Hi! I work with shipping easy right now when I’m not working off my etsy store! I know people who use shipping easy as well as ship station, IDEALLY in some hypothetical future the shipping element would just be integrated into the patreon UI the same way say etsy does, or storenvy even. I know that’s a big ask though, but if I’m going to dream, I’m going to dream big 
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Dream big–love it!
Thanks for the info!
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I’ve gotten Feedback for responses other than “Some other reason” so the capability exists. But it’s clearly not a required field and IMHO it should be, at least for those two responses I listed (and probably also for “Some other reason” as well).
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Interesting to hear. Since we’ve never seen feedback for other responses, I didn’t realize it was a possibility.
I definitely agree that it would be helpful to get more info for these responses, but I can see that requiring people to fill out those fields might just deter them from taking the survey at all. Does anyone know what the wording of these surveys is? (Like what the wording is for the optional feedback field.)
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Thanks for asking. My biggest pain points generally have to do with the website.
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Searchability & storage! The basic website design is way lacking in user friendly searching. The tagging system just plain does not work. 90% of my patron emails have to do with not being able to find content they are paying to get. It is a huge waste of time every month. I have been with Patreon for 2 years now and have seen literally no meaningful improvements in this area. Having a search option is just the most basic of needs. Why this is still not a priority makes no sense to me. Why should my patrons have to go offsite to get content? I have had to create shared folders on Google drive to give patrons access to my Patreon content but they can’t be secured like on Patreon. It is not a workable solution. Folders, galleries and other sharing and searching capabilities are a necessity for creators.
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Better patron reporting interface is needed. The patron manager systems are clunky and very difficult to use. I am glad improvements have been made in this area but more has to be done. I should be able to pull up a patron and see ALL their history with me in one place, including address, messages, pledge history, any declines, changes or interruptions in pledges. Right now it is scattered and hard to understand what is actually going on. Patreon manager only shows the last 3 payments. I want to offer long time patrons special rewards but I have no idea how long they have actually been a patron. It tells when they started and the total they have paid but that doesn’t include a full history of all their payments, changes and pledges. FULL payment and pledge history of every patron is just basic info that should be provided to creators.
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A recent HUGE problem I have come across is with your tiers rewards system. Creators are being encouraged to create special offer tiers and yet recently when I made a new tier I found out that I could not give new tiers access to old content! What? I am not sure what the reason is for this but the whole backbone of my Patreon system is based off of giving access to old and new content. I was told I would have to manually edit every one of my old Patreon posts (over 635) to be able to allow the new tier to view the posts. Here again, a storage system that included galleries or file folders that could be shared with tiers would solve this issue.
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Control over rewards levels, as a creator I should be able to have control over what rewards I want to give to patrons. If I do a special promotion I would like to be able to give limited upgrades on pledge levels. Right now I can not do that. It also limits me from being able to give access to my Patreon content to my channel managers and moderators. I need to have the ability to create admin accounts to help me manage my Patreon account. You could protect the paying patrons by not allowing creators to give less access but we should be able to give more access if desired. Access to posts and content should be controlled by the creator.
Thanks for giving us the chance to voice our concerns and needs.
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Ever since (actually before, but in person AT) PatreCon, I’ve been begging for a landing page option for the Patreon widget. When I add it to my website or socials, it sends people to the tiers, not to the main landing page with the hello and such. That seems like a slap in the face - give me money before you even know anything about me - kinda thing. At PatreCon, I was assured this would be an easy fix, but … crickets. PS: I first reported this, with screenshots, in Sept 2018. It’s in the topics.
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I love the Patron manager except for one thing…
Trying to copy an address is always SO difficult. As soon as I open the patron’s drop down to view the address and copy, it closes the drop down! Often without copying the info. I need to copy the info to import / update the profiles of my patrons in my shipping software for their mail in rewards, and it makes the process so unnecessarily long and cumbersome.
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Various funding styles - loyalty/discount products (one month free, first month at 50% off, etc.) and/or a Kickstarter model (stuff actually gets made after X funding is reached). As someone who create a physical product, it would be great to actually have more flexibility in how I reach out to an acquire patrons. The special offers thing is great, but I still want to be able to offer a discount on the total price of a month (or multiple months).
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Shipping integration - ideally having Patreon get a deal with USPS would be fantastic. For all of us physical reward people, we need to work with either Shipstation / Stamps.com. It would be great if, like Etsy, we could get the discounted shipping rates if we’re sending stuff out.
These are the main two pain points for me! TBH, it was enough for me to start building my own membership site, but I’d love it to be able to do everything from one platform.
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Hi Heather! May I ask which shipping software you use? Just curious.
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Hi Rick! How do you currently keep track of rewards/who gets what? Based on tiers?
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Tracking benefits for “per-creation” creators like me. The “completed” benefits should reset to “due” with each billing cycle, or with each creation (or I should have those options). Currently all benefits are only available as “one-time” benefits so I have to manually reset them to “due.” Please add this to the list, thanks!
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Hi @kayla - I keep track based on tiers.
I have a lower tier that gets the short story PDF every month, and then a larger tier that gets the PDF and the enamel pin (which I export from that backer tier into Stamps.com for fulfillment).
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I would like a slideshow for Photos similar to tumblr or instagram. I spend so many hours creating sets of images for may patrons. This seems like something that others have requested also and why is this so hard for you to add?
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I don’t like the updated fonts they are to cheesy and comical looking. Why did you spend time changing the way things look instead of changing how it works?
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Cool! Thanks for sharing.
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This is a super common request! Photo galleries and the like are something we’ve heard creators want. We have shared this feedback in the past with the product team, but I don’t have a current update on where this is on the roadmap.
For more information about the redesign and why we did it, you can check this blog post. Ben, our head of design, wrote: “We also took this opportunity to improve the accessibility of Patreon - introducing a font and color palette that brings significantly improved legibility to our product.”
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stamps.com, I use the software version.
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Yeah that’s a really good point. I hate exit surveys even though 99.9% of them say ‘can’t afford it anymore’ or similar. It is daft that they can click the ‘wasn’t engaging’ one and then not have to explain why.
It would be easy to email that person who has left if we knew who it was since if many left in one day then its hard to know who’s who!
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Cool, thanks HeatherHitchman!
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Shipping integration would be amazing. I am looking into adding a merch level on Patreon but have not done it yet because of the headaches it would create for me.
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Hi Angela! I’d love to learn more about what specific shipping integration you’re looking for. I work on this specific thing outside of Patreon, but for Patreon creators. Which shipping company do you work with?
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