There are a lot of similarities among WordPress membership plugins. At the same time, each plugin has its unique strengths, focus, and philosophy. You’ll want to select the plugin whose purpose matches your exact requirements—the plugin that’ll help you achieve your membership site goals.
The Top Rated Membership Plugins
Below, I’ve listed all of the known membership plugins and talked about the unique selling points of each one. You can click on the plugin name to read its full review and learn more about it.
s2Member (free) is extremely versatile and powerful. Yet, it’s available for free at WordPress.org, where it has a superb user rating. There’s a Pro add-on for the plugin, which adds a few more advanced features. s2Member is extensible, constantly improved and developed, and it’s just excellent in many ways. Download »»
WishList Member ($97) is by far the most popular premium membership plugin. It currently powers tens of thousands of WordPress based membership sites. Everything about WishList Member reinforces its professional image: the documentation, the support, the user interface, and the entire experience. Download »»
Digital Access Pass ($167) has the most features. And some of these features are developed to such a high degree of quality and depth. It has strong integration with payment gateways and supports various registration flow and payment scenarios. It puts a lot of emphasis on easy sequential content delivery, and drip feeding…among other things. Download »»
This is a comparison of these three popular plugins:
| s2Member | WishList Member | Digital Access Pass | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download here | Download here | Download here | |
| Installation & admin UI |  |  | |
| Support & docs | | |  |
| Member management | | | |
| Payment processing | | | |
| Content protection features | | | |
| Extensibility & API | | | |
| Subscriber mailing lists | | | |
| Affiliate management | iDevAffiliate | iDevAffiliate | Built-in |
| Satisfaction guarantee | (Core plugin is free) | 30 days | 30 days |
| Prices and licenses | Free core Single Pro module: $69 Unlimited Pro module: $129 Blog farm module: $289 | 1-site: $97 Unlimited sites: $297 | 1-site: $169 Unlimited sites: $297 |
| Download here | Download here | Download here |
Here are some more awesome membership plugins:
eMember ($49.95) sets itself apartment by offering a unique combination of simplicity, power, and affordability. It starts at $49.95 only, which is about half of what comparable plugins charge. But don’t let the low price fool you—this plugin can achieve amazing feats. And it is backed by passionate, yet very friendly support. Download »»
Magic Members ($97) is a beautifully designed, and well-rounded membership plugin. This is definitely one of the heavyweights. It can do it all. Yet, it is easy to use and it’s accompanied by high quality video instructions and tutorials that take you from A-to-Z. Download »»
Paid Memberships Pro ($10/month) is not as full of features as other plugins. It only covers specific use cases that utilize advanced payment processing. If one of the use cases that it covers fits you, you’re in luck because this is an excellent plugin. Download »»
WPMU DEV Membership (free) is an advanced plugin with a range of content protection options. It puts special emphasis on BuddyPress and Multisite protection. You can try the free version from WordPress.org before upgrading. Download »»
MemberWing ($199.95) is one of a kind. It is dedicated to protection of downloadable content by embedding traceable signatures and other tricks. It also has what it calls Time-Sensitive-Information delivery. It controls the availability of content based on its publishing date, where it gradually gives more and more access as content gets older. Download »»
Your Members ($95) is another heavyweight membership plugin that has a couple of unique features. With Your Members, you can easily embed your WordPress membership site into Facebook and accept Facebook Credits as payment! Download »»
wp-Member ($29.99) is a membership plugin with very basic options. It’s designed to help you setup a membership site with minimum fuss. It’s missing a lot of features, but it’s price very competitively at $29.99 only. Download »»
MemberMouse ($97/month) is a new membership plugin with interesting features. It claims to focus on marketing and conversion best practices. It’s the only plugin with direct integration with LimeLight. Download »»
And some more membership plugins
There are other membership plugins that aren’t reviewed here. Looking at their websites, I don’t see what they could possibly offer over the selection of great plugins above. Anyway, if you’re interested, here they are: WP Sales Automator, WP Member Site, and WP Member Champ.
Membership-only menus
Does anyone know of a plugin that enables a special members-only menu? So that non-logged in users don’t see pages that they can’t access? WP-members doesn’t provide this, and the built in wordpress private pages function returns a 404 if non-logged in users click a private page.
I’ve tried using custom menus plus “if ( is_user_logged_in() ) ” but I don’t know PHP at all.
Suggestions most welcome.
If your menu is done manually in the template file, you could use something like the following code (it’s what I used in one of my previous websites):
I am using Paypal Subscription Button together with User Access Manager for my membership site. The interface of PSB is very simple and easy to use and it’s not bloated like other plugins out there. Though it’s not the ultimate solution but it’s exactly what I need. You may want to try it: http://goo.gl/bhA20
On my other site I am using s2Member. It’s a beast but non-technical users may find it very hard to set up.
The most popular RoleScoper and Capability manager were not listed here. Is there a reason for that?
Most of the plugins listed here are paid plugins tough
I’m nothing to do with the site, but I’d imagine that as good as they are, they’re not really membership plugins.
I’d also point out that the vast majority of membership plugins are commercial (a couple have free “lite” versions). If the implication is that these are paid reviews then I’ll state that a plugin I’m involved with is on here, we didn’t pay for the review and the author isn’t even using our affiliate link!
Glenn Pegden,
Oh ! I didn’t mean what you thought. I don’t mind if someone write reviews on useful tools, his favorite plugins or the plugins which he like. That’s his choice .I just suggested the author that it would be useful to WinkPress users if the popular free plugins were mentioned in the review.
Thanks !
BTW, I don’t know who you are and ‘one of the plugins’ listed here is yours . I didn’t use most of these plugins and don’t know much about them or their authors (Plugin Authors)
It’s deliberate you don’t know which one I sell. I not here to pimp our stuff, I’m here to be helpful
.
Clue: It’s not one of the three listed as “best”, even though I think it’s better than them (if you don’t need multisite support).
As Glenn said, Role Scoper and Capability Manager are not real membership plugins. They can’t automatically grant access to a member when payment is made. Those free plugins don’t have any payment processing capabilities, which is an essential feature of the plugins listed here. For a plugin to be listed here, it must have this feature and it doesn’t have to be commercial.
Sorry ! I mistaken
Would like your thoughts on aMember Pro. http://www.amember.com/p/
Hi Michael, While aMember does have an official plugin to integrate with WordPress, it remains an external script that’s not really made for WordPress. Even if that mattered only a little to the end user, aMember doesn’t offer much more than the existing membership plugins for WordPress. And aMember is expensive ($175 for a single site license). I don’t see why any WordPress user would want to use it, honestly. Thanks a lot for your question!
Thanks M.K. Very helpful.
WPMU Dev offers a Lite version for free and it’s great for most basic membership sites but only allows 2 levels which usually isn’t a problem.
Just a heads up
Here’s a link to it: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/membership/
I have WP with the Thesis theme. WLM seems to have problems with Thesis. Can you comment on this? And do you know if any of the other membership plugins have problems with certain WP themes
I heard from more than one developer that Thesis is needlessly complicated. Regardless though, I doubt that WLM doesn’t support Thesis properly because both Thesis and WLM are popular among internet marketers. I think the problem lies in your particular setup. Try contacting WishList or Thesis creators.
Unfortunately, there is no way for me to test a membership plugin against all the possible themes out there. If contacting the creators is not an option for you, try membership plugins that offer a refund policy. If the plugin works for you, keep it, otherwise, refund it — until you find one that works.
What about Digital Access Pass — doesn’t it do what AWeber and Wishlist member do — and as an all-in-one package?
Yes, DAP offers a built-in autoresponder for convenience, but I would suggest integrating with a real email service provider if you really wanna use an autoresponder sequence. WishList Member and DAP both offer integration with several email marketing services.
I understand the need for a ‘real’ email service provider if I’m going to be sending hundreds or thousands of emails… due to server challenges. But if I have fewer than 100 members at any given time, won’t DAP work fine alone>?
It all depends how much the rest of the internet’s mail servers trust the mail server your web host uses. It’s getting increasingly hard to send mail from “your own” mail servers without being flagged as spam.
The Membership Plugin I’m involved with supports using the servers configured in php as an autoresponder, but we strongly recommend people use the gateways we provide to professional services (i.e. Aweber, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor etc) to avoid the mail ending up in your user’s spam buckets (at best).
Thanks for your answer. I just hate the thought of ‘integrating’ two separate companies (i.e., Wishlist Member and AWeber). I’ve heard nightmares about difficulty getting them to work together. DAP is as expensive as both of those together — which makes it not cost effective if I have to get AWeber in addition to DAP
! Seems to defeat the purpose of purchasing an ‘all-inclusive’ service. I’m not thrilled about the learning curve of DAP, but they do post their entire manual on the net for all to see — so I can see what it will take to make it work. AWeber and Wishlist Member are relative unknowns. So the question becomes, again, does it really make a difference if I’m working with paid members whom I will ask to add my email to their contact list. If they don’t, and messages go to their spam, and they contact me because they think they haven’t gotten their emails…… is that really a huge problem? So sorry to be a pest. I’m just really trying to figure our the best approach for my situation. Thank you.
Hi Bonnie, Thanks for your questions. From what I’ve seen, WishList Members’ integration with AWeber is simple and reliable. When a user signs up for your site, they’re added to your AWeber list. They will then begin receiving your autoresponder sequence or your manual email broadcasts that you setup within AWeber.
But like you said, if you only have around 100 members, using DAP’s built-in email broadcast module may work for you.
THANK YOU
” ….. If they don’t, and messages go to their spam, and they contact me because they think they haven’t gotten their emails…”
That’s the best case scenario. Unless you already have some kind of positive relationship with these people they are much more likely to lose confidence, be wary it’s some kind of scam and cancel their subscription.
Most of the reputable membership plugins and service providers (such as Awebber) have plenty of experience at tying their services together and provide robust mechanisms for doing so. Although as somebody involved with doing these types of integrations I’d probably list WishList+Aweber as one of my least preferred.
I don’t wish to use these comments to advertise, but the YM/MailChimp integration video at http://www.yourmembers.co.uk/the-support/guides-tutorials/mail-manager/mail-chimp-integration/ gives you a great idea of how completely a membership plugin can work with mailing manager.
Thanks — I’ll give it ‘a look.’
Blessings
B
Hi there,
Nice review but you forgot to include localization as a criteria. English speaking people tend to forget that there are other languages out there…
regards
melkiades
Hi Melkiades, While some plugins support translation, there are no translation files available yet for any of them. You have to make your own. I did a brief comparison of each plugin support for localization here. It’s not included in the table — only in the links below the table. The comparison page may not be comprehensive. Other plugins — such as WPMU DEV Membership and s2Member — may both support translation but I wouldn’t know until I inspect the code of each one. I’ll do that in the next update. English isn’t my native language either, by the way!
This is a nice comparison table. However, the most important thing is not addressed here — do the plugins fully integrate into the WordPress roles and capabilities system? If they don’t, the plugins aren’t worth using to me.
Hi Justin, Thanks for your comment. I just updated the table but honestly, I haven’t looked into how the plugins integrate with WordPress’ built-in roles and capabilities. I see how that’s important for interoperability with other plugins and expandability, which is what WordPress is all about, so I’ll include it as comparison metric when I’m done with some content I’m currently making. Thanks again for the suggestion!
Your Members will certainly set the WP role for you when somebody subscribes to a membership level, but other than implementing a pay-to-post system, I can’t see how this is of much use to 99% of users who just want to paywall their content from subscribers and none logged in users.
If WordPress offered a way to create user defined roles, I could see some real value in it, but currently I imagine it’s something most people just leave on subscriber and never consider changing.
Obviously, I’d be delighted if you think I’m wrong, as it then becomes something I can suggest to our development team.
I use Magic Members for my clients and it supports roles and capabilities. They have a nice menu which lists all the previously created roles (from different roles and capabilities plugins), system defined ones and the ones you created within Magic Members. You can create your own roles and attach them to the subscription packs right inside Magic Members.
With roles, you can create various different concepts.
For example: If anyone uses Simple:Press forum and wants to turn it into a membership forum you can combine Simple:Press’ roles functionality with Magic Members’. This way you can control which membership level can access to which forum category.
I think you missed Magic Members plugin.
Thanks for the suggestion — I'll update this section to include it soon. But do you think Magic Members is better than Wishlist Member?
The section has been updated and Magic Members included