14 Best WordPress Membership Plugins Compared (2026)

Picking the right WordPress membership plugin is one of those decisions that quietly shapes everything else about your site, your pricing model, your content workflow, even how easy it is to keep paying members happy long-term.

The market is crowded, and most “best of” lists feel interchangeable. So I went through the leading WordPress membership plugins and put together this honest comparison, with each plugin’s real strengths, where it falls short, and the use case it actually fits.

By the time you finish reading, you’ll know which plugin matches your goals, whether that’s selling courses, gating premium content, running a paid newsletter, or building a paid community.

What Is the Best WordPress Membership Plugin?

Out of the 14 options below, MemberPress is the one I’d hand to most site owners. It gates content and runs courses and recurring billing from a single plugin. Nothing else here gets you from install to a working paywall faster.

Comparison of Best WordPress Membership Plugins

Before we get into the full reviews, here’s a side-by-side comparison of every plugin covered in this post. You can read about the full feature breakdowns of each plugin below.

Plugin	Free version	Recurring billing	Pricing	Best for
MemberPress	No	Yes	$199.50/yr	Beginners, multiple income streams
Paid Memberships Pro	Yes	Yes	Free, $499/yr paid	Best free option, subscription businesses
Thrive Apprentice	No	Yes	$299/yr (Thrive Suite)	Design-led course sites
MemberMouse	No	Yes	$149.50/yr	Analytics and enterprise sites
WishList Member	No	Yes	$149.50/yr	All-in-one paywall solution
LearnDash	No	Yes	$259/yr	Full Learning Management System
Teachable	No	Yes	$39/mo	Hosted alternative to a plugin
Ultimate Member	Yes	Pro only	Free, $276/yr paid	Community-focused membership sites
Kadence Memberships	Yes	Yes	$299/yr (Kadence Pro)	Bloggers and other publishers
WooCommerce Memberships	No	Needs Subscriptions	$199/yr	Established WooCommerce stores
SureMembers	No	Yes	$69/yr	Fast, modern paywalls
aMember Pro	No	Yes	$149 one-time	MemberPress alternative for developers
s2Member	Yes	Pro only	Free, $89 one-time	Free option, advanced users
Paid Member Subscriptions	Yes	Yes	Free, €99/yr paid	Lightweight recurring billing

1. MemberPress

MemberPress is one of the easiest to use WordPress membership plugins out there. It comes with a ton of features and integrates smoothly with WordPress, so you can turn your website into a powerful membership site with ease.

Plus, it’s the best alternative to MemberMouse and ARMember on the market. We were super impressed with MemberPress’s range of features and flexibility.

You can use it to create a full-fledged members-only site that’s accessible to subscribers, add a paywall for restricted content on specific sections of your site, and even sell courses.

MemberPress offers a built-in Courses addon that turns it into a Learning Management System so you can create, manage, and sell online courses.

You can use the drag and drop builder to easily build your course curriculum, automatically style your course with Classroom Mode, track learners’ progress, and more.

I built a simple course page on a very plain WordPress theme, and it still looked absolutely fantastic. To summarize, there’s a lot to admire about MemberPress.

Features:

• Easy Setup: To get started all you need to do is install the plugin, configure your payment gateways, create different membership levels, and add some products. Then start inviting people to join.
• Content Restriction: Restrict user access to pages, posts, custom post types, categories, tags, and much more. Maintain control over what members can see using customizable membership plans.
• Course Builder: Create courses that mimic the style and functionality of professional online course platforms like Udemy and Coursera.
• Integrations: MemberPress integrates with popular email marketing services such as AWeber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, MadMimi, and GetResponse. You can also integrate with BuddyPress for creating a forum, and Amazon Web Services for organizing and growing your business.
• Widgets: Login widgets for sidebars to make it easy for your members to sign in.
• Payment Gateways: MemberPress supports both PayPal and Stripe payment gateways. The Pro and Plus plans also support Authorize.net.
• Documentation: Tons of helpful walkthrough tutorials.

And using MemberPress, you’ll also enjoy features such as coupon generation, dynamic pricing, content dripping, and detailed analytics for monitoring the success of your membership site.

Pros:

• Widest feature coverage here: Gated content, courses, coaching and recurring billing all come from one plugin rather than a stack of four.
• Genuinely beginner-friendly: The setup wizard gets you to a working paywall faster than anything else on this list.
• No transaction fees from Growth up: Growth and Scale take 0% on top of your gateway’s own processing fees.

Cons:

• No free version: You’re committing budget on day one, though the 14-day money-back guarantee softens that.
• The Launch tier has real limits: Stripe is the only gateway, and MemberPress adds a 4.9% transaction fee. If you expect meaningful revenue, budget for Growth instead.

Cost: MemberPress starts at $199.50/year for the Launch plan, renewing at $399. Growth is $349.50/year and Scale is $499.50/year, both with 0% transaction fees.

2. Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is the most popular free WordPress membership plugin on the market, with more than 100,000 active installations on WordPress.org and a strong reputation for flexibility.

The core plugin is fully open-source, which means you get unlimited members, unlimited membership levels, content restriction by post or page, and basic Stripe and PayPal payments without paying anything.

That’s rare in this category, and it makes Paid Memberships Pro the obvious starting point if you’re testing a membership idea before committing budget.

What I like is that the upgrade path doesn’t punish you. The paid plan unlocks dozens of add-ons (custom checkout fields, advanced reporting, 50+ integrations, multiple payment gateways), but you can launch and run a real membership site on the free version for as long as you want.

Features:

• Unlimited Membership Levels: Build as many tiers as your business needs, with custom pricing, billing intervals, and access rules per level.
• Content Access Control: Restrict posts, pages, categories, custom post types, and even individual sections of pages to specific member levels.
• Discount Codes and Drip Content: Run promotions with discount codes, schedule content releases, and offer free trials on any membership level.
• Reports and Member Dashboard: Track revenue, signups, cancellations, and churn from a built-in analytics dashboard.
• Add-On Library. 50+ add-ons in the paid plans cover Mailchimp, ConvertKit, BuddyPress, Affiliate WP, custom levels, and more.

Pros:

• The free core is a real product: Unlimited members and levels, content restriction, plus Stripe and PayPal payments, with no artificial cap waiting to bite you.
• Migration importers: They ship importers for several competing plugins, which matters more than it sounds when you’re switching.
• Open source with no site limit: You can run it on as many sites as you want.

Cons:

• Not in the WordPress repository: Updates come from their license server, so you install by uploading a zip the first time.
• The paid jump is steep: Standard now sits at $499/year, well above where it used to be and above most of this list.

Cost: Free for the core plugin. Standard is $499/year, with managed-hosting plans at $999 and $2,999/year.

3. Thrive Apprentice

Plugins by Thrive Themes are always incredibly flexible and give you outstanding customization freedom. Thrive Apprentice is no different.

It’s a powerful membership plugin and course builder that lets you create courses, assessments, and other course-related products using a highly customizable visual editor.

It’s perfect for offering instructional content to your users. You can see all your members’ information in an easy-to-read dashboard, create custom content dripping schedules, and more.

When it comes to custom course building, Thrive Apprentice gives you tons of options. You can choose how to divide up your classes, what format they’re available in (text, video, or audio), and whether you want to include additional downloadable materials and certificates.

I had a fantastic experience using the course builder from the backend. When you’re creating a course for the first time, Thrive Apprentice walks you through all the steps with a user-friendly setup wizard.

My favorite feature offered by Thrive Apprentice is content drip. This allows you to drip feed your course content to customers over a specific period of time or by using other user actions as triggers.

Features:

• User Friendly: Thrive Apprentice is beginner friendly and even provides a handy setup wizard to walk you through the process of creating your first course.
• Content Dripping: Set a custom schedule to determine when students can access new lessons. You can even create multiple schedules for the same course or use trigger actions to personalize the experience.
• Member Management Dashboard: Keep track of all your members from the member dashboard and easily set access rules for individual users.
• Visual Course Builder: Create unique online courses with ease using the drag-and-drop course builder. It comes with over 55 templates.
• Personalized Content: Use conditional display rules to show different courses to different types of users and increase your engagement rates.
• Reports: Measure course performance with enrollments, completion, average course progress, and more.

Pros:

• Best-looking course sites on this list: The visual editor and 55+ templates mean you don’t need a designer to ship something polished.
• Trigger-based drip: Release lessons on a schedule or on a user action, which is more flexible than most drip implementations here.
• Comes with eight other plugins: Since it’s suite-only now, Thrive’s landing page builder and quiz builder come along with it.

Cons:

• No standalone license anymore: Thrive Apprentice ships as part of Thrive Suite, so you’re buying nine plugins whether you want them or not.
• Overkill for a simple paywall: If you only want to gate a few articles, this is a lot of tool for the job.

Cost: Available inside Thrive Suite at $299/year (down from $599) or $149 quarterly. There’s no separate Thrive Apprentice license.

4. MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a popular enterprise-level membership plugin. It offers lots of advanced features for creating gated content, managing your members, and generating revenue.

Although it’s not as beginner-friendly as MemberPress or Thrive Apprentice, it can be a great solution for large membership sites.

The one area where MemberMouse really stands out is its advanced analytics features. It generates charts to illustrate important metrics like total members, retention, engagement, average customer value, and more in an easy-to-understand way.

I were also very glad to find convenient features like push notifications, which can be really handy for admins. You can create various kinds of notifications that trigger when a new member is added, a membership level is changed for a user, a refund is issued, and so on.

These allow you and your team to immediately learn of user events as they happen. MemberMouse also integrates with popular payment gateways and email marketing platforms as well. Plus, you can offer prorated upgrades and upsells to your members to increase your revenue.

Features:

• Create Multiple Membership Levels: Set up different types of memberships with increasing price ranges.
• Content Protection: Lock content for non-members or members who don’t have the right subscription.
• Content Dripping: Release content on a pre-set schedule.
• One-Time Product Sales: Sell physical products in addition to your membership subscriptions.
• Advanced Member Dashboard: Manage your members and view advanced analytics right in your WordPress admin dashboard.

Pros:

• The best analytics in this category: Retention, engagement and average customer value are charted for you rather than exported to a spreadsheet.
• Prorated upgrades and upsells: Genuinely useful revenue tooling that most plugins here leave to add-ons.
• Admin push notifications: Your team hears about a refund or a level change as it happens.

Cons:

• Steeper learning curve: You’ll spend longer in setup than you would with MemberPress or SureMembers.
• Renewals jump: The introductory Basic price roughly doubles at renewal, so price it on year two rather than year one.

Cost: MemberMouse starts at $149.50/year for Basic, renewing at $299. Plus is $249.50/year and Pro is $349.50/year.

5. WishList Member

WishList Member is one of the longest-running membership plugins for WordPress, and it’s still a strong, trusted option for managing content access and paid memberships.

What keeps it on top lists year after year is the steady stream of feature updates. The team behind it has shipped a course builder, a stack of integrations, and a much cleaner admin experience than most plugins in this space.

From quick onboarding to integrations with payment processors and email tools, WishList Member has matured well. Like MemberPress and Thrive Apprentice, WishList Member has its own dedicated course builder add-on, CourseCure.

Its flexible course template makes building and selling courses pretty painless, especially if you’ve felt overwhelmed by other LMS tools.

Features:

• Unlimited Membership Tiers: Add as many membership levels as you wish.
• Swift Content Protection: Control access to pages and posts with a single click. Just select the Protect option directly from the WordPress editor.
• Drip and Schedule Content: Stagger your content releases to new members to manage engagement and incentivize continuous membership.
• Teaser Previews: Display brief previews of your content to non-subscribers, enticing them to register and discover the full content.
• Integrated Course Creation: WishList Member’s own course builder, CourseCure, lets you create lessons with the option to add quizzes, points, and badges to maximize engagement.
• Multiple Payment Options: Process transactions with over 20 trusted payment platforms, including Stripe, PayPal, and WooCommerce.

Pros:

• Course builder included: CourseCure handles lessons and quizzes without a separate LMS licence, and adds points and badges on top.
• Over 20 payment platforms: One of the widest gateway lists here, which helps outside the US.
• Long track record: It has survived every WordPress era since 2008, which counts for something when you’re picking a plugin to build a business on.

Cons:

• No free version: There’s no way to trial it on a live site beyond the money-back window.
• Renewals are full price: The $149.50 entry becomes $299 in year two.

Cost: WishList Member’s Basic plan for 1 site comes in at $149.50/year, renewing at $299. Plus is $249.50/year and Pro is $349.50/year.

6. LearnDash

LearnDash is a WordPress membership and popular LMS plugin designed to help you create and sell online courses on your website.

It’s an extremely easy-to-use tool that comes with lots of integrations, membership modules, and powerful administration capabilities.

Features:

• Advanced Course Builder: If selling online courses is the main goal of your membership site, LearnDash has you covered. Their drag and drop course builder lets you create multi-layer courses with categories, lessons, topics, assignments, and quizzes.
• Easy Payment Structure: You create any pricing model you want, which includes one-time sales, subscriptions, and membership bundles. You can also use any of 300+ available payment gateways. Which is great since the goal here is to generate the most money and make the process super easy on your users.
• Comprehensive Member Management: You have complete control over your students as they progress through courses. Features include frontend user profiles for users, detailed reporting, and automatic email notifications to encourage engagement.
• Advanced Technology: LearnDash supports the latest technology and it’s WordPress multisite compatible. Use this membership plugin on any WordPress theme, without the need to code. Plus, insert tons of different media types and know your courses will look great on mobile devices.

Also, additional features in LearnDash include drip content, forums, restrict content, and the ability to award learners with certificates and badges.

Pros:

• The strongest course engine here: Multi-layer courses, graded quizzes and certificates are all first-class features rather than add-ons.
• 300+ payment gateways: Very little chance your preferred processor is missing.
• Multisite compatible: Useful if you run courses across a network of sites.

Cons:

• It’s an LMS first: General membership features like tiered article paywalls feel secondary compared to a purpose-built membership plugin.
• Entry price is higher than it was: Essentials now starts at $259/year, and the product has moved under Liquid Web’s software portfolio.

Cost: LearnDash Essentials starts at $259/year. Pro is $399/year and Elite is $599/year, all with unlimited courses and learners.

7. Teachable

Teachable is an all-in-one platform that lets you create and sell online courses with a few simple clicks. It comes with built-in member management, payment gateways, and even sales and marketing tools to help you grow your business fast.

Features:

• Membership Site Design: Create a stunning membership site with Teachable using their built-in customization tools. Add video, images, text, audio, and PDF files with ease. Plus, use the drag and drop builder to create new pages. You can use Teachable’s domain, a subdomain connecting to your site, or work with your existing WordPress website’s domain.
• Learning Tools: Create quizzes, surveys, and discussion forums for students. In addition, integrate with Zapier to connect to nearly every known support tool to stay organized and on track. Lastly, issue course completion certificates as people progress through your programs.
• Marketing Tools: With Teachable, you can easily incentivize people with coupons or promotions. Also, you can start your own affiliate program and create fully customized sales landing pages. On top of that, you can define varying prices such as one-time, membership subscriptions (recurring), or bundled services.
• Easy Member Management: Take advantage of the useful dashboard for monitoring members. You can access detailed analytics about signups, membership types, and revenue. Plus, you can even give others access to create courses and manage students.

And with Teachable, you’ll also get features such as flexible drip content functionality and international payment gateways and multiple currency acceptance. Plus, it offers automated email marketing to boost engagement and segment users.

Pros:

• Nothing to maintain: No plugin updates, no hosting decisions, no compatibility conflicts.
• Marketing built in: The affiliate program, coupons and sales pages come with the platform.
• Fast to launch: You can be selling a course the same day without touching WordPress.

Cons:

• You don’t own the platform: Your courses and your member data live on someone else’s site, which is the opposite trade-off from every plugin here.
• The Starter plan takes 7.5%: That transaction fee sits on top of standard card processing fees, and it only drops to 0% from Builder up.

Cost: Teachable Starter is $39/month, or $29/month billed annually, with a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder is $89/month and Growth is $189/month, both at 0% transaction fees.

8. Ultimate Member

Ultimate Member is the WordPress plugin to reach for if your priority is community, member profiles, and user directories rather than selling courses or paywalling articles.

The free version on WordPress.org is genuinely usable on its own. You get a full user profile system, a member directory, custom registration and login forms, and the ability to assign user roles based on which form somebody signs up through.

What I’d watch for is the trade-off. Ultimate Member is lighter on payment and content-restriction features compared to MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro.

If your monetization model relies on tiered paid access to articles or courses, you’ll want one of those plugins. But if you’re building a membership site that runs on community, profiles, and segmented access, Ultimate Member punches well above its price.

Features:

• Free Core Plugin: A real free version with custom forms, profiles, and member directories. Most premium add-ons are optional, not required to launch.
• User Roles and Forms: Assign different WordPress user roles depending on which form someone fills out. Useful for separating, say, free members from paid contributors.
• Member Directories: Build searchable directories of your members on the front end. A nice fit for niche communities, alumni networks, and professional groups.
• Profile Customization: Members can edit their own profiles with a flexible field system. Pair this with conditional logic to show different content to different segments.
• Email Templates: Customize all the transactional emails members receive on signup, password reset, profile update, and more.

Ultimate Member also has a healthy add-on library covering BuddyPress, MailChimp, MyCred (for gamification), and more.

Pros:

• The most-installed option here: 200,000 active installs and a 4.4-star average across 1,400+ reviews.
• The free version is not a demo: Profiles, directories and custom registration forms all work without paying.
• Role assignment per form: A clean way to segment members without custom code.

Cons:

• Payments are a paid add-on: Stripe arrives with the Pro plan, so the free version can’t take money on its own.
• Light on content restriction: Tiered article paywalls are not what it’s built for.

Cost: Free core plugin. Standard is $276/year and Pro, which adds Stripe and Zapier, is $348/year.

9. Kadence Memberships (formerly Restrict Content Pro)

If you came here looking for Restrict Content Pro, this is where it went. Liquid Web retired the StellarWP brand in May 2026 and folded Restrict Content Pro into Kadence Memberships.

The standalone product is no longer sold, and the free plugin on WordPress.org now ships under the Kadence Memberships name.

For existing Restrict Content Pro customers, licences were grandfathered, so nothing breaks on a site you already run. For anyone starting fresh, the practical difference is how you buy it.

Memberships is a feature of Kadence rather than a plugin you license on its own. It’s still the same lightweight approach to content restriction that made Restrict Content Pro popular with bloggers and publishers.

Features:

• Built-In Payment Integrations: Stripe, PayPal and Braintree are all supported out of the box.
• Flexible Subscription Levels: Create any number of subscription levels and assign them a price, optional signup fee, frequency, and a user role that members receive when they register. Members can upgrade and downgrade, and new subscriptions are prorated automatically.
• Drip-Fed Content: Release posts and lessons to members on a schedule rather than all at once.
• Promotional Tools: Give registered users exclusive discount codes on their subscriptions. Create unlimited discounts, set them as a flat rate or a percentage, then add expiration dates or usage limits.
• Member Dashboards and Invoices: Members get their own account area with billing history, and you get earnings reports on the admin side.
• Pro Add-Ons: 34 add-ons cover the integrations most publishers reach for.

Pros:

• Genuinely lightweight: It restricts content and bills members without asking you to learn a platform.
• Free version still exists: The WordPress.org plugin covers basic restriction at no cost.
• Bundled with a full theme and block library: If you were going to buy Kadence anyway, Memberships now comes with it.

Cons:

• No standalone licence: Memberships is gated behind Kadence Pro at $299/year. The Essentials plan at $99 is theme and blocks only.
• The rebrand was rough: Product pages moved and redirects broke, and the WordPress.org rating now sits at 3.1 stars, well below the rest of this list. Worth knowing before you commit.

Cost: Included in Kadence Pro at $299/year, or Elite at $499/year. Essentials at $99/year does not include Memberships.

10. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce Memberships is a WooCommerce subscriptions plugin that lets you limit the sale of products and services to registered users on your eCommerce site.

But it’s not an all-in-one solution since you’ll have to use WooCommerce Subscriptions to accept recurring payments for paid member subscriptions on your site. It does still give you the ability to create locked content and products.

Features:

• Membership Flexibility: Since memberships are created separately from your WooCommerce products, you have the flexibility to create different kinds of memberships. This includes standalone products, part of a product purchase, or as a monthly or yearly subscription. You can even assign memberships manually as part of an invite-only members area (exclusive to members only).
• Content Dripping: Easily schedule when members see your content as part of a drip campaign. Restrict access to WordPress posts or pages so you can control how members use your site. You can even set up a free trial and then lock content when the trial periods are over and require payment to continue accessing it.
• Member Rewards: Those paying for access to your WooCommerce shop and content are often your most loyal customers. Extend free shipping and other special discounts to people that are a part of your membership site. Then, require non-members to meet certain criteria, such as having a coupon or a minimum order amount.
• Easy Member Management: WooCommerce Memberships makes managing memberships easy for both site owners and their users. So members can view their accessible content, discover future access dates, and see all details regarding their membership status in the exclusive Members Area.

And you’ll also get features like the ability to export member information into email marketing tools and communicate with members by sharing notes you’ve created.

Pros:

• Native to WooCommerce: Memberships attach to products and orders you already manage, with no bridging plugin.
• Member-only pricing and free shipping: Real ecommerce perks that a general membership plugin can’t replicate cleanly.
• Invite-only memberships: You can grant access manually without a purchase.

Cons:

• Recurring billing costs extra: WooCommerce Subscriptions is a separate paid extension, so budget for two licences.
• Only makes sense with WooCommerce: Outside a store, there’s no reason to pick this over the plugins above.

Cost: WooCommerce Memberships is $199/year for a single site, or $318.40 for two years.

11. SureMembers

SureMembers is a newer entry from the team behind SureCart and SureFeedback, and it’s quickly become one of my recommendations for site owners who don’t want to wrestle with a heavyweight membership plugin just to gate a few articles.

The setup is fast and you can get a working paywall up and accepting Stripe payments in under an hour, which is the kind of thing the older plugins on this list don’t make easy. The interface stays out of your way, and the free version covers basic content protection, drip content, and email tool integrations like ConvertKit and Mailchimp.

Where SureMembers gets interesting is how it fits into the wider Sure suite of plugins. It pairs natively with SureCart for checkout, SureForms for member onboarding, and PrestoPlayer for protected video. If you’re already using any of those, the integration story is genuinely tight.

Features:

• Fast Setup: Designed to launch a paywall in minutes, not days. The default settings cover most simple membership models.
• Drip Content: Schedule lessons or articles to release to members over time, with per-level rules.
• Email Integrations: Native connections to Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, and a few others. Useful for syncing new members straight into your nurture sequences.
• SureCart Integration: If you sell digital or physical products, SureCart and SureMembers together cover both checkout and member access without taping plugins together.
• Free Version: The free version on WordPress.org is enough to launch a small paywall site without paying anything upfront.

Pros:

• Fastest setup on this list: A working Stripe paywall inside an hour is not an exaggeration.
• Cheapest paid entry point: $69/year undercuts every other premium plugin here.
• Tight Sure suite integration: Checkout, forms and protected video all connect without glue plugins.

Cons:

• No free version: Despite being a newer plugin, there’s no free tier on WordPress.org, so the $69 Starter plan is the entry point.
• Smaller ecosystem: Fewer third-party integrations and a shorter track record than the older plugins above.

Cost: Starter is $69/year for 1 site. Pro is $149/year for 10 sites and Business is $199/year for 100 sites. Business Lifetime is a one-time $599.

12. aMember Pro

aMember Pro is another feature-packed membership plugin designed to help you create any type of membership site you want. Keep in mind that it’s not a native WordPress membership plugin (which may cause some compatibility issues with your plugins and theme). And despite its somewhat dated interface, this solution makes it easy to create a fully functioning membership site.

Features:

• Multi-Level Memberships: Create unlimited membership levels, add as many products as you want, and set dynamic prices for products and subscriptions for WordPress users to pick from.
• Complete Member Management: Manage members in the easy to access admin panel. Add, edit, or delete customers and their subscriptions. View detailed reports and run batch operations, saving yourself tons of time and hassle.
• Integrated Modules: Modules in aMember Pro include an email newsletter optin, a helpdesk, affiliate management, and a shopping cart, plus many more.
• Automated Processes: Save time by automating customer signups. Set the product and payment gateways to offer during the initial sign up and let aMember Pro do the rest.

And with aMember Pro, you’ll also get membership features like access to dozens of payment gateways, content dripping, and coupon codes. On top of that, it has 6 translations (German, Spanish, Greek, Russian, French, and Chinese) for both the admin interface and the frontend of your site.

Pros:

• One-time payment: A perpetual licence at $149 with no annual renewal, which is rare here.
• Dozens of payment gateways: Strong coverage for markets Stripe and PayPal don’t serve well.
• Six admin and frontend translations: Useful for non-English membership sites.

Cons:

• Not a native WordPress plugin: It’s standalone software bridged into WordPress, which is where compatibility problems come from.
• Support and updates expire: The one-time fee covers roughly six months, after which you buy a support package to keep updating.

Cost: A one-time payment of $149, which includes support and updates for up to 6 months.

13. s2Member

S2Member is a long-standing free WordPress membership plugin that comes packed with features. It’s not the most beginner-friendly option here, and the interface shows its age compared to newer plugins on this list.

That said, once you get the hang of it, s2Member is still a workable choice if you want a free, code-flexible membership plugin for selling physical and digital products.

It’s a solid free alternative to WP-Members or older builds of Ultimate Member, particularly if you’re comfortable working with shortcodes for content restriction.

Features:

• Registration Flexibility. s2Member can restrict registrations to paying customers. Or, allow open registrations so free subscribers can create accounts too. This way you can limit your content the way you want and for who you want.
• Content Restriction: Restrict access to entire posts, pages, categories, tags, and more. Or, lock portions of content to encourage people to join your membership site. Using s2Member’s simple shortcode conditionals, you can restrict content in creative ways that boost signups and retain existing users.
• Email Marketing: Customize transactional emails such as signup confirmations, upgrade or downgrade actions, and checkout behavior. Add customer names for a personalized touch and include all transaction details for your customer’s records. Plus, integrate with email service providers Mailchimp, AWeber, and GetResponse.
• Multiple Membership Levels: Create 4 membership levels with the free version of s2Member. With the pro version of this WordPress membership plugin, you can have an unlimited number of users.

In addition, s2Member offers site owners features like popular payment gateway integrations and brute force attack monitoring. It’s also got bbPress and BuddyPress support, content dripping, and coupon/gift card redemption functionality.

Pros:

• Free framework with real features: Four membership levels, content restriction and shortcode conditionals, at no cost.
• One-time pro pricing: $89 for a single site or $189 for unlimited sites, with lifetime access to new versions.
• Shortcode flexibility: If you’re comfortable with shortcodes, you can restrict content in ways point-and-click plugins won’t let you.

Cons:

• The interface is dated: It looks and behaves like a plugin built for an older WordPress, because it was.
• Shortcode-driven setup: Expect to read documentation rather than follow a wizard.

Cost: The free framework costs nothing. Pro is a one-time $89 for a single site, or $189 for unlimited sites.

14. Paid Member Subscriptions

Paid Member Subscriptions from Cozmoslabs is the plugin I’d point you to if what you actually need is recurring billing on WordPress, minus the membership platform wrapped around it.

The free version on WordPress.org holds a 4.7-star average across 265 reviews. Its 10,000 active installations are modest next to Ultimate Member’s, but no other plugin here has a satisfaction rate that good.

Paid Member Subscriptions keeps its feature set deliberately narrow, so you get subscriptions, content restriction and member management, done cleanly, with no course builder or coaching module you’ll never open.

Features:

• Recurring Payments: One-time and recurring subscriptions through Stripe, PayPal or Authorize.Net.
• Content Restriction: Lock posts, pages and categories to specific subscription levels, including partial restriction inside a single page.
• Content Dripping: Schedule content to unlock based on how long somebody has been a member.
• WooCommerce Integration: Restrict products and offer member-only pricing on an existing store.
• Member Management: Front-end registration, login and account pages your members manage themselves.

Pros:

• The highest-rated plugin here: 4.7 stars from 265 reviews on a free plugin says the basics work reliably.
• Free version on WordPress.org: Unlike SureMembers, you can trial the real thing at no cost.
• Focused rather than bloated: Recurring billing and restriction, without a platform’s worth of features you won’t use.

Cons:

• Priced in euros: Basic is €99/year, which makes budgeting slightly awkward from the US.
• Smaller ecosystem: 10,000 installs and a shorter integration list than the leaders above.

Cost: Free version available. Basic is €99/year for 1 site and Pro is €169/year for 3 sites. Agency covers unlimited sites at €299/year.

Which WordPress Membership Plugin Is the Best Choice For You?

After comparing every plugin on this list, here’s the short version of which one to pick depending on what you’re building.

• Best overall: MemberPress gets the top recommendation. It’s the most comprehensive option, the easiest to set up, and the best choice for almost every use case from gated content to courses to recurring subscriptions.
• Best free option: Paid Memberships Pro. The free core plugin is fully usable, with unlimited members and unlimited tiers.
• Best for online courses: Thrive Apprentice for design-led course sites, or LearnDash if you need a heavyweight LMS with advanced quizzes and reporting.
• Best for community sites: Ultimate Member, especially if you need member profiles and directories more than paid content.
• Best for WooCommerce stores: WooCommerce Memberships, the natural fit if you already run a WooCommerce store.
• Best lightweight option: Restrict Content Pro. Good for bloggers and publishers who want a clean, simple paywall without the kitchen sink.

If you’re specifically after a pure paywall rather than a full membership system, our roundup of the best paywall plugins is a better fit.

Whatever you pick, the best plugin for you is the one that matches your business model, not the one with the longest feature list.

FAQs About the Best WordPress Membership Plugins

Choosing the right WordPress membership plugin comes down to a handful of recurring questions about pricing, free options, switching plugins, and security. Here are quick answers to the most common ones.

Is MemberPress free to use?

No, MemberPress is a premium plugin only. It doesn’t offer a free version. That said, all paid plans are backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can try MemberPress completely risk-free.

What is the best free WordPress membership plugin?

Paid Memberships Pro is the best free WordPress membership plugin overall.

The core plugin is fully open-source, supports unlimited members and membership levels, and includes basic Stripe and PayPal payments at no cost.

Ultimate Member is another strong free option if your priority is community profiles and member directories. For a free plugin focused on paywalls and digital products, s2Member is also worth a look.

Can I switch membership plugins later?

Yes, but plan for it carefully. Most membership plugins store member data, levels, and content restrictions in their own custom tables, which means migrating to another plugin usually requires manual user import, re-mapping membership levels, and reconfiguring restricted content.

Some plugins offer importers (Paid Memberships Pro has importers for several competitors), and your members’ WordPress user accounts carry over since those live in WordPress core.

The trickier piece is your active subscriptions on the payment gateway side, which often need to be cancelled and re-created on the new plugin.

What are the benefits of creating a membership website?

A membership site lets you monetize your site by limiting access to your site’s content to paid users only. This content can include downloads, forums, support, and more.

There are a lot of ways to make money online, but creating a membership website using a WordPress membership plugin is one of the most effective. With a membership site, you can do the following:

• Generate Steady Income: By requiring site visitors to pay for access to your membership site, you generate a consistent stream of recurring income that increases as more people register.
• Build a Bigger Email List: All small business owners look for ways to improve their email marketing strategies. And that all begins with building a bigger email list, so adding registered users keeps your list full of active members that are more likely to respond (and convert) to your email campaigns.
• Deliver More Value: The great thing about creating a membership site is that the premium content you limit access to is evergreen, meaning it will be valuable to people forever. It’s also packed into one convenient location for everyone to see.
• Automation: If you do all the work upfront and create a membership site for your target audience to enjoy, you technically don’t ever have to do anything else. Unless you want to update content from time to time, the content on your membership does all the work for you.

Do membership plugins allow one-time and recurring memberships?

Most membership site plugins will allow you to create a one-time subscription or a recurring membership. It’s best to research your options before choosing a plugin so you can be sure your preferred plugin includes that feature.

How do membership plugins compare to membership site builders?

Membership plugins give you more ability to customize, but they require you to have some technical skill and know-how. By contrast, membership site builders are often easier to use, but don’t offer as many options for customization.

What should I consider for security measures with my membership site?

To keep your membership site secure, use SSL and strong passwords. It’s also a good idea to limit how many people have admin access to your site. Also be sure to keep on top of your site maintenance by keeping your WordPress core, theme, and plugins updated.

Next, Build a Custom Registration Form for Your Membership Site

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress membership plugin for your needs. From what we’ve seen, MemberPress is the best one out there.

Once you’ve set up your membership site, you’ll want a way to actually onboard members. That’s where custom user registration and user login forms come in.

WPForms ships a User Registration addon that turns any contact form into a member signup flow, complete with role assignment, email verification, and conditional approval.

If your membership site also plans on running paid events, our roundup of the best event registration plugins is a useful next read.

Build Your Membership Site With WPForms Today

Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and  X (Twitter) for more free WordPress tutorials and guides.