Essential WordPress Membership Plugins (2019)

Are you planning to set up a fully functional membership site and looking the best WordPress membership plugins for that? If so, then reading this tutorial for beginners can surely turn out to be a great solution to your problem. In this guide, I will provide you a list of the best WordPress membership plugins to create a powerful membership website quickly.

Certainly, a WordPress membership website is more like having an online community and an easy way to connect with users. So, even if you are just starting or you have an established site, membership plugins can help you extend your reach. And it’s totally up to you whether you want to provide your membership for free, paid or a mix of both. So, all in all, running a membership website can be a sustainable online business for you. Whereas, if you really have something worthwhile to teach people, something that people want to know, then, you must think about your own membership website.

However, a membership website is not only built for monetary benefit. It should be able to help people and provide them some useful information as well. And WordPress membership plugins are really of great help for the same. Here at TemplateToaster WordPress Theme Builder, I have curated a list of best WordPress membership plugins for you. So you can choose which one is more suitable for you.

That being said, before we start with the list, let’s quickly catch up on what and how these plugins can help you grow your business.

What is WordPress Membership Plugin?

A membership plugin is a tool that enables you to control access to your site’s content. The primary feature of this tool is to restrict access to a particular section of your website, pages, or posts however you like. It gives you complete control over authentication. Thus, you can decide who can access your site or not.

List of WordPress Membership Plugins

1. Ultimate Members
2. WP-Members
3. Paid Membership Pro
4. Simple Membership
5. s2Member Framework
6. WP User Frontend
7. Membership and Content Restriction
8. Memberpress
9. Ultimate Membership Pro
10. Restrict Content Pro
11. MemberMouse

Best WordPress Membership Plugins Compared

Best WordPress Membership Plugins (Free & Paid)

1. Ultimate Member (Free)

Ultimate Member is a highly popular, lightweight, and open-source WordPress plugin with over 100,000 active installs. You can add stunning user profiles to your website with the help of this plugin. Furthermore, setting up an advanced online community is a breeze with this greatly extendible plugin. Ultimate Member empowers almost all types of websites.

Features

• Front-end user profiles, login, and registration.
• Open-source software.
• Account page for users.
• You are allowed to add custom form fields.
• Tons of extensions available.
  • ForumWP
  • Google reCAPTCHA
  • Online Users
  • Terms & Conditions
• Users can add profile pictures.
• Real-time notifications.
• Comprehensive documentation.
• MailChimp integration.
• Private messages facility.

2. WP-Members (Free)

WP-Members is a free WordPress membership plugin. It is really simple to use and easy to set up. Your site’s content will be accessible to registered site members only. The default, the WP-Members plugin restricts the entire content of your website. However, you can change the settings manually. If you are offering any premium content, then it is the best tool to have it for your site.

Features

• You can create custom login, profile integration, and registration into your theme.
• It is open-source software with 80,000+ active installs.
• Notifications for new user registration.
• Hide or restrict pages and posts.
• Login widgets are available.
• You can create custom registration and profile fields.
• Mandatory Admin approval for new registration.
• More than 120 control filters available.
• It also has some premium extensions.

3. Paid Memberships Pro (Free)

Paid Membership Pro is best suitable for premium content sites. This WordPress membership plugin is highly flexible to serve all your business needs. It is an open-source plugin jam-packed with useful functionalities. It also supports various payment gateways such as PayPal, Braintree, Stripe, Authorize.net. You can also set membership levels in the form of a one-time payment, recurring subscriptions. The facility to add custom trial period is also there.

Features

• Support for the six most popular payment gateways.
• Customizable member dashboard and reports.
• It has 60+ premium add-ons.
• 100% GPL
• Integration for third-party services.
• Integration for MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, and GetResponse.
• Open-source software.

4. Simple Membership (Free)

Simple Membership is a pretty easy WordPress plugin. It lets you guard your content, posts or pages. You can easily choose who should see which section of the content or the entire part of your content and or not. you can set the permissions accordingly. Various payment methods supported and the comprehensive documentation is there to help you get started.

Features

• This WordPress plugin works perfectly with all themes.
• Customized messages for non-members.
• It can be translated to any language.
• You can filter member list by account status.
• Deploy Google reCAPTCHA on the member registration, login and password reset forms.
• It is open-source software.
• You can restrict comments to your members only.

 5. S2Member Framework (Free)

The s2member Framework is a powerful membership plugin for WordPress. It has dozens of sections on its settings page. It assumes that you might not have the technical knowledge to configure the plugin. Therefore, it offers explanations for each section. So even if you are an absolute beginner you will be able to configure the plugin. You can better manage recurring and non-recurring subscriptions with the help of the s2Member Framework.

Features

• It is completely free to use.
• Integration with payment gateways like PayPal.
• You can manage WordPress capabilities.
• You can set content restrictions and open registration.
• Not so beginner-friendly plugin.
• It comes with coupon code and coupon tracking.
• It also comes in pro version with some advanced features.
• Integrated MailChimp services.
• You also get WordPress Brute Force protection.

6. WP User Frontend (Free)

WP User Frontend is another WordPress membership plugin. The site admin can easily manage site users from the frontend itself and set the dashboard access permissions for them. You can easily add your published forms in the Gutenberg Editor with the WPUF block. However, you can enable your guests to post from the frontend without having to register with WP User Frontend.

Features

• It has 20+ modules.
• Integrate with advanced custom fields.
• Customized subscription packs.
• Reminders, email notifications.
• Well-documented open-source software.

7. Membership & Content Restriction (Free)

Membership & Content Restriction is a comprehensive tool that lets you manage members, create custom subscription plans, accept member payment. It is beautifully integrated with WooCommerce that further allows you to limit product viewing and purchasing to registered members only. However, you can also offer some special discounts for your registered user as added benefits.

Features

• Content can be displayed based on the logged-in status.
• Show content to members according to different subscription plan(s).
• You can accept payments via PayPal.
• You can offer both free and paid membership to users.
• Easy member management.
• Customized admin emails.
• Range of powerful add-ons.

8. Memberpress ($149/Year)

Memberpress is arguably one of the best WordPress membership plugins available. This plugin includes all the required and robust features and it is pretty simple to use. However, it’s not free but it is totally value for money plugin. Using Memberpress can help you transform your existing website into a feature-rich membership website flawlessly. You can restrict guest users to access particular posts or pages. Memberpress gives you complete control over which user can access what type of information on your website depending on their membership level.

Features

• Integrates with best WordPress newsletter plugins like MailChimp, Constant Contact.
• Users can use the dedicated discussion and sharing ideas area for better results.
• Keep your members active with coupons and reminders.
• Memberpress seamlessly integrates with BBPress.
• You can set access rules for registered users.
• You can create both one-time plans and recurring plans.
• Support payment gateways like
  • PayPal Standard and Express
  • Authorize.net
  • Stripe
• You can have customizable checkout
• It also includes content dripping.

Get Memberpress Now (it’s a button with a link over)

9. Ultimate Membership Pro ($49)

Ultimate Membership Pro cost you just $49 and that makes it the cheapest in the list of the best WordPress membership plugins. You can get it through Envato. It allows you to limit the access to your entire website or simply restrict some specific content. You can safeguard products, pages, images with some set rules. However, there are various beautiful free WordPress themes available, you can use them and save your time.

Features

• It is GDPR compliant.
• You can restrict
  • pages
  • URL
  • products
  • categories
  • images
  • menu
• Your users can log in with their social accounts.
• Customized subscription methods.
• Dozens of built-in integrations.
• Supported payment gateways
  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • Braintree
  • 2Checkout
  • Mollie
• You can send customized email notifications.

Get Ultimate Membership Pro Now (it’s a button with a link over)

10. Restrict Content Pro ($99)

Restrict Content Pro is another gem in this list of best WordPress membership plugins. The best thing about this plugin is that it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. More so with a really cheap plan of $99/year. So, if you don’t like the plugin you can easily ask for your money. However, the powerful user-friendly features will surely convince you to use it further. You can create any number of membership levels as you want in order to restrict access to your content.

Features

• You can create a number of discount codes with ease.
• Integration with popular payment gateways
  • Braintree
  • PayPal
  • Authorize.net
  • 2Checkout
  • Stripe
• Easy member management.
• You are free to create unlimited subscription packages
  • free
  • trial
  • premium
• Third-party add-on support

Get Restrict Content Pro Now (it’s a button with a link over)

11. MemberMouse ($19.95/month)

MemberMouse is a turn-key WordPress membership plugin that comes in $19.95/month. Certainly, the cheapest of all. That too with a 14-day free trial. And surely 14 days is enough time to decide if this plugin is right for you or not. This plugin allows you to create trial offers and coupons. It also includes a widget that lets subscribers view what content or not they can have access to.

Features

• MemberMouse support payment gateways like
  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • Authorize.net
  • Braintree
• Support for email marketing services like MailChimp
• It has a shortcode library.
• It has 1-click upsells and downsells.
• Split-testing
• The starting price is really cheap.
• Customized checkouts.

Get MemberMouse Now (it’s a button with a link over)

Happy Web Development!!

So, which WordPress Membership Plugins you will choose?

I must say WordPress has a lot to offer you when it comes to membership plugins. Thus, choosing the best out of these options can be a little tricky for beginners. But the above thorough comparison between the cherry-picked WordPress membership plugins will help you get started with the right plugin with ease. All of these plugins have an array of features to offer you. Therefore, choose accordingly. In fact, creating your membership website with the help of WordPress Website Builder software like TemplateToaster will create a website in minutes. So, get started with your website today. However, if you get stuck or need help feel free to leave a comment below, I will do my best to help you with your problem.

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