Are you looking to build a membership site in WordPress? Want to know which is the best WordPress membership plugin?
Choosing the right membership plugin is crucial for your business because a better platform means more opportunities for growth.
In this article, we will compare the 5 best WordPress membership plugins to easily create paid membership websites.
What to Look for in a WordPress Membership Plugin?
There are plenty of WordPress membership plugins, but not all of them have specific features that you may need for creating your membership site.
Some of them are good for selling subscriptions on a single level, while others offer more diverse membership levels and subscription management features.
Some plugins offer a drip content feature that allows you to slowly release new content to a user. While others are restricted to only offering hidden content.
You will also need to figure out which payment gateways you will use. Do you want to accept credit cards only, PayPal, or both? Your membership plugin should have support for your preferred payment gateways, either built-in or through an addon.
Having said that, let’s see what you will need to start a WordPress membership site.
Video Tutorial
If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.
What Do You Need to Run a WordPress Membership Site?
Membership websites are resource intensive, and choosing the wrong host can be detrimental to your overall performance. That’s why the first thing you need to do is choose the best WordPress hosting that you can afford.
If you’re on a budget, then you can start with Bluehost. Their Business Pro plan comes with an SSL Certificate which you need to securely collect payments, dedicated IP, and a dedicated support line.
If budget is not an issue, and you want the best performance, then we recommend using a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine.
If you don’t already have one, then you will need to choose a domain name for your website. Here is our guide on how to pick the right domain name for your membership site.
Lastly, you will need to choose essential business plugins such as OptinMonster, which helps you capture leads and boost subscriptions.
Now that we have covered what you need to start a membership site in WordPress, let’s take a look at our top WordPress membership plugins.
1. MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the most popular WordPress membership plugins. It is also the easiest to use and the most robust when it comes to features.
Pros of MemberPress WordPress Membership Plugin
Easy to Set Up – MemberPress makes it simple to set up a membership website with WordPress. It can automatically set up pricing, login, account, and thank you pages for your users. Adding membership plans is also very straightforward.
No Limitations – MemberPress allows you to create unlimited membership levels. You can set the price and decide what premium content is included for each level.
Content Access Control – MemberPress comes with powerful access control, which allows you to restrict access to any content, including posts, pages, custom post types, categories, tags, files, and more.
Content Dripping – Content dripping allows you to show restricted content to members after a certain time. This is a very useful feature for selling online courses or learning materials.
Sell Courses – MemberPress lets you easily create and sell online courses. It offers an interactive learning experience for users that focuses on course completion rates.
Integrations – MemberPress integrates with AWeber, MailChimp, GetResponse, and MadMimi email services. It also integrates with Amazon Web Services, Blubrry for podcast hosting, and BuddyPress for building an online community.
Payment Gateways – MemberPress comes with built-in support for PayPal and Stripe payment gateways. The developer plan also adds Authorize.net support.
Other powerful features include a built-in membership management dashboard, customizable coupon codes, email notifications, frontend pricing and user registration forms, custom widgets and shortcodes, Rest API for developers, and more.
Cons of Using MemberPress Pro
Limited Payment Options – MemberPress only supports the three most popular payment gateways. This would be a deal breaker for site owners who live in countries not supported by these payment gateways.
Limited Integrations – While the plugin has enough support for popular services to run a membership site efficiently, it still lacks integrations with some other popular services. The plugin is easily extensible, and you can pay someone to integrate a third-party service you would like to use.
Pricing: The Basic plan starts from $179.50/year, and the Pro plan starts at $299.50/year.
We think MemberPress is the easiest WordPress membership plugin for beginners. It is quick to set up with tons of powerful options.
2. Thrive Apprentice
Thrive Apprentice is a popular all-in-one membership and online course builder plugin for WordPress. It comes with advanced features and easy access control settings.
Pros of Using Thrive Apprentice
Easy to Use – Thrive Apprentice has a school setup wizard that will guide you through the process of setting up the plugin. This makes creating an online course membership website quick and easy.
Member Management Dashboard – In the built-in membership management dashboard, you can easily grant or revoke access to courses, content, or membership products for specific subscribers.
Sell Online Courses – Thrive Apprentice allows you to easily create, sell, and manage online courses. It comes with 55+ course templates, a drag and drop course builder, customizable certificates, and more.
Content Dripping – It has powerful content dripping features that let you unlock content at consistent intervals for students. You can also create multiple drip schedules for the same content.
Conditional Display – You can show personalized content for different users to boost engagement and sales. For example, you can display a different course overview or login form for visitors and members.
Detailed Reporting – You can learn valuable insights, like where students are dropping off in your course, with Thrive Apprentice’s advanced reporting engine.
Cons of Using Thrive Apprentice
No Built-in Payment Support – To accept payments online with Thrive Apprentice, you need to connect it with a checkout plugin like WooCommerce.
Limited Integrations – While the plugin integrates with many popular apps, it still lacks some integrations with other popular tools and WordPress plugins.
Pricing: Thrive Apprentice starts at $147/year. You can also get access to Thrive’s entire suite of plugins, which includes Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Architect, and more, starting from $299/year.
Thrive Apprentice is a powerful and easy-to-use membership plugin. It comes with all of the features you need to protect and sell access to any type of digital content, including online courses.
3. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is one of the top eCommerce plugins for selling digital products. It’s easy to use and gives you the ability to accept recurring payments.
Pros of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Sell Digital Products – You can use Easy Digital Downloads to sell any type of digital product in WordPress, including eBooks, PDFs, audio files, videos, and more.
Built-in Shopping Cart – It comes with a built-in shopping cart system that allows your customers to purchase multiple downloads at once. Plus, you can create discount codes to increase conversions.
Accept Recurring Payments – You can accept one-time payments or easily set up automatic recurring payments on any product, including daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually.
Unlimited File Downloads – You can allow customers to download their purchased files endlessly, or you can restrict file downloads by time and/or attempt.
Payment Methods – With Easy Digital Downloads, you can accept credit card payments from Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other popular payment gateways like Braintree, with no additional monthly fees.
Addons – A variety of addons are available to extend your site’s functionality. There are extensions like Purchase Rewards, Wish Lists, Multi Currency, Conditional Emails, and more.
Cons of Using Easy Digital Downloads
Fewer Membership Features – You can sell ‘members-only’ digital products with this plugin, but you can’t hide your WordPress posts and pages from non-members.
Limited Integrations – While Easy Digital Downloads connects with some popular tools like AffiliateWP to create an affiliate program for your products, it lacks integrations with other popular services.
Pricing: The Personal plan starts at $99.50/year for a single site license and 1 year of support and updates.
Easy Digital Downloads is the best plugin for creating a membership site that sells digital products. It comes with a built-in shopping cart system, recurring payments, and a library of addons to grow your business.
Related: Here’s how to sell digital downloads on WordPress with Easy Digital Downloads.
4. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is another powerful, flexible, and scalable membership plugin for WordPress. It has many advanced features for protecting your content, selling products, creating courses, and maximizing revenue.
Pros of Using MemberMouse
Dynamic Content Protection – You can use MemberMouse SmartTags to display personalized content based on member attributes, no coding required. This gives you complete control over how you protect and display content on your site.
Advanced Reporting Suite – Easily keep track of important business metrics like lifetime customer value, retention and churn rates, member engagement, and more.
1-Click Purchase Links – You can create upsells and cross-sells that your members can purchase in 1-click, without having to re-enter their credit card information.
Free & Paid Memberships – You can offer both free and paid memberships, which is a great marketing strategy to attract new users to your membership site.
Overdue Payment Handling – MemberMouse will automatically handle overdue payments for you, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on revenue.
Built-in Push Notifications – You can easily create and send push notifications to members or specific WordPress user roles based on actions like new member added, membership cancelled, payment received, and more.
Cons of Using MemberMouse
Fewer Design Options – MemberMouse is dependent on WordPress and the theme you have installed, which can limit design options.
Limited Integrations – While MemberMouse seamlessly integrates with many popular payment gateways and email service providers, it offers fewer integrations compared to other membership plugins.
Pricing: The Basic Plan starts at $199.50/year, the Plus Plan starts at $299.50/year, and the Pro Plan starts at $399.50/year.
MemberMouse is a powerful membership plugin for businesses that are serious about growth. Once you get it set up, it’s capable of powering even the biggest membership sites around.
5. WishList Member
WishList Member is another flexible WordPress member subscriptions plugin. It comes with powerful features to protect members-only content and it offers tons of integrations.
Pros of Using WishList Member
Unlimited Membership Levels – You can create as many membership levels as you want. You can offer free memberships, premium memberships, or pay per post content.
One-Click Content Protection – When you create pages or posts, you can click the ‘Protect’ button right in the WordPress editor to quickly set your content to members-only.
Drip, Schedule, and Archive – You can drip content to new members and schedule posts to go live. You can also archive content to encourage members to maintain their subscriptions.
Sneak Peaks – It allows you to show ‘sneak peak’ snippets of your content to non-members and invite them to sign up to see what they’re missing.
Built-in Course Features – WishList Member has a built-in course builder called CourseCure. It lets you easily build lessons, quizzes, and certificates.
Payment Gateways – You can accept payments from over 20 of the most popular payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce, 2CheckOut, Authorize.net, and more.
Cons of Using WishList Member
Fewer Integrations – While WishList Member integrates with many popular payment services, it offers fewer integrations with other marketing tools.
Overwhelming Amount of Options – Beginners may be overwhelmed by the amount of membership features and options that WishList Member offers.
Pricing: Starting from $149.50/year for a single site license. This includes unlimited members, membership levels, and courses with CourseCure.
WishList Member is a powerful plugin for creating members-only posts, pages, and files in WordPress. It offers many advanced features that you can enable when you’re ready to take your membership site to the next level.
Bonus: LearnDash
LearnDash is a super flexible and extremely easy-to-use WordPress LMS plugin. It comes with advanced membership modules and tons of integrations.
Pros of Using LearnDash
Easy to Setup – LearnDash is quite easy to set up and adding content to it is much simpler. It also comes with advanced tools to easily organize your membership content into levels, groups, and more.
Easy Content Restrictions – LearnDash allows you to easily hide any content and restrict it to different membership groups.
Sell Courses – It allows you to easily create and sell online courses. It has advanced modules that allow you to better manage learning material than other WordPress membership plugins.
Drip Content – It comes with a powerful drip content feature allowing you to roll out content to users at regular intervals or upon completion of levels.
Built-in Community Features – It comes with tools to create highly engaging membership sites with quizzes, user badges, course-specific forums, certificates, user profiles, and more.
Integrations & Payments – LearnDash offers an amazing set of integrations and payment gateways. You can even connect it to MemberPress, WooCommerce, bbPress, Slack, and more.
Cons of Using LearnDash
Lacks Some Membership Features – If you are trying to build a membership website without selling courses, then some of LearnDash’s features may not be useful to you.
Pricing: Starting from $199 for a single site license with 1 year of support and updates.
LearnDash is the perfect solution if you want to sell online courses on a paid membership website. Its extensive set of addons and integrations allows you to build a highly-engaging platform. It’s also WordPress multisite compatible.
Bonus: Teachable
Teachable is an all-inclusive online course builder. It packs a membership website, LMS (learning management system), discussion forum, email marketing, and analytics, all under one dashboard.
Pros of Using Teachable
Ease of Use – Teachable is easy to set up and does not require any technical skills at all. Creating membership content is a breeze and includes built-in tools to quickly create and upload videos, text, PDFs, and more.
Drip Content – It includes a flexible drip content feature, which allows you to roll out content based on a user’s progress or subscription level.
Built-in Engagement Features – It offers discussion forums, quizzes, contact forms, certificates, and other features to boost user engagement and build powerful online communities.
Cons of Using Teachable
Not a WordPress Plugin – Teachable is not available as a WordPress plugin. Instead, you can integrate it into your WordPress site by adding links or a sub-domain.
More Expensive – Teachable includes everything, which makes it more expensive than other WordPress membership plugins.
Pricing: Basic plan starts at $39/month, and the Pro plan starts at $119/month.
Conclusion
We believe that MemberPress is the best option for a WordPress membership plugin. It has all the features that you would need to create a membership site and sell online courses, along with great documentation and support.
If you want a MemberPress alternative, then Thrive Apprentice is a great option. It’s a powerful and easy-to-use membership and online course builder plugin.
If you want to sell digital products on your membership website, then we recommend using Easy Digital Downloads. It comes with powerful features to create and sell digital downloads.
WordPress Membership Plugin FAQs
Having helped over 400,000+ WordPress users start their websites, we’ve answered a ton of questions over the years. Below are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about membership plugins.
What is the best membership plugin?
Our top 3 choices for the best membership plugin are:
- MemberPress – Best membership plugin (overall).
- Thrive Apprentice – Best membership plugin for selling online courses.
- Easy Digital Downloads – Best membership plugin for selling digital products.
No, this question is not a joke. We seriously get this question even after referring people to this guide.
What is the best free membership plugin for WordPress?
While there are free membership plugins available, such as Paid Memberships Pro and WP-Members, they often come with limited features and additional transaction fees.
But, with a premium membership plugin like MemberPress, you get all of the features you need to build a successful membership site. Plus, there are no hidden fees.
MemberPress also offers a 14-day free trial period so that you can test it out first.
How do I create a successful membership site?
Simply follow this tutorial on how to create a membership site with MemberPress for step by step instructions.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress membership plugin for your site. You may also want to learn how to track visitors to your WordPress website, or see our picks of the best WordPress page builders.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Disclaimer: We could have included many other membership plugins in this list, like Restrict Content Pro, SureMembers, S2Member, aMember PRO, WooCommerce Memberships, Ultimate Member, and so on. But, we decided only to include the very best membership plugins to help you avoid choice paralysis.
Syed Balkhi says
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Marc says
I’m looking for a membership plugin that will allow paid members to post articles.
WPBeginner Support says
It would depend on how you want that process to go, you can see more on allowing users to post on your site in our article below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-allow-users-to-submit-posts-to-your-wordpress-site/
Admin
ASHIKUR RAHMAN says
which plugin will allow a site visitor/user to watch video, if they have come from a specific website. while for direct users video will be locked. for unlock users will needs to visit that site/redirect to that site?
WPBeginner Support says
You would need to check with the support for the individual plugins for if they have that specific feature.
Admin
Jared says
Thanks for the article. Do you know which membership plugins would let me give an education discount? In other words, would let me give a discount to anyone with a “.edu” email address?
WPBeginner Support says
For conditional logic on the cost you would need to check with the support for the plugins as unless we hear otherwise they all work using coupon codes for offering discounts.
Admin
Majidul Hossain says
Thanks for this awesome and valuable content. Is there any guide for beginners for improving plugin settings and optimizing?
WPBeginner Support says
It would depend on the specific plugin and what settings you are looking to optimize. For most plugins, you can normally check with the documentation for the recommended improvements as a starting point.
Admin
Muhammad Said says
A great comparison! Thanks a lot.
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you and you’re welcome
Admin
Doug M says
Awesome info…thank you! You just saved me a bunch of tedious searching. PS-there’s a tiny typo. The first orange words from the top says:
“What to Look in a WordPress Membership Plugin?”
I think it’s supposed to be “What to look FOR…”
Just thought you’d wanna know. Thanks again!!
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide could be helpful and thank you for letting us know about the typo
Admin
Em says
Thank you for this article! I have a question for you guys, do you know of any membership plugins that allows the subscriber to choose how much they want to pay for their memberships as opposed to having set prices for how much their membership will cost?
WPBeginner Support says
We do not have a recommendation for that at the moment sadly.
Admin
John says
Can Restrict Content Pro prevent non-vip user to download file if they have a link? i want upload files into sub domain and it’s important for me to prevent non-vip user / non-logged in vip user to download file.
WPBeginner Support says
You would want to reach out to the plugin’s support and they would be able to let you know their current capacity and methods for protecting downloads
Admin
Adam says
One thing we want to do is offer the individual lectures for people to buy as a ‘once-off’ instead of paying a monthly sub. e.g. they only want 1 out of the 9 lectures, they pay us a one-time fee for access to this specific lecture page.
WPBeginner Support says
For what you’re wanting, you would want to take a look at LMS plugins rather than membership plugins, we have a few we recommend here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/best-wordpress-lms-plugins-compared/
Admin
Rami Efal says
Thank you for this – do any of these come with mobile experience, or would users use the regular desktop wp version of the website (or mobile one) with the added privileges – OR does any of these plug-in offer a specialized app experience? Many thanks !
WPBeginner Support says
Unless I hear otherwise, these options should have similar tools to their desktop view when viewing mobile
Admin
Alice says
Thanks for your great list. Do you know any membership plugins that can help password protect parts of the content?
WPBeginner Support says
If you mean a content drip, most if not all of these plugins should have that option available. If you check with the plugin’s support directly with what you’re wanting they should be able to let you know if they support that
Admin
Tanya says
Hi, I was just looking through this an I am very new to all this, I have a WordPress site with the divi builder and am looking to set up online courses and an online school that enables people to purchase a course and do payment instalments. Its important for me to be able to do it mostly myself as well as to customize the courses with photos and videos. do you recommend any one for me? just starting out so also needs to be affordable and sustainable long term to expand.
I appreciate and tips you have thanks!
WPBeginner Support says
For selling courses you may want to take a look into LMS plugins instead, we have an article listing some here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/best-wordpress-lms-plugins-compared/
Admin
UQ says
Question for you, will my recurring clients get an invoice with Membership Press?
WPBeginner Support says
You would want to check with the plugin’s support for what types of invoicing they have available
Admin
Shannon says
s2Member seems to have been abandoned by the developers. No update in a year and radio silence
WPBeginner Support says
S2member’s support is on their specific site’s forums at the moment may be why it looks that way but the plugin should still be active.
Admin
Ashleigh Sartori says
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WPBeginner Support says
Thank you, glad you find our content helpful
Admin
Bradley Craine says
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And obviously, thanks for your sweat!
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you, glad you like our content
Admin
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WPBeginner Support says
Thank you, glad you find our content helpful
Admin
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WPBeginner Support says
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Admin
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WPBeginner Support says
Glad you found our content helpful
Admin
Tamara Polson says
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting
my own weblog and was curious what all is needed to get set up?
I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a
pretty penny? I’m not very web smart so I’m not 100% certain. Any suggestions or advice would be
greatly appreciated. Kudos
WPBeginner Support says
For getting started with a blog, you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/
Admin
S.kamal says
Buddy press not in the list why???
WPBeginner Support says
BuddyPress is not a Membership plugin, you may want to take a look at our article where we cover BuddyPress here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-turn-your-wordpress-site-into-a-social-network/
Admin
John says
Hello,
IS THERE a plugin that will allow a guest to subscribe for post changes?
Lets say i publish a post with a coupon in it, the guest subscribe to the post and when the post is updated with a new coupon the guest user will receive an email notification.
WPBeginner Support says
While we do not have a recommended plugin for that specific usage, you could create a newsletter informing your users when you update a deal on your site.
Admin
Sherwin says
Hi, does the membership plugins mentioned support large files video and documents upload? Does it support file and video download options for members as well?
thanks for your response.
God bless
WPBeginner Support says
The plugins should be able to handle files on your site, for specifically large files that would depend on how you have your site and hosting set up.
Admin
Muhammad Arslan says
I need a plugin to create a registration process
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Muhammad Arslan,
Please see our guide on how to create a custom user registration form in WordPress.
Admin
McLovin says
WP-member is FREEE.
mIGHT Be wORtH cHECkinG OuT
Jon says
I am running the latest version of WordPress and have just purchased LearnDash and Divi 3.1.
I want to have affiliates selling my courses (both subscription and one-time purchases) and was told by the LearnDash team I would need to use WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads to make that happen. I want to use AffiliateWP (which is compatible with both Woo and EDD). But when I asked about how the subscriptions happened, they said that I would need to get the membership and subscription plugins for Woo, or a membership system like Restrict Content Pro.
I do not understand this as I thought LearnDash was the membership system for my courses. As I have already spoken to them and get why I need the shopping cart to add the affiliate function. Can you tell me why I need an additional, separate Membership system?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Jon,
LearnDash allows you to manage classes, courses, and students. You can sell courses with LearnDash and even add recurring payments. When setting price for your course you can select payment type (“Buy Now” or “Recurring”). After that you can select the billing cycle.
To manage your affiliates you will need an Affiliate management tool.
Admin
Frank Crosby says
I am having trouble integrating restrict comment pro membership subscriptions with Themify ultra. As a result, I am unable to test my stripe payment(s). The restrict content page says this is often a page builder error. I don’t want to revert to HTML (cut and paste). Any suggestions?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Frank,
Try contacting plugin and theme support and see if they have a better solution or workaround.
Admin
lux says
I am looking for a plugin that lets me limit the amount of pages a user can read daily before he has to sign up (and pay).
Any idea where I could find such plugin?
Jeremiah Acquah says
Please I need plugins that will allow me to sell pages to my members for blog. Meaning they can write articles that will show online.
Thanks
Tom says
Thanks for the nice article.
I’d like to see some free alternatives. Which is the best free membership plugin for building a paid membership website with some nice profile page?
Nathan says
Hi Tom, You can use Ultimate member and paid membership pro combo. It is looks very professional and with a very secure and nice login page and registration page as well. I have it on website and it work in wonders.
Tom says
Thank you Nathan!
John says
Ultimate member is a horrible plugin riddled with bugs along with very poor support. STAY AWAY from them. Once you purchase, you’re locked in and they will not refund your money no matter how many issues you have with this crappy plugin.
Gina says
Agreed. We’ve been with them for two years on their paid plan. When I asked how to transfer members to a new site (a staging site), I was told to basically “Google it.”
We’re paying for support — just wanted to throw that in there again. Oh, and it was the founder who provides support and gave me that answer.
Every time we’ve needed support from Ultimate Member, it’s nearly brought me to tears of frustration. So hard to customize, so full of problems, so not intuitive, so lacking in support. Stay away.
James says
Hello WPBeginner ! Thanks for your article.
I’m thinking of migrating my existing membership website – it would need to have individual member profiles, photo albums, a site timeline, forums, and a searchable directory, as well as a few other general pages to insert HTML and links.
Can you recommend any specific Plugin(s) that can achieve this for me ?
Thanks in advance.
John says
Hey Guys,
I’m a beginner looking for a membership site where I can divide content along lines of gender and also offer the members a chance to submit their own content but to their own area only – in the form of a journal and notes, for example. Is this possible.
Thanks in advance,
John
Barry says
I need a member area where I upload client specific invoices, estimates, drawings, tracking numbers and other information for only that client. Is that possible with any of these. I want to upload them myself and not put from something platform.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Barry,
These are membership plugins which allow you to give users access to community/paid features of a website.
Admin
Jeremiah Acquah says
Please am from Ghana which membership plugin and payment option is good for me
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Jeremiah,
For that you will need to find out which payment providers are available in your country, and then see if the membership plugin has an addon that supports any of those payment providers.
Lee says
I haven’t done it but I would go about doing this by creating a page on your site just for your client, and have that page access blocked with a username and password wall that you have for your client. Unless you have many such clients, in which case I don’t know I guess you’d need a more complicated solution.
Juana says
Hi, thanks for the great post, it was very helpful to understand some basic things for me.
But I´m still a little bit confused about how to solve my need. Maybe you can help me, and I’ll be very grateful.
I’m working on a WP site, to sell accountant services. I want customers to pay every month, lets say, 10 bucks. So what I need is to link Woocommerce (to upload my services/products), and a complete membership plugin to let them update their profile, check their payment status, edit personal information, etc. And, last, if this is possible, to link all that information to a CRM like Zoho or similar.
Do you think is that possible?
Any advices will be very welcome!
Thank you a lot
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Juana,
Yes it is possible and you have basically described how you would do it
Admin
Vlad says
Good article!
Im looking for solution to control access to pages,
Interested in function to let users have multiple subscriptions for accessing multiple courses, and to have an option to control access to pages by groups and also per user in case someone haven’t done homework.
Any of listed plugin with this functions? Or maybe it would be possible by combining some of them.
Help please.
Jim says
Why are plugins for WordPress so overpriced?? How are bloggers and NPOs able to get decent functionality to run their site when plugins cost so much?
Pepita says
Why is it overpriced? If you would have to build the functionality yourself it wouid cost so much time.
You want to have membership software so you can produce something once and sell it to members. That is what these plugin developers do as well….
Ronny Oehm says
Many thanks for the presentation of the Membership plugins!
I’m looking for a membership plugin where a paid membership level can provide different numbers of uploads. It should be a kind of photo community. The first level of membership should have one upload per week, the second should get 15 uploads per week, and so on. Unfortunately, I have not found a plugin which offers quota limits, only those with space limits. I do not know if one of your featured Membership plugins will support this.
Mike says
This is very helpful. Do you have insight on how these member plugins stack up in terms of where the member/subscriber pages live on my wordpress site? In other words, there’s a question of if the subscriber area is on a subdomain or a subdirectory. The former will allow me to have a separate search index and set of categories/tags so that subscribers can find things easier. That’s my preference, but I’m not sure if any of the plugins in this article support that, or if they work mostly with subdirectories instead. And in the case of a member subdirectory, can the site search index be partitioned to only apply to that subdirectory? Thanks for your time!
Hafiz Mateen Afzal says
I want to give my client life time access but before they pay for membership they have a chance to take a three days trial.
Which plugin is best for me ?
a) Lifetime access after trial
b) Automatically take money and automatically upgrade level after trial period
Brian Booth says
Hopefully someone can help. I have a website where I give cashback for offers that my members fill out. I need a membership plugin to keep a track of my members. I use getresponse so I would like the plugin to integrate with them. Also so my members can login and check their balance. That is really all I need from the plugin.
Pam Terry says
Your blog date says January 2 2018, but the comments date back to 2016. As I write this reply, January 27, 2018, the pricing for Paid Memberships Pro that you state does not seem to be accurate. I wish it were. I guess they went up since you wrote your blog (2016?), but their website says that their PMPro Plus license is $297 a year. They have a free version which might be the PMPro. Then there is another version, Unlimited, which is $597. I appreciate the comparisons – thank you for this information.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Pam,
Thanks for pointing this out. We have updated the article. Their basic free plan now includes some addons and limited features and their paid plans now start from $297 / year.
Admin
Dimas says
Hi,
I have a plan to make directory. in the directory itself is just list of people who specialize in graphic design (for example). there’s send message button over there, which is visitor can interaction. send message itself only on the website. can’t go outside like Gmail, or whatever. any suggestion for this?
Sylvie Bertrand says
Hi, new to wordpress… I want to sell courses online. I want to sell packages that will contain a few video on a certain topic. I want the clients who paid for them to be able to come back at will, but I don’t want them to be able to share those video. if I create videos using unpublish feature on YouTube , is it possible to restrict the sharing of those video with LeanDash? If not, do you know what plugin I could use?
Thank you
Sylvie
Fede says
S2member Pro also has Clickbank integrated as payment gateway. great post. It seems not much membership plugins works with clickbank.
Vishal Arora says
Which of these is the best option if it is critical that my members are able to make selections in multiple categories? Also, since I am looking for something very specific, I know I will need to add extra code to add some features. Which of these is most flexible when it comes to adding features? Thanks.
Storm Grayson says
Struggling to find the right member plugin. Am trying memberpress but it wont allow my members to sign in and membership pro is too complicated. Restrict content pro sounds OK but nervous to try another plugin as it doesn’t help my popular site. I don’t want to do downloads either. Any suggestions.
Yancey Thomas jr says
Another review site states this about Restrict Content Pro, “Limitations: The plugin lacks content dripping feature which is surely a fundamental feature for a membership site.”
That’s not mentioned here.
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Yancey,
Restrict Content Pro introduced content drip feature in mid 2016.
Admin
Sara Joe says
This is informative.. But I can’t still find what I actually want.
Ed says
Am looking to be able to manage contact information in a not for profit that has 3800 members. Would want them to be able to login and update their own information.
Also would want members to be able to login and be able to search (access) normally restricted information.
Any thoughts?? You all are the go to place for getting objective information!!
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Ed,
All the above listed plugins can be used to do that with a little bit of setup. You may also want to take a look at our step by step guide on how to create a membership website.
Admin
Michael Taylor says
Thank you for such a comprehensive and informative review of the membership plugins. Your recommendations have definitely helped me make a decision.