8 Best WordPress Membership Plugins 2022

Best WordPress Membership Plugins 2022

Best WordPress Membership Plugins 2022 Participation modules are fundamental to making restrictiveness and limiting your substance or administration to paid or enlisted individuals as it were. To a few, participation modules are the sole type of revenue. Find the best WordPress participation modules, and pick the one that fits you best.

Looking for the best WordPress enrollment modules to make an individual just site? In this post, we’ll separate the very best enrollment modules by the highlights that matter, similar to how they let you limit content, sell participations, coordinate with other modules, and then some.

Participation modules are an amazingly helpful apparatus for a wide range of sorts WordPress destinations… which is the reason there are so many enrollment modules to browse! You can utilize them for online courses, private gatherings, social networks, buying clubs, and significantly more.

To assist you with reducing your hunt and finding the best module for your requirements and financial plan, we’ve gathered the eight best enrollment modules for WordPress.

These modules can do the troublesome backend work of overseeing individuals and confining admittance to your substance, while as yet allowing you to utilize Elementor to plan the front-finish of your site. Some go further and deal direct incorporations with Elementor so you can even limit admittance to individual Elementor segments and gadgets.

Enrollment modules are an extraordinary nitty-gritty theme, so there’s a ton of ground to cover here.

We should get everything rolling.

What Are WordPress Membership Plugins Used For?

At a significant level, enrollment modules let you acknowledge individuals on your site and deal with various encounters to individuals rather than mysterious guests (or even various encounters to various classes of individuals).

Those truly are the main two essential conditions:

You need to acknowledge enrollment from individuals.
You need to offer various encounters to individuals, ordinarily by confining admittance to content for non-individuals (however you can likewise do as such in alternate ways).
Contingent upon how you need to execute things, you could allow individuals to become individuals free of charge. Or then again, you could charge a one-time or repeating enrollment expense to join. You can likewise go further and proposition distinctive membership levels that award various degrees of access.

This fundamental usefulness opens up a huge load of opportunities for building fascinating WordPress destinations.

What Types of WordPress Membership Sites Can You Build?
Here are a few instances of the kinds of locales that you can work with WordPress participation modules:

Online courses – you could convey online course content to individuals.
Private people group – you could make private networks that blend course content, message sheets, private instructing, and then some.
“Premium” content – this is conventional, yet you can utilize enrollment destinations for a superior substance. For instance, Scott’s Cheap Flights shares the best modest airfare that manages individuals.

A private gathering – you could make your own discussion and confine admittance to a few/every one of the discussions dependent on various participation levels.

Your own WordPress.com clone – you can allow individuals to make their own destinations on your organization utilizing WordPress multisite, actually like how it works with WordPress.com.

Online business advantages – you could offer unique arrangements/limits to individuals at your eCommerce store, similar to your own rendition of Amazon Prime. Or then again, you could expect individuals to be individuals to make a buy to make a private buying club.
This is in no way, shape, or form a total rundown, there are various ways that you can go with a WordPress participation module.

What to Look for in a WordPress Membership Plugin

Picking a participation module is one of the harder choices that you’ll make just in light of the fact that there are countless elements that go into an enrollment module. Also, there are a ton of little elements that may be significant for your particular participation execution.

In other words, this is certainly not a total rundown of what to search for. All things being equal, these are only probably the greatest variables to think about while picking a module:

• Content limitation choices
• Membership levels/the executives
• Installment choices
• Reconciliations with different instruments

Cost
Content Restriction Options
How does the module allow you to confine admittance to content? Would you be able to limit the accompanying:

• Portions of content
• Whole posts/pages
• Whole classes of content
• Whole post sorts

Certain formats?

Do you have to go past content limitations? For instance, would you like to allow individuals to make their own organization site by means of WordPress multisite? Some modules support this, while others don’t.

Would you like to limit document downloads? Once more, not all modules offer this.

Additionally significant — how might you control the circumstance of content limitation:

• Would you be able to dribble content out over the long haul? These assists make with peopling want more.
• Would you be able to set a hard lapse date for content?
• Would you be able to open substance access after a specific timeframe?
• Membership Levels/Management

Would you like to offer various enrollment levels? Or on the other hand, do you simply need to make a solitary “part” class?

Moreover, you have other significant inquiries:

Should individuals be permitted to have different memberships?
Do you need individuals to have the option to change their membership levels without manual mediation?
Would you like to offer gathering memberships? For instance, a business could buy an enrollment for its staff.
Installment Options
Assuming you’re not seeking a charge for admittance to your local area, you can securely disregard this one.

Notwithstanding, in the event that you are wanting to adapt your participation site, there are a lot of inquiries to consider here:

Which installment doors are upheld?
Would you be able to give free preliminaries or charge a one-time information exchange expense (on top of the enrollment)
Would you be able to offer limit codes or run different advancements?
Incorporations
Assuming you need to make a participation local area based around another module, you’ll need to give unique consideration to mixes.

For instance, would you like to make individuals just gather? Ensure you pick a module that coordinates with bbPress.

Need to offer free delivery to individuals from your WooCommerce store? Ensure the module has WooCommerce coordination (and that particular element).

A portion of the normal incorporations that you’ll need to consider are:

Email promoting administrations (to consequently add individuals to your rundowns)
WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads

bbPress

In case you’re utilizing Elementor, you’ll likewise need to ponder Elementor combination. Since these modules work with center WordPress highlights, they all ought to coordinate with Elementor at a fundamental level. For instance, assuming you confine a whole page, it doesn’t make any difference whether you fabricated that page with Elementor or the local WordPress manager.

Be that as it may, some modules go farther than others with their Elementor mixes. For instance, some let you limit admittance to individual Elementor areas, segments, or gadgets, which is truly valuable in the event that you intend to depend on fractional substance limitation in your Elementor plans.

Cost
In conclusion, and clearly, there’s the issue of cost. You’ll track down a wide scope of choices, so you’ll need to search for something that accommodates your financial plan. You’ll observe costs going from free up to $400+ regardless.

In the segments beneath, we’ll separate each module’s elements by these equivalent classes to assist you with rapidly evaluating them. Notwithstanding, participation modules have excessively many elements to remember for a gathering post like this, so we’d urge you to utilize our portrayals as a hopping-off point for additional exploration.

8 Best WordPress Membership Plugins

1. MemberPress

MemberPress is one of the most popular WordPress membership plugins. It only comes in a premium version, but it’s affordably priced unlike most of the competition.

For a more detailed look at what it’s like to use MemberPress, we have an entire tutorial on how to build a membership site using Elementor and MemberPress.

Content Restriction Options

MemberPress gives you a lot of options for restricting content.

First off, you can bulk restrict content in a number of ways:

• All content
• Entire categories
• Entire tags
• Child pages of content
• Post types

You can also restrict individual pieces of content (including widgets). Or, you can use partial content restriction via a shortcode or PHP.

MemberPress also lets you protect files, which lets you prevent unauthorized downloads

You can also use these rules to:

• Drip content
• Expire content after a certain amount of time.

Subscription Levels/Management

MemberPress lets you create unlimited free and paid subscription levels. You can create “tiers” so that members can upgrade and downgrade accordingly.

Members will be able to manage their own subscriptions from the front-end. They can update, upgrade, downgrade, etc.

With the Corporate Accounts add-on, you can also create group memberships with sub-members inside that account.

Payment Options

MemberPress supports both one-time and recurring payments via the following payment gateways:

• Stripe
• PayPal (Express, Standard, Pro)
• Authorize.net
• Offline payments

You can offer both free trials or paid trials, as well as coupon codes.

Notable Integrations

MemberPress integrates with the following tools:

• bbPress
• Affiliate Royale (from the same developer) to create an affiliate program
• Zapier
• Many popular email marketing services
• External object storage (like Amazon S3) to restrict access to files from those services
• LearnDash and some other LMS plugins for online courses

There’s also an official Elementor add-on that lets you restrict individual sections from inside the Elementor interface. This is really handy if you want to use Elementor to design the content that you offer to members. 

Or, you could include these rules in templates from Elementor Pro and Theme Builder to easily restrict content sitewide.

Price

MemberPress has three different pricing plans, each with different features and site usage limits:

• Basic – $149
• Plus – $249
• Pro – $349

2. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a popular WordPress membership plugin that was acquired by iThemes on September 1st, 2020. While this is a big change, iThemes is a very established company and is planning to put resources into Restrict Content Pro, so you should still feel confident that it will be around for the long haul.

Content Restriction Options

You can restrict individual posts/pages, or, you can also bulk restrict content based on:

• The category that the content is

• The post type

If you need more granular control, you can also partially restrict content using a shortcode or PHP function.

Other useful features include:

• Drip content

• Hard expiration date for content

• Unlock content after a certain amount of time

You also get some other interesting ways to restrict “content”. For example, you can let members create their own network site on your WordPress multisite network.

Subscription Levels/Management

Restrict Content Pro lets you create unlimited subscription levels, including both free and paid levels.

Members can manage their subscription levels from the front-end, including options to upgrade or downgrade.

With the Group Accounts add-on, you can also offer multi-member group memberships that you can sell to organizations.

Payment Options

Restrict Content Pro offers support for the following payment gateways:

• Stripe

• Braintree (by PayPal)

• 2Checkout

• Authorize.net

• PayPal (Express, Standard, Pro)

You can offer free trial periods, as well as a fairly flexible coupon feature that lets you add coupon limits and even lock coupons to specific membership levels.

Notable Integrations

Restrict Content Pro has built-in integrations for some popular email marketing services including:

• Mailchimp

• AWeber

• ConvertKit

• ActiveCampaign

• MailPoet

• Campaign Monitor

There are also dedicated integrations for a few other plugins:

• WooCommerce

• Easy Digital Downloads

• WP Job Manager

• bbPress

Finally, it also integrates with the AffiliateWP plugin to help you create an affiliate program.

Price

There is technically a free version of Restrict Content available at WordPress.org, but it’s very limited.

Most sites will want to go with Restrict Content Pro, which has four pricing plans:

• Personal – $99 – premium features on one site.

• Plus – $149 – premium features on five sites.

• Professional – $299 – premium features + 18 pro-add-ons on unlimited sites.

• Ultimate – $499 – premium features + 18 pro-add-ons on unlimited sites with lifetime support/updates.

Or, thanks to the new iThemes acquisition, you can also get it as part of the iThemes Toolkit, which starts at $700 for access to all iThemes plugins/services.

3. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is a WordPress membership plugin that, as the name suggests, uses WooCommerce as its base.

This leads to a common misconception that WooCommerce Memberships is only for creating a membership site built around an eCommerce store. That is not the case – you can use WooCommerce Memberships to create any type of membership site (though it does have some nice options for eCommerce stores).

Content Restriction Options

WooCommerce Memberships lets you bulk restrict content at various levels:

• Entire post types
• Categories
• Tags
• Custom taxonomies

You can also restrict individual pieces of content, as well as partial content restriction via shortcodes or block settings.

If you’re running a WooCommerce store, you can also restrict who can view and/or purchase products.

Finally, you can also drip content out over time.

Subscription Levels/Management

You can create unlimited subscription levels and link them to WooCommerce products to control access. That is, when someone purchases a product, they get access to the subscription level. You can also offer free memberships by creating a free product.

Members can have multiple subscription levels. If you’re using WooCommerce Subscriptions, they’ll also be able to manage their subscriptions using features from that plugin.

With the Teams for WooCommerce Memberships extension (separate $129 purchase), you can also sell group memberships.

Payment Options

Because it’s built on WooCommerce, WooCommerce Memberships really shines when it comes to payment integrations. You’ll be able to tap into all the regular WooCommerce payment gateways and features.

That includes coupons, discounting rules, free trials/sign-up fees (with WooCommerce Subscriptions), and more.

Notable Integrations

If you are running a WooCommerce store, WooCommerce Memberships does have some useful WooCommerce-specific features:

• Require people to be members in order to purchase products.
• Offer special discounts or free shipping to members.

It also integrates with Automattic’s Sensei LMS plugin, which helps you create online courses.

Price

WooCommerce Memberships themselves costs $199. However, most membership sites will also need to purchase some other WooCommerce extensions to get all of the features that they need.

For example, if you want to offer recurring subscriptions, you’ll need the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, which also costs $199. For that reason, this one can be a little more expensive than another option that has everything built-in.

4. Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is the first membership plugin on this list that offers a full-featured free version at WordPress.org.

With just the free core version, you already get access to a lot of features. If you want to go further, you can also choose from 18+ free add-ons and 65+ premium add-ons. Because it has so many add-ons, Paid Memberships Pro gives you a lot of flexibility for how you set up your site.

Content Restriction Options

You can restrict entire pieces of content by:

• Individual pieces of content
• Category
• Post type

You can also hard-code content restriction using a PHP function. You can also use this to wrap ads so that you can offer members an ad-free experience while showing ads to non-members.

For partial content restriction, the plugin includes both a shortcode and a dedicated “Member” block that restricts all blocks nested inside.

Through its many add-ons, it also supports:

• Drip content
• Member-specific RSS feeds
• Network sites for members with WordPress multisite
• Limiting post views (like the paywalls that many newspapers use)

Subscription Levels/Management

Paid Memberships Pro allows unlimited membership levels, including an option to link membership levels to new or existing WordPress user roles.

Some other notable features are:

• Members can have multiple membership levels
• You can sell group memberships to organizations

You can also create a front-end directory of user profiles, which is useful for community websites.

Payment Options

Paid Memberships Pro supports one-time and recurring payments via the following gateways:

• Stripe
• PayPal (Express, Standard, Website Payments Pro, and Payflow Pro)
• Braintree
• Authorize.net
• CyberSource
• 2Checkout
• Payfast

There’s also a WooCommerce integration that lets you use WooCommerce to handle payments.

Other useful features include:

• Trial periods
• Coupons/discounts
• Failed payment limits
• Variable pricing/donations
• Proration and membership pausing

Notable Integrations

• Popular email marketing services, including Mailchimp and AWeber
• Zapier
• WooCommerce
• BuddyPress
• bbPress
• Download Monitor
• Some popular events plugins for members-only events

Additionally, there’s an official Elementor integration that allows you to restrict content at the element or widget level and display content to non-members or for specific membership levels. It also gives you more flexibility over the appearance and content restrictions.

Price

The core Paid Memberships Pro plugin is available for free at WordPress.org. You can also get 18+ free add-ons through the developer’s website.

There are two plans to access the 65+ premium add-ons and support:

• Plus – $297 for up to 5 sites
• Unlimited – $597 for unlimited sites

5. Paid Member Subscriptions

Paid Member Subscriptions is a freemium membership plugin from the same developer as the TranslatePress plugin, which we detailed in our tutorial on how to translate Elementor.

It’s a little more lightweight than some other plugins, but it still has all the features that most membership sites will need and it’s more affordable than most of the competition.

Content Restriction Options

Your options for restricting content vary between the free and paid versions:

• Individual pieces of content (free)
• Entire taxonomies (paid)
• Entire custom post types (paid)

For partial content restriction, you can use shortcodes and you can also drip content out over time.

Subscription Levels/Management

Paid Member Subscriptions lets you have unlimited levels of membership subscriptions. You can arrange your levels in a hierarchy to make it easy for members to upgrade/downgrade.

With the paid version, you’ll also get the following features:

• Members can have multiple subscription levels
• Group/umbrella memberships for organizations

Payment Options

Paid Member Subscriptions integrate with the following payment gateways:

• PayPal (Standard and Express)
• Stripe

It supports both one-time and recurring payments as well as the following features:

• Free trials
• One-time signup fees
• Taxes and EU VAT
• Pay what you want (variable pricing)
• Discount codes

Notable Integrations

First off, Paid Member Subscriptions has a dedicated Elementor integration that lets you restrict individual sections, columns, or widgets using the native Elementor interface. You’ll get a new Visibility Restriction setting in the Advanced tab when you’re working in Elementor.

You can use this to restrict parts of individual designs. Or, if you combine it with Elementor Pro and Theme Builder, you can add content restrictions directly to your templates.

Other integrations include:

• WooCommerce (restrict product viewing/purchasing or offer special perks)
• bbPress
• Profile Builder

Price

Paid Member Subscriptions has a viable free version available at WordPress.org.

If you need additional features, there are two paid plans with different features and site limits:

• Hobbyist – $69 for basic add-ons on one site
• Pro – $149 for all add-ons on unlimited sites

6. MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a membership WordPress plugin that operates more like a SaaS tool in its billing model and approach.

It offers a lot of advanced features in one package. However, one important thing to note is that MemberMouse is not GPL-licensed like most other WordPress plugins. That means, in part, that you won’t be able to edit any of the underlying code. If GPL licensing is important to you, you’ll want to look for another plugin.

Content Restriction Options

MemberMouse lets you restrict individual pieces of content as well as bulk restriction via:

• Categories or other taxonomies
• Post types

You can also partially restrict content using SmartTags. SmartTags also let you display different content based on a user’s level, which is useful for creating personalized experiences.

Other features include:

• Content dripping
• “Teaser” versions of restricted content – this lets members still share restricted content, but limits what guests can see

Subscription Levels/Management

MemberMouse lets you create unlimited subscription levels. However, while members can upgrade and downgrade their level, they can only have one membership level at a time.

MemberMouse also lacks a group membership feature, though there are some third-party extensions that add this.

Payment Options

MemberMouse supports the following payment gateways:

• Stripe
• PayPal
• Braintree
• Authorize.net
• Clickbank
• Sticky.io
• Coinbase

You can sell both one-time or recurring memberships including:

• Free or paid trials
• Payment plans
• Coupon codes
• One-click upsells
• Gifting

One notable feature is that MemberMouse can also help you sell individual products in addition to memberships.

Notable Integrations

Because you can’t edit the underlying code, it will be difficult to set up integrations beyond the built-in ones (though MemberMouse does have an API).

MemberMouse’s integrations are basically limited to popular email marketing services, along with a catch-all Zapier integration.

Price

MemberMouse uses SaaS-style recurring billing based on the number of members your site has, along with some other feature differences:

• Builder – $39.95/month for up to 5,000 active members
• Advanced – $99/month for up to 50,000 active members
• Premium – $299/month for up to 100,000 active members

7. Members

Members is a lightweight free WordPress membership plugin that was acquired by the MemberPress team in late 2019.

It’s a good option if you just want a lightweight option to restrict access to content, but it doesn’t have the advanced subscription level and payment features that the other plugins offer.

Content Restriction Options

Members works in tandem with WordPress’ default roles and capabilities features to help you control what users can do on your site.

You’ll be able to restrict access by user role/capability for lots of different parts of your site including:

• Blocks
• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) fields
• Easy Digital Downloads
• GiveWP
• Meta Box custom fields
• WooCommerce

Subscription Levels/Management

Again, you’ll use the default WordPress roles and capabilities features – it doesn’t add its own subscription management.

Payment Options

None, but you could integrate it with MemberPress for payments.

Notable Integrations

Members integrate with the capabilities in a lot of other WordPress plugins including:

• ACF
• Easy Digital Downloads
• GiveWP
• Meta Box
• WooCommerce

Price

Since the MemberPress acquisition, the Members plugin and all add-ons are free.

8. WP-Members

WP-Members is a popular free membership plugin at WordPress.org, where it’s active on over 80,000 sites with a 4.7-star rating on over 200 reviews. There are also additional premium add-ons that extend the core plugin.

It’s a good lightweight option but, like Members, it lacks some of the advanced features found in the other membership plugins.

Content Restriction Options

WP-Members lets you restrict individual posts, pages, or custom post types. You can also partially restrict content using shortcodes. However, there’s not an option to bulk restrict content.

With a premium add-on, you can also restrict access to specific files.

Subscription Levels/Management

Unlike the other plugins, WP-Members doesn’t let you create unlimited subscription levels. Instead, users are just “members”.

That is, there are basically two “levels”:

• Anonymous visitors
• Members

Payment Options

With the paid add-ons, you can sell memberships via a built-in PayPal integration or a WooCommerce integration that lets you use WooCommerce to handle payments.

If you want more flexibility, you’ll probably want to use the WooCommerce integration because it lets you tap into WooCommerce’s many other payment features.

Notable Integrations

Beyond the WooCommerce integration, WP-Members also integrates with the following tools/plugins:

• BuddyPress
• bbPress
• Easy Digital Downloads
• The Events Calendar
• Mailchimp
• ACF

Price

The core plugin is free at WordPress.org.

You can purchase individual add-ons or get a bundle of all add-ons and premium support for $125.

Create a WordPress Membership Site, and Design It Effortlessly With Elementor

As we referenced, it’s hard to make one general suggestion for the best enrollment module in light of the fact that there are extremely numerous factors that go into building a WordPress participation site. What’s best for one individual probably won’t be best for someone else.

All of the modules on this rundown are quality choices, so we urge you to utilize this post and its examinations as a bouncing-off point in your own inquiry.

In case you’re actually overpowered and not certain where to begin, MemberPress makes an incredible first choice that has an implicit combination for Elementor. You can follow our full enrollment site instructional exercise to make your own WordPress participation site controlled by MemberPress and Elementor.

What’s more regardless of which enrollment module you pick, you’ll, in any case, have the option to utilize Elementor to configuration better presentation pages, limited substance, or whatever else that assists you with making a superior participation site