Are you looking for the best WordPress membership plugins? In that case, you’re on the right page.
Membership sites are one of the popular types of websites that contain exclusive content for their members only. In simpler terms, those contents aren’t accessible to the public. For example, Udemy is a membership site that provides premium courses for its members.
So, if you want to create such a site, then you need a good WordPress membership plugin. Using a membership plugin lets you create multiple membership levels and allocate them with different types of access to premium content.
In WordPress, we’re lucky that many powerful plugins are available for membership sites! But choosing one from many is tough at the same time.
So, we’re here with the selected best WordPress membership plugins for you. Let’s begin!
Why You Need a WordPress Membership Plugin?
Simply, you need a WordPress membership plugin to create a fully functional membership site. So, let’s discuss what a membership website is briefly.
A membership website is a site that lets you offer gated content to your subscribed users only. In those sites, access to premium content is protected from non-registered users. So, you need to be a registered member of the site to view its contents.
Also, you can create different membership levels with exciting pricing packages. And, the members can access various content based on their level.
To know more, check our article on membership site examples.
So, there are various membership sites of different niches. For example, the Smart Passive Income Courses provides online training and courses to create successful online businesses. Similarly, Netflix is a subscription-based service with unlimited movies, TV shows, etc.
In contrast, SiteSaga.com is not a membership subscription site. Because any internet user can access all of its content whether or not they’re registered.
Now, let’s check out some major benefits of a membership site.
- Monetization: You can generate a consistent income by making your visitors pay to access premium content.
- Grow email list: By creating free plans, you can quickly and easily grow your email list. And, you can reach out to more users.
- Deliver valuable content: You can create and deliver your members more valuable content. This encourages them to pay continuously for membership to access those content.
- Control access to content: All the membership plugins give you full control over your content access. You can decide whether to display or restrict a specific portion, post, page, and so on, based on membership levels.
What to Look for in a WordPress Membership Plugin?
Not all the plugins provide specific features you’re searching for your membership site although there are several membership plugins.
So, here’re some of the factors you must look for while going through the list of WordPress membership plugins:
- Drip Content: Chosen plugin must allow drip content to make your users curious. So, you can release your content gradually rather than giving it all at once.
- Coupons and discounts: Generating coupons and offering discounts make your user want to purchase your membership. So, make sure the plugin lets you create coupons and discounts for certain events.
- Subscriptions: Ensure that the plugin you choose allows you to create different types of subscriptions like one-time, recurring (weekly, monthly, yearly), and more.
- Payment gateways: Check whether the plugins offer you various payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, etc. Also, supporting currencies lets users from different countries subscribe to your site.
- Email marketing tools: Integration of a selected plugin with email marketing tools helps to grow your email list and active members. Some popular tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, etc.
If you want detailed information on selecting WordPress plugins, then don’t forget to check our article on how to choose the best WordPress plugins.
With that, let’s move on towards our list of best WordPress membership plugins for 2022.
15 Best WordPress Membership Plugins 2022
Here, we’ve handpicked some of the best WordPress membership plugins with detailed descriptions, features, and pricing. So, go through each plugin to determine which is suitable for your membership site.
1. MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the most popular all-in-one membership plugins for WordPress. It’s an easy-to-use drag and drop builder, combined with powerful features for membership and LMS (Learning Management System).
You can grant membership to your users right from the website and allow them to upgrade, or cancel their membership. Also, it allows you to approve the membership to groups and organizations rather than individuals. In that case, one member can pay for a group of people.
Additionally, it gives you control over what content your users can see depending on the membership or digital product they purchase. You can limit a single page to certain membership levels or protect everything within a specific category.
Key Features of MemberPress:
- Keep your content interesting with scheduled content release and content access expiration.
- Integration with email marketing tools like ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and more to keep your members in the loop.
- Able to generate as many coupons as you want along with expiration dates and number of users.
- Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net integration lets your users pay for their memberships from your website.
- Provides templates to create beautiful pricing pages for your membership products effortlessly.
Pricing:
MemberPress has an only premium version where there are 3 different pricing plans:
- Basic Plan: $179/year for 1 site, unlimited members, unlimited courses, Stripe & PayPal integration, powerful content protection, Coupon Codes, etc.
- Plus Plan: $299/year for up to 2 sites, advanced marketing integrations, sell podcast memberships, forums add-on, communities add-on, etc.
- Pro Plan: $399/year for up to 5 sites, sell corporate accounts, two-factor authentication, 3 months free of OptinMonster, etc.
2. Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Memberships Pro comes with everything you’ll need to start, manage, and grow your membership site. It’s designed for premium content sites, online courses, or LMS and members-only products, subscription box products, paid newsletters, and more.
Similar to MemberPress, you can create an unlimited number of membership levels with flexible pricing. Such as free trials, recurring payments, subscriptions, one-time payments, and more.
In addition to that, your users can choose a membership level, complete checkout, and become members of your site right away. And, your members can log in, view payments, update billing information, or cancel their account directly on your site.
Key Features of Paid Memberships Pro:
- Able to restrict custom post types like events, courses, downloads, and WooCommerce products.
- Manage your entire membership data, import/export members, view the reports on sales, revenue, cancellation, expiration, signups.
- Allows you to manage affiliates with add-ons or 3rd party tools like AffiliateWP.
- You can offer members-only events with all major WordPress event plugins.
- Select from Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Braintree, or 2Checkout payment gateways. Also, allow users to pay by check or direct transfer.
Pricing:
Paid Memberships Pro offers a free version that you can download from the official WordPress plugins directory. Or, also from its original website. You can also install it right from your WordPress dashboard.
However, you can also upgrade it to the premium version to unlock more features. Its pricing plans are:
- Standard Plan: $247/year for 1 site, advanced customization recipes, premium support, 20 add-ons etc.
- Plus Plan: $397/year for 2 sites, all Standard Plan features, 29 add-ons, and more.
- Unlimited Plan: $697/year for 5 sites, all Plus Plan features best for agencies.
For a complete review, check our article on Paid Memberships Pro review.
3. ARMember
ARMember is yet another top-rated membership plugin for WordPress that comes with a wide range of features. This plugin will help you to build a fully functional membership site with much better performance.
It allows you to create a variety of plans for your members. It includes free plans, finite/infinite paid plans, the charge per post, subscriptions with auto-recurring payment, multiple membership subscription options.
Additionally, you can also create various types of coupons including plan-specific coupons. Such as, for the membership level with higher cost, you can offer coupons for discount. This way, users can subscribe right away.
Key Features of ARMember:
- Let users upgrade, downgrade, renew, or cancel their membership.
- The inbuilt module includes drip content or a periodic content feature that allows you to release your content periodically.
- Offers email marketing software such as AWeber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact.
- Facilitate users to postpone their next payment due date and the expiration date.
- Integration with different payment gateways like Mollie, PayPal, Pagseguro, PayFast, PayStack, and more.
Pricing:
ARMember is a freemium plugin that comes with both free and premium versions. You can download the free version from WordPress.org.
Meanwhile, you can purchase the premium version for $59. You’ll get additional features on upgrading to a premium version. Such as subscribing to multiple memberships at the same time, logging in via social accounts, invoices, priority support, and more.
For detailed information, check our article on ARMember review.
4. Restrict Content
Are you looking for a content restriction membership plugin? If yes, then we recommend you Restrict Content plugin.
This plugin allows you to restrict content and monetize your site to access exclusive content. It gives you full control over who can and can’t view content. Also, it makes it simple to limit access to posts, pages, media, custom post types based on membership levels.
Moreover, you can easily keep track of your memberships via an intuitive interface. It lets you quickly view active, expired, canceled, and pending memberships. Furthermore, you can manually add memberships in bulk, edit, and search to locate a specific record.
Key Features of Restrict Content:
- Your members can access the complete history of payment including PDF invoices for each payment.
- Collect payment via Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, etc.
- Option for auto-renew membership or lets customers decide when to renew their membership.
- Discount codes offer special promotional codes to your visitors that give them a discount on membership purchases.
- Restrict access to WooCommerce products as well.
Pricing:
You can download the free version of the Restrict Content plugin from the official WordPress plugins directory. And it’s even possible from its original website.
If you want to unlock more features, then you can upgrade to its pro version where the pricing plans are:
- Personal Plan: $99/year, license for 1 site, 34 pro add-ons, plugin updates, and private, ticketed support, etc.
- Plus Plan: $149/year, license for 5 sites, 34 pro add-ons, plugin updates, and private, ticketed support, etc.
- Professional Plan: $249/year, license for unlimited sites, 34 pro add-ons, plugin updates, and private, ticketed support, etc.
5. Ultimate Membership Pro
Ultimate Membership Pro is another powerful plugin that allows you to create and work with multi-level access for your members. You can create free, recurring, date range membership access where users can access between specific dates, etc.
Along with that, it allows you to generate as many discount codes as you want with flat or percentage discounts. You can validate the discount code for a specific period or unlimited.
Additionally, this plugin gives you complete control over what valuable content your members may access based on their subscription. You can restrict pages, custom posts types, categories, files, navigation menu, or any other content similar to Restrict Content plugin.
Key Features of Ultimate Membership Pro:
- Manage members from the dashboard and follow users’ activity, current subscription status, and reports.
- Provides a certain period to each member to allow them to renew it without losing access to valuable content.
- Allow users to log in to your site with 7 different social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, VKontakte, Tumblr.
- Payment options: PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2CheckOut, Braintree.
- Limits the number of comments you can submit based on your subscription level.
Pricing:
Ultimate Membership Pro is the premium plugin that costs $59 for its regular license. It comes with 6 months of free support and updates. You can extend support and updates for 12 months for an additional $79.25.
6. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is another incredible plugin that lets you quickly manage your members. You can view and edit members’ account details and access permission. Also, you can view each members’ engagement statistics using comprehensive member search options.
Moreover, it allows your members to access self-service for their accounts. They can easily reset their password, view purchase history, update their account information, and more.
Additionally, if you’ve an existing membership platform, then import your member list to this plugin. With that, you can manually add members as well.
Key Features of MemberMouse:
- Able to display different content on any post, page, categories, based on membership level. Plus, upsell access to restricted content to generate additional revenue.
- Create sales strategies with various pricing options for each/any product with free and paid subscriptions.
- Automatically handles the overdue accounts and failed payments.
- Unlike other plugins, it dynamically recommends a downgrade membership level option when someone tries to cancel their subscription.
- Schedule your content to release a little at a time such as one module per week, based on the user’s purchase date.
Pricing:
MemberMouse being a premium plugin, offers 3 different plans though it has a 14-day free trial plan:
- Builder Plan: $29/month, email support, staging license, 11 essential membership pages, all payment integrations, all email integrations, purchases and upsells, etc.
- Advanced Plan: $79/month, priority email support, staging license, full analytics and reporting suite, social signup & login, manage billing dates, etc.
- Premium Plan: $199/month, phone and email support, staging license, Sticky.io integration, along with all Core and Advanced features.
7. Paid Member Subscriptions
Paid Member Subscriptions is another robust membership plugin that offers a complete membership solution. You can create an unlimited number of hierarchical subscription plans such as free, silver gold. And, you’ll be able to overview all of your members and their subscription plans.
Moreover, the plugin lets each member choose a subscription plan during their registration process. Also, the existing users can purchase the subscription plan or upgrade their plan along with renewing, canceling, or abandoning their subscription.
Key Features of Paid Member Subscriptions:
- Display another template for non-members for the restricted posts.
- Keep track of all member payments, status, purchased subscription plans, and access to detailed payment logs.
- Offers a discount for special product prices to members based on their active subscription.
- Create a series of automated email reminders to be sent to members before or after certain events take place. Such as subscription expiration, activation, cancellation, etc.
- Prevent users to access their accounts from multiple locations at the same time.
Pricing:
Paid Member Subscriptions plugin offers both free and premium versions. You can install the free version from WordPress.org.
For the premium version, there are different pricing plans:
- Basic Plan: £69/year for 1 site, unlimited Paypal standard and free subscriptions, account management, WooCommerce integration-8 Basic add-ons, priority support, etc.
- Pro Version Plan: £149/year for unlimited sites, supports free trial and sign-up fees, WooCommerce integration-8 Basic and Pro add-ons, and more.
8. WooCommerce Memberships
The WooCommerce Memberships isn’t just any other plugin for restricting your site’s product and membership. Rather, it lets you determine how access is granted for maximum flexibility.
Also, you can assign zero or more products to a membership plan for several types of memberships. Like, creating products for membership, access to purchase products, access to the same membership from multiple products, inviting only members, etc.
Similar to the MemberMouse plugin, you can set up a schedule to let your members view content. For example, your members won’t immediately access the content. It’ll require you to be a member for at least 1 week to access certain products, content, posts, etc.
Key Features of WooCommerce Memberships:
- Offer your customers some perks to encourage them to purchase from your site.
- Provide free shipping to members while requiring non-members to meet requirements like having coupons or minimum order amount.
- Let your members access all the sections along with the list of accessible products, contents, discounts, future accessible content, etc.
- Able to export and import members and add or create new members, users, bulk-update by merging with existing data.
Pricing:
Being the premium plugin, you can purchase WooCommerce Memberships at $199/year with a 1-year extension update, support, 30-day money-back guarantee.
9. Fitness Trainer
Looking for a fitness club? Then, here we go!
Fitness Trainer plugin lets you offer your users training, diet plan, detox, guide, etc. to stay fit and healthy along with their membership subscription. You can create any sort of subscription package. For instance, daily/weekly/monthly/yearly subscription, free trial, paid trial, one-time payment.
Your members can select any package and upgrade, downgrade, or cancel their subscription at any time. Also, they can change passwords, view their social profile, training plans, detox plans, physical records, and so on.
Key Features of Fitness Trainer:
- Admin can set the trainer package where they can add/edit/show training plan, record, report, details, of their client.
- PayPal and Stripe payment gateways are available.
- Create attractive pricing details of the membership plans along with the significant benefits of each plan.
- Provide coupon package, limitation of coupon usage, and expiration date of the coupon.
- Offers email templates where you can send a welcome email, information, order message, subscription reminder, etc., to your customers.
Pricing:
Similar to the Ultimate Membership Pro plugin, you can purchase the regular license of this premium Fitness Trainer plugin at $39.
10. LearnDash
LearnDash is probably the best LMS plugin that comes with everything you need to start building your online courses. Along with that, it comes with full features of membership similar to the MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro plugin.
You can create various memberships that contain access to multiple courses instead of selling access to individual courses. So, whenever someone purchases access to the membership, they can get access to all the courses associated with a certain topic.
Key Features of LearnDash:
- Allows you to sell the access for one-time prices, or on a recurring basis.
- Send automatic renewal membership notifications to your members. If users won’t renew on time, then you can choose to remove the access.
- Built-in payment feature available using Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout.
- Sell your membership access using a shopping cart (like WooCommerce) as well.
- Offer free samples of your content to encourage customers to purchase a membership.
Pricing:
The LearnDash plugin doesn’t have a free version. So, to use it, you must have to purchase its premium packages that offer 3 different plans:
- Basic Plan: $159/year for 1 site, unlimited courses and users, course content protection, drip-feed lessons, advanced quizzing, free integrations, and more.
- Plus Package Plan: $189/year for up to 10 sites, including ProPanel, certificates & badges, course forums, email notifications, and more.
- Pro Package Plan: $329/year for up to 25 sites, demo site template, and all features of both Basic and Plus Plans.
11. s2Member
s2Member is one of the best freemium WordPress membership plugins to protect WordPress content with a secure checkout solution to get access. You can protect your entire site, just certain areas, or even just parts of pages.
Moreover, you can just sell specific posts or pages, file downloads, access capabilities to your visitors via subscription. Also, include the “buy now button” to let your users purchase your site’s content with a single payment or recurring payments.
Key Features of s2Member:
- Integration with PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net payment standard to facilitate users to purchase from your website.
- Offer coupon codes and gift/redemption codes to attract more users to purchase a membership or upgrade their levels.
- Create custom email messages to send customers for checkout, signup confirmation, transactional, and so on.
- Provides Mailchimp, AWeber, GetResponse mailing services to send emails to your customers, subscriber list, campaigns, etc.
- Manage your affiliate programs with iDevAffiliate or ShareAsale for the promotional campaigns.
Pricing:
You can download the free version of the s2Member plugin from WordPress.org. And you get to download it from its original site as well.
To unlock more features, you can upgrade it to a premium version:
- Single Site License Plan: $89, One-time Payment, one-step registration, pro-forms, integrate with Authorize.net, unlimited membership levels, coupon codes, etc.
- Unlimited Site License Plan: $189, One-time Payment, perfect for site owners with multiple domain names, one-step registration, integrates with Authorize.net, unlimited membership levels, etc.
12. WP Membership
Yet another awesome plugin for membership is WP Membership which allows you to create different types of membership. Such as free account, one-time payment, recurring payment, free trial, paid trial, variable payment package.
Additionally, it offers 7 different templates for pricing tables similar to other plugins. So, you can beautifully showcase your pricing plans along with the details of memberships.
With this plugin, you can grant your members access to their privacy settings, change passwords, social profiles, and so on. Moreover, your members will be free to upgrade, downgrade, or even cancel their subscriptions.
Key Features of WP Membership:
- Choose from 2 sign-up styles and customize them to look attractive.
- PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce Payment are available.
- Able to view the complete payment history.
- Send automatic subscription reminder email messages to members.
- Ability to configure the settings for content protection.
Pricing:
The regular license of this premium WP Membership plugin costs $35.
13. WP-Members
WP-Members is one of the first and free membership plugins of WordPress that continues in active development to keep pace with current WordPress. Its initial concept is to keep it simple to set up and install while providing a standard interface for customization.
Most importantly, you get to restrict or hide the specific content, posts, pages, & custom post types. However, you can grant access to only registered members or based on membership levels.
Unlike other plugins, it integrates the registration process within your content rather than the default WP login page. Also, you can create your registration page to make users register and subscribe for the membership.
Key Features of WP-Members:
- Limit the access to menu items based on the user’s active status.
- Set up the invitation code, validate them, and invite the selected members.
- Enable the admin approval for new registration.
- Protect your forms from spam bots using a honey pot.
- Allows you to add a Mailchimp list subscription to your registration form.
Pricing:
WP-Members plugin is free to use and can be downloaded from WordPress.org.
However, it provides several premium extensions to add different functions and features. But you can purchase its premium priority support with 2 different pricing plans:
- WP-Members Priority Support Plan: $59/year, including email support, premium site access, forum access.
- WP-Members Pro Bundle Plan: $125/year, including all priority support features, premium extension bundle, plugin extension updates.
14. Simple Membership
Simple Membership is one of the flexible and easy-to-use WordPress membership plugins for offering free and premium content. The free contents are for non-members. So, whenever they try to view the protected content, they’ll be prompted to become a member page.
Furthermore, you can set up unlimited membership levels such as free, silver, gold, etc. Also, it offers you to configure free or paid membership.
For the free membership, you can enable email confirmation or activation. Meanwhile, you get to accept payments via PayPal, Stripe, or Braintree payment gateways for the paid memberships.
Key Features of Simple Membership:
- Automatically disables the commenting section on your protected posts.
- View the payment logs anytime from the payments menu in the admin dashboard.
- Manually approve the registration of your customers.
- Filter the member list by account status and membership level.
- Easily customize the content protection message for the non-members.
Pricing:
Simple Membership plugin is completely free to use and is available in the official WordPress plugins directory.
15. Restrict User Access
Restrict User Access is another fast and simple membership plugin for WordPress that allows you to quickly set up a membership site. You can create different levels of memberships with affordable prices such as platinum, gold, free.
Moreover, you can restrict access to posts, pages, custom post types, categories, etc. You can even set certain access conditions such as protecting all posts that are tagged with “premium”. Also, it allows you to restrict content written by selected authors.
Key Features of Restrict User Access:
- Display the certain nav menu items for only users with authorized levels.
- Similar to other plugins, its drip content feature lets you unlock access to content after a predetermined time to increase engagement.
- Full control over whether a membership level lasts for days, years, or indefinite.
- Option to show your users excerpt and hide the remaining content instead of redirecting to a different URL to unauthorized users.
- Tie your membership levels to WooCommerce products and make users purchase your membership to view and checkout with certain products.
Pricing:
Although the Restrict User Access plugin is available for free in WordPress.org, you can also download it from its original site.
Also, you get to purchase its premium add-ons which mostly costs $39 per add-on. It also provides bundle packages for add-ons where the pricing plans are:
- Essentials Plan: $99/year, for 1 site, standard email support, free plugin updates, Date Restriction, Timelock, URL Restriction add-ons.
- Plus Plan: $199/year for 5 sites, standard email support, free plugin updates, ACF restriction Date Restriction, Timelock, URL Restriction, Visibility Controls add-ons.
- All Access Plan: $399/year, for 50 sites, VIP email support, Meta Box Restriction, all future add-ons including all add-ons of Essentials and Plus Plans.
Conclusion
That’s all folks! We’ve arrived at the end of this article. We’ve discussed the 15 best membership WordPress plugins along with their features and pricing.
Among the listed plugins, we would like to recommend you MemberPress plugin if you’ve got an LMS site and want to grow it. As the membership feature on your LMS site increases more members, students, trainers, etc.
However, to sell and grow your WooCommerce products, you can go with WooCommerce Memberships. This allows you to categorize your product among the public for all the visitors and users and private for members only.
We hope this article helped you to find the best membership WordPress plugins in 2022. If you’re using any of these plugins for your website, then please share your experience below in the comment section.
In case you’ve any more queries, then feel free to ask us. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Also, share this article with your friends and colleagues.
You may also like our article on the best and must-have WordPress plugins and the best community plugins.
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