5 Best WordPress Membership Plugins to Grow Revenue in 2023

WordPress membership plugins are essential tools for building and managing membership sites. With the right membership plugin, you can easily create subscription plans, collect payments, and customize your site to fit your unique needs.

When selecting the best membership plugins to grow membership revenue in 2023, there are a few key factors to consider. These include the plugin’s pricing, features, ease of use, and security.

Choosing the right membership plugin can increase your membership revenue and provide your members with the best possible user experience. So what are the 5 that will up your membership game? Let’s find out.

What is a membership plugin, and how does it work?

A membership plugin will provide a WordPress website with the ability to restrict content to logged-in users and allow monetization of this content. This strategy is mainly used by blogs and news websites that intend to generate income from subscriptions instead of relying on Google AdSense or affiliate links.

Anyone who wants to access your exclusive content must subscribe by paying a monthly or yearly fee. Websites like Bloomberg and Harvard Business Review use this model to generate income.

These websites take different approaches with their membership. Harvard Business Review will allow you access to articles but gates premium content such as data & visuals. Bloomberg lets you read a small percentage of an article and then gates the rest.

Whichever model you desire to implement, using a WordPress membership plugin is a must to ensure your website possesses the functionality and features to accomplish content restriction.

Benefits of starting a WordPress membership website

There are some great benefits when you invest in a membership plugin for WordPress for your site. Here are five that make starting a membership site worth the investment.

A Membership Website creates Reliable and recurring income

If you have monthly subscribers on your site, it is much easier to estimate your monthly income than with other income streams, including AdSense or affiliate marketing. Having users subscribe to access your content creates a recurring income stream that you can rely on to plan for the future of your business. However, it will require you to create top-notch content or products if you want all your users to renew their monthly or annual subscriptions constantly.

A Membership Website creates a strong community

People who pay to view your content are those who believe in the vision of your business and find value in the content you publish. Such people will always read and engage with almost every article or content you add to your site. They will also interact with other users through comments and DMs, creating a strong and loyal community that will always be willing to support your business in all seasons.

A Membership Website provides a captive audience

Selling a product to someone who is already a subscribed member of your site is way easier than selling to total strangers visiting your site for the first time. Your website members are already aware of the goals and values of your business, making it easier for them to trust the products you offer to sell them.

A membership website provides feedback

Most of your website members care about the existence and growth of your business, so they will always be willing to share their honest feedback whenever the need arises. This feedback might be about your content or the business as a whole.

You can use this feedback to refine your goals and make improvements that will boost the experience of your website members. Sometimes these users may give you feedback in a rude or frustrated manner; you just need to know how to turn this feedback into goals you can implement to improve your website’s user experience.

A membership website compliments other income sources

Most websites that use the subscription model also use other income-generating strategies, including affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, etc. So, the revenue generated from membership fees complements the other income sources of the business.

How to choose the best WordPress membership plugin

Before getting into our list of the top five plugins, let’s discuss some of the factors you need to consider when choosing the membership plugin to install on your website.

Price

You should compare the prices of the different options and choose one that offers the best value within your budget. You will notice that different plugins have different pricing plans and features at various price points.

Your goal should be to choose a plugin that serves the purpose. Don’t choose a pricy plugin that charges you for the extra fancy features you may never use. On the flip side, a free membership plugin is not likely to provide enough features, so be prepared to purchase a premium membership plugin at some point.

Check out the reviews

It is essential to check out a plugin’s reviews on the official WordPress plugins store and other review platforms, including G2, Capterra, or TrustPilot. These reviews will give you a clear picture of the experience the previous and current plugin users have. Don’t just look at the overall rating; read these users’ reviews.

We’ve added the ratings of each of our listed membership plugins for WordPress in our round-up below to get you started, but don’t stop there. Reading the reviews is critical if you want to know how it works for your particular use case.

Multi-level membership

Membership plugins can also categorize your website members, giving them different access levels. This may not matter to you if you intend to charge your members the same rate. However, if you want to charge them based on the level of access, it is vital to choose a plugin that gives you this option.

Look for plugins that have the capability to create unlimited subscription levels or to create unlimited membership levels. These terms are typically used and found in the features section of a plugin.

Supported payment methods

Choose a plugin that makes it easy for your users to make their subscription payments. That is why it is essential to choose one that supports most payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and even potentially Apple Pay and Google Pay. The goal is to reduce the friction your customers must overcome to make their subscription payments.

Ease of use

If you are tech-savvy, you can opt for a plugin that provides extra functionality at the expense of ease of use. However, for most people, it is always best to choose a plugin that is easy to set up, configure, and use.

Your full-time job should be designing and creating content to improve your users’ experience, not configuring plugins. Reading reviews of the current plugin users will give you an idea of how easy it is to set up and use the plugin.

Compatibility

Before installing the membership plugin, ensure it is compatible with the other apps installed on your site. Your experience will be much better if all the apps installed on your site seamlessly share data. This is difficult to ascertain without asking the plugin provider directly or looking at reviews to see if anyone noted compatibility issues.

5 Best WordPress Membership Plugins Compared

We’ve compiled 5 of the best membership plugins to start with when building a WordPress membership site.

MemberPress

MemberPress is one of the most popular and reliable membership plugins. It is not a free membership plugin so it is not rated on WordPress.org. With MemberPress, you can create different levels of access for the different users of your site based on the plan they choose to subscribe to. This plugin also integrates with almost every popular WordPress theme and plugin.

MemberPress core features

• Clone Roles: Instead of building new roles from scratch, you can simply clone one and make changes. This will save you a lot of time.
• Content Permissions/Restricted Content: This is obviously among the most valuable features of this plugin. You will use it to determine who gets access to what depending on the different user roles.
• Explicitly Deny Capabilities: Website admins can use this tool to deny or restrict certain capabilities to specific user roles.
• Multiple User Roles: This feature allows the website admin to give one or more roles to a given site user. This includes both the backend and front-end users of the website.
• Plugin Integration: This plugin integrates with most popular plugins and apps users install on a WordPress site.
• Private Site: MemberPress allows you to make your site and its feed completely private if you wish. This makes the entire website only accessible to users who have subscribed to any of your membership plans.
• Role Editor: This feature allows website admins to change, create, and delete roles and capabilities for these roles. If you want to create multiple membership plans, you can create several roles that differ based on the level of access they get.
• Shortcodes: MemberPress also allows you to write shortcodes to determine who has access to certain content.
• Widgets: This plugin allows you to add a login form widget that non-members can view in their sidebar menu and use to subscribe to any of your membership plans.

MemberPress integrations

MemberPress offers a ton of integrations with other critical platforms and WordPress plugins to help build your membership site. Some of the most notable are listed below.

ACF: This integration helps create custom capabilities for the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin for managing with the Members plugin.

ChatGPT: MemberPress integrates with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in order to make content production easier than ever.

Easy Digital Downloads: MemberPress also integrates with the Easy Digital Downloads plugin to enable users to create different levels of access for the digital products on their site. 

Elementor: Elementor is the most popular WordPress website builder plugin to help you construct your membership site from the front end.

GiveWP: This integration brings the capabilities of the GiveWP and GiveWP Recurring Donations plugin into the MemberPress role manager functionality.

Meta Box: MemberPress integrates with the Meta Box plugin to further enhance its role manager capabilities.

WooCommerce: This integration brings WooCommerce capabilities to MemberPress, allowing users to create membership programs for their eCommerce sites.

Zapier: The integration with Zapier extends the functionality of MemberPress a hundred-fold, allowing you to connect with over 5,000 additional applications.

MemberPress pricing

This plugin has three pricing plans you can choose from depending on the features you want to integrate into your site. Let’s share the details of each plan.

Basic plan: $179.50/year

• Use on 1 site
• Unlimited members
• Unlimited courses
• No transaction fees
• No monthly fees
• Stripe & PayPal integration
• Powerful content protection
• Advanced publisher paywall
• Coupon codes
• Email marketing integrations
• Basic add-ons & integrations
• Standard support

Plus plan: $299.50/year

• All Basic plan features plus
• Use on up to 2 sites
• Unlimited quizzes
• Advanced marketing integrations
• Sell podcast memberships
• Forums add-on
• Communities add-on
• Zapier – 2000+ custom integrations
• HelpScout integration
• Developer tools
• Advanced customization
• Priority support

Pro plan: $399.50/month

• All Plus plan features plus
• Use on up to 5 sites
• Authorize.net integration
• Sell corporate accounts
• Sell gift memberships
• TaxJar integration
• Premium support
• 3 Months of free access to OptinMonster & OptinMonster University
• 3 Months free of TrustPulse

All the above plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee if this plugin doesn’t do the job as expected. There is no free plan with MemberPress, but you can use the trial to test the features.

MemberPress pros & cons

Pros

• It comes with a 100% money-back guarantee
• Easy to set up and use
• Supports multilevel membership personalization
• It has highly personalized coupons with add-on features
• Robust reporting capabilities
• Reliable customer support

Cons

• No lifetime purchase option
• It doesn’t have a free version
• The built-in forum community functionality is still lacking

MemberPress support

MemberPress offers 24/7 support via email. It also has a knowledge base that includes articles and FAQs that answer some of the most common questions about the platform. Subscribers of the Pro and Plus plans are given more priority. You can also contact them for pre-sales questions.

BuddyBoss

BuddyBoss is a high-powered WordPress plugin to help create communities and membership sites. BuddyBoss sells multiple products to help build a community website, but it can also be used for membership sites as the two have many similarities.

BuddyBoss, the company, offers a range of plugins and add-ons that extend the features and functionality of WordPress and BuddyBoss Theme, their community theme. They also do custom theme development to suit any use case.

BuddyBoss core features

Community Creation: It allows you to create and bring people closer together on your platforms. With these features, members of your site will be able to interact and follow each other like they would on most social platforms.

Forum Discussion: You can create forums where your members can discuss relevant issues.

Limitless Customization: After integrating BuddyBoss into your site, you can easily customize your membership functionalities to suit your website.

Member Access Control: This feature allows you to control the level of access that the different users of your site have. It is one of the most useful features any membership plugin should have.

Plugin Integrations: It integrates with over 55,000 plugins in almost every category, including rich media, mailing lists, forums, analytics, and more.

Private Messaging: This allows members on your site to send personal messages.

BuddyBoss integrations

BuddyBoss integrates with multiple WordPress apps and plugins to further extend the functionality of your membership website.

Automation Plugins: It also integrates with automation plugins, including Uncanny Automator, AutomatorWP, and WPFusion.

Email Marketing: BuddyBoss integrates with several email solutions that you can use to market your business and engage with your potential customers. Some popular platforms include MailChimp, Keap, ActiveCampaign, and more.

Events Plugins: BuddyBoss seamlessly integrates with events plugins that you can use to invite your website members for online or in-person events.

Zoom and YouTube Live Integration: This allows you to create live streams with subscribed members of your site. This is a handy feature for online course websites and apps.

BuddyBoss pricing

BuddyBoss has three plans you can choose from based on the number of sites you intend to manage. Below are the prices and what each plan provides.

1 Site: $228/year

• BuddyBoss Theme
• BuddyBoss Platform Pro
• License for one site
• 1 Year priority support
• 1 Year of updates

5 sites: $288/year

• BuddyBoss Theme
• BuddyBoss Platform Pro
• License for 5 sites
• 1 Year priority support
• 1 Year of updates

10 sites: $388

• BuddyBoss Theme
• BuddyBoss Platform Pro
• License for 10 sites
• 1 Year priority support
• 1 Year of updates

BuddyBoss offers a 100% risk-free trial to test out the full power of the membership plugin. There is no free version of BuddyBoss.

BuddyBoss pros & cons

Pros

• It integrates seamlessly with most of the essential plugins on WordPress
• It is an all-in-one solution providing a theme, plugin, and several integrations
• It offers a wide range of customization options to help you customize the look and feel of your community.
• BuddyBoss has built-in analytics tools that allow you to measure the success of your membership.
• Its mobile app makes it easy to access and manage on the go.

Cons

• It can be difficult to navigate for users unfamiliar with the platform
• Scaling may not be possible for some use cases; you may need to switch platforms if they outgrow BuddyBoss
• The cost of the platform can be expensive depending on the number of features needed

BuddyBoss support

Their customer support is very reliable and available 24/7 to attend to all use issues via email. They offer chat support and office hours and have guides, narrated videos, and an FAQ section that answers the most common questions about their products.

Paid Memberships Pro

This is another handy plugin you can use to build your membership-based WordPress website. It is a relatively popular plugin with over 100,000 active installations and a 4.3-star rating based on 564 reviews on the official WordPress plugin store. Paid Memberships Pro is the first free WordPress membership plugin on our list.

Paid Memberships Pro core features

Administration Tools: This plugin also has several admin tools for tasks such as adding members manually, importing and exporting members, approving memberships, and managing membership roles.

Content Restriction: This feature allows you to restrict access to your content, including pages, posts, blocks, and categories. Only members with specific credentials can access the restricted content on your site.

E-commerce, Payment Options, and Invoicing: This allows you to create custom rules on how the different members should make payments on your site. It will also give you the flexibility to create several membership plans that members can subscribe to and choose their preferred subscription duration.

In-depth Reports: You will get automatically generated reports about the performance of your membership programs, including revenue, sign-ups and cancellations, member visits, order management for admins, etc.

Membership Management: This tool allows you to create different categories of members on your site. With this tool, it will be pretty easy to attach restrictions or send emails to a certain group of users on your site since they are already split into several categories.

Paid Memberships Pro integrations

Paid Memberships Pro offers seamless integration with what they refer to as add-ons, which comprises several WordPress plugins and off-property applications to create more possibilities for your membership WordPress site.

Communities and Social Networks: This plugin integrates with BuddyPress and BuddyBoss, which you can use to create a social community on top of WordPress.

MailChimp: This integration will help you synchronize your members’ list using MailChimp and several other CRM and marketing automation tools.

Members-only Events: This will allow you to invite specific site members to attend online or in-person events.  

Social Login: This integration allows your members to sign in using their existing social media profiles.

WooCommerce: This allows you to integrate your membership site with WooCommerce to sell membership as a product or offer members-only discounts on your site.

Zapier: Paid Membership Pro integrates with Zapier, giving you access to thousands of Zapier integrations.

Paid Memberships Pro pricing

Paid Memberships Pro has a free version and three premium plans that you can choose from based on the number of sites you want to manage and the features that matter to your business.

Free plan: $0/month

• Unlimited restricted content
• Unlimited membership levels & members
• Free or paid subscriptions
• Stripe, PayPal Express, & more
• + 31 Free add ons

Standard plan: $247/year

• All the features in the Free plan plus
• 1 Site license
• Premium support
• Advanced customization recipes
• Automatic updates
• + 20 Standard add ons

Plus plan: $397/year

• All features in the Standard plan plus
• 2 Site license
• Premium support
• Advanced customization recipes
• Automatic updates
• + 30 Plus add ons

Builder plan: $697/year

• All the features in the Plus plan and
• 5 Site license
• Premium support
• Advanced customization recipes
• Automatic updates

All the above plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee that you can take advantage of if you are unhappy with the plugin.

Paid Membership Pro pros & cons

Pros

• Easily create custom membership plans with different levels of access and pricing
• Track member activity, view detailed reports, and manage memberships from an easy-to-use dashboard
• Automatically send notification emails to members when their membership is expiring or renewing
• It allows for discounts, coupons, and gift cards for members to redeem on their purchases
• You can protect your content with flexible user roles and permissions

Cons

• It can be quite expensive. The base plugin is free, but to unlock all of the features, you may need to purchase a premium version
• It can be complex to set up and configure, especially if you are unfamiliar with the WordPress dashboard
• The customer service and technical support are limited to the paid versions

Paid Memberships Pro support

Paid Memberships Pro offers 24/7 ticket support for premium subscribers with a 24-hour response time. They have an in-house support team comprised of seven dedicated team members. They also have a knowledge base that includes a series of articles that users on the free plan can utilize to learn more about how this platform works.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a membership and eCommerce plugin that you can use to integrate membership functionalities into your website. You don’t need to be techy to use this plugin because it has a pretty easy setup process and is also very easy to use. MemberMouse has most of the functionality built-in, unlike some membership plugins.

Besides the content restriction features, this plugin also allows you to sell products, including some nice upsell opportunities that will enable you to generate even more money from your membership site. You can install this plugin into your WordPress site with just a few clicks.

MemberMouse core features

Automation: MemberMouse has several automation functionalities that allow you to Automate your member engagement, support, and marketing with tools such as overdue payment notifications, content protection sync’d with billing status, push notifications, integration with 3rd party systems, Zapier integration, email integration, and more.

Manage Members: With this feature, you will create and manage member roles. It also tracks member info, activity, transaction history, and more.

Protect Content: This is the core feature of this plugin. It allows users to protect member-only content with a variety of access controls. This will enable you to make some or all the content on your site accessible to a specific category of users.

Reporting & Analytics: MemberMouse has several built-in reporting tools that will help you track the performance of your membership site. Some of the reports generated include engagement statistics, LCV, LCV by lead source, member count report, sales by product, and more.

Sell Products: This tool makes it easy to sell any kind of product on your site, from memberships to physical goods, using different pricing models, including recurring subscriptions, payment plans, members-only pricing, one-time purchases, free/paid trials, and more.

MemberMouse integrations

Affiliate Programs: MemberMouse integrates with affiliate programs such as iDevAffiliate, Post Affiliate Pro, and more.

Email Platforms: MemberMouse also integrates with several email marketing platforms, including MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Aweber, GetResponse, Drip, iContact, and more.

Payment Solutions: MemberMouse integrates with several payment platforms, making it easy for subscribers to make payments on your site. Some supported payment platforms include PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree, ClickBank, Coinbase, and more.

Shopping Carts: MemberMouse can be integrated with shopping cart systems such as WooCommerce and Shopify.

Zapier: MemberMouse also connects with over 5,000 Zapier integrations.

MemberMouse pricing

MemberMouse has three pricing plans that you can choose based on the core membership feature you want to integrate into your site. Below are the prices and the main features you will get for each plan.

Basic plan: $199.50/year

• Stripe payments
• 7 Email integrations
• Zapier integration
• 1-click purchases and upsells
• Bulk content protection
• Drip content scheduling
• Coupons & gifting
• Teaser content functionality
• Email support
• Staging license

Plus plan: $299.50/year

• Everything in the Basic plan and
• PayPal payments
• Braintree payments
• Social signup & login

Pr0 plan: $399.50/year

• Everything in the Plus plan and
• Authorize.net payment gateway
• Manage billing dates
• Full analytics & reporting suite
• Advanced affiliate settings
• Employee access control
• UserVoice integration
• Priority email support

Elite plan: $1,199.50/year

• Sticky.io integration
• Phone support

MemberMouse offers a 14-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans instead of a free plan or free trial.

MemberMouse pros & cons

Pros

• It is easy to set up and use, allowing you to get your membership site up and running quickly
• Allows you to offer secure payment processing for memberships and other products
• The plugin provides extensive customization options that let you tailor your membership experience to the needs of your users
• Membermouse offers powerful marketing features, such as drip campaigns, custom emails, and affiliate programs, that can help you grow your membership base

Cons

• The cost can be expensive, especially for small businesses
• MemberMouse does not provide support for custom coding or integration with other third-party services
• MemberMouse does not offer a free trial, so it may be difficult to determine if the platform will meet your needs before making a purchase
• MemberMouse renews at double the initial purchase price outlined in this article

MemberMouse support

MemberMouse’s customer support is available 7 days a week, 9 AM – 5 PM (PST). They usually respond within 24 business hours of when you contact them. However, the most expensive plans are prioritized while responding to customer support queries. They also have a knowledge base to answer product questions.

Ultimate Member

Ultimate Member is among the top-rate Membership WordPress plugins. It is the second free option on our list of the best WordPress membership plugins. It is installed on over 200,000 websites and has an average rating of 4.4 stars out of 1,378 reviews.

This plugin can create a personalized member registration and login page, allowing businesses to register website users who want to be members. Ultimate Member also has most of the core features you would expect from a 2023 membership plugin.

Ultimate Member core features

Multiple registration forms: This allows website admins to create multiple registration forms to ensure each user role has a different registration form.

Role selection: With this feature, you can add a role selector field to the registration form, which allows users to choose the role they want before registering

Role assignment: Alternatively, the website admin can assign a user role to a specific registration form so that anyone who registers using that form will automatically be assigned that particular role.

Customizable login form: Ultimate Member has a customizable login form that allows you to change the button text, hide the register button from the login form, apply custom styling, and much more.

User Profiles: This plugin allows you to add user profiles to your WordPress site. These profiles can be customized to ensure they blend with your overall site design. Some of the information in the profiles includes username, user bio, user info, profile permalinks, and more.

User Roles: Ultimate Member allows you to create different user roles and give each role its own permissions and capabilities. This is one of the features you will use the most.

Member Directories: This feature makes it easier for your website users to find each other’s profiles. 

Access Controls: This is what you will use to add restrictions to your site globally and on individual web pages.

Custom Fields: This plugin comes with several form field types that allow you to collect data from their users. It also comes with a couple of pre-defined fields automatically installed with the plugin.

Form Builder: Ultimate Member comes with a drag-and-drop form builder for creating unique registration, login, and profile forms for the website.

Email Templates: This plugin also comes with customizable email templates that make it much easier to create email templates you can send to your customers and prospects.

Ultimate Member integrations

This plugin integrates with many useful WordPress tools to further boost your site’s functionality. The integrations that most people will find helpful include the following;

WooCommerce: This integration will enable you to sell digital or physical products on your Membership site.

MailChimp: This integration will allow users to subscribe to your MailChimp email lists.

Google reCAPTCHA: This will stop bots from registering on your site

Social Login: This integration will allow your users to register & login to your site via Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, etc.

Unsplash: This integration will allow users to select a profile cover photo from the millions of photos on Unsplash.

User Reviews: This integration allows your site users to rate and review each other.

Social Activity: This integration will integrate social media features into your website. This allows users to create public posts and see other users’ activity on your site.

Ultimate Member pricing

Ultimate Member has a free package and three premium plans that vary in price depending on features. Let’s share the prices and significant features for each plan.

Core Plugin: $0/year

• User profiles
• User registration & login
• Content restriction
• Member directories

Extension Pass: $249/year

• It comes with all the Core plugin features and
• Access to all extensions
• Unlimited sites license
• Updates for one year
• Email support for one year

Extension + Theme Pass: $299/year

• It comes with all the Pass features and
• Access to the Ultimate Member Theme

All the above plans come with a no-risk 30-day money-back guarantee if you are unsatisfied with this plugin.

Ultimate Member pros & cons

Pros

• It has a free plan with the core features needed
• It has the option of installing it with a customizable theme
• It is easy to use
• It integrates with most essential WordPress plugins
• 100% money-back guarantee

Cons

• Ultimate Member can be resource-intensive and may slow down the performance of your website
• There are a limited number of customization options available, so it may not meet all of your needs
• The plugin does not provide an easy way to customize the design of user profiles, making it difficult to create an aesthetically pleasing page

Ultimate Member support

This plugin has 24/7 email support for its premium members. Those using the free plan can access the general support channels, including FAQs and a support forum. there is a chatbot for instant answers.

Best WordPress membership plugins Final Thoughts

When it comes to plugins, there are plenty of options to power a membership site. The best membership plugin for your WordPress website will be the one that meets your needs the best. There are many directions membership site owners can take when creating a site that meets the needs of their users.

Paid member subscriptions are one of the best monetization methods for a website with a dedicated audience or community approach. There are many options for feature-rich membership plugins, so determining your specific needs and budget are likely the most important factors to have clear before you purchase.

Have you used one of these top WordPress membership plugins, or maybe some other membership plugin? Let us know your experience to help others succeed with their website.