Best Memberful Alternatives (2026): 8 WordPress Plugins and Hosted Options

The best Memberful alternatives are Ultimate Membership Pro, MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro if your site runs on WordPress, and MemberSpace, Outseta, Ghost, Podia and Patreon if you prefer a hosted service. Memberful adds a 4.9% fee to every payment on top of its monthly plan, so most people who switch want to cut that percentage, offer more ways to pay or keep billing on their own site.

Ultimate Membership Pro is made by WPIndeed, the publisher of this blog.

Memberful alternatives are tools that sell memberships and protect members-only content without Memberful’s hosted service. They fall into two groups: WordPress membership plugins that run on your own site, and hosted platforms that run the software for you.

• Memberful has one public plan, and its 4.9% fee applies to every purchase and renewal (full pricing below). Stripe is its only payment processor, and Stripe’s card fee comes on top.
• Of the Memberful alternatives here, Ghost, Podia (from Shaker), MemberPress (Growth and Scale) and Outseta’s Max plan list no transaction fee of their own. MemberSpace, Outseta’s other plans and Patreon still take a percentage.
• A WordPress membership plugin trades the hosted service for mostly fixed costs: hosting and an annual plugin plan. You take on updates, backups and security.

How does Memberful pricing work?

Memberful has one public plan. As of October 2026, Standard costs $49 a month plus a flat 4.9% transaction fee on every purchase and renewal, and Stripe charges its own card processing fee on top. Enterprise has custom, volume-based pricing.

You can set up and test for free and only pay once you go live. Every plan includes a website and newsletter builder with custom domains, and support for podcasts, newsletters, communities, courses and downloads. Checkout covers group plans, gift purchases, trials and a “choose what to pay” option.

Member tools include a built-in referral program, automated retention discounts and cancellation surveys, and integrations cover WordPress, Discord, Mailchimp and Kit. Check which of these extras you actually use before you compare fees.

Why do creators leave Memberful?

Most creators leave Memberful because the 4.9% fee grows with revenue. Others want more payment options, or want checkout, member accounts and billing to live on their own site.

• The percentage fee. A creator earning $15,000 a month pays Memberful $784 a month, before Stripe’s card fee.
• Stripe only. Memberful’s help center says it supports no other payment processor, so members can’t pay with PayPal or a local gateway.
• Two systems on one site. On WordPress, the Memberful plugin signs members in and syncs their plans, while billing and the member database stay on Memberful’s hosted service.
• Member data lives on Memberful. Closing a Memberful account deletes its data, so leaving depends on the CSV files you export first.

Memberful alternatives at a glance

Memberful sits in the first row as the baseline, so you can compare each option with what you pay today. Fees come from each vendor’s own pricing page as of October 2026. Card processing is charged on top everywhere.

Option	Type	Pricing model	Fee on member payments	Best for
Memberful (baseline)	Hosted, with a WordPress plugin	Standard $49/month; Enterprise custom	4.9% plus Stripe fees	Hosted billing plus a site builder, newsletters, courses, community and podcasts
Ultimate Membership Pro	WordPress plugin	Sold as annual plans (Pro, Full Package, Agency) plus your own hosting	Your payment processor’s fees	Memberships on your own WordPress site with many gateways
MemberPress	WordPress plugin	Annual plans (Launch, Growth, Scale)	4.9% on Launch; 0% on Growth and Scale	WordPress sites that also sell courses
Paid Memberships Pro	WordPress plugin	Free core; Standard $499/year for premium add-ons	2% on Stripe Connect without an active license	A free, open-source start
MemberSpace	Hosted, added to an existing site	Starter $24/month or Growth $99/month, billed annually	5% on Starter, 2% on Growth, plus Stripe fees	Squarespace, Wix and other site builders
Outseta	Hosted all-in-one, added to an existing site	From $37/month billed yearly, by number of contacts	2% on Start, 1% on Scale and Pro, none on Max, plus Stripe fees	Memberships with CRM, email and help desk in one tool
Ghost	Publishing platform, hosted or self-hosted	Paid subscriptions from Publisher at $29/month billed yearly	0% from Ghost; processor fees apply	A publication with its own site and newsletter
Podia	Hosted all-in-one	From $42/month billed yearly	5% on Mover; none on Shaker and Earthquaker	Courses, community and downloads
Patreon	Hosted creator platform	Free to start	10% for pages published after August 4, 2025, plus processing, conversion and payout fees	Creators who want a ready-made page and app

What are the best Memberful alternatives?

The best choice depends on where your site lives. On WordPress, Ultimate Membership Pro, MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro move checkout, members and billing onto your own site. For a hosted service, MemberSpace works most like Memberful, Ghost suits publishers and Podia suits course creators.

Memberful alternatives for WordPress

Memberful alternatives for WordPress replace both the Memberful plugin and the hosted service behind it. Checkout, member accounts and renewals run inside your WordPress site, and you pay your payment gateway directly.

1. Ultimate Membership Pro

Ultimate Membership Pro is a WordPress membership plugin by WPIndeed, used by 80,000+ creators, coaches and businesses since 2015. Members are WordPress users, and with Stripe Connect they pay on your site through the Stripe account you connect.

Ten payment gateway options come with every plan, including Stripe (Connect or Checkout), PayPal (Standard or Express), Braintree, Mollie and Authorize.Net, and Full Package adds PayFast, Paystack and Razorpay. Recurring Memberships cover free or paid trials, coupons, gift memberships, pay what you want and prorated upgrades. You can lock posts, pages, categories, files and parts of a post, and release content on a drip schedule.

On the member account page, members renew, cancel and print invoices. With Stripe Connect they can also change their card and pause or resume a subscription. Group memberships, which some Memberful sites sell, come with Full Package.

Best for: WordPress sites that want a Memberful alternative with more payment gateways and member data in their own database.

Limitation: the plugin doesn’t send newsletters or create private podcast feeds for podcast apps, and its integrations page lists no Discord integration. You pair it with an email tool, and you run hosting, updates and backups.

Ultimate Membership Pro is sold as annual plans (Pro, Full Package and Agency), with unlimited members on every plan, as listed on the pricing page. Payment processor fees still apply.

2. MemberPress

MemberPress is a WordPress membership plugin with built-in courses, sold as annual plans. The entry Launch plan adds a 4.9% transaction fee per successful payment and supports Stripe only. Growth and Scale list 0% transaction fees and add PayPal and Square.

Best for: WordPress sites that sell courses alongside memberships.

Limitation: on Launch the fee matches Memberful’s 4.9%, and both content dripping and course curriculum dripping start at Growth (as of October 2026).

3. Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is an open-source WordPress membership plugin with a free core that includes payment gateways and 25 free add-ons. The Standard plan, $499 a year for one site, adds 54 premium add-ons and support, and the Max plans add managed hosting.

Its Stripe documentation lists a 2% application fee per transaction for sites that use Stripe Connect without an active license key. The fee doesn’t apply with a license or with your own API keys.

Best for: WordPress owners who want a free, open-source start.

Limitation: many features live in separate add-ons, and the free version carries the 2% fee on Stripe Connect.

Hosted platforms that replace Memberful

Hosted Memberful alternatives keep the model you know: the vendor runs the software, billing and security, and most still charge a percentage, a plan fee that grows with your audience, or both. MemberSpace and Outseta add memberships to the site you have, while Ghost and Podia give you the website as well.

4. MemberSpace

MemberSpace is the closest match to Memberful. You add it to an existing site with a code snippet, and it works with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Showit, Webflow and other builders.

Starter costs $24 a month and Growth $99 a month, billed annually, with fees of 5% and 2% on sales; Custom plans drop to 1%. Stripe’s processing fees are separate, and Starter and Growth allow unlimited members.

Best for: creators on Squarespace, Wix or another builder who want a hosted Memberful alternative with a lower percentage at higher revenue.

Limitation: you still pay a share of each sale, and Starter connects only one website.

5. Outseta

Outseta combines Stripe payments, logins, protected content, a CRM, email and a help desk. You add it to a site built with Webflow, Framer, WordPress or other tools with a script and sign-up links.

Start costs $37 a month billed yearly for up to 1,000 contacts, with a 2% transaction fee. Scale and Pro charge 1% and Max charges none. Outseta’s fees come on top of Stripe’s, and every plan includes free data migrations.

Best for: small businesses that want memberships, email and support in one subscription.

Limitation: the price rises with your contact count, and you still need a website built somewhere else.

6. Ghost

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform with a website, a newsletter and paid memberships built in. Paid subscriptions start on the Publisher plan at $29 a month billed yearly for up to 1,000 members, with no transaction fees from Ghost; payment processor fees still apply.

Best for: publishers and newsletter writers ready to move their whole site to one tool.

Limitation: you leave WordPress, so the site, theme and plugins need rebuilding, and hosted prices rise with member count.

7. Podia

Podia is an all-in-one platform for courses, downloads, community and email, with its own website and blog. Mover costs $42 a month billed yearly and keeps a 5% fee. Shaker, at $84 a month billed yearly, has no transaction fees and adds PayPal.

Best for: creators who sell courses and digital products alongside a membership.

Limitation: included email is capped by plan (100 subscribers on Mover, 500 on Shaker and 1,000 on Earthquaker), and your site moves to Podia’s builder.

8. Patreon

Patreon is a creator membership platform with posts, video, podcasts, chats and a mobile app. Its pricing page lists a 10% platform fee, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees and taxes. Patreon’s help center says the 10% applies to creators who publish their page after August 4, 2025, while earlier creators keep their existing pricing. Memberful’s own help center names Patreon as its parent company.

Best for: creators who want a ready-made page and app and don’t need their own website.

Limitation: for a new page, the 10% fee is about twice Memberful’s 4.9%, and members and payouts run through Patreon.

How much do Memberful’s fees cost compared with other options?

At $5,000 a month in member revenue, Memberful’s fees come to $294 a month before Stripe’s card fee. The table below is a worked example, not a quote. It uses the fees each vendor listed as of October 2026 and leaves out card processing, which you pay everywhere.

Monthly member revenue (example)	Memberful Standard ($49 + 4.9%)	MemberSpace Growth ($99 + 2%)	Patreon (10%, new pages)	Ghost Publisher or a WordPress plugin
$1,000	$98	$119	$100	Plan or hosting cost only
$5,000	$294	$199	$500	Plan or hosting cost only
$15,000	$784	$399	$1,500	Plan or hosting cost only

Above about $1,700 a month in revenue, MemberSpace Growth costs less than Memberful, because its lower percentage outweighs the higher plan fee.

Over a year, those Memberful fees add up to $1,176, $3,528 and $9,408 at the three example revenue levels. That yearly figure is the one to compare with the fixed costs of Memberful alternatives.

Memberful alternatives on WordPress mostly have fixed costs: hosting, a domain, a theme and an annual plugin plan, plus your gateway’s card fees. Stripe’s pricing page lists 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards in the United States, and a separate 0.7% fee on volume that runs through Stripe Billing. Check each plugin’s plan for its own fee, since MemberPress Launch and unlicensed Paid Memberships Pro add one.

Hosted service or WordPress plugin: what changes when you leave Memberful?

With Memberful, the vendor runs billing, logins and security. With a WordPress plugin, those parts move onto your own site: you gain control over checkout and data and give up the hands-off setup.

• What Memberful does for you: hosted checkout, member accounts and billing, plus a website and newsletter builder, courses, communities, downloads, podcast feeds, a referral program, retention discounts and Discord access.
• Who matches the extras: Podia comes closest, with a website, courses, downloads, a community and email. Ghost covers the site and newsletter, and MemberSpace builds courses, files and discussions in its Spaces. On WordPress you add an email tool; MemberPress has courses built in, and Ultimate Membership Pro pairs with Ultimate Learning Pro, a separate WPIndeed plugin. Check any shortlist for a referral program and retention discounts.
• What a plugin gives you: checkout on your own domain, member data in your WordPress database and the plugin’s choice of gateways.
• What you take on: hosting, updates, backups, security and an email tool for newsletters.

Which Memberful alternative should you choose?

Start from where your site runs and what you sell, then compare two or three Memberful alternatives at your revenue.

Your site already runs on WordPress

If you want a Memberful alternative for WordPress, a plugin keeps everything on the site you already have. Ultimate Membership Pro suits sites that want many gateways and content restriction by Membership, from whole categories down to part of a post. MemberPress suits course-led sites, and Paid Memberships Pro suits a free start.

You publish paid posts or a podcast

Ghost is built for newsletters and publications. For a podcast, Patreon offers podcast import and RSS distribution. Ultimate Membership Pro locks creator content such as posts and embedded video on your site, but it doesn’t create private feeds for podcast apps.

You need courses, video or a community

If courses, video or a community matter more than billing, look at the course and community platforms that top many Memberful alternatives lists. Your content moves onto their platform. Pricing as of October 2026:

• Kajabi: courses, community, website and email in one tool, from $143 a month billed annually. It lists no revenue share, but card fees apply, and third-party processors add 0.5% to 2% by plan. Fit: course creators who want everything hosted.
• Mighty Networks or Circle: community-first platforms with courses. Fees fall by tier, from 2% to 0.5% on Mighty Networks and from 2% on Circle’s $89-a-month Professional plan (billed yearly), and custom branded apps sit on the top tiers. Fit: paid communities.
• Uscreen: a video catalog, live streaming and your own mobile app, $149 a month on Growth plus $1.99 per paid member each month. Fit: video memberships.

When Memberful is still the better fit

Stay if you use much of the bundle, such as the site builder, newsletters, courses, podcast feeds, the referral program and Discord access, and you don’t want to run a site. At $1,000 a month in revenue, its fees are $98 a month, which may cost less than the time a move takes.

How do you move from Memberful without losing members?

Whatever you choose, export everything from Memberful first, rebuild your plans on the new platform, then plan how paying members move. Recurring billing needs the most planning, so ask for help early.

1. Export your data. In Memberful, open Members, filter for active members and choose Actions, then Export CSV. The file includes each member’s plan, auto-renew status, expiration date and Stripe customer ID. Export your orders and subscriptions too.
2. Rebuild plans and access. Recreate each plan with the same price and billing cycle, and lock the same pages again. On WordPress, replace the Memberful plugin’s Restrict Access settings and its sign-in and purchase links. Work on a staging copy.
3. Talk to support. Before you set a switch date, ask the new platform’s support team how your active recurring subscriptions will continue.
4. Import members. Give each member access until the expiration date in your export.
5. Test, switch and close. Test a sign-up, a renewal and a cancellation, then deactivate the Memberful plugin. Stop Memberful renewals only once you know how each subscription continues, so nobody pays twice. Export again before you close the Memberful account, because closing it deletes the account’s data.

What happens to paying members?

Memberful’s help center says it manages subscriptions inside Memberful and stores cards in your connected Stripe account. The customers and saved cards stay in your Stripe account, but the renewal schedule lives in Memberful, so renewals don’t carry over by themselves.

On WordPress, the Ultimate Membership Pro support team helps you migrate from Memberful with its own tools. Ask them how your active recurring subscriptions will be handled for your payment gateway, and mention that Memberful billing runs through your own connected Stripe account. New sign-ups then pay through the Stripe integration or another gateway.

The standard CSV member import covers accounts and access: it adds a Membership with start and expiry dates and attaches it to an existing WordPress user with the same email. On its own, the import doesn’t create orders or gateway subscriptions, which is why the support-assisted migration comes first for recurring billing.

Frequently asked questions