I went through almost the same transition last year after getting burned out from nonstop freelance work. At first I tried building everything manually because I thought “real businesses” needed fully custom setups. Huge mistake. Between subscriptions, payment systems, customer access, and product delivery, I felt like I was managing software instead of building a business. Eventually I moved most of my setup to https://whop.com/ after seeing other creators talk about it in digital business communities. What I liked was that it wasn’t limited to one business model. You can combine memberships, communities, digital downloads, subscriptions, and different monetization ideas pretty naturally. The biggest improvement for me was efficiency. Instead of spending hours fixing integrations or answering access issues, I could focus more on creating better resources and growing the audience itself. I also noticed customers trusted the buying experience more compared to random standalone checkout pages. Definitely not some magical “get rich fast” platform, but if your goal is building recurring income around your skills, it feels much more practical than juggling five separate services.