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So you have a Wordpress membership website and want to provide your customers with a protected membership / membership area? And want to provide them access for a monthly paid subscription?
Membership websites are a great way to generate regular. This application has many possibilities:
Your customers need regular support, guidance and coaching, which you want to offer, for example, in the form of exclusive newsletters, videos, live webinars or a Q & A area? Or you want to merge your customers in an exclusive paid community?
That’s exactly what membership websites are for.
And with the WordPress Membership Plugins available today, the implementation may not be a breeze, but at least with very little money, time and efforts you can easily implement extensive Membership websites.
Top 5 recommended WordPress Membership Plugins
There are countless Wordpress membership plugins available online (more than 25+)
Instead of just making a big list with a few advantages and disadvantages to each plugin, I give here my personal and concrete recommendation to my favorite ones in their own Membership “category”.
All plugins offer the following Membership functions (which are not always present with other plugins):
Membership Level Management
If you have multiple membership levels, a member should be able to manage their subscription. Say, for example, to upgrade or downgrade his subscription.
And of-course, the previous payment should be credited on “pro rata” basis.
Fortunately, all Wordpress membership plugins today offer very sophisticated and easy-to-use membership management functions (which was not taken for granted a few years ago).
Content for new members with time delay
Protecting your content is of-course the core of any membership plugin.
But:
If you do not want to kill your new members with tons of content right away, you have the option of using “content dripping” to specify exactly when and which content will be released for the new member.
Ofcourse, this can also be interesting for you as a provider:
Nobody can copy or download all content within one month and then cancel their membership immediately.
Payment Options
The most popular payment options available online are the PayPal, Credit card, Debit card and bank transfer.
Since we want to receive regular (typically monthly) payments in contrast to the classic online shop, credit card and PayPal are top in list.
Newsletter / Email Marketing Integration
I recommend ConvertKit (rather than the widely recommended Mailchimp) as an e-mail marketing solution.
The point is:
Each plugin supports email marketing solutions.
In any case, make sure that your chosen Membership Plugin offers an integration with your already used Email Marketing Provider.
Affiliate program integration
If you want to promote your membership program through affiliates, you need an affiliate program. There are many different affiliate solutions available online.
In short: Each of the featured Membership Plugins offers the possibility to set up an affiliate program (partly within the plugin, partly with the integration of proven third party plugins).
My recommendations:
OK, so much for the membership functionality. What is my recommendation for the implementation now?
Well, of-course it is practically impossible to make a general statement for your individual case. In addition, the plugins are constantly evolving day by day.
That’s why my recommendation is based on how I “categorize” the WordPress Membership Plugins:
# 1 The All-in-One: MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the most popular WordPress Membership Plugins.
It has virtually all the features you could need, plus a long list of integrations with email marketing tools and is my first choice for Membership Websites.
There are 3 plans(Pro, Plus & Basic): These determine on how many websites the plugin can be installed and which addons are available.
The Basic plan (which includes all major features) costs $ 129 a year.
View MemberPress
# 2 A full Featured: Restrict Content Pro
Pippin Williamson, the main developer behind Restrict Content Pro, is considered to be a great developer of WordPress ( the author of 2 other popular plugins: Affiliate WP and Easy Digital Downloads ).
That means:
You can rely on the code and documentation of the plugin.
What makes Restrict Content Pro a very interesting choice is if you want to extend the plugin with your own functions (e.g. for projects with non-standard membership functions).
At the same time it offers all important membership functions. The price for the standard “Personal” plan is $99 a year.
However, there are some basic features that are only available in the expensive “Professional” plan with the Pro Addons for $249 per year (e.g. the “Content Dripping” described in this article).
So you have to estimate if the standard version would be sufficient.
View Restrict Content Pro
# 3 WooCommerce Integration:
WooCommerce Memberships + WooCommerce Subscriptions
If you want to combine the physical products in your WooCommerce online shop with a member area, you should take a closer look at the combination of WooCommerce Memberships + Subscriptions , even though the other membership plugins mentioned here can also be integrated with WooCommerce (that certain products are only available to members).
My experience with Premium WooCommerce plugins is that while they tend to be very easy to use (and well expandable for developers), they do not offer that many configuration options.
Plus, since you will probably need both plugins, the total price is slightly higher:
WooCommerce Memberships: $149 a year
WooCommerce Subscriptions: $199 a year
Total: $348 a year
I would rather only consider this, if an existing WooCommerce shop somehow with the Membership part must be integrated (and even in this case, other plugins that basically yes).
Note: The plugins are not developed by the WooCommerce team itself, but are third-party (this is not bad, but not that you have the wrong expectations).
View WooCommerce Memberships
View WooCommerce Subscriptions
# 4 Paid Member Subscriptions
You will be able to create and manage member subscriptions, grant and revoke access to posts, pages, categories as well as custom post types based on the subscriptions your users have purchased.
Paid Member Subscriptions integrates with WooCommerce allowing the admin to restrict product viewing, purchasing and special product prices to members.
- Restrict product viewing
- Restrict product purchasing
- Restrict access to entire WooCommerce Shop
- Add member discounts per subscription
- Add member discounts per product
View Paid Member Subscriptions
# 5 MemberMouse: The giant for scaling
MemberMouse probably offers the most functionality for even the most exotic Membership use cases and configurations.
Here are some more specific features as an example:
- Access to individual pages can be sold (regardless of membership subscription).
- Once a membership subscription has been purchased, an upsell (eg another digital product) can be offered with a one off discount.
- One can optimize its subscription prices by A / B split tests .
So it’s a very comprehensive solution that offers a lot of special features from scratch.
Accordingly, MemberMouse also costs significantly more and makes the price dependent on the number of members:
- Up to 1’000 members: $ 19.95 per month
- Up to 5,000 members: $ 39.95 per month
- Up to 10,000 members: $ 59.95 per month
- Up to 50,000 members: $ 99 per month
- Up to 100,000 members: $ 299 per month
- Unlimited members: $ 599 per month
I personally regard MemberMouse as a solution to existing and successful membership programs that are pushing their existing solution to the limit and want to grow fast.
View MemberMouse
I don’t have a Wordpress Website
Or maybe you just do not feel like messing around with the technical details?
Of-course, it is always possible to switch to a cloud provider:
There are also a relatively large number of providers, with a very clear favorite: Podia.
Why?
Because it is a web service that combines all three types of a typical online business :
- Digital products
- Online courses
- And now, memberships
At $ 79 a month, Podia is a bit more expensive (online courses and digital products, by the way, are already available from the $ 39 per month plan), but it saves a lot of work and has very quickly started a very professional looking membership area.
Definitely worth a look (and maybe a good alternative to MemberMouse if you ‘re looking for a solid platform to grow).
As I said:
In the end, I can not accept the choice (as it always depends on your individual requirements), but this pre-selection should at least be much more helpful than analyzing more than 25+ plugins in detail.
