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.
Great post. I have a client who is running membership site that is free but users must register to download content. I see several of these plugins will solve this. However my client needs to be able to track what members download, do any of these plugins provide metrics on who downloads what?
Thanks
None of these membership plugins tracks who downloads what, but this can be done with Google Analytics custom variables and a bit of WordPress development.
M.K
thanks for the reply. Is google analytics accurate or just ballpark metrics? My client needs to know document A was downloaded 58 times between date 1 and date 2 by which members. Or do i need to look in other directions?
thanks
liking WinkPress a lot
Hi Scott:
I stand to be corrected here but I believe you can track downloads with Google Analytics by adding the file extensions and in the settings panel in the dashboard area if you are using WP. I think you can also set up a funnel as goals in the Google Analytics dashboard itself and if it is a paid item set it to tract as ecommerce.
Scott, If it’s implemented correctly in Analytics, it’ll probably be the most accurate metrics you can get. Yes, it’s possible to know how many downloads occurred when by who.
HI there
Thanks for the great post!!!!!
I currently use whishlist to run my membership webiste and I was wandering if you knew membership plug-in that allow user to receive auto generated password and username.
Ideal would be the username=address that user used to sigh up pay pal and password=auto generate.
Been try to figure this out for such a longtime but not real solution yet,,,
Digital Access Pass has a feature where if someone signs up through an email opt-in form, it automatically creates an account in your membership site for the user. You can set it up to also email the login credentials to the user.
Thanks!!!!!
I will look into DAP!!
Again cheers for your advice
This a great post. Thanks for the info. I have been trying out a few different membership plugin options but I can’t find one that allows non-registered users to view posts/wiki/forum ect. but only allows registered users to participate. Do you know if any of the plugins you mentioned have this capability? So far s2member has been the best (and thanks to the video tutorials), easiest free plugin to use. I just can’t seem to make it to this one thing.
Erik, have you tried s2Member‘s integration with bbPress? As far as I remember, it does have this feature.
Thanks for the reply. I am using bbpress forums but I haven’t noticed a way to create the situation that I want yet. I am having a problem with the log in/registration page, so maybe once I clear that up other features will make more sense. Thanks again.
Hi guys! Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive guide to membership plugins for WordPress – very useful.
I’ve been reading through and haven’t yet found a good answer to a couple of questions, so thought I’d follow everyone else’s lead and ask directly…
I am building a site that needs the following membership features:
1. Multiple levels of access to different areas
2. All membership levels to be free
3. Some membership levels to have time-based expiry
4. Username for membership to be email address, not a custom username
5. Membership approval to be based on a unique code – this is the tricky one, so here’s some background:
The site is for a company that creates and sells music tuition textbooks. Each book has a unique code printed in the front of it. Along with the purchase of the book comes a free digital copy, as well as access to a digital resources section of the website containing music files, examples, etc. So we need users to input their number and (ideally) have the system automatically check that number against a list/table and approve the member accordingly.
We are currently using Wishlist Members, which is pretty good but I’m not super happy with it. While it does allow custom fields to be placed in the registration form it allows you to do very little with them. They can’t be reported in the approval email sent to admin, they can’t be displayed very easily, and they can’t be checked against anything before registration. Wishlist also does not allow use of email address as username (although there’s a kludgy way to get around that – rename the username field to “email” and call the email field “confirm email”. Works, but doesn’t give any checking to the matchup between the two fields.
Can you guys suggest a plugin that could do these things? Tried out so far:
spMembers (free)
WPMembers (free)
Wishlist (paid but still within 30 day period)
As it took several days setting up Wishlist before the limitations became really apparent I don’t really have the time to dig through the others comprehensively enough to be sure they can do what I need, so thought I’d ask!
Thanks – would appreciate any advice you can give!
– Andrew
Andrew
I think s2Member will do this but you will have to get your hands a bit dirty. For example to activate levels rather than by Paypal (ie make them free), you can set the role s2member_level{n} using a line or so of php. s2Member extends the standard WordPress roles.
The free version allows up to 4 levels (plus a free level) while the pro version allows infinite levels. Note that levels are nested so level 3 contains level 2 etc. If you have particular requirements then capabilities can be used instead of roles. s2Member Pro includes coupon codes. If you don’t want nested membership then look at Your Members. s2member also allows you to protect the back end by making it invisible unless you are an admin.
I think s2member will also allow login with email addresses but if not, then Theme My Login does.
Does s2Member do login based on a unique code?
No, Andrew, it doesn’t do that out of the box. That feature will have to be custom built.
I think many of the membership plugins suit most of my organization’s needs, from what I’ve seen. However, I’m unclear as to whether any (or most) of them allow you to give permission to members to add content to your site. For example, I would like to allow our member organizations to be able to add job postings for THEIR organization on a “jobs” page that I would create. So, I want them to be able — as a benefit of membership — to be able to post job listings for public viewing…and, of course, I would like to have some control over the fields and parameters so that the “jobs” page they are adding content to looks uniform and appealing to job hunters.
Do any of the membership plugins fit the bill — oh, and this is for a WordPress based site (just to be clear).
Thanks in advance for any and all pointers…and THANKS so much for these reviews; very helpful!
I would recommend you use Gravity Forms to create the job submission form. (See this article on allowing visitors to post content to your site.) And then use a membership plugin to protect the page that has this form.
I have installed Gravity Forms and have learned how to create basic forms. Check. I have read posts on allowing visits to access forms that then post content to your sit, HOWEVER, they all seem to deal with allowing POSTS to be created. I need advice on allowing visitors to fill in a form that then generates content for a page!
So, for example, a visitor would enter a set of info into fields in a form and then it would generate content listings on a page, taken from their submission.
Can anyone help? Thanks!!!
Scott do you think you would be able to achieve what you are trying to do – membership features and directory listing – on your website by using a directory plugin for to list the info after members use the membership feature to register? Just a thought.
Scott, It’s possible to allow visitors to create Pages on your site using Gravity Forms. Contact Gravity Forms support for more details.
However, I would advise that you use Posts instead of Pages. Posts have categories, tags, and are generally more versatile. Then consider using a WordPress category template to display your list of posts.
Hello,
I hope someone can help me out here.
I have a real estate site for which I want to upload a new themeforest theme.
However, I want the visitors to upload their real estate information (images, description).
For that I need a membership plugin. But it has to have the feature to combine it with the real estate functionality. Moreover, it should have (at least for the future) a payment option. Maybe I would like to switch to a fee-based version.
Would that be possible with the free plugins mentioned above?
Some advice would really be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
What do you mean by that? As I told Jim below, if you’re looking for a flexible membership plugin that has good API for integrating with other stuff, take a look at s2Member.
I need a plugin that can accept third party payment and provide direct access to another custom plugin I’m having developed that will have three levels of memberships, two are paid levels. I’d like all the other bells and whistles, but communication with my custom plugin that will handle delivery of content based on membership level is a must.
Ideas?
So, your custom plugin already handles content access control, you don’t want a membership plugin to do that? In that case, you just need a plugin to handle the payment and has an API. For Authorize.Net, there’s Authorize.Net for WordPress by Daniel Watrous and I’m sure a plugin to facilitate integration with PayPal exists, but I’ve not researched that.
If you want a membership plugin with strong API, I recommend you look into s2Member or WishList Member.
I have been busy to find a solution to block the access to the Membership Level after the Subscription days is over.
Hey Dev,
MemberMouse actually does that right out the box. You simply need to select that the membership expires and how long it takes for that to happen and you’re done. Once a member’s membership expires they will be locked out of the content that membership protects but they will still be able to log in so that you can upsell them or have them renew their membership.
Hope that helps,
Palak
MemberMouse
www.membermouse.com
I need some advice. I’m building a website with about 40 workout videos. The service will be sold primarily to companies as an employee benefit. I need a plug in that will allow me to create “groups” for each company name and have all of the employees for that company under that particular “group”. I’d like to send out drip emails/ content to each group separately.
The other hurtle is tracking. It would be great if I could tell each company how many of their employees are using the service, how long they are on the site, things like that.
Any thoughts?
You need a membership system so that people are members of groups and the group defines what can be seen. Think of each group as a product then people login and are allocated to products. Each product contains access to a bespoke set of videos that are not exclusive. This means that a strictly hierarchical system of membership won’t work since in that system the higher level capabilities contain the lower level capabilities. Whereas if you can define your products completely differently that will enable you to tailor the product to the company.
I think YourMembers will do that as the products are independent although it can be rather messy to set up in my experience and writes a [private] tag into the posts and pages which needs to be removed if you find it is the wrong system.
I think you’re exactly right Loggy on how to implement that. Groups that can be sold differently but contain the same content would be the best way to handle that situation. This is actually something that is built into MemberMouse and was specifically designed to do.
Jaclyn, MemberMouse’s Product Bundles are completely independent products you can sell and you can protect that content through a simple point and click interface. And you can even create custom messaging, confirmation pages, member homepages, and more for those different groups (for example, using each company’s logo in the design). The nice thing too is that none of that requires a developer or that type of knowledge. Check us out.
Palak
MemberMouse
www.membermouse.com
Very helpful guide to membership plugins – thanks!
I’m trying to do something pretty simple (I think) with my membership site; I need to be able to have people sign up and identify themselves as one of three roles (i.e. doctor, nurse, or administrator) and then have an extended profile that supports custom fields (i. e. licensed in what state, specialty practice, etc). I then need to be able for visitors to the site to see a searchable lists of people separated by role. Any thoughts on which plugin would work best? or is what I’m looking for more of a profile plugin?
Hi Nate, Almost all membership plugins allow you to extend the registration page with custom fields. But I haven’t come across a plugin that would allow your visitors to see a searchable lists of people separated by role—except perhaps if you use BuddyPress, which sounds more appropriate for what you’re trying to accomplish. s2Member has the best compatibility with BuddyPress, so try it out. And you may ask in their community forums. They’re pretty useful.
Hi Nate,
I think you don’t need a Membership plugin for that. A “Role Manager Plugin” should be enough (search for that).
All the best
Thanks for the great review…has anyone built a WordPress membership solution that protects video content? Preferably vimeo PRO… but could be another service if necessary. I’m stumped on the best way to present and protect this video content to members, including private videos to specific users (photo critiques). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Have a look at Your Members. I haven’t tried the video bit myself but it has secure streaming:
“Amazon S3
Using Amazon s3 to store media content Your Members – Secure Stream allows protected content to be delivered using time sensitive URLS
Protecting Content
Associate media with other content types and they will automatically inherit permissions. Permission are checked on every load of the media to check if the user is authorised and a time sensitive URL is issued, if the URL is shared it will not work.”
HTH
Hi RossP, I’ve not seen any plugin that’s specifically made for Vimeo PRO. There are several plugins that protect videos, but all of them do it through Amazon S3, so you’d have to upload your videos there first.
I’ve got a challenge – I need a fairly straightforward membership plugin (1 free level, 1 paid level with access to all content). However, I need to create special membership logins that allow that member to have access to all items with a particular TAG, but not items with other tags.
Any thoughts? S2Member seems to allow membership levels that grant access based on tags, but they always include the tags at the lower level and that won’t work for this site.
Help?!
Hey Kelly,
You can actually do this easily (and with no coding) with MemberMouse. MemberMouse has the ability to group content and make that content accessible for free or for a price – called Product Bundles. You can then restrict parts of your website to just be accessible by that Product Bundle – and have that be completely different protected content from your Free and Paid memberships. Take a look at the video on our homepage to get more of an idea of what you can do.
Thanks,
Palak
MemberMouse
Hi Kelly, If you must have tag-based protection, then you might have no choice other than s2Member. I have not seen any other plugin that offers tag-based protection.
If you’re looking for something simple and free to use, try Paid Memberships Pro.
Most membership systems I have seen don’t include email notification of posts. In a non-membership site, this can be easily done by, for example, Subscribe2 which sends emails to all subscribers and users. But you may not want to warn free or lower level members of posts at the Gold level for example, particularly if this level is private.
In addition, it may be necessary to limit menus to different levels and tag clouds to point to entries that the member can actually see. Lastly when a visitor or member comes across a post that they are not entitled to see, there should be the option of not seeing anything at all or just a taster message to encourage them to upgrade.
These last issues are all to do with the theme of course so it does make it difficult to implement and requires coding.
Thanks for your observations, John. You’re right, I’ve never seen a membership plugin that sends automatic email notifications either. But there are workarounds. For example, s2Member and Digital Access Pass can both add members to specific mailing lists based on the members subscription level. If your content protection is based on WordPress categories, you can setup the RSS feed for those categories with, for instance, MailChimp to send notifications to subscribers.
As for limiting menus, I think that’s built into some of the plugins. WishList Member and s2Member both do this, I think. And as you said, a theme developer could use the API of those plugins to control what is and isn’t available to visitors in menus and theme templates.
And the last bit about replacing protected posts with taster content, most plugins do that. Some plugins let you to use
[shortcodes]to protect content and leave some of it visible…other plugins only protect content after the<!--more-->tag.Hi – I’m trying to find the best fit for a membership/subscription site that ships a physical item vs. providing digital content. The needs are:
1. Easy access, set and use as I’m learning my way and building the site myself
2. Members join, in 3 steps – name and email, pay (likely via PayPal), then fill out a detailed profile questionnaire.
I need all of the data from sign up to go into a database that also includes their payment status each month, questionnaire answers along with shipping info. Suggestions?
Simple is best. At this point, I don’t need protected content and I don’t even know what a drop feed is
Thanks for your input!
Hi Aysia. Thanks for your comment. Cart66 is a shopping cart that has built-in members management capabilities. I think it matches your requirements!
Hi,
After I’ve read your review of eMember, I wanted to see if you had a review of Rapid Action Press. I’m considering buying it, since I need drip feeding, and although I would love to buy eMember (they have great service and great products), I’m afraid the auto-upgrade function will not fulfil my needs, since one of our membership sites will have drip-feeding over 21 days.
I’ve tried Digital Access Pass in 2008 and again now for the last time.
Another great membership plugin (which doesn’t do drip feeding, though) is WP Sales Automator for only $10. The programmer does EXCELLENT service! Really! You should take a look at it.
Thanks a lot for your feedback and these recommendations, Britt. I’ll look into Rapid Action Press and WP Sales Automator.
Hey, great reviews.
I am looking for a membership site of sorts. I teach classes and want to offer a package where you the client can buy 10 credits, and then utilize your credits to sign up for a class.
I have tried searching for punch cards, loyalty program management, membership, and others, without any help.
What I really want is something where I have a list of “members” on the back end with a number of credits, that I can add credits to as required.
Any suggestions would be insanely appreciated
I think you could achieve this with Digital Access Pass. DAP has a feature called Self Service Store. Here’s one way the Self Service Store works:
This feature is offered at an extra cost by the way—a $97 plugin in addition to DAP itself. Best you contact DAP before you buy and verify whether it can accomplish what you’re trying to do.
Hey M.K.! Man I really like your site but it is a pain to navigate because I can’t find articles, that I want to read again, easily in Google or on your site. That’s great for stickiness but bad for getting the info to read again and again. Would you be willing to trade a search box for likes and tweets? I really could use a search box at the top of your site. ;0)
Which plugins do you recommend that would work with 1shopping cart and also provide sequential content distribution. In other words, some content is only available in month 2, month3, etctera of the subscription.
Hi Tim, Wishlist Member and Digital Access Pass both support 1ShoppingCart, and both of those plugins support sequential content delivery.
Check out these two pages:
* Supported payment gateways for WordPress membership plugins
* WordPress membership sites with gradual content delivery
Hey M.K. have you seen the newest wordpress membership site plugin, MemberMouse? The plugin is designed to follow marketing best practices for signing up new members and keeping them as long as possible. Its got some great features such as 1-click buy links & a my account page.
You should check out the video on the homepage (has some really cool stuff in it):
www.membermouse.com
That looks pretty interesting. Thanks a lot for your comment!
Hello !
I would like to hear more about http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/membership/ (And Premium: http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/membership) . Does any body have Idea on both versions of this plugin?
Personally, I don’t like WPMU’s plugins. But would like to use this one
The full version of WPMU DEV Membership is reviewed here. What exactly would you like to know about the plugin?
At that moment, I was confused a bit about configuration . But now it’s Okay. Could any one share their opinion on this plugin before I purchase premium version ? Free version is too limited .
I request other subscribers of this post to share their opinion on this plugin as this plugin just seems as a fork of other plugins
Thank you!