8 Best WordPress Membership Plugins Reviewed & Compared

Are you looking for the best WordPress membership plugin to make a WordPress membership site? We know choosing the proper membership plugin is very difficult. In this article, we will review and compare the top 8 best hand-picked WordPress membership plugins to create membership websites easily.

I know when you search for best, you will find hundreds of plugins for free or paid. But can’t decide which one to choose, and which is the right for your purpose.

The plugins I’m sharing today is full of functionalities and will help you to create a paid membership websites, in less time. Let’s check all the plugins with their features, pros, and cons with best available price.

In the end, I will give you my suggestion about which one to pick, and I am also using it to grow my businesses.

So, Continue your reading!

How To Choose The Right WordPress Membership Plugin?

Currently, there are hundreds of WordPress membership plugins available, but not all the plugins have the specific features which you may be looking for.

So, the question arrives on how to choose a membership plugin for WordPress?

We have invested a lot of time making our list, depending on the most important things keep in mind:

• Plugin Features
• Compatibility
• Ease Of Use

WordPress membership sites require specific features to run the website. Some of them include selling subscriptions at once and the rest of them are focused on subscription-based membership levels.

You should keep in mind that which payment gateway integration you want to use. Because your membership plugin may not support your preferred payment gateways every time. Either you have to choose the proper plugin or integrate it through add-ons.

Choosing the right plugin depends on your requirements, and it varies from users to users. Each person has their unique demand according to their business and website. Nowadays, there are some premium themes in the market, like Newspaper X, which offers the membership option.

Now let’s see how to choose the right one for you.

Best WordPress Plugin For Membership

Before we jump into detail let’s take a look at a glance.

Plugin Name	Price
1. MemberPress	Basic: $129/year for 1 site Plus: $249/year for 2 sites Pro: $349/year for 5 sites
2. LearnDash	Basic: $159/year for 1 site Plus: $189/year for 10 sites Pro: $329/year for 25 sites
3. Teachable	Basic: $39/monthly Professional: $99/monthly Business: $499/monthly
4. Restrict Content Pro	Personal: $99/year for 1 site Plus: $149/year for 5 sites Professional: $249/year for unlimited sites Ultimate: $499/lifetime
5. S2Member	$89/lifetime for single site $189/lifetime for unlimited sites
6. AMember Pro	$149.36/lifetime unlimited sites
7. WooCommerce Memberships	$149/year single site
8. Paid Memberships Pro	Free Plus: $297/year Unlimited: $597/year

Let’s dive into it.

1. MemberPress

MemberPress is one of the most popular plugins to create a membership website on WordPress. The setup process of the MemberPress plugin is too simple, as it will automatically create the pricing, login, and confirmation pages after installing the plugin.

MemberPress Features

• Easy setup
• Powerful access rules
• Payment gateways
• Affiliate program
• Coupons system
• Dynamic pricing pages

MemberPress can be easily integrated with plugins like MailChimp, AWeber, and other email services. Paypal and Stripe used as default payment gateways. But you can always add your preferred payment method using add-ons.

The price of the plugin for the basic plan $129/year for 1 site, plus plan $249/year for 3 sites and ultimate plan $349/year for 5 sites. If you are just a beginner and want a WordPress membership plugin, it one is the best for you.

2. LearnDash

LearnDash is a viral WordPress membership plugin used to create and sell online courses on the WordPress website. It has a lot of accessible integration features and a powerful admin panel with LearnDash focus mode.

LearnDash Features

• Best for online courses websites
• Hassle-free setup
• Content restrictions
• Drip contents
• 300+ Payment gateways
• Powerful course builder
• Advanced quizzing
• Certificates & badges

Suppose your website based on selling online courses, LearnDash will help you to create an excellent course page using drag & drop course builder. The plugin comes with prebuild features like categories, quizzes, lessons, topics, forums, grade points, etc., to make it more attractive and engaging.

It has over 300+ payment gateways, which are useful to sell your courses in any part of the world. Even you can connect it with Memberpress, WooCommerce, bbPress, etc.

The most amazing feature of LearnDash is Easy Content Restrictions. It allows you to hide any content or restrict it to different levels of subscription groups. Also, the certification & badge system makes it stand out from other plugins.

Starting for a $159/year, it offers unlimited courses in a single site. You can extend its features by using the addons available, which helps create a very engaging platform.

3. Teachable

Teachable is another fully loaded feature membership addon for selling online courses or creating a membership site. It has features such as analytics, membership website, email marketing, and discussion forum, all in just a single plugin.

Teachable Features

• Beautiful design
• Marketing tools
• Member management
• Drip content
• 2048-bit SSL
• Coupon codes
• Instant payments

If you are going to create an online course selling website, then, Teachable can help you build a website with built-in customization tools. Create beautiful course pages using drag and drop builder.

Built-in Engagement features give you the functionality to organize surveys, create quizzes, certificates, contact forms, and discussion forums for the enrolled students. You will have a complete eye on each member’s reports and progress. This will boost your user engagement and build a strong online community.

There are few extra features such as automated email marketing, multiple payment gateways, learning tools, etc makes things easier for you.

Teachable is available at basic plan $39/month, professional $99/month, and business plan $499/month. All plans are included unlimited courses, unlimited videos, no fees on free courses, integrated payment processing, and instant payouts.

Note: It is not a WordPress membership plugin, but you can use it by integrating it with links or sub-domain to your WordPress website.

4. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a powerful & lightweight WordPress membership plugin. That gives you the full freedom to create a full-featured membership website. This plugin is developed by the team members of Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP plugins.

Restrict Content Pro Features

• Easy to use
• Built-in payment gateways
• Membership levels
• WooCommerce integration
• Promotional tools
• Discount coupons
• Data import export as CSV

Restrict Content Pro is designed in such a way that you can easily get familiar with its beautiful UI, as you start using the plugin. Paid add-ons tools such as Driped content, REST API, Group Accounts, Email manager, MailChimp, CSV Exports, etc are very handy if you are not a technical person.

Payment gateways such as Stripe, Paypal, Braintree are available for free, whereas other gateways such as 2checkout, Payments Pro, PayPal Express, and Stripe Checkout are available required premium version.

It is fully compatible with plugins like Easy digital downloads, WooCommerce, AffiliateWP, etc. By looking at the features, I recommend you to go with the Restrict Content Pro.

Restrict Content Pro has 12 addons for $99/year with a single site license, $149/year with 5 sites, and $249/year with unlimited sites which has all the premium addons available, and a lifetime deal is also available at $499.

5. s2Member

S2Member is a very popular free as well as a premium WordPress membership plugin. In the meantime, it has achieved a vast userbase. The free version has a limited number of features, but those are just really worthy and useful.

S2Member Features

• Free version available as Framework
• Content drip
• Content restriction
• Payment gateways
• Custom membership page
• Coupon code tracking
• Affiliate program integration
• One-step checkout

S2Member is perfect for both kinds of products, digital or physical products. One-click registration and checkout option let the user signup on their platform with or without paying the subscription fee. Contents such as posts, pages, courses, etc. can be locked until payment.

The free version comes with Paypal integration, where the Pro version of the plugin offers Stripe and Authorize.net as well. Works flawlessly with bbPress, Mailchimp, and BuddyPress. For better protection plugin has an inbuilt security function to block brute force attack.

For the quick setup process, S2member has pre-made email templates and custom login pages, and one most important is IP restrictions. Also, they have an impressive knowledge base available for each function. Pro users can avail of email-based support.

S2Member free version does the job, but if you want all addons and exclusive features, you can choose one time $89/site or $189/unlimited site license.

6. AMember Pro

AMember Pro is another flexible membership plugin to design any type of membership website you want. Before proceeding make sure this is not a native WordPress plugin, but you can easily integrate with any WordPress website.

It is built with PHP so that you may face some compatibility issues with existing themes and plugins. aMember Pro is a multi-level membership software for accepting payments, add as many products you want at different prices, manage your affiliate program, deliver digital products, etc.

AMember Pro Features

• Multi-Level membership
• Automated signup and expirations
• Access sharing prevention
• Multi-language translation
• Subscriber management
• Integrated modules
• Built-in affiliate program
• Translated into 6 languages

You can allow users to signup and access all the premium modules available. Premium version comes with 200+ different payment gateways integrated, works fine with content drip & coupons.

aMember Pro supports six language translations, including German, Spanish, Greek, Russian, French, and Chinese. Both frontend and backend have this function.

Pricing starts at $149.36 for lifetime use on unlimited websites. Also including six months of email-based support and free upgrades. aMember Pro is recommended best for freelancers and agency owners.

7. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is a WooCommerce addon that restricts content for subscribed members only. If your site is accepting the recurring payments you also need the wooCommerce subscription plugin.

wooCommerce membership plugin has the upsell product feature, which will allow you to sell other products along with it. It makes your business grow faster.

WooCommerce Memberships Features

• Reward Members with special discounts
• Content Drip
• 30 days Money-back guarantee
• Content lock
• Import or Export Members
• Memberships + Subscriptions feature
• Groups membership

You can allow users to show a preview of videos before purchasing the course. Also, you can create a purchasing club, which means users have to buy it before accessing exclusive items.

After the integration of WooCommerce Memberships, you can just add shining stars to your membership area. Suppose you are selling a course and want to display a few videos without purchasing and keep others locked, then WooCommerce will help you do that.

Starts from $199/year for a single site license with 1-year support and free updates, WooCommerce Memberships plugin is highly recommended. If you are not satisfied, they offer a 30-days money-back guarantee.

8. Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro a premium, as well as a free WordPress plugin, have all the features to start, grow, and manage your membership website. The plugin is designed for subscription-based, premium content-based sites, club associations, etc.

This is a multi-purpose plugin for WordPress Membership, allows you to create unlimited membership levels with flexible pricing options, trials, recurring payments, one time payments, and more.

Paid Memberships Pro Features

• 100% GPL
• Content restrictions
• Personalized content
• Payment Gateway
• Administration tools
• Custom trials & Custom renewal dates
• Integrate with top plugins
• Developer friendly

This plugin lets you display an excerpt to the non-subscribed members. You might be thinking about what the benefit of the excerpt is? The advantage of the excerpt is that it is useful in the SERP ranking, even when your content is not visible to everyone.

Paid Memberships Pro free version does the job. But if you want advanced features like add-ons, premium theme, developer support, payment gateway, etc you must try Plus ($297/yr) and unlimited plan ($597/yr). Plus and Unlimited Membership comes with a 100% money-back guarantee.

Which Is The Best WordPress Membership Plugin?

According to the features of all the plugins mentioned above, I believe that MemberPress is the best choice for you, as it is offering all the essential features and supports.

But if you are not happy with this and want something comfortable to go then Restrict Content Pro is right to go solution.

For selling online courses, LearnDash is the perfect and fantastic tool that we are also using on our websites.

But it all depends on your choice, I have mentioned the eight best WordPress membership plugins with their features. So you can choose one according to your requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrap Up

I hope this article would be helpful for you. If you had enjoyed it, then don’t forget to share it with all your blogger friends and family.

If you have selected one from the above plugins, can you please comment below which one you use?

Meanwhile, you can read: Best SEO Friendly WordPress Themes