WordPress is an incredibly versatile CMS. You can use it to launch a blog, an online store, a photo gallery and more. While it’s probably not its typical use, you can also easily turn WordPress into a membership site, too. To run a membership site with WordPress, you need one of the numerous, free or paid, membership plugin WordPress. You can’t say one plugin is better than the rest – it simply depends what you need it for. Here’s a roundup of the best free WordPress membership plugins you can start using on your website today.
Top membership Plugin WordPress
WP-Members
WP-Members is probably the first WordPress membership site plugin that comes to mind. This isn’t strange because it’s a very popular plugin – it has 60,000+ active installs.
The list of its features is rather impressive. In a nutshell, it has all the features you will need to manage your members and the content they can access. Some of the features you won’t find in all other plugins are inline login/registration (i.e. from the page itself, not from the WP login page), custom registration and profile fields, automatic creation of post excerpts, and so on.
S2Member
S2Member is another one of the most popular, best and powerful (free) membership plugin for WordPress. With S2 membership plugin, you can protect members-only content with user roles and capabilities.
The s2Member Framework free WordPress membership plugin integrates with PayPal Website Payments Standard (also free). You can set up Membership access to your site. This free plugin allows you to restrict access to user roles, Capabilities, Posts, Pages, or anything else in WordPress.
You can even protect all downloadable files and stream audio and video on your WordPress website. You can store files locally, or use s2Member’s integration with Amazon S3/CloudFront.
A pro version is also available which allows you to accept payments via Stripe, PayPal Pro, and Authorize.net.
Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro is one of the biggest names when it comes membership plugins. It comes from Pippin’s Plugins, the same team behind Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP. Pippin has rightfully built a reputation for releasing high-quality plugins and Restrict Content Pro is no exception.
Restrict Content Pro lets you create unlimited subscription levels. You can choose between free, trial, and premium subscriptions, which gives you a good deal of flexibility.
You can also get creative with pricing. For paid memberships, you can choose to charge a certain fee for a set period, as well as an optional one-time fee. This combination allows for some exciting pricing structures. For example, you could charge something like $20 per month with a one-time $50 signup fee.
If users want to move between plans, they can easily upgrade or downgrade and have the amount they paid prorated to their new plan. Only if you allow it, of course. Not many membership plugins offer this functionality.
To structure membership content, Restrict Content Pro lets you restrict content on a per post basis. Or, you can use shortcodes to only restrict specific content inside an otherwise available post/page.
MemberPress
MemberPress is another popular membership plugin. It includes all the standard features you’d expect plus a few nifty tricks.
First off, you can create unlimited membership levels with all kinds of trial periods and payment options. And you can even categorize different membership levels into “Membership Groups” to create predefined upgrade paths. That’s a unique selling point!
You can restrict content in some ways. You can go broad and restrict whole categories or sets of child pages, or you can go granular and restrict only parts of a post/page. You can also restrict access to individual files to help you manage downloads.
And like the previous plugins, MemberPress lets you drip out your content on a predefined schedule.
MemberPress gives you all types of reports to see how your membership site is performing. And it also has a nifty feature called MemberPress Reminders which lets you send out emails when specific events occur, like an upcoming subscription renewal.
As far as integrations go, MemberPress hooks up with most major email marketing services, as well as the major payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Stripe. And you’ll really love this integration if you run an online course:
MemberPress can integrate with LearnDash, a popular learning management system for creating online courses using WordPress. That unlocks some powerful online course functionality.
Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Memberships Pro is one of the most popular free WordPress membership plugins. It requires WordPress 3.5 or higher and is compatible up to WordPress 4.4.2.
With Paid Memberships Pro plugin you can set up unlimited membership levels and provide restricted access to members-only content (including pages, posts, categories, videos, forums, and downloads).
Accepting payments is also easy because Paid Memberships Pro integrates with The Most Popular Payment Gateways including Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal (Standard, Express, Website Payments Pro, and PayPal Payments Pro/Payflow), Braintree, 2Checkout, and Cybersource.
Conclusion
I hope that this article helped you a lot in order to find the perfect membership plugin wordPress for your website. So, which one is your’s favorite? For any query feel free to comment below. Thanks for reading.
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