Are you trying to figure out how to create a membership site with WordPress?
Membership sites let you charge users for access to restricted content so you can skyrocket your website’s revenue.
In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to easily create a membership site using WordPress.
What Is a WordPress Membership Site?
A membership site invites visitors to pay to access certain areas or content on your site. It lets you restrict access to all or some of your site’s content, downloads, forums, online courses, support team, and more.
Membership sites are an increasingly popular and easy way for people to make money online with their websites.
What Are the Benefits of Creating a WordPress Membership Site?
There are a lot of reasons why you may want to consider having your own members only area of your website. Here are some of the most popular benefits of creating a membership site:
- More Income. Membership websites use a recurring billing model, meaning you can generate a steady stream of income that grows every month when more and more visitors register. This can help boost your income, especially if you’re already using affiliate sales and advertising.
- Less Work. Put your content to work for you. Membership sites are a fantastic way to grow your passive income by creating premium content once, then adding to it only if you choose to. If you create a great membership site once, you don’t have to do much more to continue to grow it unless you decide to update your content or interact with your members.
- Establish Authority. When you restrict content to a membership plan, visitors will easily understand that your premium content is valuable and that you are a master on the subject.
- Grow Your Email List. When you add registered users to your email list, you’ll fill it with engaged visitors who are already familiar with your site and more likely to interact with your emails. This will help boost your email marketing efforts.
What Is the Best Membership Plugin for WordPress?
There are a lot of great membership plugins for WordPress.
With the WPForms User Registration Addon, you can create registration forms to let your visitors register for a WordPress account easily. And you can automatically add them to your email list, send them welcome emails, and even activate their accounts.
However, if you’re looking for a more comprehensive membership website plugin, you should use MemberPress.
We recommend it because it’s easy to use, works great with WPForms, and is one of the most popular membership plugins on the market.
How to Create a Membership Site with WordPress
Asking yourself how do I create a membership website? Let’s go ahead and take a look at how to create a membership site with WordPress and MemberPress.
- Set Up The MemberPress Plugin
- Set Up Your Payment Methods
- Create Membership Levels
- Set Up Access Rules
- Create Members Only Content
- Create a Pricing Page
- Add Sign Up and Login Forms
Step 1: Set Up The MemberPress Plugin
You’ll want to start by installing and activating the MemberPress plugin. Here’s a step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Next, click on the link to the plugin’s options page in the Dashboard notification.
In addition, you can also access this page by going to MemberPress » Options.
Now, configure all of the settings to your liking.
Step 2: Set Up Your Payment Methods
Next, click on the Payments tab on the options page to set up the payment gateways you want to use on your membership site.
MemberPress lets you accept payments with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net as your payment gateway. Feel free to set up multiple payment gateways or just stick with one.
For an in-depth comparison of the 2 most popular options, check out our article Stripe vs Paypal.
Step 3: Create Membership Levels
Now that your MemberPress settings are all configured, the next step is to create membership levels for visitors to purchase.
Each level can have different pricing, features, and content. Luckily, you can make unlimited membership levels with MemberPress.
To do this, go to MemberPress » Memberships from the left-hand Dashboard menu, and after that click on the Add New button.
Next, enter a title and description for your membership level in the editor. Then, set the price, billing type, and access time from the Membership Terms section on the right.
After that, you’ll want to scroll down to the Membership Options section to customize it the way you want it. And don’t forget to click on the other tabs to configure the Permissions and Price Box as well.
Next, publish your membership level.
Step 4: Set Up Access Rules
You’ll want to make sure you define where and to who you want to restrict access on your membership website. So to do this, you need to set up rules.
Go to MemberPress » Rules in the left-hand panel and select Add New.
Now on the screen that appears, create a new rule to link your content to the membership levels you already created.
For instance, you can select all the content under a specific category be accessible only by users with the 2 most expensive membership plans. In this example, we selected the Advanced WordPress Guide category.
Next head to the Drip/Expiration settings.
If you choose to enable the Drip option, this will let you gradually release content.
On the other hand, the Expiration option lets you choose the time when the content is no longer available.
Once everything looks the way you want it to, save your rule. Now you can repeat this step to create more rules.
Step 5: Create Members Only Content
Next, you’ll want to create members only content so that you actually have premium content to offer people after they register for your membership site.
You can add content with a post or page. So for this example, we’ll create content to link to the access rule we created in the last step.
Create a new post and add the content you want to it. Next, select the Advanced WordPress Guide category.
Next, scroll down to the MemberPress Unauthorized Access section. Here you can set up what non-members (non-registered users) will see when they try to access this content.
And when everything is configured the way you’d like it, publish your page. Then, you can head to Posts » All Posts to see which content access is restricted to certain membership levels.
You can also create online courses with the built-in Courses addon. Creating your course curriculum is easy with the visual course builder. It’s built on top of the WordPress block editor so it’s a similar process to the steps above.
Step 6: Create a Pricing Page
In this next step, you’ll want to build a pricing page so your site visitors can see your different membership plans and sign up. MemberPress lets you do this easily from the Groups settings.
Go to the left-hand panel and select MemberPress » Groups. Next, click on the Add New button.
Name your group something like ‘Pricing Plans’ so people know what the page is about. After that, scroll down to the Group Options section. Here, you can add the memberships you want to show on your pricing page. You can also change the pricing page theme on this page.
Now publish this page when you’re ready, and preview it to check it out.
Here’s an example of how a pricing page will look on the default WordPress Twenty Nineteen theme:
Now to make sure your pricing page gets seen, you want to setup MemberPress to direct unregistered users to this page when they try and access members only content. In other words, when someone who hasn’t paid to access your premium content tries to, they’ll be sent to a sales page.
To do this, go back to MemberPress » Groups and copy the URL of the group.
Next, head to MemberPress » Options and scroll down to the Unauthorized Access section. After that, check the box next to Redirect unauthorized visitors to a specific URL and paste the URL in the box below.
Finally, select the Update Options button to complete this step so unregistered users will be redirected.
Step 7: Add Sign Up and Login Forms
Now everything is almost all set up. So the final step is to add sign up and login forms to your membership site so people can access them.
Let’s do this with a widget. Go to Appearance » Widgets from the left-hand panel and drag the MemberPress login widget to a widget-ready area of your choice.
Next, you’ll need to add your pricing page URL to the navigation menu so people can actually sign up.
So head to Appearance » Menus and create a new menu or choose an existing one.
After that, select Pricing Plans from the left under Groups and click on the Add to Menu button.
And when your pricing page shows up below the Menu Structure, drag it to rearrange it to where you want it and then click Save.
And that’s it! You’ve successfully created your Membership site with WordPress.
How to Get Analytics on Your Members
And now that you have a membership website, you’ll have a thriving and growing community that you’ll want to take good care of.
Your next step is to optimize your membership site to get more traffic and more registrations. You can use MonsterInsights to take a look at the stats of your membership site.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. You can use this plugin to get in-depth insights into what your registered users are doing, your transactions, and more.
How to Boost Your Site’s Membership Signups
Similarly, you’ll also want to focus on growing your membership signups on your site.
You can use the OptinMonster software to build your email list and let people know about your membership site. Check out this case study where one business uses OptinMonster to grow their online community by 30,000 members per month!
You can also consider running a WordPress giveaway and awarding the winner a free basic membership to attract some viral attention.
Final Thoughts on Creating a WordPress Membership Site
And there you have it. You now know how to create a membership site with WordPress using a membership plugin.
Want to read about even more ways to boost your online income? Check out this article on WPForms power hacks to grow your business online.
So what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.
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Thanks for this article. I am currently using memberpress for my membership and I’m considering using wpforms for the sign ups instead of just the memberpress forms. Is it possible to integrate the payment methods, also the offline payment method memberpress offers, with the wpforms? And also integrate new users from wpforms and memberpress into the same Aweber Email list?
Hi Joanna,
We currently don’t have a way of integrating the payment methods from Memberpress with WPForms at this time so I apologize for the inconvenience. As for AWeber, we do offer an Aweber integration that will allow users to be added to your AWeber list once they submit a form. You should be able to integrate users from both WPForms and Memberpress into the same list.
I hope this helps!
Would this work if I need to have a WP page that has to unlock a new page every two weeks, but only that page? Page will have videos with text explanation that has to be mobile friendly.
– Another version of subscription would have access to all of the locked workout pages.
– Would also need a place to ask questions.
– Needs to be on regular site with a link on site page.
The article was really helpful. Thank you.
Hi Paul – I apologize, but I’m familiar enough with all of Memberpress’s features to be able to provide a full answer here. But if you’d be willing to reach out to the Memberpress team (https://memberpress.com/contact/), they’d definitely be able to help you out! 🙂
Hi There, is it possible for the registered member to post a custom post once they login. This is what I am looking for as each member can post a volunteer opportunity ( which is custom post) they will have and these posts they post can be visible on the website to everyone.
Thanks
Hi Praveen! Yes, with our Post Submission addon you can allow users to submit posts to your site.
If you would like to allow this for logged in users only, then you can also use our Form Locker addon, which can restrict access to a form for logged in users only.
I hope this helps.
Have a good one 🙂
Hi there, thank you for this article. It does simplifies the process nicely and gets the the important points nice and quick, but I am wondering of there is a way ( and how : ) to use WPForms for the registration forms rather then the base forms. I don’t need to have payment for this particular site, but would like to use some of the functions and the much nicer layout options within WPForms. I have seen something with another forms component but have always preferred WPForms 🙂 so thought I would ask. Please forgive me if there was info in this page, but I did read over and didn’t see anything.
Hi Michael!
Great question! You can absolutely create a registration form with WPForms and our User Registration addon, which is available with the Pro license level or higher.
I hope this helps.
Have a good one 🙂
Hi, does this membership site allow you to use your own online payment gateway, ie your own bank, thanks
Hi Rejane,
In WPForms we only have PayPal, Stripe and Authorize.net payment options. I’m not aware of the payment options provided in the membership plugins, but you can check this with the plugin’s support team.
I hope this helps.
Have a good one 🙂
Hello there, what are the steps to integrate MemberPress with wpforms? Can seem to find any information on there is a mention of it that it works with it but there is no Doc to how to accomplish this. Also what part does wpforms take care of and what part MemberPress handle? Especially collecting information from user / potential member and who will be handling payment? such as reoccurring payments ie monthly or yearly or give option to pay installment for yearly membership and also with the option if you have setup fee / registration fee also offering discount option to redue setup fee ie 50% disclount or a $ amount?
Hi Ezekiel!
We don’t have any direct integration with MemberPress. When you get a chance, could you please share more details, or possibly an example of what you’re looking to do?
With WPForms you can create a registration form using our User Registration addon.
Also, you can accept payments for the user registrations with the Stripe addon where you can set up recurring payments.
However, WPForms doesn’t allow users to edit their user profile, this can be done on the MemberPress side.
I hope this helps.
Have a good one 🙂
Hello, is it possible to have these set up and delegate access to certain premium contaents to certain members who satisfy certain requirements but not necessarily on-site payment? for example i have content i want specific group of people to see but these group of people are selected by certain criterias that does not include payment.
Hey Sokki – Great question! I am afraid you will need to contact the plugin support for such insights. Contacting them might help because even if they don’t have any such feature, they might be able to suggest some workaround.
Have a good one:)
Very helpful article. So I am looking for a solution for my membership site. I want to add affiliate program for my membership as well, can we integrate with any third party to execute this? Plus how to add the member’s email directly to the email list (I am using Mailerlite). Thanks
Hey Joy – I apologize, I am not fully aware if MemberPress allows integrating with some third party affiliate plugin and Mailerlite. I’d recommend reaching out to the Memberpress support team for further assistance regarding this.
Have a good one 🙂