If you have built a membership site for your business and want to know which is the best WordPress membership plugin, you are in the right place.
Picking the right membership plugin is essential for your business growth because it breeds more opportunity.
In this article, we will compare a few of the best WordPress membership plugins that allow you to generate paid membership websites.
Key Takeaways:
- WordPress membership plugins help you deliver exclusive content to your most loyal followers.
- The right membership plugin will provide all the features and flexibility you need to create a membership website.
- Your overall business goals matter when trying to find the right membership plugin for you.
- Each membership plugin caters to different goals, so it’s important to know what yours are.
- A flexible payment integration option is important and allows your members to have a range of options for payment.
Why Membership Plugins Matter
WordPress membership plugins will benefit you significantly in delivering special content to your loyalist members. The featured plugins here are awesome for creating paid subscription email lists for business updates or exciting deals, or even gathering important information from your members. In short they give you some of the essential building blocks you need to monetize from members.
Choosing the Right Membership Plugin
A decent membership plugin will be stacked with everything you need to build a handy membership website. Think about things like;
- restricting access to specific content
- adding different membership levels
- more than a few payment gateway options
It all hinges on your business needs and objectives of your site.
Elements of The Best Membership Plugin for WordPress
Below we have narrowed down our top picks. A lot of significant elements add to the right membership plugin for your WordPress website. Let’s explore them.
Business Goals
The objectives of your business play a significant role when it comes to choosing the best WordPress membership plugin. Every membership plugin provides for different objectives. Take some time to decide what yours are before you choose a membership plugin.
If you want to transform your business by creating and selling courses to your customer base, then a plugin like SureMembers would be an excellent option. This is because it integrates perfectly with SureCart- which in itself is useful for marketing courses. It also offers a range of widespread tools to your disposal.
Looking at what your specific business objectives are will help you decide what membership plugin would be best for you.
Adaptable Payment Integration
Seeing that you obviously need to profit from this site, you need to find adaptable and robust payment integration options.
The truth is members are a little hesitant to give you their bank account information- especially if there is no extra security.
A few well-known payment integrations include Stripe and PayPal. By including multiple payment options your prospective members will have another reason to extend their membership.
Membership Management
When your business grows, so will the number of members to your website. Membership management is a significant element for larger businesses that have a lot of memberships to please. So basically check that you have a good membership management system in your plugin if you plan to go big.
MemberPress and SureMembers are great if you need a tad bit of help to manage your memberships. Without a steadfast management system, you might be left frustrated to manage your memberships manually. This is not ideal for when you try to reach a certain level of professionalism in your business.
Running a membership site can be a schlep, but with the right plugin will make it easier and more up-front. With that being said, here are a few of the most recommended membership plugins
Ultimate Member
Ultimate Member is used by over 200,000 business and the number keeps growing. It has been hailed as one of the most popular plugins for creating virtual communities and membership sites. Among its best features, it has;
- Front-end user registration, login, and profiles
- Modifiable user roles
- Content restrictions (Obviously)
- Cutting-edge member directories
Also if you use Gutenberg blocks, their block editor is quick and easy to use. You will be able restrict access to your site either globally or per page or post basis. Finally, Ultimate Member lets you customize your email templates while hosting powerful extensions to boost the plugin.
Members
This is an exceptional membership and user role editor plugin created by the brains behind MemberPress. Here you can you add roles with abilities to your members so you can restrict content as you need to.
Among its best features you can expect to find:
- User-friendly interface for WordPress’s roles and capabilities system
- You will be able to edit, create, and delete roles
- The ability to limit access to your content based subject to certain user roles
- Allows you give multiple roles to a user
- Conveniently integrate multiple existing plugins
Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Memberships Pro is intended to be the most wide-ranging free membership plugin for your WordPress business site. It also gives you Gutenberg blocks, adjustable email templates to send to your members. Even though it has a lot of built in functionality, Paid Membership Pro is supercharged with a range of extensions to enhance the supremacy of the plugin. You can also:
- Limit accessibility to different content, posts, and courses
- Create infinite membership levels with flexible pricing. At the moment its supports as many as six payment gateways, including PayPal and Stripe
- Have access to combined reports for your sales and income, , member visits, views, and logins
MemberPress
The most competitive membership plugin out there. MemberPress is intended to be a complete solution for producing a membership site. Here you can monetize from your pre-existing site, or create a new one with its user friendly functionality.
Optimal MemberPress features include:
- Front-end user registration, login, and profiles
- Various Membership levels
- Drip content functionality
SureMembers
Newly created membership plugin, SureMembers, is intended for WordPress business owners who want to restrict access to content based on different membership levels.
Businesses who will benefit from this are mostly those who:
- Dabble in online courses
- Sell E-books or digital downloads
- Provide Special blog posts or tutorials
- Upload Videos or audio files (Podcasters and Vloggers we are looking at you)
SureMembers is fantastic for monetizing your site and generating recurring revenue. It has all the features you would find from a membership restriction plugin, including:
- Restricting content
- Customizing your posts
- Categorizing content and members
- Assigning membership levels
- settings for unapproved access block-level control for Gutenberg.
SureMembers easily integrates with a host of platforms including SureCart, Gutenberg and Elementor.
LearnDash
If you are in the market of selling courses, then you are in luck. Here is a membership plugin that sets you up to build a membership site specially for learning. LearnDash allows you to compile limited access to videos, materials and assignments. It also comes with built-in functionality to give certificates and badges to your members.
Conclusion
Above are some of the best membership site plugins for WordPress. You are probably also aware of all the factors to think about when choosing one for your business. Think about your business needs and goals, then do some extensive research. Good luck.
