| Overall rating: |   |
| Version: | 3.0.6 |
| Reviewed by: | M. K. Safi |
wp-Member is a basic membership plugin. It can help you easily protect posts, pages, and categories within WordPress. The installation process of this plugin is not as smooth as with other plugins, but once you’re past that stage, you can begin to reliably use the plugin to protect your content.
While wp-Member is missing a lot of features, such as digital files protection, an API, and integration with 3rd party services, it is priced very competitively. The single site license goes for $29.99 only. This makes it a great choice for those who want basic protection for their small WordPress-powered sites.
Installation & Admin UI
The installation process of wp-Member is cumbersome. You download a zip file which cannot be uploaded through the WordPress plugin uploader. Instead, you have to unzip the file and FTP the resulting directory to your wp-content/plugins folder, which can take several minutes.
Additionally, the plugin’s source code is obfuscated with ionCube, so it requires that you have the ionCube PHP decoder installed on your server (most hosts have ionCube installed and activated by default).
Once uploaded and activated, you’ll have to enter your license key in a field that’s hidden in the plugins menu of the WordPress admin dashboard. When that’s done, you’ll finally see a top level menu through which you can interact with wp-Member.
The admin UI does not conform to the native WordPress UI, but it’s very neutral and usable.
Documentation & Support
wp-Member is a basic membership plugin. Therefore, it doesn’t need a lot of documentation. Regardless, every single admin page of the plugin is documented.
Support of the plugin is provided through a ticketing system only. And it expires after one year. You’ll have to renew for $19.99 every year if you want to continue to receive technical support and software updates.
Member Management
While wp-Member uses native WordPress user profiles to manage members, it does not use the built-in user roles and capabilities that WordPress employs. It has its own membership levels system. And I found the user interface for managing members to be a little tedious to use.
However, wp-Member does have some advanced members management capabilities. It allows you to create unlimited membership levels and it supports custom registration fields. But in the version that I tested, the registration page was kind of broken (but I’m sure that’s easily fixable).
Payment Processing Features
wp-Member supports PayPal Standard, Authorize.Net, and Google Checkout.
With PayPal and Google Checkout, the payment will be done off-site. With Authorize.Net, the payment can be made on your own site.
wp-Member doesn’t support advanced payment processing features such as upsells, coupon codes, or processing cancellations and refunds automatically.
Flow of Registration Steps
wp-Member supports the following registration flows (each ‘→’ represents a redirect):
- Register → Login & access free content → Pay
- Register → Pay → Login
Content Protection Features
wp-Member provides basic content protection for posts, pages, and entire categories. But the plugin lacks any sort of advanced protection. It doesn’t support IP restrictions, gradual content delivery, digital file protection, or protected RSS feeds. However, it does allow for partial content protection through [private] tag. And it allows for a site-wide lockdown where only logged in members can view any content.
Email Communication with Subscribers
wp-Member has a built-in “Simple Newsletter” module. It allows you to send messages to inactive, active, pending, expired, or all subscribers at once. It’s very basic, you simply specify a message subject and body, and send. wp-Member doesn’t integrate with any autoresponder.
Who is Using It
I was able to find two membership sites that currently are using wp-Member: Contra Costa County Sheriff Reserve and Frances Insights. As would be expected, both are small sites that use wp-Member to protect their content with minimum fuss.
Money Matters
wp-Member comes in two licenses: single license and developer license. The single license ($29.99) can be installed on one site only. The developer license ($199 annually) can be installed on up to 30 websites.
Updates and support are offered for one year of purchase, and can be renewed for $19.99 when it expires. There are no refunds.
