If you want to know how to setup a membership site with WordPress, then the plugins covered in this article will help you with your objective.
Not only are these plugins packed with features, but they are, for the most part, very easy to setup and use. The tools listed cover a range of budgets, from free to premium, and they are ideal for those just starting out, through to site owners looking for a high end professional solution.
In fact, if you need to add a members’ area to your website, and are using WordPress then you will be pleasantly surprised by some of the tools available to help you accomplish this.
WordPress Membership Plugins
Keep reading to discover the best membership plugins for WordPress and get your site up and running today.
1. MemberPress – Membership Plugin
This is a well-regarded professional membership plugin for WordPress. It’s not free but it should have all the features you need and more to setup a fully functional membership website.
Once installed, this plugin allows you to restrict access to all the content on your WordPress site including pages, posts, categories, tags and files you’ve uploaded. Some other top features of MemberPress include:
- Management of unlimited members
- Create unlimited access rules
- Offer unlimited pricing pages
- Sell an unlimited amount of digital products
- Accept payments with PayPal Express Checkout and Stripe
- Automatically grant and revoke access when members join or unsubscribe
- Content dripping with timed release of access
- Premium support
When it comes to pricing, there are three plans available:
- Basic – $129 – 1 site and basic features.
- Plus – $249 – up to 10 sites and some more advanced features.
- Pro – $369 – up to 30 sites and all features, including Affiliate Royale.
If you want a premium membership plugin that covers all the bases and gives maximum flexibility then MemberPress is a great choice.
Pros: This is a well-regarded option that is very easy to use. The support for digital products as well as managing a membership site makes this a versatile plugin.
Cons: The annual billing could add up to be expensive over time, but the option to renew and use the plugin unsupported is there.
2. Restrict Content Pro
This is another premium option, this time from Pippin’s Plugins. The admin user interface is well designed and it fits right into the appearance of the WordPress admin area, creating a seamless integration on the backend. Restrict Content Pro is very easy to use and there’s helpful documentation displayed throughout the settings pages to ensure you’re able to get started as quickly as possible.
This plugin is jam-packed with great features that give you complete control over how your content can be accessed. Restrict Content Pro is continually improving and regularly adds new features to the list.
Upon install, this plugin gives you the ability to restrict access to your content in a number of different ways. You can restrict access to individual posts based on membership level or use categories and tags to restrict access. Some other features you get with Restrict Content Pro include:
- Unlimited membership numbers
- Create unlimited subscription package levels
- Customer dashboard allows your customers to view and manage their account details
- Sell an unlimited number of digital products
- Accept payments with Stripe, Braintree, 2Checkout, PayPal Website Payments Pro, and PayPal Standard, and Express.
- Prorated upgrades and downgrades
- Content dripping, restrict access to past content, limit available quantity for products or membership levels, group membership options, and more.
- Premium support and updates
There are four pricing plans available: Personal, Plus, Professional, and Ultimate.
- Personal – $99/year and gives you access to the 13 free add-ons, email support, and the use of the plugin on one site.
- Plus – $149/year and gives you access to everything you get with the Personal plan, however, you can use the plugin on up to 5 sites.
- Professional – $249/year and adds access to 17 pro add-ons (plus future releases) for unlimited sites.
- Ultimate – a one-off fee of $499 for everything included in the Plus plan as well as lifetime updates, support, and future releases.
If you’re after a premium quality membership plugin with ever-increasing features and amazing flexibility then Restrict Content Pro is an excellent choice.
Pros: Restrict Content Pro is extremely versatile and gives you maximum control over access to your content. Drip it out, lock past content, set content to expire and go public after a certain time – all of this is possible with Restrict Content Pro.
Cons: Annual billing is less of an investment upfront, however,the cost of use will add up to more over time.
3. Paid Memberships Pro
This is a great option that will cost you nothing to get started with. Yes, this is a free membership plugin that you can begin using today in order to restrict access to the content on your WordPress site to selected users. There are also two premium options for this tool. The premium price plans will give you access support including documentation, premium content and members-only forums, but apart from that, it’s the same functionality.
As for the plug in itself, it’s got a great feature set making it a solid choice for anyone looking for a no-budget tool. Some of the standout features include:
- Unlimited Membership Levels
- Easy Payment Gateway Integration
- Flexible Pricing and Free Trial Periods for your members
- Accept recurring subscriptions
- Set access and membership levels for individual pages and posts
- Customise the notification email messages
- Edit or replace the default plugin pages for login etc.
- Offer discount codes
- Drip release content over time
- Expand the features with free extensions and add-ons
While Paid Memberships Pro is lacking the ability to drip content over time, out of the box, there is a free add-on that has been made for just this feature. The plugin has been released by the PMPro development team and is available from GitHub. Information about the other free extensions and add-ons can be found on the add-ons page.
Pros: The main draw of this plugin is that it is free to use on as many sites as you want, it also comes packed with features. The third party add-ons allow for easy integration with a range of other services you are probably already using.
Cons: Need to install additional plugins and add-ons to get access to some standard features, however they are free and easy to find.
4. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is a premium membership and eCommerce solution, which lets you create a membership site in minutes. The plugin is built with keeping non-techies in mind, and takes only 2 minutes to setup the site.
Easily restrict or protect your website content using MemberMouse built-in password feature. The MemberMouse plugin makes it easy to deliver your product and customize its delivery based on membership level, duration of membership, referring affiliate and more.
You can also showcase what content is available to your members and what will be release in the future through a content widget. The plugin provides a great features and such feature is SmartTags – it allows you to dynamically display content, member attributes, offers, upsells, downsells, and more using simple shortcodes. Put a decision tag on a confirmation page or thank you page and display relevant products after a purchase.
Other features include – customer management, self configuring checkout, share anywhere links, coupons, international currency, group functionality, sharing auto-lock, prorated upgrades, social media integration, protected upgrades, overdue payment handling, and much more.
7 payment gateaways are supported currently – PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Auth.net CIM, Braintree, ClickBank, Lime Light CRM, and Coinbase. You can also sell physical or digital goods, along with maintaining a membership site.
All this functionality comes at a hefty price tag, however. A starter package comes at $19.95 per month only allowing for up to 1,000 members. Up to 5,000 members — $39.95 per month. MemberMouse is a high-end and expensive plugin, but if you are starting a professional online and eCommerce business, this is the best membership option money can buy.
5. WooCommerce Memberships
WooCommerce was released in June of 2015 to much anticipation. While most of the time, these roundup posts are about listing the primary things that a plugin “can” do, when it comes to WC Memberships, there’s no doubt that the shorter list would be the things it “can’t do”. WooCommerce Memberships is absolutely loaded with features.
This plugin is all about one thing – control over your membership website. You’ll be able to create simple memberships that offer content in exchange for a fee or your can tie a membership to into the purchase of a specific product. You can also choose to drip content to members based upon categories, tags, specific post or pages and projects. The plugin can also be combined with WooCommerce Subscriptions to provide equal control over the content provided during free trials.
Additional features include the ability to create a purchasing club – visitors need to become a member before they can complete a purchase. Once they’ve signed up you can keep them coming back by offering loyalty discounts.
Billing control is better than many other plugins as well. When combined with subscriptions, members will have complete control over their own memberships. Including the ability to pause, upgrade, downgrade along with the other requested proration adjustment.
- Restrict either viewing of content or purchasing of products
- Offer unlimited membership levels
- Multiple membership are possible for one customer
- Access to a great selection of payment gateways
- Ability to integrate an affiliate program into your membership structure
- Full eCommerce features
- Premium support and updates for 12 months included
Pros: It’s WooCommerce. That means you’ll be able to take advantage other extensions that Woo offers including Subscriptions, Bookings, and Groups.
Cons: It’s not inexpensive and in order to maximize the functionality, you might need to purchase additional extensions which make it more expensive.
6. aMember Pro
This is a premium membership service that can be used on many online platforms including WordPress. It’s not an online service, but is a PHP script that you pay for access to, and then install on your own webhosting server. Non-technical users will be pleased to know that a free installation is included in the one-off fee and for WordPress users, there is a free plugin for easy integration with your site.
Some of the highlights from the feature list of aMember include:
- Unlimited membership levels and items
- Incremental content delivery for drip release
- Integrated with PayPal, ClickBank, 2Checkout and more
- Select fail-back payment processors
- Automated member signups and expirations
- Integrated modules including email newsletter, helpdesk and affiliate management
- Create coupon codes
This plugin certainly seems to have all the requisite features to manage a fully featured membership site. However, the user interface did feel quite dated, so it’s worth thinking about whether this option is the right choice for portraying your brand in the best possible way.
Pros: Available for a one-off fee, full access to source-code with ability to customise it to your needs, supports multiple payment options, comes with a few support videos for help with setup, integrates with other platforms such as vBulletin forums.
Cons: A comparatively expensive option, user interface not consistent with WordPress UI and appears dated.
7. Paid Member Subscriptions
This is a versatile membership plugin for WordPress that will help you set up a full-featured membership site. The basic plugin is free, but if you want to unlock features like content dripping you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans.
Install this plugin and you’ll be able to restrict access to your site content by post, page, tags, or categories. You can also trial the features on the demo site to get a feel for how the plugin works.
Some of Paid Member Subscriptions’ other features include:
- Management of unlimited members
- Navigation menu filter, members see only what their access level allows
- Accept payments with PayPal Pro, PayPal Express Checkout, and Stripe
- Globally restrict access to content based on post type, taxonomy, and terms
- Content dripping with timed release of access
- Discount codes for running promotions or rewarding your members for upgrading their membership level.
When it comes to pricing, there are three plans available: free, Hobbyist, and Pro. Both paid plans come with a year of updates and support, so to continue receiving them you’ll need to continue paying annually.
If you want a membership plugin that gives you great flexibility and the ability to drip content, then Paid Member Subscriptions is a great choice.
Pros: This is a full-featured plugin with a clear, user-friendly interface. You can get started with the free version of the plugin and upgrade once you know what features you need.
Cons: Annual payments add up and may end up being more expensive than simply purchasing the unlimited license outright.
8. MagicMembers
Update: We are not recommending MagicMembers anymore.
If you are looking for a solution that will enable you to deliver an online course, or need a way to drip feed content over time, instead of making all your premium content available to your members in one go, then the content dripping abilities of MagicMembers are top notch.
While some other plugins feature this ability, including MemberPress, MagicMembers continues to draw praise for doing it the best. However, that is not all this plugin does, other top features include:
- Multiple payment gateway compatibility
- Integration with email newsletters such as Aweber and MailChimp
- Payment subscription support including daily, weekly, monthly and more
- Download manager for restricting file access
- Sequential course delivery for content dripping
- Pay Per View for paid access to specific content such as videos
- Automated expiration email reminders
The list of features is outstanding and is well-worth checking out. This is a premium membership plugin for WordPress, so you will have to pay to get access to it, but hopefully the revenue generated by your membership course will cover the cost in no time. There are three price plans to choose from and each comes with detailed support to help you get up and running in no time at all.
The only downside with this plugin is that the control panel doesn’t use the standard WordPress interface. This means the settings have the feel of being tacked on to your WordPress dashboard rather than seamlessly integrated. While this isn’t a major issue, it can make using the plugin feel less intuitive than it should be and might be something to consider when deploying MembershipMagic for clients.
Overall though, if you want a feature packed plugin that excels at content dripping and sequential course delivery, as well as everything else associated with running a membership site, then MembershipMagic is a highly recommended option.
Pros: The strong content dripping and sequential content delivery make this plugin ideal for those looking for offer a premium or members only online course. Also supports multiple payment gateways for making it even easier for your customers to sign up.
Cons: The interface uses a custom design, rather than following the standard WordPress interface, which might be confusing for some users.
Get MagicMembers
9. OptimizePress 2 – WordPress Membership
We recently published a full OptimizePress 2 review, covering the best features and usability of this landing page builder for WordPress. However, it’s worth another mention here as it does allow you to enhance the membership functionality of your WordPress site.
OptimizePress 2 comes with a number of templates specifically for dealing with membership sites and is a great tool for those looking to optimise the signup pages of their site. The page builder makes it very easy to setup and customize the landing pages for your membership offering, and the membership portal aspect of the plugin works with a range of membership plugins. If you want to customize the sign up pages, login forms and membership lesson and module listings then OptimizePress, used in conjunction with a supported membership plugin equals a powerful combination.
Pros: Comes with a very large selection of templates. The page builder is also very easy to use, giving you access to an unlimited amount of designs. Ideal for any type of landing or registration page, not just membership sites.
Cons: Does not deliver membership management functionality to your site, and must be used in conjunction with a supported dedicated plugin.
10. Wishlist Member Plugin
Wishlist Member is a premium membership plugin that is renowned for being able to give you lots of control over how your content is restricted and made available, and to which members. This also means that there are lots of options to explore, which can sometimes be confusing for new users. However, lots of settings and expansive menu systems are often the price you pay for this level of control over your membership site and premium content.
Some of the features of this premium WordPress membership plugin include:
- Create unlimited membership levels
- Sequential content delivery and auto-upgrades of membership levels
- Easy ability to hide or restrict individual pieces of content from non-members
- Handles free, trial and paid memberships
- Integrates with PayPal and ClickBank
- Secure RSS feeds
- Subscription length control with auto-expire
- Free previews with protection after the ‘more’ tag
- Partial content display for protecting as little as one sentence within a post
The plugin also comes with a good selection of support material to help you get started such as video tutorials, support guides, one year of unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Wishlist Member is available for $197 for the single site license, or $297 for the multisite license.
Developers might want to give this one a miss though, as the plugin code has been encrypted. This means you can’t easily dive in and make any adjustments to the plugin to help it better fit your needs. Also, it’s worth pointing out that if you are an existing customer of Pressable (formerly ZippyKid), or plan to use their managed WordPress hosting service in the future, they do not allow use of the Wishlist Member plugin due to performance issues.
The Wishlist Member plugin can be integrated with your WooCommerce store using a premium extension and there are also a few other addons for the plugin available here.
This WordPress membership plugin does have everything you will probably ever need when setting up and managing a membership site or restricting access to content using registered user accounts.
Pros: Lots of control over how your membership site works, comes with a risk-free 30 day trial and integrates with PayPal and ClickBank.
Cons: Unable to view or edit the plugin code so making custom alterations is not an option, not supported by some managed hosting services.
>> WishList Member Plugin for WordPress Review and Tutorial
11. Cart66 Cloud
Cart66 Cloud allows you to do many things with a WordPress installation, including managing an eCommerce store which sells physical products or digital downloads. It also functions as a membership plugin for WordPress, allowing you to sell and restrict access to your site using subscription payments and recurring billing.
Some of the top membership features of the Cart66 Cloud plugin include:
- Sell membership access using the recurring billing engine
- Make content available on a drip basis
- Allows subscribers to manage their own billing information in the customer portal
- Supports over 50 payment processors
- Restrict access to pages, posts, sections of content or entire categories
- PCI compliant with no requirement for having your own SSL certificate
- Auto-membership expiration email reminders for members
There is also a 30-day no risk money back guarantee so you can take Cart66 for a test drive.
Pros: Also features eCommerce functionality for multipurpose sites, works with lots of payment processors, multiple pricing plans available, options including monthly or annual payments, attractive admin interface
Cons: Purchase requires monthly or annual recurring payment subscription which can soon add up over time,
12. Zippy Courses
With the global e-learning market predicted to reach $107 billion by the end of 2015, it only makes sense that we include a plugin whose niche is to provide membership based courses. If you’re in the process of creating a course that you’d like to sell, Zippy Courses might just fit the bill.
This plugin was built with one purpose in mind – to simplify the process of creating and delivering online courses to your students. It essentially removes all the headaches typically associated with online course delivery. You’ll be able to spend less time working with technology and more time creating content and helping students.
Zippy Courses features an easy to use drag n’ drop editor and flexible content scheduler. You be able to release your course all at once, or based upon a flexible and robust schedule. Not only does Zippy Courses allow you to create an unlimited number of courses, but it also keeps track of all your relevant analytics as well. This lets you create more of what working well and less of what doesn’t.
- Email integration for AWeber, MailChimp, Infusionsoft, and Ontraport
- Payment gateways include Stripe and PayPal
- Run multiple courses on one installation
- Works with almost any WordPress theme
- Create quizzes that are optional or mandatory
- Smart widgets control what visitor to your site will see
- Includes 12 months of support and updates
Zippy courses will even allow you to create course bundles so you can group together specific courses and offer unique pricing. And if you need to create tiered pricing within a single course, that’s possible too.
Pros: This plugin is easy to use and quick to get started. If online courses are your business, this plugin is just what your need.
Cons: If you need more robust membership features, this plugin might not work for you. Integrations are somewhat limited at this time (but improving).
Quick Membership Plugin Comparison Table
| Membership Plugin Comparison | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Dripping | Digital Downloads | Recurring Subscriptions | Price | |
| MemberPress | Y | Y | Y | $129* |
| Restrict Content Pro | Y | Y | Y | $99* |
| Paid Memberships Pro | Y | Y | Y | Free†, $297* (Pro) |
| MemberMouse | Y | Y | Y | $19.95/month |
| WooCommerce Memberships | Y | Y | Y | $149* |
| aMember Pro | Y | Y | Y | $179.95‡ |
| Paid Member Subscriptions | Y (Pro) | Y | Y | $69, $149 (Pro) |
| MagicMembers | Y | Y | Y | $97* |
| OptimizePress 2 | Y | Y | Y | $97* |
| Wishlist Member | Y | Y | Y | $197* |
| Cart66 Cloud | Y | Y | Y | $95 |
| Zippy Courses | Y | Y | N | $199* |
* one year of support and updates
† no support with free option
‡ six months of updates
Conclusion: The Best Membership Plugin for WordPress
With high quality free and premium options available, anyone can start offering restricted access content on their site to their members and subscribers. Whether you want to build a private community or a premium online course, you should be able to setup your site in a very short amount of time using one of these plugins.
While the above plugins only represents a small sample of the many membership tools out there for WordPress, they should be enough for most user’s needs. Unfortunately there is no one size fits all best WordPress membership plugin, as while the above are all well rounded products, they have their own strengths and weakness, not to mention price tags.
Before making a choice, it’s a good idea to be clear on exactly how you plan to manage your members area and what features you will need, such as content dripping, course delivery, recurring payments, ease of use, custom landing pages or pay per view access. Once you know your requirements, making a decision will be much easier.
I hope this article helped you find the right membership plugin for your website. You may also want to check out our post on best WordPress landing page plugins and sales page themes.
Have you setup a membership site and if so which plugin did you use?
Cart66 Cloud includes a pretty robust set of membership features including both the e-commerce of selling the membership (or subscription) on a recurring basis as well as the content restriction including the “drip” functionality you mentioned was lacking in some of the other solutions. You also get a built-in customer portal for your subscribers to manage their own billing information. Everything is built-in including the security so you don’t even have to worry about installing your own SSL cert. It’s a pretty comprehensive solution – would be cool to see it listed as another option to consider. http://cart66.com
Thanks Lee. I will take a look at Cart66 as not used it before.
One that we’ve been using for awhile is aMember. It’s been pretty good to us and it works well with other softwares like vBulletin.
Thanks for the recommendation Michael, I will take a look at it.
Great summary Joe. We feel like we’ve got a pretty unique solution over Memberful. You can start selling memberships with no up front costs, and it only takes a few minutes to integrate with WordPress.
Thanks for the heads up Drew. I will take a look for an updated article.
You’re missing Premise (by Copyblogger) and Restrict Content Pro by Pippin 😉
Cheers Rudd. There are lots out there that didn’t make the list.
Amazing Article, Incredible writing style. i really liked the way you represent the content.
Thanks for the excellent coverage of the plugin options available. I’m co-developer of Paid Memberships Pro and just wanted to mention that we do indeed have drip feed content included in the PMPro Series add on here: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/add-ons/plugins-on-github/pmpro-series-for-drip-feed-content/.
Thanks Kim. Are the add ons on Github developed by the PMPro team?
I think I will do an updated version of this post including all the recommendations received so far.
Developers, feel free to send over any review copies of any plugins that you think should be included.
Yep – our GitHub Repositories and Gists are all written by or reviewed then pulled in by Jason Coleman who’s the core Paid Memberships Pro developer. http://github.com/strangerstudios and http://gist.github.com/strangerstudios
I can’t see how you can create such a list without the master if membership plugin Wishlist Member.
The plugin uses quite a lot of resources so I can see how it from a hosting perspective is not the best plugin, but from an end user perspective it’s fantastic.
Also including OP2 on the list kind of crazy since it has nothing to do with a membership plugin. If you really wanted to review something like this you should probably have reviewed OptimizeMember that is actually a free membership plugin from the creator of Optimize Press.
I’ve tested several of the products on your list (and a few more including OptimizeMember) and while it is a resource hog, I still recommend Wishlist Member to anyone wanting to build a membership site on WordPress.
Thanks Rasmus. I will look at those for part II of this list, due in the next week or so.
Thanks for this info and your other helpful posts, Joe. I have some additional questions hoping you can answer.
1. I’m looking for a solution in which my customers experience the purchased product content directly on the page (no emailed download links). For each product I include audio players (for live and archived audio access to the class), pdfs, embedded video, and an area for customer interaction/community forum that is product specific. Looking for an option where all of this can be available within each product.
2. What do you recommend for the customer interaction aspect, where customers of that product can interact with each other on that page, creating a virtual experience for the customers (sharing what they enjoyed most, questions for me or others, other general comments).
3. Which of these has product/membership options that can show up as Store items, along with any other products, including those that are not memberships? I don’t do code, so hoping this is out of the box.
4. Can I offer payments for some membership products (some are pricey)? With Cart66 Cloud, in order to offer payments, they force you into subscriptions (with expiration dates) yet the product content is actually more like all the other membership items (unlimited access).
5. Is there a way to limit how many devices/IPs my customers can use to access the content, to minimize piracy/login sharing? (I know wishlist member offers this and that Cart66 Cloud does not.)
6. Which of these membership plugins allows me to organize the products, shown in a Store type menu, into categories or some other form of grouping? With so many classes offered, it’s important for me to be able to group them to keep things organized in the offering, which I hope is the Store. With Cart66 Cloud I learned I cannot organize my product posts into Categories within Store.
7. Is there a membership plugin that allows me to offer memberships that links the dates of the customer’s specific membership and to dates product was published/created? I’m not talking about content dripping here. I’d like windows of time for membership matching present window of material that matches their membership dates. Since we offer about 4-6 events per month, some regular customers purchase all that we offer, so this membership would be a big convenience for them to just know they have access to new products offered in that time window, but not to everything created in prior time windows. For my staff, we wouldn’t have to do anything special, just knowing the system is matching their membership dates with the workshop published dates.
8. Which of these allow customers to have “accounts” which saves their info for future purchases?
9. Which members offer PCI/SSL out of the box or what additional is needed to achieve this?
Sorry if some of these are basic and for so many questions. My use case is specific and with so many options it’s been a lot of researching to try and find what meets my needs. Not sure if I need an eLearning solution (like WP courseware) with a membership plugin or whether I can just find the right membership plug-in. Have been trying to make Cart66 Cloud work for the past 2 months and I’m realizing it just isn’t a fit for me. For now still muddling through with Ning plus my website but want one WP site solution.
Thank you!!
Hi Jill,
I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can!
1) I think all of the main options should allow you to give your customers access to your content as soon as they register/make the payment. WishList Member would be one option, which I covered recently here: http://www.wpkube.com/wishlist-member-plugin-wordpress-review-tutorial/
2) Would the standard post comment functionality of WordPress suffice for this? Or do you want more of a forum experience? If the former then with these membership plugins, you can display the protected content on a post and then allow those with access to discuss it in the comment section. If the latter then you might need to use an additional forum plugin/service.
3) One option is to use WooCommerce with WishList Member to do just that: list memberships and other products for sale. There is an extension for that which can help you: http://docs.woothemes.com/document/wishlist-member-integration/
4) I don’t understand this, sorry. Who would you be offering the payments too?
5) Yes with WishList Member you can set the number of IPs per customer to any number of your choice. MemberMouse is another plugin that has this option. I don’t think many of the other plugins have this featured as far as I’m aware.
6) You can do that with WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform and integrating it with a membership plugin such as WishList Member. With WooCommerce, products are created in a similar way to posts (using a custom post type) and you can assign them a product category.
7) Sorry, I’ve no idea about that one!
8) I think most of them have user profiles that are created when a user signs up/registers.
9) A lot of them integrate with PCI compliant payment gateways including MemberMouse, MemberPress, MagicMembers, etc.
Hope this has been some help. It might be a better idea to write down a required feature list and send it to all the vendors and see who can meet your needs. Let me know how you get on.
Joe
Thank you, Joe — very helpful. I so appreciate your time to reply.
Well Jo! that was a very thorough review. I was surprised not to see S2 Membership plugin in the list though 😉 Any particular reason (non-libellous) that it wasn’t included?
My requirement is to have membership level control over content and resources on a crowd funding site. The architecture so far is to use Astoundify’s Fundify theme which hooks into their Crowdfunding and Easy Digital Downloads Plugins; to control the sales and membership.
Unfortunately the info on those plugins is relatively scant. Have any of your readers had any experience with the membership aspects of the plugins mentioned above, or have any experience of marrying them to the functions of a classic membership plugin?
Thanks for the excellent review. Good work.
Hi Ray,
Thanks for your comment. No real reason why S2 wasn’t included, just haven’t had any experience of it yet. Will try and include it if we do an update.
Same goes for EDD. I hear that is a great plugin but haven’t used it yet. I’m sure it will be fine for your needs.
Joe
Good article! Are there any security issues with using such plugins? Are there any vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit? Thanks.
Hi Rick,
No different from any other plugin I would imagine. The above are all widely used so any weaknesses would’ve been quickly ironed out. As with any software, plugin, or theme, make sure they are updated as soon as possible (after testing the update of course). Running outdated software can lead to problems with security.
Good luck.
Joe
Joe, thanks a lot for the reply. I’m confused by the variety out there and I need to make a decision soon. What would be you #1 choice for an easy-to-use plugin that offers simple integration with Paypal, a feature to notify members about new posts and ability to restrict content at any place within a post?
Well Paid Memberships Pro is free without support so is a good option.
Wishlist Member is good too and is easy to use. You can read my review/tutorial I did of it to get a better idea of if its for you:
http://www.wpkube.com/wishlist-member-plugin-wordpress-review-tutorial/
Good luck!
Hi all
I need some plugins to develop my WP site, so could you please recommend which plugins I should use to achieve these functions below (I have the latest version of WP):
1-It will be an online casting agency site. Where member film producers will search and book member actors.
2-There are 2 member types: Producers and Actors. Both members are free members, there wont be any paid members on the site. Actors membership will be authorized my email confirmation. But producers’ authorization will be made manually by admin.
3-Actors:Web site visitor that decided to be an actor in my site’s portfolio, click sign up button and fill a small form with name, email so after his email confirmation -or signup by Facebook – he comes back on landing page that has long form that consists of age, physical details, skills etc, and upload 6 photos of himself/herself, then when he sends the form he is registered actor member, now he has his profile page with all info about him/her and has 6 photos (1 profile pic the rest his/her other photos). And on the user profile page there are 2 buttons: Add to Favorites and book this user buttons which only producer members can see these 2 buttons.
4-Producers:Web site user that he is in real life a film producer or production company rep, clicks for sign up button (this button is different that above sign up button in a another page or can be the same sign up button as above then there may be option saying actors click here to sign up and producers click here to sign up). So producer fills a form that has name, company name, email, tel no, address, so when he sends the form, admin receives the warning in admin panel also receives email about this signing, and sees that it is a producer so admin manually makes some phone calls and confirm that he is a real producer so admin manually authorize that producer’s membership to the site as “producer member”. So now producer member can search and view all actor members, view theri full profiles, and view those 2 buttons (fav and book buttons) and when he clicks book button on a user’s profile page a small popup modal window opens with a small form saying: Event name, event date, event hour. So when he fills and sends this form, these data is saved on DB: Producer’s ID, name, event date, name, hour. So admin can see that in event or booking calendar in admin site only, and admin manually informs that particular booked user about this booking.
5-Non-member public users can do search as well and see actor members’ thumbs on search results, but they cant view their profile pages, so only thumbs they can view and when they click on a thumb a popup windows appears saying you should sign up to view user profiles.
6-In few months I may make the actor members registration process through payment. Basically to be an actor member they have to pay an annual small fee by Paypal only. So membership plugin should be compatible with Paypal payment gateway. ( I m thinking only 1 payment option which is Paypal, nothing else).
So please tell and recommend and give advice; which WP plugins I should use to achieve above? Thanx very much to all helpful people in advance.
Hi Joe, thanks for this great article. It’s very informative and helpful. I am looking for a membership plugin for WordPress that allows me to sell physical products. We sell wine from small producers in Spain and are adding tastings, courses and wine tours this year and want to give people the option of regular deliveries as well as upsells, coupons, discounts etc. Most of the plugins seem to be for digital downloads. Can you recommend one that would work for us? Many thanks.
You should check out WooCommerce, it is a fantastic solution for selling physical products.
Please note that if you are selling digital products or services (including memberships) to customers in the EU that you need to comply with the new EU laws.
Currently memberpress does not allow the necessary VAT calculation functionality (2 non conflicting pieces of evidence) to allow the vendor identify the location of the customer.
Woocommerce’s membership plugin integrates with the woocommerce VAT plugin (made to work with taxamo.com) and is the only compliant solution on the market right now.
Cart66 just changed their pricing structure to an annual rate of $95 a year…. might be worth updating this article. If you don’t have quite such intricate needs and want something easier to setup, Cart66 Cloud is a great way to get started with low cost and peace of mind.
Hello joe Fylan and everyone,
Wow, I got the lot of thinks from there. Every comment is very helpful.However, I want to add something, and recently I just released the membership plugin in the wordpress repository who is called “rs-members”. Before developing I just studied existence all membership wordpress plugin.I got many problems from the those.As a result; I just tried to include many useful features.Without programming skill any guys can easily maintain this plugin. I hoped this plugin will be helpful fill up your all demand. .Guys you can visit my “rs-members” from wordpress repository.
Thank you gentleman for patiently reading.
Hello, on the website I am creating, you nedd to be a member to buy virtual products (services ) . This can be done with paid membership pro? or wich is the best for a online shop with membership?
Does Paid Memberships Pro allow you to sell group memberships ? For example, if I want to sell 5 memberships at once to a single company in a bundle, can I do that? Lots of companies we work with like to purchase group memberships for their various teams (sales teams, media teams, HR teams, etc.) or wich plugin allow you to do this?
Great summary Joe. You really did a good review. Including your list, I want to add another one, which is quite impressive. in Last three month I did four membership site projects and in every projects I used Expand Memebership plugin.
I wanted to write some review on this membership plugin, because not only I, but my clients are also satisfied to get perfect solution spending few penny. I was looking for review article written by my favourite writer including you, and that’s I can suggest you to check this plugin too.
Once again thanks for the awesome summery.
Hi, Amazing article,
I just want to download the list of plugins and themes you use, i also clicked on one of the lead magnets but it seems not to be working. Can you please provide me that file where in you have listed all the plugins which you use. Thanks
Hey Amey,
Glad you liked the article.
Sorry about that, will get it fixed. Here’s the list — http://www.wpkube.com/behind-the-scenes/
I have Memberpress and Mailchimp. Do I also need a CRM?
Thanks,
Mike
Hey Mike,
I don’t think either of them are CRM solutions. Though, MailChimp does provide integration with most popular CRM solutions — https://connect.mailchimp.com/collections/crm/. Hope that helps.
Great roundup. I wanted to mention that Optimize Press now has a member plugin, so you don’t need an additional one.
Not a fan of Magic Members because it doesn’t let the user pick a password when registering. A user is e-mailed some auto-generated password and then they can log in to change that. I am changing to a plugin with fewer steps. I lose a lot of customers who do the initial sign-up, but then never log in.
Joe- I am looking for a simple membership plugin for WordPress that will simply collect membership data….no membership dues, dripping, or anything else. The only capability I need is to export the membership data six months from now and then be able to import it into a full up plugin. I tried MemberPress and WP-Member but could not get it to work.
Any comment on the usefulness of encrypting membership plugin in files in 2017. Does this provide any real security today?
We are using Digital Access Plus (DAP) which has been great but we are at a point where we want to customize the member page more than its allowing us to.
It offers most everything included in the plugins listed above and it does two things which we need.
1. Automatically pause content when payment not made. has option to retain access to paid for data and also to restrict on a member to member basis.
2. When paused it advances access start and end date so next payment maintains drip and doesn’t dump weeks of content at once when the payment is caught up.
If you don’t mind can you explain or discuss Optimizepress?
I adore this website – its so usefull and helpfull.|
I was on the phone with Ontraport yesterday and realized they include membership site creation and management as part of their product, however upon further review, the affordable offering called Basic doesn’t include it. Pro level and up does though, and they also offer landing page creation and some great CRM style features, triggers, and prospect tagging and such. But for a person willing to spend medium business levels of money, it should be noted that membership site creation and functionality are included in the Pro and Plus plans.
All of the above membership plugins are great. However, I seek a membership plugin, or some easy to implement code, that expires access to view content on a company site (it’s not an eCommerce site) for ‘Visitor’ Users, based on hours and minutes or ‘instantly on logout’, rather than days, weeks and years. I can find no plugin that offers this feature. Is there anyone out there that can solve my dilemma?
For example: I land on a website. I want to read all of the pages, but it says it is a restricted website. Viewing requires a registration. I register my name and email address, and this gets confirmed via email. I search through the site and eventually choose to leave. I close my browser. 15-30 minutes later I want to return to this website and read something I read previously. I try to login, but I can’t and a message returns saying my registration has expired, “Please re-register for access”. Had I logged in within a 14 minute window my login and password would have worked. This restriction is only for the casual ‘Visitor’ User. Staff and business partners would be approved, registered and managed, by the site Administrator and a regular membership plugin would work for this.
Is there anyone out there with the knowledge and experience who can guide me to resolve this issue?
Hey James,
The only plugin I could thing about is Restrict Content Pro, as it is focused more on the content-side of things, instead of eCommerce. We reviewed it, a while back, you can read here
If RCP doesn’t solve the issue, you will probably need to hire someone from sites such as Codeable or Envato Studio.
Would love some assistance! I’m helping a friend with his new site, and I’m only looking for a plugin that will tackle the sites 2 main functions:
1) Allow members to register/sign-up (payment likely to be handled externally…)
2) And this is the most important: Each member will have access to a specific page *uniquely assigned to each individual account/user* that will have their own audio player with a custom set of music that we’ll provide.
3) Bonus: If possible, I’d like to be able to restrict the number of simultaneous users logged in to a single account. (Example: User123 is logged in. If User123 is logged in 2 locations, and I am able to restrict them to only 2 simultaneous sessions, then if a third location tries to log in, they’ll get a “limit reached message” of some sort.
#2 is the biggest thing I need – I need the user to (once they login) be able to be able access a specific page, assigned to that unique user ONLY (which we would assign to the users manually once registration is approved.) I hope that makes sense.
The idea being that if User1 logs in and goes to their player, it’s the on the page that we created for User1. If User2 logs into their account, their player will be unique to them, thereby being completely separate and having nothing to do with the page/player assigned to User1.
I apologize for the lengthy explanation, I just want to make sure it’s fairly clear to understand. It’s worth clarifying that I don’t need a the plugin to create the unique user pages or the players that will be designed. We can do that on our own, fairly quickly. We just basically need to be able to assign individual permissions to every single user for their own unique page. There won’t be any “page sharing” by users (again, I hope this makes sense…)
I appreciate any assistance, and apologize for any over-explaining.
Thanks for all of your time, and any help you can provide.
Question: I have a client that is a teacher and wants to sell lesson plans, books he has written, etc. He has 198 items for sale in his store and wants to setup membership areas where people who buy into the program for a year will get access to that content.
So basically a person can buy 5 lesson plans in the store or they can choose to buy a full membership and get everything. Is there one membership platform that is better for this? My concern is that if I buy one it will make everything private and I’m looking to easily create the membership area and keep his shop in tact.
From the article: “All this functionality comes at a hefty price tag, however. A starter package comes at $19.95 per month only allowing for up to 1,000 members. Up to 5,000 members — $39.95 per month. MemberMouse is a high-end and expensive plugin, but if you are starting a professional online and eCommerce business, this is the best membership option money can buy.”
Is this supposed to be a typo? $19.95/month is considered a “hefty price tag” and a “high-end expensive plugin”?
MAC
I, too, noticed this discrepancy.
$19.95 a month sounds ideal, working out at around $240 over a year.
If it is a monthly subscription, then more people can get their feet in the water faster and start getting on with the project.
We are currently using Magic Members for one of our clients and ran into an issue a couple months ago – they have not responded to any of our inquiries, tickets etc… I would not recommend them based on that – even though we loved the plugin.
I took over the management of a small non-profit site that is a member-only site. They have been using Magic Members for some years and I’ve been struggling with it for about 2 years now.
Magic Members looks good until you actually have to use it. Many of the features that they tout are simply not there or are extremely buggy.
A simple task like setting up a yearly date-based subscription (i.e. members pay yearly by a certain date) is not as simple as it should be – I apparently need to create a new “subscription pack” each year instead of just a recurring one with a month/day expiration date. I have just spent hours trying to get the MailChimp integration to work – unsucessfully. And although I can add my own custom field to the interface, I can’t edit it once it’s there.
So many other problems. I keep filing bugs and requests with little result. I cannot recommend this to anyone and I’m actively looking to switch to something else.
I initially used Magic Membership but soon found their app unworkable for what I wanted. They were and still continue to be extremely obstructive when I asked for a refund within the 30 day Money back Guarantee. Their invoice they sent wouldn’t print out properly and now I having the pass the matter over to my bank in order to reclaim the funds. You should not be recommending Magic members it is an extremely dogy app that should be flagged as fraudulent.
Zippy Courses is very good The Best WordPress Membership Plugins .