WordPress Membership Site Plugin Reviews
What Is A WordPress Membership Plugin?
A WordPress membership plugin allows you to password protect certain areas or content of your blog, only the registered users can login and have access to those protected areas and download the content. This allows your users to access free blogs while charging them for more premium services.
This is a great way to get sales on your blog since any of your existing readers more likely to pay for premium content.
Having your own products/information to sell rather than relying on advertising income can really generate higher income and create more value for your blog.
WordPress membership site plugin takes care of all the technicalities related to signing up new users, integrating with a payment processor such as Paypal, Clickbank etc, granting access to members and protecting your content.
The plugin costs around $50-$100 but is well worth it for the benefits.
What to Look For In a WordPress Membership Plugin
Personally I have tested couple of WordPress membership site plugin. I made a list of features that you should look for:
Payment Processing
Membership site plugin should allow you to accept all payments through the major gateways. Most plugins should have this already integrated, requiring you to only supply your details for deposits of payments.
It is also beneficial that the plugin allows cancellations of membership subscriptions. So if a membership is cancelled the user is unsubscribed and no longer requires payments on your site.
Affiliate Marketing
Membership site plugin should include features that every member is instantly made into an Affiliate that they can use to instantly start promoting your membership site if they wish and also record all your Affiliate sales. Affiliate sales are when your partner sites promote and sell your membership site in return for a commission if you are running an affiliation program.
Forum Integration
Membership site plugin should be able to integrate with Forum plugins like SimplePress, vBulletin, bbPress etc so only the members can participate in restricted forum.
Autoresponders Integration
If you are running an email marketing campaign it is very important that your Membership plugin integrates with your email marketing tools like AWeber GetResponse, MailChimp etc
Protecting Content
Membership plugin must have the ability to protect content from non paying site visitors, this is an obvious thing, but content can be protected in a number of ways.
Protection of pages – restrict if a visitor can see a particular page.
Protection of posts – have the ability to mark a particular post as premium content.
Partial protection of posts – Control exactly how much content and information you want members and visitors to see. This feature is particularly useful in providing “teaser” articles that give just enough information that will make non-members want to become members.
Downloads – Protect downloads from being accessed by unauthorized members and guests by assigning permissions based on the different levels of access. Only those memberships with the assigned permissions will be able to download the restricted files.
Sequential content delivery
This feature of Membership site plugin helps you control what your members see with the built-in Sequential Course Delivery System (Drip Feed) and allows you to create delays (in days) before your members see certain content or articles. Sequential Course Delivery System allows you to develop your content and make it available to your members on a weekly or monthly basis.
Membership Levels
The plugin should have the ability to control access to different levels across your membership site. The ability to offer different membership access to different areas, such as a download area, increases value for your membership levels.
Flexible Membership Option
Membership site plugin should have the ability to create Free, Trial or Paid membership levels (and any combination of all three).
Secure RSS
Purpose of this feature is that your members will have the ability to receive content through RSS feeds and you don’t have to worry about non-members accessing it.
Custom Error Page
When a non member tries to access your content they don’t have permission to view, they will be taken to an error page. You should have the ability to determine what that page will be. This gives you the chance to encourage them to register or upgrade to a different membership level.
Video Tutorials and After sales support
Membership site plugins could be a bit complex to use or setup if you are not very familiar with the system, that’s why after sales support is very important. Before buying the plugin check the seller’s site for documentations and video tutorials for the plugin which are very handy to setup the plugin. Another good way to find out about their service level is to check the comments and forums that the users left on their site.
The Membership Site Plugins out in the market
There are couple of good Membership site plugins out there. All of them pretty much offer the same basic features but you will need to understand which features you really want for your site. Just because the plugin is offering 100 features it doesn’t have to be the plugin you need to get. Understand your need and look for the features that will serve your purpose.
I have worked with couple of WordPress membership site plugins, they are
- WishList Member
- WP eMember
- MemberWing
- WP member
- Magic Member
Here is a matrix of how they stacked up using my criteria above:
|
WishList Member |
WP eMember | MemberWing | Wp Member | Magic Member | |
| Price | $97 | $49.95 | $199 | $49.99 | $97 |
| Shopping cart Integration | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Affiliate Software Integration | no | no | no | no | no |
| Forum Integration | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Autoresponder Integration | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
| Protect Pages | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Protect Posts | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Partial Protection | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Pay per Post | yes | no | no | no | yes |
| Download Protection | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Sneak Peak content Display | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Sequential Content Delivery | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Unlimited Membership Level | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Multi level Access | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Flexible Membership Option | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Secure RSS | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
| Customize error Message | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Custom Widget | yes | yes | yes | no | yes |
| Video Tutorial | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
| Live plugin Demonstration | no | yes | no | no | no |
| Customer Support | good | great | good | good | great |
WORDPRESS MEMBERSHIP PLUGIN HANDY REVIEW
 WishList Member |
WishList Member is the best Membership site plugin out there at the moment. They offer every feature possible to setup your own Membership site. The plugin is easy to setup and use. WishList offers a huge archive of Support Guides and Training Videos so before you make a purchase you can have an Idea about how the plugin works. However the price is high compared to other WordPress membership Site plugins for both single site and Multi-site Licence. |
 WP eMember |
WP eMember is the cheapest WordPress Membership Site plugin in the market. The Plugin has all the features that a Membership Site plugin should have. They also have a Free Live Plugin demo where you can test the plugin before you purchase. WP eMember also comes with great customer support, plugin updates and Training Videos. You don’t need to purchase a Multi site licence as you can use one plugin for multiple sites. |
 MagicMembers |
Another good WordPress Membership Site Plugin. MagicMembers is very similar to WishList MEMBER in regards to features and prices. They provide good training videos and customer support. One catch is that the customer support is only available free for 1 year. Further customer support after 1 year requires a fee. |
 MemberWing |
MemberWing is a very expensive Membership Site Plugin with no Training Videos and not enough documentation. For Plugin upgrades and support you will have to also buy a Yearly maintenance licence. You are better off using other WordPress Membership Site plugins which offer the same basic features for a lot cheaper price. |
 WP Member |
WP Member’s official website has a very poor presentation. The Plugin features are not well documented and there are no Training videos. My initial reaction was that I didn’t have a clue what they are selling. I could not even find any support forum for the plugin users or feedbacks. |
TagsWordPress, WordPress Plugins
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10 Responsesto “WordPress Membership Site Plugin Reviews”
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WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
Nice review of wordpress membership plugins! Thanks for including WP eMember in your list
Thanks for the review. I’m looking for a membership plugin and your review makes it zero in on the good ones. Thanks again!
Hi Jay, let us know how did you go with your membership plugin, we would like to hear your feedback. Cheers !!
What about DAP (Digital Access Pass) it would of been great to see how this one would stacked up in your comparison chart. It is priced at $167. but has many features not seen in other plugins that make this plug in very attractive.
Does anyone know of a plugin that allows for at least 2 membership levels, entering more a more detailed profile and one level allowing to query the detailed profile of one of the levels? Just a one way direction.
Hi Alex, WordPress eMember Plugin allows unlimited levels of membership, couldn’t really understand your next query sorry.
Just wanted to drop a note about Magic Members. Magic Members was built on a very old version of Your Members code which it later licensed.
Obviously its now exceptionally out dated compared to Your Members which celebrated it’s 4th birthday with the release of YM10 recently.
You may also wish to consider Digital Access Pass as De De said it’s slightly more expensive but is the closest in terms of features comparable with Your Members.
To answer Alexandra I think all the plugins mentioned allow multiple memberships and most will allow you to define some sort of hierarchy. YM keeps this flexible by allowing you to set which upgrades you want to a user to see at a given level.
Disclaimer: I’m the Technical Director at Coding Futures makers of Your Members.
Thanks Tim for clarifying these for our readers. Cheers
Great overview. While ‘Wishlist Member’ has many positives, it shockingly lacks a some basics like – allowing your members to UNREGISTER! Wow.
Read the full review…
‘Wishlist Member’ WP Plugin Reviewed!
bit.ly/Gzr1xV
Thanks for your feedback Sam