Do you want to create a membership site? You can find plenty of powerful WordPress membership plugins that will let you create a membership website easily without having to hire a developer.
In this article, we’ll share the best membership plugins for WordPress to create a site that can grow and bring in revenue.
The Best WordPress Membership Plugins
Here are the WordPress membership plugins on our list. Click on any to jump to the description.
- MemberPress
- Thrive Apprentice
- Restrict Content Pro
- Easy Digital Downloads
- LearnDash
- WooCommerce Memberships
- MemberMouse
- S2Member
- WishList Member
- WP-Members
- ARMember
What Is a Membership Website?
A membership site is typically a website with gated content that only registered users/members can access.
In other words, it’s an online business that provides access to its content or its services only to the people who become members. It works similarly to a gym or club that requires you to buy a membership to enjoy its services.
On the internet, there’re now thousands of membership sites that offer online courses, webinars, training, e-books, and more, and make good money by selling their memberships.
Creating a membership site is now one of the most popular ways to make money online.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Membership Plugin
If you want to start a fully functional membership site and earn money, you’ll need powerful software to run your membership system.
Here are a few major features you’ll need to consider when choosing the best membership plugin for your unique site:
- Membership Management: Take a look at the membership levels, subscription types, trial period features, etc.
- Content Restriction Options: Check how the plugin handles content restriction options. You may need a content-dripping option.
- Payment Gateways: Figure out if the plugin has an integration with your favorite payment gateways.
- Email Marketing: Check if the plugin has the necessary integrations for the email marketing tools you’ll use.
Also, check if the plugin has easy options to create coupons and discounts.
Now, let’s take a look at the best WordPress membership plugins you can use to create the membership website of your dreams.
1. MemberPress
MemberPress is the most popular WordPress membership plugin available on the market. It comes with a complete set of features to enable you to create a powerful membership system in WordPress.
The plugin makes it super easy to set up your membership site. All you need to do is install the plugin, enter your payment gateway details, add some products, and your site will be ready.
With MemberPress, you can create an unlimited number of memberships and set powerful access rules for your premium content. You can restrict access to pages, posts, custom post types, categories, tags, and any other files on your site.
It includes a content dripping option if you want to release content over time instead of giving access to the full content at once. This feature is particularly useful for e-learning sites that sell online courses.
It has in-built integration for major payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. Similarly, you can use the most popular email marketing services, including AWeber, Mailchimp, and GetResponse. It also supports other popular tools like bbPress, Easy Affiliate, etc.
Doubtlessly, it’s one of the best WordPress plugins ever made.
Pricing: $179.50 Per Year for Basic Plan (1 Site)
Get started with MemberPress today!
2. Thrive Apprentice
Thrive Apprentice is the best membership plugin for LMS. It lets you create and manage online courses, training programs, and membership sites using WordPress.
You don’t need any technical skills to make professional-looking content because of its intuitive drag-and-drop editor and over 55 course templates.
It has powerful content-dripping features that let you unlock content at consistent intervals for students. You can also show personalized content for different users and get valuable insights with the advanced reporting engine.
You can use Thrive Apprentice to track the progress of your students, create interactive quizzes to test their knowledge, and reward them with customizable certificates upon course completion.
You can connect the WP membership plugin with a checkout plugin to accept payments for your courses and memberships directly on your site.
It’s a simple WordPress membership plugin that’s user-friendly and quick to set up, thanks to the school setup wizard that guides you through the process, but it also includes plenty of advanced features in the built-in membership management dashboard.
Pricing: $149 / year for Thrive Apprentice, or it can be purchased as part of the entire Thrive Suite of plugins for growing your online business.
Get started with Thrive Apprentice today!
3. Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro is yet another of the best membership plugins for WordPress. It allows you to make a powerful membership site and earn money by selling different levels of memberships.
But what makes it really awesome is that you can create an unlimited number of subscription packages, including free, trial, and premium subscriptions. It has a simple member management interface to view all your active, pending, expired, canceled, and free users.
To keep your members updated, it allows you to send automatic emails to your members. For example, a welcome email when a new member joins, when payment is received, when a subscription is going to expire, etc. It also includes a beautiful customer dashboard from where your members can view and manage their account details.
Restrict Content Pro has built-in integrations for Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal to accept payments.
You can also access the included Restrict Content Pro Ultimate Member addon for integration of more advanced member management features.
MonsterInsights also integrates directly with Restrict Content Pro.
Pricing: $99 Per Year for Personal Plan (1 site)
Get started with Restrict Content Pro today!
4. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is an awesome plugin subscription provider and one of the best WordPress membership plugins for eCommerce. It’s a perfect tool for selling digital goods online and makes it simple to sell a variety of digital products, like eBooks, videos, audio files, and PDFs.
This plugin comes with a built-in shopping cart, allowing customers to purchase multiple products at once. Discount codes can be created to increase sales, and customers can pay one-time or set up automatic recurring payments with different intervals like daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.
You can also allow customers to download their purchased products as many times as they want or restrict the number of downloads by time or attempts.
Easy Digital Downloads accepts credit card payments from popular gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Braintree without additional monthly fees.
Additionally, there are many addons available to enhance the functionality of your WordPress subscription plugin. You can use addons like Wish Lists, Purchase Rewards, Conditional Emails, and Multi-Currency to tailor your customer experience.
Pricing: Starts at $99.50 / year
Get started with Easy Digital Downloads today!
5. LearnDash
LearnDash is the most popular learning management system (LMS) for WordPress. It’s the best plugin for creating and selling online courses.
The plugin comes with an intelligent course builder that helps you create highly engaging courses. Then, you can sell access to your classes at a 1-time price or as subscriptions, memberships, bundles, etc. You can also drip-feed lesson content according to a schedule.
The plugin lets you send automatic email notifications to your learners based on their activities. You can connect to popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp to keep your users informed.
It allows you to use PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, and 300+ others with WooCommerce as payment gateways. It also supports useful plugins like bbPress, Slack, etc.
Pricing: $199 for Single Site License
Get started with LearnDash today!
6. WooCommerce Memberships
WooCommerce Memberships is a WooCommerce extension plugin to create a complete membership system on your WooCommerce store. With this plugin, you can create several types of memberships and sell them.
You can sell a membership as a stand-alone product or grant access to a membership as part of a product purchase. You can also assign memberships manually for the invite-only member’s area.
It includes several other useful features like content dripping, special discounts, export/import members, etc.
The downside of the plugin is that it requires you to install another plugin, WooCoommerce Subscriptions, to accept subscription-based recurring payments.
Pricing: $16.59 / monthly
Get started with WooCommerce Memberships today!
7. MemberMouse
MemberMouse is a great WordPress membership plugin option to sell products and offer memberships on your WordPress site. It comes with many advanced features, like dynamic content protection and a built-in push notification system, making it easy to manage and sell your offerings.
And the simple interface and integration with email automation services and various payment options make it easy to get started.
MemberMouse also offers many security functions, like setting a maximum number of login attempts and locking shared accounts to reduce security risks.
With its abandoned cart recovery feature, you can even offer the option to downgrade a user’s membership to prevent them from canceling altogether. And if you’re worried about missing out on revenue from overdue payments, MemberMouse will handle that for you automatically.
While MemberMouse may be a bit pricey, you can try it out for 14 days for free before committing to a monthly payment plan. Its advanced features and functionality make it a great investment for those looking to build a complete sales-based membership site.
Pricing: Starts at $199.50 / year
Get started with MemberMouse today!
8. S2Member
S2Member is another popular membership plugin for WordPress that offers both a free version and a premium version.
If you’re just starting out, then this is the best free WordPress membership plugin you can use. It offers a detailed knowledge base that has useful tutorials and guides. But it does lack a few features. For instance, with S2Member Pro, you get a content drip feature.
You also get more payment options in the Pro plan, which includes Stripe and Authorize.net, along with PayPal.
The WordPress membership plugin integrates perfectly with different marketing tools like Mailchimp and BuddyPress. That said, it isn’t the most user-friendly membership plugin.
Pricing: $89 one-time charge for the Pro plan.
Get started with S2Member today!
9. WishList Member
WishList Member is a flexible membership plugin for WordPress that offers powerful features to protect your content. It integrates easily with most plugins, themes, and page builders, and it lets you set up trigger actions to increase efficiency.
With WishList Member, you can create unlimited membership levels with flexible options, including free memberships, premium memberships, or pay-per-post content. It offers one-click content protection, making it easy to set pages or posts to members-only.
This subscription plugin also allows you to drip, schedule, and archive content, and to show sneak peeks to non-members. With over 20 popular payment gateways available, including Stripe, PayPal, and WooCommerce, you can accept payments from your customers easily.
While there are a lot of options, it comes with a simple setup wizard that walks you through the process step-by-step. You can also take advantage of its developer tools, like the REST API and WP template tags, and view membership statistics at a glance.
WishList Member is probably the best WordPress membership plugin on our list for maximum flexibility.
Pricing: $149.50 / year for 1 site license
Get started with WishList Member today!
10. WP-Members
WP-Members is among the best free WordPress membership plugins that you can use to create gated content. It’s very simple to use and lets you hide content from the front end.
Using the plugin, you can create custom profiles and registration fields along with small teaser content to grab the attention of the user.
WP-Members also offers over 120 different filter hocks and actions to customize your membership area. You can even use its security features to keep your members secure.
That said, the free version features are limited, so you can also check out its premium version.
Pricing: $125 for the Pro bundle.
Get started for free with WP-Members today!
11. ARMember
ARMember is a free WordPress membership plugin that offers a lot of features. You can have unlimited membership levels, drip content, restricted content, and more.
Using the membership plugin, you can upgrade, cancel, renew, or downgrade memberships. Not only that, but you can also award certificates and badges to your subscribers.
Plus, you get easy to use interface, which makes ARMember a great choice for beginners.
Pricing: Free
Get started with ARMember today!
Bonus: Teachable
Teachable is a powerful online LMS course builder platform that lets you create and sell gorgeous online courses. Although it’s not available as a WordPress plugin, you can integrate it with your WordPress site by adding links.
Teachable lets you create engaging multimedia lectures, including video, image, text, audio, and PDF files. You can also run quizzes, have discussions, and provide course completion certificates to enhance your members’ learning experience.
There are advanced pricing options to sell your online courses. You can charge a 1-time fee, sell a subscription, or set up a pricing plan to sell individual or bundled courses. You can accept payments using Stripe or PayPal.
Additionally, it has a built-in affiliate marketing feature, coupons, and promotion options to boost your marketing efforts.
Pricing: $39 Per Month for the Basic plan
Get started with Teachable today!
Which WordPress Membership Plugin is Best for You?
After reviewing the best WordPress membership plugins closely, MemberPress is the best option available. It has all the features you need to set up a full-featured membership system.
Alternatively, Thrive Apprentice is a great choice if you want to create a membership site specifically for selling online courses. The plugin has additional features to engage your learners and enhance their learning experience with fun elements like quizzes, awards, certificates, etc.
We hope this article helped you find the best membership plugin for your WordPress website. You may also want to see our handpicked list of the best WordPress plugins to improve your website traffic and sales.
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