backups | <$1/mo |
| Support burden | ~$2-3/mo |
| Pass-through total | ~$12-15/mo |
| What we charge | $25/mo |
The markup covers support response time, the occasional usage spike, and a small operating reserve. We do not profit from your growth. We cover what hosting it costs us.
We do not say "unlimited." Every platform that promises unlimited eventually throttles you, rate-limits you, or routes you to a sales team when costs run away. Pricing it honestly up front is the better trade. And if your member count drops in a renewal year, you can downgrade in one click and we refund the difference. No mystery, no surprises.
How we use AI.
Sembr's AI is grounded in your own data, not a chatbot guessing. When it says "7 members lapse in the next two weeks," that number comes from your renewal dates, and it shows you where it came from. It drafts the reminder for you; it does not invent the fact.
It is always optional. Every part of Sembr works with AI switched off. And your data is never used to train anyone's model.
The trade-off: grounded AI is harder to build than a generic "write something" button, and it will sometimes tell you "there is not enough data to answer that" instead of bluffing. We prefer honest silence to confident nonsense.
Where your data lives, and what we will not do.
Ahead of launch, we are migrating your data to a Canadian region. Payments run through Stripe, so we never store full card numbers. We publish every third party that touches your data on our subprocessors page, and we keep it current.
We do not sell your data. We do not run ads against it. We do not use dark patterns, hide the cancel button, or add surprise fees. The full detail is in our privacy policy and security pages, written to be read, not to be survived.
What we have not built yet.
Honesty cuts both ways. We are still building. Some integrations (accounting, calendar sync) and the deeper engagement analytics are on the roadmap, not live today. We would rather tell you what is coming than imply everything already exists. If something you need is not here yet, ask where it sits on the list and we will tell you straight.
Still have a question?
If something here does not add up, email us. A person answers.