Key Takeaways
Before we go into the SureMembers VS MemberPress comparison here are some few high-level takeaways we’d like to leave you with.
- Overall, both SureMember and MemberPress does everything you need to. Just in a few different ways.
- They work with any WordPress theme, integrate well with other WordPress plugins.
- If you want to build a membership site that assembles a loyal community both plugins are great.
- You can go deep into the several access features, or keep things simple for you and your members.
- In short, both SureMember and MemberPress can be usefull whatever your plans for the future are
Choosing a membership plugin that offers effective solutions for your business can be tricky.
You want to make a profit while allowing your members to reap certain benefits. MemberPress and newcomer, SureMembers, offer unique features and benefits that aim to achieve different goals.
Here we explain what each platform has to offer to help you discover which is right for you.
MemberPress Explained
MemberPress is a premium compact solution for crafting your membership site in WordPress. From its many uses you will be able to
- Charge your members on a regular basis
- Control and monitor membership subscriptions
- Control access to some of your content
- Create a private forum or group where your members can engage
- Integrate with other tools and software
- Build an affiliate program for members and joint venture partners
It Integrates well with your WordPress website. This means that members don’t need to log in to other sites- easy navigation basically. So let’s look at what else you can get from MemberPress
Best Features
WordPress Theme Friendly
MemberPress will work with your current WordPress website. So there’s no need to change your website for this, unless it isn’t hosted with WordPress.
Payment Integration
You won’t have any problems charging your members here.
MemberPress plugin has you covered and is integrated with gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. When you integrate your chosen payment gateway, everything happens fluently, removing any fuss for you and your members.
Managing Subscriptions
MemberPress controls the automatic billing structures on your payment gateway’s side. So your members will be charged automatically.
Their Subscription Management is user-friendly and gives you all you need.
Access Rules
Granting apportioned access to certain members is the backbone of a membership site. MemberPress gives you smooth control over what members can access based on their membership ranking.
Premium Community Forums
Building a member community is easy.
MemberPress integrates with several WordPress forum plugins for broader engagements. You may grant certain access and restrictions, make members moderators, and form an interactive community that builds confidence, trustworthiness, and authority.
Automatic Email Reminders
Communicating with your members about what they signed up for is important. However, it can be demanding for you to bring about on your own. MemberPress takes care of this for you by letting you automatically send email reminders about important things like membership renewals. You will be able to modify how many emails and when to send them. You will also be able to edit the email copy.
Affiliate Programs
There are many ways to grow your membership site. You can do this by partnering with existing members, other content creators, bloggers, vloggers, and anyone who may have an extensive email list. You can also use a cool integration WordPress plugin such as Affiliate Royale.
Wide-ranging Reporting
You won’t be able to measure the level of your membership site’s success
without tracking and analysing its progress.
With MemberPress you can creäte and manage all-inclusive reports to track income, membership numbers, possible issues, and anything else you need to know to ensure great ongoing service.
Pricing
Unfortunately, MemberPress isn’t free. The plugin offers three levels of pricing plans for different types of users. All three plans provide a yearly license.
SureMembers Explained
Seeing that SureMembers is new on the ecommerce block, we will explain a little more about what it is as supposed to just what it does. SureMembers acts as both a content restriction and membership plugin for WordPress.
Its main purpose is to direct who will be able to see certain content on your website. SureMembers is simply an effective membership platform that doesn’t remove the functionality of your website while being flexible and compact.
Who Should Use SureMembers?
So by now you know that SureMembers is for WordPress site owners who want to limit access to content based on different membership levels.
This is particularly handy for entrepreneurs who
- Offer or sell online learning courses
- Sell e-books or digital downloads
- Have written engaging blog posts or tutorials
- Upload special videos or audio content
- Interact with customers or members on a private group
Turning your business website into a membership platform is great for monetizing your site and generating recurring revenue. You may consider creating a digital product, charge a one-time fee, and then allow your customers to access any of your pages associated with that product.
Using SureMembers
This membership platform is an absolute breeze to set up. Sometimes you will find yourself bashing your head as you go through many pages of configuration, but not here. With SureMembers you just need to
punch in your license key and skim through a few options.
Getting Started
To effectively use SureMembers you need to start by creating an Access Group. This is basically the equivalent of a membership level. So, you can basically add members to this Access Group, then allocate content control based on your groups’ settings.
Setting Boundaries
Next you need to stipulate what parts of your content you would like to set restrictions for. You can choose to restrict your whole website or certain pages or posts. You can obviously allow certain posts and pages to be exempted from this rule.
Halt! Who Goes There?
If someone lands on your content who isn’t part of your group, you get to decide what action will be taken. You can forward them to another page where they can sign up or show them a message encouraging them to become a member.
Restricting Pages
You don’t have to control all your page rules from the Access Group. This can take a lot of your time and get quite frustrating. Instead, you can protect or unprotect a page directly. You have a business to run so you really don’t have the time to check thousands of times if your pages and content has been restricted.
Controlling Blocks
If you are using Gutenberg, you can conditionally show or hide elements inside based on your Access Groups. You can do this on their “Restrict This Block” panel.
But Wait There’s More
You won’t be confined to just restricting your site’s pages. In your content you have the freedom to restrict content such as images, a certain paragraph, or a third-party block.
Let’s say, you have created a section encouraging your members to upgrade to a highly exclusive premium plan. You can hide this request if they have already signed up.
In our opinion this gives SureMembers the advantage over other membership platforms and plugins. Where other platforms only allow business websites to restrict content inside their Gutenberg block, SureMembers is more flexible.
Organizing Members
There are two ways you will be able to manage your Acces Group members. First by using the Access Group’s admin page or by utilizing WordPress’ built-in Users page.
This is useful if you want to see which users have access to which areas of the site. Each user’s active Access Groups are shown beside their username and email. You can also use the search function to find specific users.
Integrations
SureCart
SureMembers is a potent tool for managing access to your content and products. With its direct integration with SureCart, you can instantly add new customers to an Access Group.
This makes it easy to keep track of who has access to what, and ensures that only authorized users can access your content.
The integration between SureCart and SureMembers will become even more powerful when SureCart Pro is released, which will include order, bump, and upsell functionality.
WooCommerce
If you are already using WooCommerce on your site, you can create a new product and link it to your Access Groups. This integration is coming soon, and will allow you to sell memberships straight through your online WooCommerce store. This will be a great way to increase sales and grow your business
Conclusion
When it comes to choosing between SureMembers and MemberPress, it all boils down to your own business needs. If you need to charge your members for access to content or courses on your site, and manage their then MemberPress is probably the right fit.
Equally SureMembers is a lightweight membership alternative that keeps your website in check when it comes down to functionality.
It is also a piece of cake to set up and it complimented with a great User Interface. So if you want something a little lightweight give it a try.
