MemberPress: the ultimate membership plugin for WordPress

WordPress as CMS has many plugins available in its market which can transform your website into a membership platform. Many of these plugins are highly rated and also provide a ton of value for money too.

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Also, almost all of these plugins need time and money investment in order to be set it up and used to their full potential. In such cases, it becomes important to understand what your needs are and which plugin fulfills them the most.

In today’s article, we will cover features and USP points about ‘MemberPress’ and give you a clear picture of whether it is ideal for you or not.

Fundamentals of membership website

In order to build a membership website, it is important to have some of the fundamental features which will help you make your system complete, easy to use, and feature-rich.

At this point, we will provide you with a list of these fundamental features, which will further help you to select the ideal membership plugin for you.

Pages and Feature unlock after purchasing the plan:

One of the important reasons why people opt-in to buy a membership is the reward of unlocking exclusive content. At the very basic, the membership plugin should have an easy-to-use and well-integrated interface to make website content exclusive for the membership level.

Availability of various stages of membership level and validity:

Having membership plans with different validity (e.g. Yearly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) gives people more choices to choose from, hence helping you increase your conversion rate. In a similar manner, having different levels of membership like basic, premium, and ultra provides users with more flexibility in the selection of exclusive content and hence increases the per-user spending on your website.

Due to this reason, it is important that the membership plugin provides the flexibility to incorporate these features on your website.

User Dashboard:

After membership purchase, it is important to provide the user control over membership. Points like membership cancellation, payment method change, upgrade membership (if available), change membership plan and overall statistics related to membership are important to provide to the user.

Arranging all these points in a single dashboard helps you to improve user experience and eventually contributes to user satisfaction. It is thus important to select a plugin that has a feature-rich user dashboard. Following is an example of a user dashboard for MemberPress made using Elementor.

Different types of product support:

On any website, membership could provide different types of content as output, e.g. Netflix provides membership to watch exclusive video content, and Amazon provides membership for faster delivery as well as streaming of exclusive content.

The content can range from physical products to digital streaming, and thus it is important that the plugin should have a different workflow in order to incorporate the maximum type of content.

Integration with page builder:

One of the important aspects of any membership website is its UI/UX. The overall look and feel of the website can make a huge impact on conversion rate, and hence it is important that the membership pages provided by the plugin are easily editable.

The proper integration of the plugin with page builders like Elementor, Gutenberg, and Divi can further help you streamline the designing of membership pages. Any membership plugin which is deeply integrated with any of the mentioned page builders will have a clear advantage over other membership plugins.

Transactional and update emails:

At every point in membership, notification to the user is important as it keeps the user updated and increases user interaction. It is therefore important to select a membership plugin that provides inbuilt automatic email functionality that is easy to use and flexible.

MemberPress Features

After going through the important features of any membership website, let’s see what MemberPress has to offer and decide whether it is the ideal membership plugin for us or not.

Easy to set up:

Setting up MemberPress just needs installation and activation of the plugin. MemberPress provides all the required pages, and all the required settings and the only thing required from our end is to make different membership levels and set up payment to start selling our memberships. It has among the easiest setup process for any membership plugin available for WordPress.

Full control on access restriction:

Using MemberPress, you can restrict posts, pages, custom post types or any type of file available on your website. The area in which MemberPress takes the access restriction to a whole new level is it can even restrict specific parts of a page or post to make it members only. MemberPress is among the very few membership plugins which provide this level of access control for your content.

Deeply integrated with Elementor:

MemberPress is very well integrated with Elementor for design changes of plugin features. Using Elementor, you can edit all the MemberPress pages, manage access restrictions for each page, make a specific template for MemberPress pages, and use exclusive MemberPress Elementor widgets.

Since Elementor is among the biggest and most used page builders available on WordPress, this integration of MemberPress with Elementor provides the plugin with a very big edge over the competition.

All-round Subscription Management:

Like any subscription management system, MemberPress allows users to update, upgrade or cancel their subscription directly from the website. It also ensures that automatic billing is processed at the payment gateway’s end; this ensures that cancellation from the user end, either from the website or from the payment gateway provider, will revoke user access from the membership, providing you with peace of mind that no user has access to membership without paying.

Easy-to-use user dashboard:

The dashboard provided by MemberPress by default for users has all the fields required related to membership; they are also arranged in a simple but effective way. One of the main USPs of MemberPress is the amount of control the user has regarding their membership.

This feature increases user trust in your product and website, hence increasing recurring renewals from existing customers. MemberPress also allows editing this dashboard layout using Elementor, hence making it ideal for a wide range of people.

Highly customizable:

One of the main USPs of MemberPress is that it is highly customizable. From customization of pages to compatibility with a wide range of membership content, MemberPress provides total freedom to us to change it in whatever way we want.

This feature makes it desirable to a wide range of crowds and hence making it among the top membership plugin available for WordPress.

MemberPress Alternatives

MemberPress is an excellent choice for WordPress websites. But if you are not satisfied with its features, there are a few other MemberPress alternatives too. These alternatives offer almost similar functionality and services as MemberPress. You can give them a try before making any decision.

Here’s the list of the most popular alternatives that I would recommend trying out: 

• OptinMonster: A WordPress membership plugin with a free version offering features like payment gateways, content restriction, and a variety of add-ons for extended functionality.
• Restrict Content Pro: A powerful content restriction plugin for WordPress, offering features like payment gateways, built-in integrations, and customizable emails.
• LearnDash: A WordPress LMS plugin, LearnDash is designed for creating and selling online courses, offering features like course builder, quizzes, certificates, and content dripping.
• WooCommerce Memberships: An extension for WooCommerce, this plugin enables selling memberships and restricting content access, integrating seamlessly with the popular eCommerce platform.
• Ultimate Membership Pro: A WordPress membership plugin, Ultimate Membership Pro provides features like multi-level access, content dripping, and payment gateways, allowing for versatile membership site creation.

In my humble opinion, MemberPress is a great plugin that will meet all your needs. But at the same time, other plugins like OptinMonster, can do the job. But, keep in mind that every plugin has its own benefits and limitations. So make sure you explore every aspect of these MemberPress alternatives. 

If you are on the fence about MemberPress, feel free to give these alternatives a try to decide for yourself!

Wrapping things up

There are many great membership plugins available for WordPress. Every plugin has its own USP, and these are the points that give that plugin a unique identity. In a similar manner, MemberPress also has many positive points, which makes it special.

We hope we were able to help you today by deciding whether the MemberPress plugin is ideal for you or not. For any help or suggestions, you can reach out using our contact us page.

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