Best WordPress Membership Plugins to Build your Online Community

wordpress membership plugin

If you ever wondered about starting an online business/creating a site, you might have received suggestions including a membership site. Indeed, a membership website can be an earning bowl if you are creating an exceptional content worth real value. And WordPress is doubtlessly the best platform for creating a website.

Then you need a WordPress membership plugin. With a membership site plugin, you can create a premium content library and make it accessible only to your registered members.

Choosing the right WordPress membership plugin can be a daunting task. Before you dive in, below are a few things you need to keep in mind when choosing a WordPress membership plugin for your site.

  • Ease of Use
  • Compatibility
  • Design and Features
  • Multiple Membership Levels
  • Payment Gateways and eCommerce support
  • Content Dripping

WP-Members

For those of you working on a tight budget, WP-Members represents the free option on today’s list; its free core lets you block access to content for non-registered users, converting your WordPress-powered website into a fully functional membership site.

Content is restricted via a simple settings screen, from which you can blanket-restrict all of your posts or pages, or restrict individual post or pages.

Another cool feature is the plugin’s login/registration system. The login form is displayed in-line with your content, preventing visitors from snooping around the default WordPress login page. There’s also a login/registration form widget that can be placed in a sidebar.

The plugin lacks integration to payment gateways, eCommerce features, and multiple membership levels.unless you upgrade to the Site Membership Subscription plugin.

WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is an addon for WooCommerce that allows you to limit your content only to the registered members of your site. If you’re already selling digital products on your website and want to sell memberships as well, then you should give WooCommerce Memberships a try.

WooCommerce Memberships features almost all the functionalities and options required for a membership site. You can restrict content to members, drip content, sell access to memberships, include memberships with product purchases, and completely integrate restrictions with your store. However, it requires another WooCommerce extension ‘WooCommerce Subscriptions‘ for subscribing features which is an extra investment.

The main benefit of the plugin is that you can restrict WooCommerce products so that they can be purchased by members only. You can also provide special site-wide discounts for premium members.

s2Member

S2Member is one of the most comprehensive membership plugins and comes with a lot of features out of the box. You can extend your S2Member site with popular community plugins, including bbPress and BuddyPress.

The core plugin is bloated with many features, so the user interface of S2Member is not as simple as other modern membership plugins. Due to this fact, there is a steep learning curve when you’re just starting out with the plugin.

The plugin is almost entirely powered using shortcodes, and you can easily accept recurring payments with great flexibility.

The basic S2Member plugin is free to install and use. With the basic plan, you can protect your content and accept membership payments through PayPal.

The pro version of the plugin is available to download for a one-time fee of $89.

MemberPress

MemberPress is another popular membership plugin. It includes all the standard features you’d expect plus a few nifty tricks.

First off, you can create unlimited membership levels with all kinds of trial periods and payment options. And you can even categorize different membership levels into “Membership Groups” to create predefined upgrade paths. That’s definitely a unique selling point!

You can restrict content in a number of ways. You can go broad and restrict whole categories or sets of child pages, or you can go granular and restrict only parts of a post/page. You can also restrict access to individual files to help you manage downloads.

And like the previous plugins, MemberPress lets you drip out your content on a predefined schedule.

MemberPress gives you all types of reports to see how your membership site is performing. And it also has a nifty feature called MemberPress Reminders which lets you send out emails when specific events occur, like an upcoming subscription renewal.

Despite the fact that MemberPress is a feature-rich plugin offering plenty of options, it doesn’t have eCommerce features. Therefore, you cannot sell physical products.

Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a light-weight WordPress membership plugin that lets you easily create a fully-featured membership site. Without bloat, it bundles the set of features you’ll need for your membership site as addons.

The plugin is built with developers in mind; customize and modify anything as per your specific needs. In addition, it integrates perfectly with any theme without any custom CSS being necessary. Similarly, it ensures seamless integration with other plugins and add-ons. If you have any problem while using this plugin, contact customer support. They are brilliant in providing expert support.

You can also get creative with pricing. For paid memberships, you can choose to charge a certain fee for a set period, as well as an optional one-time fee. This combination allows for some interesting pricing structures. main features like Unlimited Membership Subscription Levels,Content Restriction,Integration with Payment Gateways,E-commerce support.

The plugin lacks content dripping feature which is surely a fundamental feature for a membership site.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse is arguably the most powerful and scalable membership plugin on this list. Despite possessing plenty of advanced features, the plugin remains impressively user-friendly. In fact, it’s versatile enough that it can be used to power your entire business — and several multimillion dollar businesses use it to do just that.

MemberMouse allows you to restrict access to any published post, page, or custom post type, controlled via a grant access button, found next to the default publish button. In just a few short seconds, you’ll be able to specify which membership levels can access what content — plus, you can drip-feed content by configuring a time release.

MemberMouse is also big on integrations: There are eight payment gateways (including Stripe and PayPal) and four autoresponder services (such as MailChimp and AWeber) for you to integrate.

Other goodies of MemberMouse are 1-click upsells, split testing prices, trial offers, the ability to customize the checkout, and solid management. With the latter, you have a bird’s-eye view over order history, engagement, pauses, cancellations, refunds, and all the rest.

Paid Memberships Pro

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.

Paid Memberships Pro also allows you to create unlimited membership levels with flexible payment terms. You can choose a price, recurring billing cycle, membership term, and specify free or reduced-price trial periods.

aid Memberships Pro also allows for some interesting advertising options. For example, you can choose to display ads to some membership levels while hiding them for others. So you could, for example, only display ads to free membership tiers, while hiding them from premium memberships.

Finally, the plugin also includes plenty of integrations with email marketing services and payment gateways. And if you need to tweak functionality yourself, Paid Membership Pro is 100% GPL, so you can customize its code as much as necessary.

Membership 2

Membership 2 is a freemium plugin which is available in both FREE and paid versions. The plugin is developed by WordPress professionals at WPMU. It provides a simpler platform with more powerful controls so as to let users create membership sites without messing around. Moreover, it is a user-friendly, intuitive and beautiful membership management tool for WordPress.

The plugin allows you to restrict any content on your website and allow the content access to the certain subscribed members. Creating memberships is really simple with the inbuilt ‘smart setup wizard’. The smart setup wizard will guide you through configuring a wonderful membership site instantly.

The plugin has integration with payment gateways PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. You can sell memberships and earn money. The free version of the plugin simply offers content restriction options and lets you protect your posts and pages. For more advanced features, you must buy a WPMU membership. Membership 2 Pro plugin comes with a bundle of useful add-ons so you can add only the functionality your sites.

The plugin presents mainly four base membership options: Standard Membership, Dripped Content Membership, Guest Membership and Default Membership. Standard Membership makes your content available to members and hidden to not-logged-in users. Dripped Content Membership lets you release the content in timed intervals. Guest Membership is great for limiting access to only a few items and default membership allows content access to all users.

Membership 2 free plugin has simple basic features which may not meet all your requirements of a membership site. The premium version cannot be purchased individually; you must buy a WPMU membership which is quite costly.

Conclusion

WordPress users are spoilt for choice when it comes to membership plugins. As a result, narrowing today’s post down to just a handful is far more difficult than usual — the list could easily have been three times as long!

All of the plugins featured represent excellent selections, though — each is easy to use and comes equipped with all the essential membership features needed to satisfy most users. This includes the ability to ‘lock’ content, monetize your website by selling premium memberships, and drip-feed content to increase membership lifespans.

However, it’s the additional features that’ll determine which membership plugin’s right for you — and this is where the plugins stand apart from each other.

Figure out which features are essential for your website, then check to see whether your preferred plugin supports them.

And, with so many great membership plugins available, you can afford to be picky, so consider any advanced functionalities you’ll need. Chances are you’ll find these features in at least one plugin.