While Magic Members appeared relatively late on the membership plugin scene, thanks to its rapid improvement and development, its features and quality has surpassed some of the established plugins.
As evident in the user comments below, Magic Members support is responsive and cares about the reputation of the plugin.
The only case for which I’d recommend not using Magic Members is if you need explicit support for WordPress Multisite, BuddyPress or bbPress forum. It also doesn’t include a programming interface upon which 3rd party developers could build. Other than that, Magic Members includes almost all of the features and qualities that are to be expected from a top rated membership plugin.
Installation & Admin UI
The Magic Members plugin is sent in as a zip file which can conveniently be uploaded with WordPress plugin uploader. After activation, you’ll have to enter the email address that you used to purchase the plugin in order to begin using it.
Many aspects of Magic Members’ admin UI can be considered eye candy. Luckily, it doesn’t sacrifice function for aesthetics. The interface is neatly laid out and well organized. It doesn’t conform to WordPress native taste but it is still pretty and useful.
Documentation & Support
The documentation of Magic Members features and settings consists of two things: in-plugin descriptions and tooltips as well as high quality training videos. These two are so comprehensive that a separate PDF user-manual will definitely not be missed.
Support for Magic Members is provided through a help desk where you can submit tickets. There’s no community forum. Support is offered for one year only after purchase. After that, it has to be renewed. There’s also a pre-sale FAQs page. Support options and policies are explained on the website of Magic Members.
Member Management
Magic Members integrates with the pre-existing WordPress users table and treats users as subscribers. It doesn’t create a list of subscribers that’s separate from WordPress, which is the right way to do it. However, you cannot manage subscription related options from WordPress users screen. Magic Members has its own dedicated page for that.
For customizing the access rights for your subscribers, Magic Members ships with a powerful roles and capabilities editor. You can associate each WordPress role (i.e. subscriber, editor, author) with any membership level that you create with Magic Members. You can have an unlimited number of membership levels.
Other powerful features Magic Members has include its ability to create and display custom registration and profile fields, and a selection of shortcodes for displaying registration forms, user profiles, and more…
Payment Processing Features
Magic Members supports plenty of payment gateways: 2Checkout, AlertPay, Authorize.Net, CCBill, ClickBank, Epoch, iDeal, eWay AU, MoneyBookers, Ogone, PayPal (Standard, Express, and Website Payments Pro), Sage Pay, and WorldPay.
As is the case with any plugin, not all gateways have all the features. But unlike other plugins, at least Magic Members provides more details on which features each gateway has. You can read more about Magic Members payment gateways here.
Coupon Codes
Magic Members has full support for coupon codes. Coupons can be a percentage or a flat cost. They can be associated with specific subscription pack and can be restricted to a limited number of uses. Once a coupon code is created, it can be added to the registration/payment form on the custom fields editor.
Flow of Registration Steps
Magic Members extensive payment gateway support enables all of the possible registration flow scenarios. Take a look below (each ‘→’ represents a redirect):
- Register → Login & access free content → Pay
- Register → Pay → Login
- Pay on PayPal first → Register → Login
- Pay and register account on one page on your site → Login
- Register for a free trial by submitting payment info → Login → Automatic payment after trial
Content Protection Features
Magic Members provides several ways to protect content. And not only can it protect posts and pages, it can also protect categories and downloadable files. If you wanna protect posts in bulk, you can utilize category protection. The only other way is to go into individual posts and specify the access rights there.
Magic Members by itself doesn’t monitor IPs to prevent possible password sharing. However, if you buy the 3-sites license or higher, you get the Magic Kicker plugin as a bonus, which does that and more. You can also purchase Magic Kicker separately.
Gradual Content Delivery
For each protected post or page in Magic Members, you can specify a delay in a number of days—a distinct delay can be specified for each membership level.
Protecting Files
Magic Members can protect any type of digital file. You have to upload the files using the Magic Member file uploader and then specify the posts on which the file will be available. After that, you have to insert certain shortcodes within the posts, which will be replaced with access links. For enhanced protection, Magic Members also supports Amazon S3 storage.
Teaser Content
Teaser content can be achieved in one of two ways. The more feasible way is probably to use the [private] shortcodes, which you can wrap around specific portions of your posts to make private. The other way is to use the global protection settings of Magic Members where you can specify the number of words to display for all posts before protection kicks in.
Protecting Entire Site
Magic Members makes it easy to protect all posts on your site. You simply go to the global protection settings and choose “FULL”. That way, no content will be accessible by non-registered members.
Extensibility & API
There’s no mention of API support any where on Magic Members documentation.
Email Communication with Subscribers
While Magic Members integrates with several autoresponder services, its integration with them is very basic. It only synchronizes your membership site subscribers with your list and vice versa. It doesn’t allow for separate lists based on membership level or anything like that.
Affiliate Management Capabilities
With Magic Members, you can manage affiliates by integrating with Magic Affiliate plugin. This will allow you to manage your affiliates in house. Alternatively, you can utilize the affiliate management capabilities of some payment gateways, such as ClickBank.
Who is Using It
Because of Magic Members well-rounded abilities, it is able to power a variety of types of websites. Here are some pretty looking examples: Fund Radar, Designers Inn, NutriFamilyMeals, Interview Income, OHM, Whitemarsh, and Pop4Schools.
Money Matters
There are three types of licenses for Magic Members: single, 3 users, and unlimited. The single license ($97) is for the base plugin and is to be installed on one site only. The 3 users license ($197) can be installed on up to 3 personal sites, and the unlimited license ($297) can be installed on an unlimited number of personal sites. Both the 3 users and unlimited license include a 300-icon set, the Magic Kicker plugin, and a 20% discount on the Magic Affiliate plugin as bonuses.
All licenses include a one year free update and support. After that, you’ll have to renew ($49) to continue to receive updates and support.
All purchases from Magic Members are protected by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
I’m glad I found this site. Thank you for your helpful reviews. I purchased Magic Members yesterday and it’s been very easy to set-up. However, when I protected the premium content, it screwed up my sidebar. When logged in, the comment box runs the full width of the content section and sidebar, pushing the sidebar below it. The only thing I see on the top of the sidebar are the lines:
Leave a Comment
Logged in as X. Logout.
So I think there’s some sort of default in the setting that pushes the log-in to the top of the sidebar, and expands the comment box. Any idea what the issue is and if it can be resolved. I use the Thesis theme. I’m hoping I can get it to work, because it is pretty easy to set-up. Otherwise, will have to get a refund and purchase another plug-in.
Thank you in advance. Really nice site you have here!
Hi A.C., Protecting some content may have messed up your HTML structure a bit. The best thing to do is contact Magic Members support. I think you’ll be able to solve the issue without resorting to refund.
Thanks for your response, M.K. I was able to figure out that it was my mistake in placing the [private] tags that was causing the issue. Once I started putting the [private] tags on a separate line, the issue was resolved. Magic Members has great support, and they helped me with a lot of questions. Everything has been easy to set up so far. Very pleased right now.
Hello, did you ever compare against Wishlist? http://wishlistproducts.com
any comparison or feedback is greatly appreciated. Also, what is your view on Kajabi?
Hi Jeff, I have done a very similar review of WishList. Taking a look at both reviews will give you a very good idea about how the two plugins compare.
Good day. I have the same problem – 500 (Internal Server Error) with MM v.1.7.12. Do you know how to fix it? Support says “you need more memory on your site”
What memory? Server memory or WordPress memory threshold? They should have told you which one. If it’s server memory, then you need to upgrade your hosting account. If it’s WordPress memory, then they should’ve given you instructions on how to do it.
Their answer: “There is a lot of updates in between, your server might be run out of memory to process them. Can you ask your host to increase your site’s memory?”
I’ll try to increase server memory, v.1.5.x works ok, but v.1.7.12 – 500 (Internal Server Error)
P.S. MM v.1.6.21 also works ok.
I kind of doubt that it’s your server memory. Try to allocate more PHP memory within WordPress and see if that helps. These are instructions on how to do it.
At first look Magic Members looks like a good option. It has a large feature list and a reasonably slick looking interface. And seemingly great support. After 3 months of trying to get Magic Members to work properly and iron out all the bugs I’ve encountered, the best advise I can give is stay well clear of it.
Most of the major issues I’ve had relate to the coupon system they have which really doesn’t work properly. It half integrates with whatever the subscription option the user entered during registration, and half has a mind of it’s own.
Their ticketing support system is fine for basic fixes – they usually get back to you within 1 business day. However when a serious issue crops up they simply ignore it. I’ve had to issue tickets just to get a reply to the previous tickets. And the replies are seldom helpful. Their documentation is not updated as often as their constant releases (mostly bug fix releases) and half the time they have a link to documentation, it doesn’t actually exist.
From what I can tell Magic Members jumped on to the scene with an impressive feature list, but forgot to test everything works.
I have the same issues as Pat.
Even more I bought a 3 site license only to find out I can’t use Paypal IPN one more then one site.
When I file a support ticket, they simply ignore me.
Now the site of MM even produces an internal server error, so I guess they are gone
Well I’m over my rage from when I posted above. That day I thought I finally had everything sorted only to find another quite serious bug related to the issues I was having. After me flipping out Magic Members fixed the problem and issued a release overnight to resolve it.
The serious issues I’ve had relate to PayPal standard gateway and the coupon system. I think I finally have everything working and they have released fixes for the issues I had. There’s lots of functionality of Magic Members I’m not using so can’t give positive or negative feedback on a lot of it.
Some more constructive feedback on the plugin in my experience:
- It’s pretty big and has a lot of functionality so is necessarily complicated. I think Magic Members would do well to put a feature freeze on and do a couple of updates that focus solely on tidying documentation, html/css output and making sure everything is 100%.
- If an issue is complicated and takes a few days to solve letting people know it is being looked at in the ticketing system goes a long way to ease tension.
Next time I have to do a Membership Site I will probably look at other options, however with that said if other options don’t suit I would consider using Magic Members again.
Well same here, only minutes after posting this I finally got a reply from support. Seems there was a problem with the ticketing system. They should send out an e-mail to their clients if that is the case.
Seems like the IPN feature is build in already for several sites, but that can’t be found anywhere in the doc.
I agree, for now I’ll keep using MM, however I’m looking into DLguard aswell, just in case I need to switch fast to something else.
I hope MM convinces me when it is fully functional. However communication and documentation needs some work.
I’ve been building membership sites for a very long time. I had many customers who want to use Wishlist or Dap. I always advise them to get Magic Members, not because it has advanced functionalities, but because it also has a great UI. My clients are really happy with the results. The plugin looks professional, the support is responsive (Thanks to Angela
). Every month they release both major and small updates.
The similarity between Magic Members and Your Members is because Magic Members was built upon an old version of Your Members, though both products have been developer separately for several years now (oh and CCBIll is something both products support, not just Magic Members
).