When you are on the hunt for a lightweight membership plugin that effortlessly limits access to content on your WordPress website, you will find many options.
None of them can be compared to SureMembers.
No one paid us to say this, and you are welcome to try it out for yourself. We just thought that it’s awesome. Here’s why.
SureMembers Explained
This is basically the latest content restriction plugin for WordPress. In case you were confused and thought it was just a membership plugin, let us explain. Usually, membership plugins are crammed with built-in checkouts, subscription billing, content constraints, affiliate dashboards, a variety of addons- the list goes on.
It all sounds like fun and games, but multipurpose platforms aren’t well known for their ability to keep up with each individual feature.
SureMembers removes all the leftover fluff, and basically handles the content limitation side of things. It manages what visitors will be able to see on your site.
This flexible method will allow you to integrate it with a committed checkout platform such as SureCart.
SureMembers can be used with SureTriggers to generate enhanced autonomy. For instance, if a customer joins your email list through MailChimp, you can use SureTriggers to create a fresh user on your website and throw them into a SureMembers Access Group.
Now you will have a membership platform that is straightforward, open, lightweight, doesn’t hold back your website, and is adjusted for conversions.
Meet The Makers
SureMembers was created by Adam Preiser, the man behind the latest ecommerce platform SureCart and SureTriggers, and his team.
Presiser is well known for his handy YouTube videos about WordPress. He has since formed companies that are focused on rendering software as a service. These include the likes of CartFlows and Presto Player.
Also on the team are
- Sujay Pawar from Brainstorm Force
- Ben Bartling who has established many successful Software service focused businesses
- Andre Gagnon, a gifted who was the mastermind of ProjectHuddle.
Members Only
This innovative platform is aimed at WordPress site owners who want to limit access to content for certain membership plans.
This can be used for things like
- Online courses
- eBooks or digital downloads
- Private blog posts t
- Tutorials
- Exclusive Videos or Audio files
- A private group
Designing your website to be more “member focused” is a smart way to monetize your site and receive frequent income. That’s the idea of starting a business, isn’t it?
Think creatively. You can offer special tutorials, put on a monthly subscription for exclusive access to interesting content, and then only allow the VIP members to see your tutorials.
How SureMembers Works
If you have decided that SureMemebers is something that you would like to add to your business, you are probably curious about how it works. Below we explain in detail how to do just that.
Setting It Up
You won’t believe your eyes when you just how quick and easy it is to install SureMembers.
There are hordes of various membership plugins out there that dump lots of configuration pages for you to (con)figure out. Nuh-uh, not with SureMembers. All you need to do is log in your license key and click on some options.
Create an Access Group
The first thing that you will need to do is create an Access Group. To put it simply, an “Access Group” is just a fancy term for a Membership Ranking.
Here you may include certain members to an Access Group and have total control over what content they can access based on their so called” ranking”.
You Set the Rules
After naming group a name, you can state what content you want to safeguard and implement restrictions on.
You will have multiple options here such as:
- The entire website
- Entire Posts or pages,
- You can even be a little picky and choose specific pages, posts, genres and so on.
- You may also exempt some posts and pages from your rule above.
Drip Content
SureMembers allows you to drip content. In other words, you can present certain content in a certain time on a customized predetermined program.
For example, if you have twelve different songs in your album, you might only want to give free access to each song once a week.
Access Denied
“Unauthorized Access” is where you control what happens when someone lands on your content who isn’t a member of the Access Group. You can either choose to send them to a different page or have a message pop up. Just a tip- try to get the latter to be a message that encourages them to become a member.
Prioritize
If your site users are members of more than one Access Group, that is where the priority function becomes most effective. Should your content be limited for one Access Group but not the other, the higher priority group will be chosen.
Restricting Pages
There is a simple shortcut to controlling all your page rules instead of using the Access Group. You will be able to “protect” and “unprotect” your pages straight from the pages themselves. This will save you a lot of time from moving hither and thither a million times to shield your pages.
Controlling your Blocks
If your are using Gutenberg, then SureMembers will feature a “Restrict This Block” panel to all of your blocks. What this means is that you can temporarily show or hide any component inside of Gutenberg. This is contingent upon your Access Groups.
SureMembers gives you the ability to restrict more than just pages.
You will have the freedom to restrict sections, images and blocks.
Let’s say you create a call to action for your subscribers to advance to your premium plan. You have the convenience of keeping it out of sight even if they are part of that plan. You don’t want to annoyingly nudge someone into something they obviously are part of.
This approach is more versatile when pitted with other membership plugins, where they only let you limit content within the Gutenberg block.
Dealing with Members
SureMembers will let you view all members who who are listed on an Access Group. There are two ways you can do this; by using the Access Groups’ admin page or by using the WordPress Users page.
The plugin also throws in a mix bag of elements to your Users page. These will let you filter by Access Group and shows each user’s active Access Groups.
You will also have control of the Access Group filter. When clicking on a specific user, you will be able to regulate which groups they are associated with as well as their activity and overall history like when they were added.
Integrations
You will be able to integrate quite a few the best ecommerce platforms out there.
SureCart
Seeing that SureMembers was created by the same team who brought you SureCart, it will obviously be integrated with this plugin. When one of your users buys a product or subscription through SureCart, you will be able to add them to one of your Access Groups. When SureCart levels up to its premium plan you can be sure to expect to see even more functions and features.
WooCommerce
Using WooCommerce on your site? That’s fine. You will be able to create a new product and link it to your Access Groups. This feature is yet to be released.
SureTriggers
SureTriggers is a powerful automation platform (similar to Zapier) that lets you connect your WordPress site, plugins, and other SaaS apps together.
You can easily add members to your Access Groups when an event is triggered from another app.
Elementor
Just like the block-level control for Gutenberg we spoke about earlier, SureMembers allows you to control how your users can see an element depending on how you set your Access Groups.
Other Page Builders
SureMembers is likely to be well-matched with every page builder and theme on the market.
.
Pricing
We tried to find the latest updated pricing structure for SureMembers, but nothing solid has come about just yet.
It will likely follow a tiered pricing structure based on the number of sites:
- R3500 for 20 sites
- R5380 for 50 sites
- R7000 for 100 sites
These estimates based on other website information and the current exchange rate in South Africa. It is likely to change, don’t shoot the messenger.
How to Download
If you have decided that you want SureCart, you can get it by clicking here
Conclusion
Even though SureMembers is still in its formative phase, we have been nothing but impressed with the idea behind this software.
SureMembers is precisely designed for its intended use and doesn’t try to duplicate other platforms or resort to being pretentious.
SureMembers has been cleverly designed to help you restrict content and it does this very well in our opinion. It is lightweight and won’t slow down your website. It is flexible as far as integration is concerned and even mixes well with the likes of Gutenberg.
It also is very suitable to use with SureCart (obviously) and WooCommerce. This will give you heaps of range when you create and enhance your point-of-sale experience for your customers.
In general, if you have been looking for a membership plugin that has all the meat and trimmings, there may be others that could be better suited for your needs.
However, if you want a lightweight membership solution that won’t cram up your business website, is easy to get going with, has a modern User Interface, and integrates with all your other apps, the SureMembers is certainly worth a shot.
