Having a membership site is very helpful for your online business. It can help you increase user engagement around your brand and benefit you in many ways. So if you are planning to build a new membership site on WordPress but do not know how to start, you have come to the right place. In this article, we are going to discuss the 15 best membership plugins that will help you build a membership site on WordPress without requiring any prior coding knowledge. But before that, we will understand what a membership site is and what are its benefits.

What is a Membership Site?

A membership site is just like a normal website but it has protected content that is only available for paying members. The content available on a membership site is exclusive and paid. The membership content includes digital products, physical products, webinars, special reports, online courses, coaching sessions, podcasts, eBooks, white papers, images, audio content, videos, virtual conferences and events, and much more. It is up to you whether you want to protect the content on your website partially or completely.

Some website owners make half of their web content available for free, and to access the exclusive content, they ask readers to subscribe or become paid members.

Note: People often get confused between a membership site and a subscription site. They think both are the same. But if we look very closely, they are different. Refer to this article to learn the difference between a membership site and a subscription website.

Benefits of Membership Site

Membership sites are very popular these days because there are several benefits of having a membership site, such as – 

• One of the most significant benefits of having a membership site is that it helps you increase your revenue.
• With a membership site, you can easily gain the trust and loyalty of your audience. Besides, you can also build authority with your content.
• You do not need any physical product for your membership site.
• With a membership site, you get a lot of free traffic.
• You can develop a lasting relationship with your audience and enhance your brand value.

Refer to this article for more information – Benefits of Having Membership Site.

List of Best Membership Plugins

The easiest way to build a membership site on WordPress is using the right membership plugin. There are many membership plugins available on the WordPress plugins directory. And when there are too many choices, you may find it difficult to choose the best plugin to build your membership site. But do not worry. We have come up with a list of the 15 best membership plugins that you should consider using. After reading this list, we hope you will be able to choose the right membership plugin to build a membership site on WordPress.

Below is the list of the best membership plugins for your WordPress site – 

#1 – MemberPress Plugin

Being one of the best membership plugins, MemberPress holds the #1 position on our list. It will help you create a powerful membership site without requiring any prior coding knowledge. The MemberPress plugin is a simple and robust solution that works perfectly with a new or an existing WordPress site. This means you do not need to create a new membership site. Instead, you can simply install this plugin and turn your regular site into a fully featured membership site.

With over 200,000 active installations, the MemberPress plugin is quite popular among WordPress users. It provides you with all the features that are needed to create and manage a membership site. Content access control and content dripping are the two most useful features offered by MemberPress. So if you are looking for an easy and instant way to create a membership site, you should definitely give it a shot.

Check out the list of features provided by MemberPress.

#2 – ProfilePress Plugin

ProfilePress is another powerful and easy-to-use membership plugin for WordPress. It is a modern WordPress membership cum user profile plugin that allows you to create user profiles as well as member directories. By using the ProfilePress plugin, you can build a beautiful user registration form, login form, and provide options for password resetting and profile editing. Besides, it allows you to protect your exclusive web content and control member access.

With over 400,000 active installations, ProfilePress is among the best and highly recommended membership plugins for WordPress users. It works as a simple drag & drop form builder so even a new WordPress user can use it with ease. So if you are looking for the best solution to build online communities and membership sites where users can register or become members, the ProfilePress plugin is the perfect solution for you.

Check out the list of features provided by ProfilePress.

#3 – Restrict User Access Plugin

Restrict User Access is another great solution for those who are looking for the best WordPress membership plugins. As the name suggests, it helps you restrict user access to your membership site created on WordPress. It is an easy-to-use plugin that comes with powerful administration capabilities, multiple membership levels, a variety of payment integrations, and much more. With this plugin, you can easily restrict the web content so that only the members can access it, depending upon their membership/subscription types.

Over 270,000 people around the world are using the Restrict User Access plugin, and this number is enough to tell that how popular this WordPress plugin is. It provides you with unlimited content restrictions and a lot of other useful features, making it one of the most powerful membership plugins. Without having any coding knowledge, you can start a fully functional membership site on WordPress.

Check out the list of features provided by Restrict Content Pro.

#4 – Ultimate Member Plugin

Just like ProfilePress, Ultimate Member is also a user profile cum membership plugin for WordPress. It is one of the best membership plugins to create a user-based site on WordPress with beautiful front-end elements and powerful admin functionality. The Ultimate Member plugin offers you a wide range of features that include user profile creation, user registration, user login, member directory, content restriction, and much more.

With the help of the Ultimate Member plugin, you can enable users to signup and become a member of your site. Besides, you can also create beautiful users profiles for your membership site. Today over 200,000 WordPress users are using the Ultimate Member plugin to power their online community and membership sites. It is a lightweight and easy-to-use plugin that makes it easy for even a new WordPress user to create a membership site.

Check out the list of features provided by Ultimate Member.

#5 – Paid Memberships Pro Plugin

The next plugin on our list is Paid Memberships Pro provided by Stranger Studios. It is the most complete WordPress membership plugin of all time. From restricting content to managing member subscriptions, this smart membership plugin will help you with everything you will be needing to create and manage a membership site on WordPress. You can also create unlimited membership levels with flexible pricing that includes free memberships, trials, subscriptions, recurring payments, one-time payments, etc.

Users who want to be a member of your site can select the membership level, complete checkout, and become a member immediately. You will have full control over your website’s content, i.e. you can decide what content a particular member can access. With over 100,000 active installations, the Paid Memberships Pro plugin is quite popular among WordPress users.

Check out the list of features provided by Paid Memberships Pro.

#6 – WishList Member Plugin

WishList Member is another best membership plugin on this list. It is a simple yet powerful solution for creators, coaches, podcasters, authors, and communities. With the WishList Member plugin, you can create unlimited membership levels, protect your web content with a single mouse click, accept payments from various gateways, integrate with your email marketing service, etc. Within a few minutes, you are can start a fully functional membership site without requiring any prior designing knowledge.

Trusted by over 100,000 website owners in the world, WishList Member is one of the most popular and highly recommended membership plugins of all time. The only drawback with this plugin is that it has too many options so you may get confused or overwhelmed while using it. Otherwise, the WishList Member plugin is a great choice for those who are looking to set up membership sites, online courses, or communities on WordPress.

Check out the list of features provided by Wishlist Member.

#7 – Magic Members Plugin

Magic Members is another popular WordPress membership plugin known for its simplicity and intuitiveness. With this WordPress plugin, you can build a new WordPress membership site in just a few minutes. Besides, you can also turn your existing site or blog into a fully functional membership site or an online community. It provides you with flexible payment gateway options so you can easily integrate your membership site with Paypal, Stripe, WorldPay, ClickBank, iDeal, eWay, and other popular payment gateway service providers.

With over 88,000 active installations, the Magic Members plugin is counted among the best WordPress plugins in the world. So if you are looking for a WordPress plugin that can help you sell online courses and other digital content, restricting or dripping content, and allow you to provide digital products to your members on a pay-per-view basis, Magic Members is the best option for you.

Check out the list of features provided by Magic Members.

#8 – WP-Members Plugin

With over 80,000 active installations, WP-Members holds the #8 position on our list of best membership plugins for your WordPress site. The WP-Members plugin is a free solution using which you can turn your business site or blog into a fully functional membership site. Just like any other WordPress membership plugin, it is easy to set up and use so creating a membership site becomes very easy even for a new WordPress user. Other than membership sites, the WP-Members plugin is a perfect solution for private blogs, newsletters, premium content sites, etc.

This membership plugin allows users to protect their premium or exclusive content by hiding or restricting them so only registered members can access that. Unlike other plugins, it keeps the registration process aligned with your content and website’s theme which means it does not add a native WordPress login page. Instead, it lets you create the login and other pages as per the design of your WordPress theme.

The WP-Members plugin is undoubtedly a great solution for those WordPress users who want to create a website that will offer premium content to subscribers and paid members.

Check out the list of features provided by WP-Members.

#9 – Simple Membership Plugin

With over 50,000 active installations and an amazing 5-star user rating, the Simple Membership plugin is among the most popular membership plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory. With this WordPress plugin, you can easily protect your exclusive content behind various membership access levels (free and paid). And then you can charge your members to access it. When any non-registered member views the protected content, s/he will be prompted to log in or sign up for membership. This is the smartest feature of this WordPress membership plugin.

PayPal, Stripe, and Braintree are the most popular payment gateways supported by the Simple Membership plugin. You can accept one-time membership payments via all three payment gateways, whereas the recurring/subscription payments are only supported for PayPal and Stripe. Besides this, the plugin also records all the payments made by your members. So overall, the Simple Membership plugin is the perfect solution for you if you are looking for a user-friendly and instant way to start a membership site.

Check out the list of features provided by Simple Membership Plugin.

#10 – Ultimate Membership Pro

Ultimate Membership Pro is among the top-selling WordPress membership plugins in the world. It allows you to create and manage multi-level access for your members based on their memberships (free and paid). With the Ultimate Membership Pro plugin, you can restrict the premium content of your website and sell unlimited subscriptions through the most popular payment gateways like Paypal, Stripe, Payza, etc. Besides, you can manage multiple subscriptions simultaneously.

Over 30,000 users are actively using the Ultimate Membership Pro plugin to manage their membership sites on WordPress. It has almost everything that you need to manage your membership site on WordPress. So if you are looking for a premium solution that is powerful yet easy to use, you must use Ultimate Membership Pro.

Check out the list of features provided by Ultimate Membership Pro.

#11 – MemberMouse Plugin

MemberMouse is one of the most popular and feature-rich membership plugins of all time. From startups to the enterprise, MemberMouse is the perfect solution for everyone who wants to create and manage a membership site or an online community on WordPress. By using the MemberMouse plugin, you can start selling your products or subscriptions, protect your exclusive content, manage your site’s members (both free and paid), and maximize your online revenue.

It is an easy-to-use solution so you do not need any coding knowledge to create a membership site. With this plugin, you can create different membership levels and bundles so that your existing members can easily make purchases on a one-off basis. You can create trial offers and discount coupons, and you can also integrate the MemberMouse plugin with the 3rd party payment gateways and email marketing providers.

Over 17,000 WordPress sites are using MemberMouse, making it one of the most popular and trusted membership plugins. So if you are planning to create a profitable membership site on WordPress, you should definitely consider using MemberMouse.

Check out the list of features provided by MemberMouse.

#12 – s2Member Plugin

s2Member provided by WP Sharks is among the most popular and powerful membership plugins for WordPress. It allows you to restrict the web content that you want to make available only for your site members. Besides the web content, you can also put different types of restrictions on online courses, eBooks, streaming media, and file downloads. The s2Member plugin supports all popular payment gateways such as Paypal, Stripe, ClickBank, etc. Besides these useful features, you will also get email templates, custom login welcome pages, protection against brute forces, and the ability to restrict IPs.

Currently, over 15,000 websites in the world are using the s2Member plugin. The free version of this WordPress plugin has a variety of features that will help you create and manage your membership site without requiring any prior knowledge. However, it is limited to only 4 paid membership levels along with some feature restrictions. So if you want to unlock all the premium features, you should consider using its premium version. The premium version of s2Member is available in two options – Single Site and Unlimited Sites.

Check out the list of features provided by s2Member.

#13 – WP User Frontend Plugin

WP User Frontend is the next plugin on our list of best membership plugins. As the name suggests, it allows you to manage everything on your WordPress site from the frontend. It is an all-in-one solution, instead of just being a WordPress membership plugin. The WP User Frontend plugin helps you with Posting Form Creation, Profile Building, Registration Form Creation, Subscriptions, and Content Restriction. With over 30,000 active installations, it is among the most popular membership plugins for WordPress users.

With WP User Frontend, you can easily turn your existing WordPress site or blog into a great membership site, and that is too without requiring any coding knowledge. And to restrict the content on your membership site, you just need to add a shortcode.

Check out the list of features provided by WP User Frontend Plugin.

#14 – ARMember Plugin

ARMember is one of the best-rated membership plugins for WordPress. It helps you restrict the web content that you want to make available for your members only, create different membership levels for your members, create user-profiles and user signup forms. With ARMember, you can easily restrict the whole content of your website or the partial content of any specific web page by simply adding a shortcode.

Besides, you can also create different plans for your members, such as free plans, paid plans (limited & unlimited), subscriptions with an auto-recurring payment option. It has a built-in form builder using which you can create spam-free forms for a variety of purposes, such as Registration, Login, Edit Profile, Password Recovery, Change Password, etc.

The ARMember plugin is an easy-to-use solution, and it offers a wide range of features along with a great performance and a modern user interface. So if you are planning to build a fully functional membership site on WordPress, ARMember will definitely help you.

Check out the list of features provided by ARMember.

#15 – aMember Plugin

aMember is the one of most flexible and user-friendly membership plugins for WordPress users. It will help you create any type of membership site or an online community without requiring any coding knowledge. The aMember plugin provides you with unlimited membership levels, hundreds of payments options, easy & smooth membership management, and much more. The only drawback of using aMember is that you may face compatibility issues with other plugins that you have installed on your WordPress site.

aMember is the perfect solution to create a membership site for selling digital products. And that is why thousands of websites and eCommerce stores have trusted the aMember plugin.

Check out the list of features provided by aMember.

Conclusion

So if you are looking for an easy and instant way to start a membership site or an online community on WordPress, these are some of the best membership plugins for you. Using any of these plugins, you can easily create a new membership site or turn your existing WordPress site into a fully functional membership site.

The primary objective of this article is to help you choose the best WordPress membership plugin for your membership site. If you have any suggestions, please let us know in the comments section below.