8 Best WordPress Membership Plugins (2024 Pros And Cons)

Looking for the best WordPress membership plugins? You’re in the right place.

Adding membership functionality to your WordPress website has never been easier. 

There are tons of plugins out there that do all the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to gate off members-only content, set up membership levels and billing options, and more in a couple of clicks.

I tried and tested all of them so you don’t have to. And in this post, I’m going to review and compare all my top picks. Read on to find the right plugin for your needs.

The best membership plugins for WordPress compared

#1 – MemberPress

MemberPress is going to be the best choice for most users. It’s the most complete WordPress membership plugin on the market right now with all the features you could need and then some.

MemberPress is as close to an ‘all-in-one’ membership plugin as you can get. It doesn’t just include the basics, like the ability to set up subscription plans and gate members-only content. It also includes a ton of advanced features and add-ons.

My favorite is the built-in learning management system (LMS), which you can use to build and deliver online courses, and then enroll and manage students.

The Communities and Forums add-ons also come in useful if you plan to sell paid community memberships. You can use them to set up members-only discussion spaces on your website, which you can then include access to as part of your subscription package.

I also appreciate how easy MemberPress is to set up. The code is clean and it seems to play nicely with most popular themes and plugins too. I’ve tried it with a bunch of different themes and I’ve yet to run into any conflicts.

My one gripe is that MemberPress doesn’t offer any kind of free plan or even a free trial. However, they do offer a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Key features

• Learning Management System (LMS). Build and sell courses through your membership sites, complete with quizzes, progress tracking, certificates, and more
• CoachKit™. Offer unlimited coaching programs and milestones as part of your membership packages.
• Communities. Build and host a password-protected community space (forum) on your WordPress site.
• Content Access Rules. Set up paywalls and limit access to what content users can see based on their membership level.
• Subscriptions. Set up subscription billing to automatically re-bill customers and renew their memberships at set intervals.
• Drip content. Utilize timed releases and access expiration to drip content out to members over time.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $359/year but you can get 50% off with their Special Offer discount (running currently). A 14-day money-back guarantee is available.

#2 – Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a good choice if you don’t want to pay a subscription fee for your membership plugin. It offers a decent ‘free’ plan that comes with all the important features. But keep in mind that on the free plan, you’ll pay an additional 2% transaction fee on your sales.

Restrict Content Pro has fewer features than something like MemberPress, so it won’t weigh your site down, but it’s nonetheless very powerful and extensible. There’s an extensive library of add-ons so you can only activate the specific features and integrations you need.

Once activated, you can use Restrict Content Pro to create membership ‘levels’, and restrict access to content by membership level, which is pretty neat. You can also paywall your premium content to display a sign-up offer to visitors.

I particularly like how developer-friendly Restrict Content Pro is. Template files are fully editable, you can customize it with action hooks and filters (making it easy to integrate with other plugins), and it comes with full developer documentation.

Another cool thing is that, unlike most other membership plugins, you don’t need to have a third-party ecommerce solution like WooCommerce installed for Restrict Content Pro to work—it just works right out of the box.

Key features

• Content restriction tools. Lock content behind a paywall with a sign-up offer and restrict access based on user role, membership level, etc.
• Membership levels. Create and sell tiered membership levels with different perks and prices.
• Premium content delivery. Deliver new premium content to members automatically
• Discount codes. Create discount offers and coupon codes to drive sales.
• Developer tools. Theme integration, action hooks & filters, editable template files, documentation, etc.
• Payment integrations. Use Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout, Braintree, and more to take payments. Or use the API to build your own custom payment gateways

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $99/year. 

#3 – Paid Member Subscriptions

Paid Member Subscriptions is another lightweight solution and a good choice if you just want the essentials. 

I found that it isn’t as feature-rich as some other plugins, but it still has everything you need to turn your WordPress website into a fully functional membership site.

You can set up content restrictions to put your members-only content, products, etc. behind a paywall and charge customers for access. And I like how much flexibility it offers when it comes to payment options. 

A lot of other membership plugins only support recurring subscription payments, but with Paid Member Subscriptions, you can also charge one-time fees, offer pay-what-you-want pricing, set up free or paid trials, offer group membership discounts, and more.

It integrates well with common WordPress themes and page builders like Divi, Elementor, etc. And it’s super affordable too.

My main gripe is that, as far as I can see, it doesn’t offer any built-in LMS or tools to help you create online courses out of the box. So if you were planning on selling course memberships, you’ll probably need to integrate it with a third-party tool like LearnDash.

Key features

• Content & product restriction. Hide or display specific posts, pages, types, products, and more based on membership status.
• Content dripping. Keep members engaged with scheduled content releases.
• Member management. Add, remove, and manage members from your dashboard, and allow members to upgrade/downgrade their subscriptions from their login page. 
• Group memberships. Sell group memberships to businesses, schools, etc. with multiple ‘seats’ for different users. 
• Payment options. Set up one-time or recurring payments, accept donations, offer free trials, use pro-rate prices, offer discount codes, and more.
• Tax & EU VAT. Install the tax & EU VAT add-on to automatically charge users tax based on their location.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from €99 / year. Try it risk-free with their 15-day money-back guarantee.

#4 – Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is the best free WordPress membership plugin I’ve tried. The core plugin is 100% open source under a General Public License and allows unlimited members, membership levels, and restricted content. 

What’s more, unlike other ‘free’ platforms (Restrict Content Pro, I’m looking at you), Paid Memberships Pro doesn’t sneak in any additional transaction fees to make money. The only fees you’ll pay are those your payment gateway charges, but you’d pay those anywhere. 

Upgrading to a paid license unlocks a few extra features, including premium support, automatic updates, and some other goodies, but it’s not necessary for most people. And if you do choose to upgrade, your purchase is backed by their super generous 100-day money-back guarantee. I can’t fault that.

I also like the way Paid Memberships Pro paywalls work. You can restrict access to any post or page on your site and, when non-members open it up, they’ll be shown a ‘sneak peak’ of what’s inside and invited to subscribe to unlock the whole page. Displaying a small excerpt rather than blocking everything helps boost conversions and gives the page a better chance to rank.

Key features

• Content restrictions. Restrict pages, posts, post types, single pages, and more.
• Content dripping. Give your members drip feed access to content according to a set schedule.
• Unlimited levels. Set up multiple membership levels with unique pricing and access limits for each tier. 
• Payment options. Charge one-time payments or recurring subscriptions, allow members to set their own price or make donations, and more.
• Reports. View detailed analytics with reports for things like sales and revenue, signups and cancellations, etc.
• Personalized content. Personalize your posts and pages for each visitor based on membership level.
• Directories and profiles. Set up a members-only directory to create your own community or listing site.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $347/year and are backed by a 100-day money-back guarantee.

#5 – MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a powerful membership plugin built for enterprises. It comes with more advanced features than most other plugins, including a few unique features I haven’t seen elsewhere.

With MemberMouse, you can password-protect your premium content, build and restrict online courses, take payments, manage members, drip out members-only content, and do everything else you need to do to manage a WordPress membership site.

My favorite feature is SmartTags™. They’re shortcodes that allow you to easily create personalized experiences for your members without any programming. You can use them to dynamically display personalized content, upsells/downsells, forms, and more based on member attributes.

Another cool feature you get with MemberMouse that I haven’t seen on many other membership plugins is automated overdue payment handling.

If one of your customers misses a payment, it won’t just cancel their account straight away. Instead, it’ll put them into ‘overdue’ status first, which temporarily restricts their access to members-only benefits. 

While in overdue status, it’ll automatically send out overdue payment notifications and attempt to rebill them several times over one week before canceling their account, and you can customize these notifications and rebilling attempts as needed.

This gives customers a chance to fix the billing issue and helps ensure you don’t needlessly miss out on revenue.

Key features

• Content protection. Protect members-only areas, content categories & taxonomies, posts and pages, etc.
• Ecommerce features. Free & paid memberships, members-only pricing, one-click upsells, recurring subscriptions, flexible checkout pages, payment plans, and more.
• Member management features. View member activity logs, upgrade/downgrade members, offer self-service accounts, manually create and import members, issue refunds, etc.
• Online course features. Create and protect courses in a drag-and-drop builder, track student progress, build and offer quizzes, reward students with certificates, and more.
• Automation features. Streamline your processes with automated overdue payment notifications, email purchase receipts, welcome emails, push notifications, and more.
• Reporting and analytics. View and export data on members, revenues, sales, engagement, churn, retention, etc.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $399/year but you can get 50% off with their current offer. Try it risk-free with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

#6 – s2Member

s2Member is another one of the most popular membership plugins. It offers a pretty good free plan, and its lifetime license is one of the cheapest on the market, so it’s a good option if you’re on a tight budget.

I’ll be honest: I was initially put off by the way s2Member looks. The website is very dated, as are front-end elements like the login and welcome pages. 

But functionality-wise, it does the job. The free version has everything you need to protect WordPress content, create membership pages, and accept one-time or recurring payments through PayPal.

I like that you can protect individual portions of your posts instead of the whole page if you so choose—a lot of other plugins don’t let you do this. You can even protect downloadable files, which is pretty neat.

The plugin is powered almost exclusively by shortcodes, which makes it fairly easy to set up if you know how to use them, but the UX isn’t as streamlined as other plugins I’ve tried.

If you want to use any payment processor that isn’t PayPal to take payments, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version. You’ll also need to pay if you want to set up unlimited membership levels, coupon codes, or drip content.

Key features

• Custom pages. Design your own custom login page, user registration forms, membership options page, etc.
• Content protection. Restrict any post, page, page section, download, or any other type of content to members only. 
• Take payments. Accept one-off or recurring payments for memberships through PayPal (and other gateways with the Pro version)
• Membership levels (Pro only). Set up multiple membership levels with different perks at different prices. 
• Discount codes (pro only). Create and distribute coupon codes, gift/redemption codes, etc.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan is available. Lifetime licenses start from $89.

#7 – WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is a good choice if you already have WooCommerce installed on your website or if you want to sell memberships alongside other products.

It’s a site-wide membership solution that brings your products, content, and memberships together in one place, allowing you to create a membership system that’s seamlessly integrated with your store.

One cool thing about this is that it means you can grant customers memberships with their product purchases. For example, if they purchase a meal box subscription, it grants them access to the members-only recipe section. 

Or it can work the other way around: When they purchase a membership, it grants them access to specific products or member-only perks in your store (e.g. discounted shipping), allowing you to turn your WooCommerce store into a purchasing club.

All that said, WooCommerce Memberships work much better alongside WooCommerce Subscriptions (another plugin). 

Without both, you won’t be able to set up recurring billing (you’ll have to charge for a set term like a year rather than billing members month-to-month). You’ll also need Subscriptions to offer free trials, let members pause their memberships, etc.

This is a bit of a bummer as it means you have to pay for yet another add-on, and install yet another plugin, to get everything you need. And that all adds up to drain your wallet and your site’s resources.

Key features

• Sell memberships. Create a ‘membership’ product and sell it through your WooCommerce store.
• Grant access with product purchases. Give customers who buy a product in your store access to members-only areas as part of their purchase.
• Protect and drip content. Choose which posts, categories, etc. to protect and when members get to access them.
• Restrict purchasing. Allow only members to view or purchase specific products in your store to turn your site into a purchasing club.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $16.59/month billed annually and are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#8 – WP-Members

WP-Members is another free membership plugin for WordPress. It’s light on features out of the box given that it’s free, but extensible with premium add-ons.

I like how developer-friendly WP-Members is. The dev team behind it seem to know what they’re doing and have designed it to be as flexible and customizable as possible. You can customize it with over 120 action and filter hooks, and there’s a large library of API functions.

It works the same way as most other membership plugins. You create and customize your membership registration and log-in pages, then set pricing and restrict posts and pages as needed. It’ll automatically create excerpts and teasers for your restricted posts too.

It does the basics well but lacks advanced features that you might want, like content dripping, online course building, and so on. That said, if you pay for a Pro Bundle license, you get a lot of add-ons that make it much more powerful.

Key features

• Content restrictions. Show/hide posts, pages, and custom post types based on membership status.
• Integrated membership pages. Member registration, login, and profile pages are integrated into your WordPress theme.
• Post excerpts. Create teaser content for all of your protected pages automatically.
• Shortcodes. Use shortcodes to manage content restrictions, logins, registrations, and more.
• Customizations. Create powerful customizations with over 120+ action and filter hooks.

Pros and cons

Pricing

WP-Members core plugin is free. Various paid add-ons are available, and Pro Bundle licenses start from $149/year. Discounts are available.

Final thoughts

All of the WordPress plugins we’ve looked at in this post can be used to add membership functionality to your WordPress website.

The right choice for you will depend on the features you want, how much control/flexibility you need, and your budget. 

If you’re building a membership site to sell online courses, you may be better off using one of these online course platforms, rather than WordPress.

For more ways to earn money from your WordPress website, check out our roundup of 13 ways to make money from a website, and our beginner’s guide on how to make money blogging.

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