With an overwhelming number of membership plugins available for WordPress; finding the right solution for your business can be a tricky task.
Whether you’re in the fitness industry and looking to sell memberships to coaching and fitness programs, or you’re a psychologist providing courseware to your fellow practitioners; memberships can be a great addition to any business.
We’ve shortlisted our 5 best membership plugins for WordPress this year to help you make the right choice for your business. Some plugins integrate directly with WooCommerce, whereas some act as a standalone plugin, so browse through our plugin breakdown below for more information.
MemberPress
One of the most popular WordPress membership plugins, MemberPress is also one of the easiest to use. Packed with features, MemberPress comes with just about everything you need to setup a scalable and professional membership environment for your website.
Pricing
Priced from $149 (Basic Plan) – View all pricing information here.
| Pros | |
| Simple Setup | Streamlined interface, can automatically setup pricing, login, account, and thank you pages for your users. Adding membership plans is also very straight forward. |
| Content Access Control | Powerful control to to restrict access to any content including posts, pages, categories, tags, files, etc. |
| Integrations | Integrates with AWeber, MailChimp, GetResponse, and MadMimi email services. It also integrates with Amazon Web Services and BluBrry for podcast hosting |
| Payment Gateways | Built-in support for PayPal and Stripe payment gateways. Developer plan also adds Authorize.net support. |
| Cons | |
| Limited Payment Options | MemberPress only supports the three most popular payment gateways. |
| Limited Integrations | While the plugin has enough support for popular services to run a membership site efficiently, it still lacks integrations with some other popular services. |
WooCommerce Membershps
WooCommerce Memberships is an easy-to-use, site-wide membership solution that brings your content, shop, and memberships together. Integrating directly with WooCommerce, it’s a powerful solution for both large and small membership websites.
Pricing
Priced from $199 (inc 12 Months Updates) – View all pricing information here.
| Pros | |
| eCommerce | WooCommerce Memberships is built specifically to integrate with WooCommerce. |
| Extensive payment solutions | Since WooCommerce handles the payments, it opens up your payment gateway choice, offering more solutions than other membership plugins |
| Unlimited Membership Plans | Create as many membership levels as you like |
| Upgrades | Full control over system users and ability to upgrade membership levels |
| Content restrictions | Comprehensive control over pages, images, widget areas and more, restrict content down to specific membership levels |
| Drip content | Just like other membership plugins, you can can schedule when members should have access to your content. |
| Member only products | Create members-only products so that your site can become a purchasing club |
| Members only shipping & discounts | Restrict special shipping rates and product discounts to members only, each configurable by membership level |
| Cons | |
| Subscriptions integration | Need to setup recurring billing? Memberships integrates with WooCommerce subscriptions which is it’s own separate plugin. |
S2Member Pro
One of the most popular membership plugins, S2Member Pro has been around for quite a while and has a strong community of users. What started as a free membership plugin, S2Member now offers a Pro version which is feature rich and making it one of the most powerful membership plugins for WordPress.
Pricing
Priced from $89 – View all pricing information here.
| Pros | |
| Payment Integrations | Out of the box payment gateway integrations for PayPal Standard & Pro, Stripe and Authorize.net |
| User control | Setup custom user roles and capabilities with ease, unlimited membership levels |
| Content Restrictions | Easily configure content dripping and content restrictions based on user roles, membership level and more. |
| Security | Brute force login protection, security encryption key, IP restrictions and more. |
| Digital Downloads | Easily configure digital downloads and apply restrictions |
| Profiles | Custom registration and profile fields can be configured |
| Branding | S2Member Pro allows you to brand login and registration pages |
| Extra integrations | Compatability with bbPress, BuddyPress |
| Turnkey system | No use for WooCommerce or any other eCommerce integration is needed |
| Cons | |
| Not as user-friendly | We found s2Member Pro to be a little more difficult to use than other membership plugins |
LearnDash
LearnDash is a flexible and easy to use Learning Management Software plugin for WordPress. It comes with advanced membership modules and tons of integrations which makes it a good choice for anyone run a membership website with online courses.
Pricing
Priced from $159 – View all pricing information here.
| Pros | |
| Simple Content Restrictions | LearnDash allows you to easily hide any content and restrict it to specific membership groups. |
| Sell Courses | LearnDash allows you to easily create and sell online courses. Its advanced modules allow you to course material better than other WordPress membership plugins. |
| Drip Content | The drip content feature allows you to roll out content to users on regular intervals or upon completion of levels. |
| Community Features | It comes with tools to create highly engaging sites with quizzes, user badges, course specific forums, certificates, user profiles, etc. |
| Integrations & Payments | LearnDash comes with a set of integrations and payment gateways including MemberPress, WooCommerce, bbPress, Slack and more. |
| Cons | |
| Lacks some membership features | If you are trying to build a membership website without selling courses, then some of LearnDash features may not be useful to you. |
Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro is one of the biggest names in membership plugins due to its simple and easy to understand interface, jam-packed features and affordable pricing. Restrict Content Pro is a flexible solution which can be used for almost any type of membership website.
Pricing
Priced from $249 – View all pricing information here.
| Pros | |
| Easy to Use | Restrict Content Pro provides a simple and easy to understand interface. |
| Built-in Integrations | Unlike other membership plugins, Restrict Content Pro comes with built-in integrations that other plugins charge for as paid addons. It has Stripe, PayPal, MailChimp, MailPoet, email manager, CSV export, and many more features. |
| Payment Gateways | Stripe, PayPal, and Braintree come as free addons. Other supported payment gateways include 2Checkout, PayPal Website Payments Pro, PayPal Express, and Stripe Checkout. |
| Excellent Support | There is extensive free documentation available for all users. You also get professional support by email with very fast response times. |
| Cons | |
| Fewer Integrations | It has fewer integrations with third party services such as email service providers than some other plugins on this list. |
