How to Find the Right WordPress Subscription Plugin for Your Site (+ 5 Examples)

by Octavia D | Aug 20, 2023 | How To

Your membership or subscription site deserves to be more than just “functional.” It needs to be a mean, lean, revenue generation machine — and for that to happen, you need to make sure you get the right WordPress subscription plugin.

Why is this step so essential — and how to do it well?

Keep reading and find out more about how to get the right WordPress subscription plugin for your membership site (+ find out more about the top 5 best WordPress subscription plugin options.)

Contents

Why WordPress?

WordPress still holds more than 60% of the market share in the content management space — and for all the good reasons. It is:

Affordable (WordPress is free and open source, and you can find plenty of plugins for very reasonable prices)
Flexible (you can customize it to a great extent and make it work with almost any theme/layout)
Secure (regular updates ensure your site won’t get hacked by malicious actors)
Easy to learn (its user interface is very intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners).

With all these advantages, it’s no surprise that WordPress remains so popular. And the same applies to its subscription plugins!

What Will a WordPress Subscription Plugin Do for You?

A WordPress subscription plugin is meant to help you create, manage, and monetize your membership site.

It will allow you to easily add subscription forms, payment gateways, and other eCommerce features to your WordPress site.
It will provide you with detailed analytics about your user base – what kind of content they’re consuming the most, how much time do they spend on your membership site, and more.
It will also help you automate managing subscriptions and recurring payments.
It will integrate with various tools, such as email software that helps you market your content and products, CRM and customer support software to help you better understand your customers, and so on.

In short, a WordPress subscription plugin will give you everything you need to run a successful membership site or subscription-based business.

Criteria for Choosing a WordPress Subscription Plugin for a Membership Site

When looking for a WordPress subscription plugin, you might find there are many, seemingly similar products on the market. So it’s understandable if you might also feel a bit overwhelmed.

The best thing to do is to sit down and think of how you’ll use this plugin — what are your main goals, features you need, and budget constraints.

Here’s a list of criteria to consider when choosing the right WordPress subscription plugin:

Content Restriction Features

If you want to use your WordPress subscription plugin for your membership site, you should look for a plugin that allows you to do more than just run subscriptions from your WordPress site. Ideally, you need a plugin that brings together content restriction features, along with the ability to:

Restrict content by user roles
Create multiple membership levels and set different access rules for each of them
Set up time-based and other advanced access control rules.

Integrations

Integrations are to membership websites what cables are to a house: you need them to make sure your membership site is properly wired up and functioning.

That’s why you should pick a WordPress subscription plugin that allows you to integrate with different tools, like email marketing software, CRM, customer support systems, and other tools your business needs to run smoothly.

Analytics & Reports

To ensure your membership site is running properly and growing, you need to keep a close eye on different metrics related to the performance of your website.

Make sure that the WordPress subscription plugin you’re using comes with comprehensive analytics and reporting features so you can track different statistics about your memberships – from payment plans to content usage & user engagement.

Payment Gateways

Naturally, you want your WordPress subscription plugin to be connected to different payment gateways too. This allows you to connect your membership site to Stripe, PayPal, or other payment processors and set up recurring payments when a new member signs up for a paid membership level plan.

Ease of Use

You need a complicated WordPress subscription plugin like you need holes in your pockets (which is, you don’t.) Let’s face it: you are already busy creating content, running marketing campaigns to attract new members, running engagement campaigns to keep existing members, and so on.

The last thing you need is complicated software. Which is precisely why you should look for a plugin that’s easy to use and doesn’t require you to be a coding expert or tech wizard. Make sure the WordPress subscription plugin comes with intuitive tools, features, and user-friendly UI (user interface) and UX (user experience.)

Top 5 WordPress Subscription Plugin Options

Still not sure which WordPress subscription plugin to choose? We dug a little and here are the top 5 subscription plugins you can choose from for your membership site:

Ultimate Membership Pro

Ultimate Membership Pro is a WordPress subscription plugin with content restriction and WooCommerce integration features, allowing you to create multiple membership levels, payment plans, and more.

It also offers a great user experience – users can easily install the plugin in a matter of minutes. Also, it comes at a very affordable price. For $59 (as a one-time fee), you get access to all the features of an advanced membership site plugin, as well as access to:

41 addons (valued at more than $600 if you buy them separately)
9 payment processors
10 email marketing tools
And more

For $149/ year, you can also get access to 46 more premium addons (valued at nearly $500.)

MemberPress

Another very well-known WordPress subscription plugin is MemberPress. It comes with everything you might need to build a successful membership website, including content restriction features, advanced analytics and reporting tools, payment processing options, and email marketing integrations.

It’s also quite easy to use – after installation, you can start creating membership plans within minutes. However, MemberPress is not cheap software. Their pricing starts at $179.5/ year and goes as high as $399.5/ year.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse is an all-in-one membership site plugin for WordPress. It comes with numerous features, including content restriction tools, payment processing & customer support options, email marketing integrations, and others.

Just like MemberPress, MemberMouse comes with a good variety of features useful for membership sites. However, the difference between MemberPress and MemberMouse is that the latter is better for those who don’t want a lot of customization, but want to use the plugin “out of the box.”

It’s also quite easy to use – you can quickly create your membership plans within minutes after installation. The downside of MemberMouse is it’s quite expensive. Their lowest pricing plan costs $199.5/ year and their highest is $1,199.5/ year.

Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a great WordPress subscription plugin for those on a tight budget or who don’t need a lot of customization features. It has all the essential content restriction, analytics & reporting, payment processor and email marketing integrations you need to create and manage your membership plans effectively.

The good thing about Restrict Content Pro is that it’s quite affordable compared to other plugins – their yearly subscription plan starts from only $99/ year (for one site) and go up to $299/ year (for five sites.) It’s still more expensive than Ultimate Membership Pro, especially when comparing the basic versions of each.

WooCommerce Memberships

If you run an eCommerce store on WooCommerce, you might be tempted to get WooCommerce memberships as your WordPress subscription plugin. This may not be a bad idea, as WooCommerce memberships come with powerful content restriction and payment processing features.

Some of the most notable features to WooCommerce memberships include membership auto-renewals, content dripping (you can release content on a schedule), and recurring payments. It’s also quite affordable – you can get it for $16.59/ month (or $199/ year.)

Wishlist Member

Wishlist Member is also a great option for those looking for a WordPress subscription plugin. Aside from the wide range of features, one of the elements that makes it so attractive is the setup wizard, which helps you get your membership/ subscription business up and running in minutes.

Wishlist Member costs $69, and you can get an addon bundle pack for $199 (for a single site), respectively $399 or $699 for 5 or 20 sites. This bundle is helpful if you need more advanced features or integrations that are not available in the

Conclusion

All in all there is no one-size-fits-all subscription plugin for WordPress. Each plugin comes with its own set of features, pros and cons. It’s important to consider which features are most important for you—content restriction, payment processing & customer support, analytics & reporting tools, email marketing integrations, etc.—when looking for the best fit.

If you are looking for the best price/ quality/ features ratio, Ultimate Membership Pro is what you need. It allows you to build just about any type of membership site without breaking the bank and it provides you with extensive documentation on how to do it.