Do you intend to transform your WordPress site into a full-fledged membership site? Well, then you’ll have to equip it with the best WordPress membership plugins. A decent membership plugin for your WordPress site will facilitate the creation of a content library, accessible only to the registered members of your website.
Now, the choice of your WordPress membership plugin has a long-term impact on your business and it’s not easy to back out at will in case you make the wrong choice. Irrespective of whether you’re trying to create a recurring income or simply building your list a customer list, this blog post will help you in choosing an appropriate membership plugin as per your unique requirements. However, before we get on with the list, let’s find out the traits of a stellar WordPress membership plugin.
Major points to consider in a WordPress Membership Plugins
- Easy to Use– If you’re not in a position to hire someone to develop your membership site then you must go with a plugin that can be installed and used without much. Your requirements are unique and specific so there’s no point installing a membership plugin with multiple features. Why install features that you might never use during your lifetime?
- Compatibility – Before installing a plugin, check whether it is compatible with the ones that are already installed on your website. Local testing of your WordPress membership plugin is essential before uploading it on your server.
- Features and Design – Are you interested in offering only a single payment gateway to your customers or your business demands multiple checkout process? Do you have an idea about the design of your pricing page? Well, once you’re clear about these requirements, it’s easier for you to make your decision.
Search the internet and you’ll be flooded with WordPress membership plugins; however, your choice must be based purely on your requirements. Choose the one that perfectly suits your membership business model.
You need to sort out the payment gateway for your use. Would you like to accept credit card payments, PayPal, or both? Your membership plugin needs to support your preferred payment gateways, either inherent or through add-ons.
So, let’s have a detailed comparison between some of the best WordPress membership sites.
1. MemberPress
This is the perfect WordPress plugin and is available with complete features required for building an effective membership site. This plugin offers you to change your present website into a fully loaded membership site using minimal efforts.
The only thing you require is to install the plugin into your existing site, insert your payment gateway details, set up the products, and then request your visitors to join the membership site.
Having MemberPress, you can control the access to certain pages, files, posts for your site visitors. The seamless integration with in-demand email marketing services, such as AWeber, GetResponse, and MailChimp.
2. LearnDash
LearnDash was built to sell online courses on WordPress sites. This plugin offers you a powerful learning experience for your members supporting the up-to-date gamification, social learning, and micro-content trends.
This plugin provides the learners to discover new courses depending upon the points earned while learning the courses. This lets you improve retention and site visitors engaged in online courses.
Based on the learners’ performance, you can award fully customized certificates and badges to them. The members can track their activity based on the front-end profiles provided by you.
3. Paid Member Subscriptions
One of the most outstanding plugins for restricting viewing of products, purchasing of products, and offering special product prices to a few members. Imagine this plugin letting you have the full experience of Amazon-Prime e-commerce style for the users.
Having this plugin, it will offer you to manage the member subscriptions, permit and reverse the access to posts, categories, pages, and in addition to that customized types of posts depending on the subscription plant of your users.
The leading part is that the Paid Member Subscriptions do not drive you into a predefined structure because this plugin flawlessly incorporates into your content and WordPress site.
The plugin is easy to set up. For accepting payments PayPal, all you need to do is you can choose the subscription plan to protect the content via meta box appearing in individual pages, posts, or customized posts types.
4. Teachable
This is an all-in-one standalone platform for developing and publishing delightful online courses. You can integrate the online courses into your present website or you can host them on the Teachable subdomain.
Enabled with a powerful editor, it helps to build and start an amazing sales page converting your visitors into potential paid users. The numerous advantages this plugin offers sets separately from the competitors. Quizzes and discussions are easily set on your Teachable site.
If you want to reward your students, you can issue badges and certificates of completion. For seamless integration, you can import various content from One Drive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. To improve your sales, affiliation programs, coupon codes, including those seeking 33% off on a popular dating app, pricing, and many more options are easily available.
5. Restrict Content Pro
Developed by the same team Easy Digital Download Plugin, is a light-weight WordPress membership plugin. This plugin enables you to make an explicit membership site.
Restrict Content Pro is the perfect plugin for your membership site you need, as this plugin is bundled with a set of features matching your suitability. It offers multiple payment integrations with PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
The free version of this membership plugin has limited features. As the plugin offers a lite version, you can download the plugin from the official WordPress plugins repository.
MemberPress is the best plugin when you’re looking for an extensive membership plugin for your WordPress website. If you need a plugin that offers you a great learning certifications, experience, and quizzes, then LearnDash is the perfect choice for you.
In the case of special pricing for your selected users like Amazon Prime, then the best choice would be Paid Member Subscriptions. Irrespective of what you choose, make sure that you don’t pay up even an extra penny for a plugin that doesn’t benefit your business.
