Are you looking for the best WordPress membership plugin?
WordPress membership plugins let you restrict access to certain parts of your website. You can share basic content and charge for access to the members-only area.
In this article, we’ll explore the best plugins to help you create your own membership site.
Click any link to jump to a more thorough description.
| Membership Plugins | Price |
|---|---|
| 1. MemberPress | from $199 / year |
| 2. Restrict Content Pro | from $80 / year |
| 3. WooCommerce Membership | from $99 / year |
| 4. LearnDash | from $19.5 / month |
| 5. s2Members | from $29 / quarter |
| 6. Paid Memberships Pro | $5/ month |
| 7. MemberMouse | $69/ lifetime access |
We’ll start with one of the most popular membership plugins for WordPress.
1. MemberPress
MemberPress is the best membership plugin for WordPress. For ease of use and features, we had to put this one at the top of the list.
MemberPress covers all the basics you need from a membership plugin. But it also has some advanced features that’ll help you generate extra revenue. For example, there’s a course builder built right in.
You can also use MemberPress to:
- Automatically generate your members-only areas
- Take payments from your members via Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net
- Sell individual downloads
- Build and sell online courses
- Create an unlimited number of membership plans and control the content members can access based on their membership level
- Create groups
- Build your email marketing list with AWeber, MailChimp, and GetResponse
- Integrate your site with bbPress
- Create drip content, which means that content is made available to members on a predetermined schedule rather than immediately when they join.
Pricing – MemberPress starts at $179/year for the Basic plan for a single site. It also has a $299/year plan that comes with two site licenses and Zapier integration.
2. Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro is a powerful WordPress membership plugin managed by the same team behind iThemes Security. It includes all of the features you’ll need to run a successful membership website.
Features:
- Take payment from members via Stripe, Braintree, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, and PayPal
- Create an unlimited number of subscription levels, including free tiers and trial memberships
- Let customers upgrade or downgrade their membership
- Integrate your email marketing list using ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp.
Pricing: Restrict Content Pro pricing starts at $99/year for a single site license and 12 free addons.
3. WooCommerce Memberships
WooCommerce Memberships is a WooCommerce plugin that allows you to create a membership site on top of a WooCommerce store.
You can use this plugin to sell memberships as a stand-alone product or grant membership access as part of product purchase.
Features:
- Content dripping and scheduling based on specific triggers
- Restrict WordPress posts or pages
- Offer certain products exclusively to members
- Provide free shipping and special discounts to members
- Exclude members from the minimum order requirement for your store.
Pricing: WooCommerce Memberships pricing starts at $199/year for a single site license.
4. LearnDash
LearnDash is a popular learning management system that can also be used to create a membership site. You can use it to create and sell online courses.
The plugin is easy to use and comes with integration with many popular marketing tools.
Features:
- Build courses with drag and drop
- Add lessons, topics, assignments, and quizzes
- Drip content or provide it in a specific sequence
- Offer badges and certificates
- Generate reports
- Integrate with email marketing tools and payment gateways.
Pricing: LearnDash starts at $159/year for a single site license.
5. s2Member
s2Member is a freemium plugin that includes all of the features one requires to run a successful membership website.
Features:
- Restrict content or lock a part of it for members only
- Drip and schedule content
- Create unlimited membership levels in the Pro version
- Integrate with email marketing tools like Mailchimp, AWeber, and GetResponse.
- Take payment with PayPal in the free version. The Pro version of the plugin supports Stripe and Authorize.net as well.
Pricing: s2Member has a free version. The pricing for the premium version starts at $89 one-time payment for a single site license.
6. Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Memberships Pro is a free WordPress membership plugin. It also has paid plans that include access to 65+ addons to help you publish gated content and take payment.
The interface is arguably less intuitive than some others on the list.
Features:
- Create flexible memberships with different pricing levels: free, one-time payment, or a recurring subscription (annual, monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly)
- Restrict pages, posts, blocks, and categories
- Hide full content or offer a sneak peek to non-members
- Offer members-only discounts or coupons.
- Use it with WordPress multisite to manage everything with a single user login
- Integrate your site with 6+ payment gateways.
Pricing: Paid Memberships Pro is a free plugin. You can extend its functionality by paying $267/year for access to 65+ addons.
7. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is a premium membership plugin that allows you to create memberships with different levels of access.
You can also use it to sell individual or groups of posts or pages for a one-time fee.
One of the downsides of using this plugin is that it has restrictions on the number of members you can have, so that might not work for a fast-growing membership site.
Features:
- Offer one-time payments or recurring subscriptions
- Integrate with 7+ payment gateways
- Set up the custom login page and member account page automatically
- Give access to limited content by offering free trials and coupons.
- Integrate with email marketing providers to build an email list for your members.
Pricing: The MemberMouse pricing starts at $29/month for the Builder plan. The plan is limited to 5,000 members.
Which Is the Best WordPress Membership Plugin?
After checking out the features and benefits of each option, we found that MemberPress is the best membership plugin for WordPress.
MemberPress includes all of the features you’ll need to set up a full-featured membership website. And it integrates with a wide range of email marketing services and payment gateways.
We love the fact that you can restrict content in multiple ways, including tags and categories. And the fact you can also sell courses gives you new ways to add income streams to your site.
Next, Fix Your Membership Site Emails
Are your members having difficulty receiving important emails from your website? If they’ve paid for a subscription, this could be a huge problem.
Check out our guide to MemberPress not sending email to find out how to fix it.
Ready to fix your emails? Get started today with the best WordPress SMTP plugin. WP Mail SMTP Elite includes full White Glove Setup and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
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Thank you for this overview. I would say, that If one has already a WooCommerce Shop running, the WooCommerce Memberships Plugin is the better choice than MemberPress as this does not integrate well with WooCommerce anymore.
Hi Andreas,
Thank you for sharing! We’ll certainly be taking a look into that, and making adjustments to this post as needed.
We appreciate your feedback, as it may help others find the most suitable option for them.
Thanks 🙂