What is a Membership Plugin? Everything You Need to Know

Want to monetize content and enhance member’s experience on your WordPress website? A membership website is the best solution. But to make it happen, you’ll need a Membership plugin. 

The best part? You don’t need any complex coding, tech skills or a big budget for a membership plugin.

In this ultimate guide, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about membership plugins. From what it has to offer to how it helps you create a membership site. We can also help decide which membership plugin is best for you based on your requirements. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

What is a Membership Plugin?

A membership plugin is a tool that lets you control access to your specific content.

With a membership plugin, you’ll easily be able to create gated content and to access it, your members will have to buy your membership. You can also create different membership plans with different prices and different access rights to your content.

If we take ARMember for example which is a popular WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to protect and monetize your content with rules for individual pages, categories, URLs, or any content area of choice.

You can also tease out a particular part of your content by partially restricting content. Moreover, you can also provide user specific private content for a better personalized experience.

The best part? It also comes with powerful features such as drip content, robots set of payment gateways, third party platforms and community features to enhance your member’s experience. 

In a nutshell, a Membership plugin’s main feature is to protect your content and control access to it. However, plugins like ARMember go the extra mile and offer powerful features and functionalities to create a full-fledged membership site.

How Do Membership Plugins Work?

Let’s say you have an OTT membership site. You upload your premium content aka videos, series, live streaming and all. Now you want only your members to get access to your premium content in order to make money online. So what will you do?

In a real life scenario, you might say assign a guard so it lets only authorized members in. Well to your surprise, a membership plugin works the same way. It’ll act like a gatekeeper (guard) of your membership site and will make sure only the users with specific memberships can access the specific content.

Now let’s understand how a membership plugin will work for your membership site in simple terms.

• Whenever a user buys your membership plan, they automatically get access to that specific content. 
• As the owner of a membership website, you can set content access rules and decide what’s free and what’s paid. Also set automated notification, payments, create login forms and more. 
• Now you just have to focus on your business while the member plugin will take care of rest automatically. 

Types of Membership Models

To build a sustainable membership site, you have to monetize your content with different membership models with different pricings and access rights.

Yet this has to be done in the right way. Choosing the right membership model is not all about setting up prices. It’s about deciding how your business will make money out of it, how users perceive your content and if they become a lifetime customer or churn after a short time.

You must have seen popular membership sites like Netflix and Amazon; And how they offer multiple membership plans with unique perks for all. You have to do the same to grow your membership business.

Thus, here are the different types of membership models you can use:

Free membership

This membership model is considered best for attracting new members. Let’s agree that visitors don’t want to risk directly jumping on a paid plan. So for that case, this free membership model can work.

A free membership model can be the most beneficial model if you are new in this membership business. It can help you generate leads, attract potential members and increase brand awareness.

Here are a few benefits of free membership model:

• Lead generation
• Expanding brand awareness
• Builds trusts 
• Better chances for upselling paid plans
• Perfect for building online community 
• Good if your membership website relays on ads revenue

While this may be a good business model, this has to be considered and planned carefully. Make sure you only offer a limited amount of content to give new visitors a taste of paid membership. Also, not too less that they might start thinking your paid membership will also be the same.

Thus, this membership model needs strategic planning and if implemented in a smart way, it can be the most beneficial one.

Lifetime or Per-Per-Access Membership

A lifetime membership model is well suited for those businesses who offer static content. Suppose you are a coach or tutor who wants to launch an online course on “Basics of IT”, with 3 hour duration and downloadable resources such as e-books or digital notes. Now if you are not planning to further expand this course, you can easily give it access under Lifetime membership.

Also, suppose if students only want e-books and notes, not the whole course via lifetime membership, then you can use the Pay-per-post model. It allows your visitors to pay for what they want only.

Here are a few benefits of lifetime or per-per-access membership model:

• Simple pricing due to one-time payment 
• Potentially higher customer lifetime value
• Reduced churn rates 
• Easy to attract price-sensitive customers
• Perfect for selling digital products like templates and E-books.

However, remember this model also needs a lot of payment as strategic planning. Also make sure the lifetime value of a customer doesn’t exceed the cost of the lifetime membership.

Recurring Subscriptions Membership

This is one of the most popular membership models out there. If you are looking for a way to generate recurring revenue, this is a perfect model. This membership model allows you to set up multiple revenue cycles like weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. for user payment flexibility as well as consistent income.

One of the best advantages of this model is predictable revenue. You can generate a stable and continuous income stream, perfect for businesses that offer ongoing access to service, content, or community.

Here are a few benefits of recurring subscriptions membership model:

• Provides a steady income 
• Foster loyalty and customer lifetime value
• Reduces cost of attracting new customer
• Better customer engagement 
• Subscriptions gives better data insights of customers
• Higher chance for Upselling and Cross-selling

This is one of the most used membership models yet you must have to strategize it properly otherwise it might fall back.

Hybrid Membership

Ever thought of coming all these membership models into one? That’s exactly the hybrid model. It simply combines all the pros of free and paid memberships to create a perfect custom membership plan.

Let’s say you run a fitness website. Now you can allow free, signed up users to access basic workouts and community features but for advanced and personalized training or one-to-one sessions, they need to opt for paid memberships

Here are a few benefits of Hybrid membership model:

• Attracts a more audience
• Combines different revenue streams for more potential revenue 
• Offers more flexibility for customers and members
• Tests and combines different membership models, without settling for one only

This may be the easiest to choose yet it needs proper management in order to avoid future confusions and errors. Also, make sure not to over complicate your membership pricing structure. Customers like simplified pricing models with clear comparative perks.

Do You Need a Membership Plugin for Your WordPress Site?

Ever wondered if you actually even need all advanced features and a membership plugin itself?

Well, you are not alone. This is a common thing to consider before investing your time and money on a membership plugin. You must have to make sure it actually helps your business to grow and also grows alongside you.

Here are some signs that say yes. You need a membership plugin if:

• You are a blogger, coach, or creator who wants to monetize their content.
• You want to generate recurring revenue from your exclusive content.
• You want to build a high-end online community with exclusive forums, discussion groups and other members-only features. 
• You want to upscale your existing membership site into a full blown membership business. 
• You want a platform to offer your online courses and digital products and manage access to them. 

If any of this matches like your future plan, then a membership plugin can be the best investment for your membership business.

However, you actually don’t need a membership plugin if you are planning to make a:

• Fully public websites
• Local communities
• Brochure style site and so on.

Common Use Cases for Membership Plugins

Membership plugins are used in multiple sectors of business and industries.

Now that you are sure about getting a membership plugin, let’s take a look at the most common use cases for using a membership plugin.

• Online Course: Many coaches and educational institutes use membership plugins for creating and managing lessons, quizzes, and e-books. 

• Subscription Services: If your business offers subscription boxes and digital products, you can easily manage and track all your services with a membership plugin. 

• Premium Content Websites: You can protect your website’s content with a membership plugin. Whether it’s a podcast, OTT series, blog or newsletters, you can easily manage everything at one place. 

• Community Forums: Membership plugins are perfect if you want to create and manage a high-end community with awesome gamification elements and social community features.

Key Benefits of Using a Membership Plugin

A membership plugin goes beyond just protecting your content. It allows you to create robust membership plans, automate subscription management and email notifications along with flexible payment collection options for generating revenue. 

Monetize and Protect Your Content

A powerful membership plugin helps you protect your exclusive content with advanced content access rules.

ARMember protects your content with its advanced set of content restriction rules. It comes with an easy to use user interface so you can restrict access of any content with just a simple checkbox and toggle button.

With ARMember, you can smoothly set content protection access rules for your WordPress pages, posts, custom posts, post taxonomy, navigation links, archives and more. Also, all new pages or posts you create will automatically be created with default access rules you set in the global setting.

Collect Membership Payments

Another benefit of using a membership plugin is super quick automatic payment collection for your monetized content. Multiple popular plugins smoothly connect with payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, automating recurring payments and subscription management.

The more, The merrier. This also goes for payment gateways as your members will get more flexibility to pay for your membership with their preferred payment method.

A membership plugin also supports multiple payment options and multiple revenue cycles like weekly, monthly, yearly and so on for offering a flexible payment process.

With ARMember, you get over 21+ popular payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce, and more for a fast and secured payment.

Schedule and Drip content your content

Imagine releasing your content like a Netflix series, episode by episode for keeping your members excited and engaged. If you also want this amazing feature then you can take advantage of the drip content feature for scheduled content.

Drip content is a process of releasing your content over a period of time. It helps keep members excited for new content. Worth mentioning, this advanced feature comes already inbuilt in ARMember.

With ARMember, you can easily add new drip content rules alongside 5 different types of drip rules.

• Immediately
• After certain time of subscription
• Specific date onward (range)
• After certain time of post is published
• After certain time of post is last modified

These drip rules are simple to set and enhance member engagement and retention. Thus if you are also looking to offer a personalized experience to your members, drip content can help a lot.

Enhanced Community Engagement

A membership plugin helps you create a dedicated online community that fosters a feeling of trust and belonging. Unlike open social media platforms, these communities can be for exclusive and authorized members online.

With membership plugin, you can enhance your community with its amazing social media like feature but more exclusive. Mostly it offers member profiles, forum and discussions boards, members-only area, personalized recommendations and gamification elements.

Worth mentioning, ARMember gives you all you need to boost your community. You can build a meaningful on-site connection with your members with its ready-to-go public member profiles, fully customizable directory templates, flawless BuddyPress/BuddyBoss Forum Support along with awesome gamification elements. 

These awesome gamification elements include badges, rewards, and points. These are best for gamifying your LMS websites and gym or fitness membership websites.

Furthermore, you can also enable members to create subsites to run their own network within your WordPress membership website.

Offer Amazing Discount Coupons and Gifts

Everyone loves discounts and gifts. It is one of the best ways to attract more customers and keep your existing members happy. If you also want to offer amazing coupon codes and discounts to your loyal members, a membership plugin is your best solution.

A membership plugin allows you to create and manage discount coupon codes. You can control everything from how many times they can be used, their expiration dates and more.

If you are planning to use the ARMember membership plugin then you are in luck. ARMember comes with 57+ in-built addons such as coupons management. It allows you to create and manage up to 1000 discount codes in just a few clicks.

Moreover, you can also take advantage of its premium Gift Membership Addon to let your members gift your membership.

Automation of Important Tasks

With a membership plugin, you can automate most of your important tasks. The membership system can save a lot of your time by automating multiple things which used to require manual work before.

You can automate user signups, collection of payments, refund process, cancellation process, forgot password emails, welcome notification and expiration notification, access permissions and so much more.

There’s no end to this list but with a membership plugin, you can let the system handle everything in background while you focus on growing your business.

ARMember membership plugin can automate everything you can name. It’s super easy to automatically streamline all your important tasks such as sending automated emails for subscription events, processing payments and syncing user data.

More interesting, you can send automatic reminders and notifications via popular medium such as Emails, WhatsApp and SMS for better reach.

How to Choose the Right Membership Plugin for Your Site

As we move forward, we understand the awesome benefits of using a membership plugin.

However, not all membership plugins are the same. While the core features are the same, it’s additional features, no useful integrations and beginner friendliness makes the whole difference.

Thus, here are a few factors to keep in mind before choosing any membership plugin for your WordPress membership website.

• Easy to use: Make sure it’s super easy to use even for beginners and non-tech savvy people. We recommend going for plugins that are easy to set up, have beginner-friendly dashboards and come with detailed documentation in simple words.

• Key features: Look for both basic and advanced features such as drip content, content restriction, payment integrations, community features, scalability and more.

• Good support: A good customer and technical support team can help a lot for troubleshooting any issue in future.

• Pricing: Always look for a plugin which fits with your budget and also offers money worth features and functionalities. If it’s a free version, that’s your golden chance.

• Rating: It is always advised to check ratings and reviews before investing into any membership plugin to avoid future troubles.

Best WordPress Membership Plugin Examples

There are dozens of membership plugins in the WordPress plugin market, everyone claiming themselves as best. Yet, the one that steals the spotlight as the best example of membership plugins is ARMember.

ARMember is a powerful and easy to use WordPress membership plugin, offering a complete membership management solution. It lets you create a countless number of membership plans with different access rights and pricing.

No matter whether you want to build an online coaching platform or a premium Content platform, ARMember is an all-in-one membership plugin and best for all use cases.

It is one of the best plugins out there for both beginners and advanced users. It comes with advanced features such as in-built community features, advanced drip content rules, in-built form builder, along with over 21+ payment gateways for flexibility and scalability and has over 50k happy customers globally.

Key Features of ARMember:

• Powerful content restriction and drip content rules
• Simple drag and drop interface for creating forms
• Supports popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and more. 
• Powerful Addons such as Online Courses, Affiliate, Social Community and more.
• Over 57+ in-built addons for free
• Multiple third party integrations like WooCommerce, MailChimp, GetResponse and so on. 
• Fully customizable user profile and directory templates
• In-built form builder for creating your own stylish and captcha free login and registration forms.

That’s why, ARMember is the best example of a complete and all-in-one membership plugin for WordPress.

However, there are many other popular examples of membership plugin you can consider such as:

• MemberPress:  A popular membership plugin with powerful content restriction, subscription management, course building and automated billing features. Compare it with ARMember.
• Paid Memberships Pro: This plugin is well-known due to its flexible membership levels with different access rights and pricing for each. Compared with ARMember.
• Simple Membership:  It is a free, flexible and easy to use WordPress membership plugin for creating membership plans.
• Restrict Content Pro: Restrict Content Pro is also another great example of the best membership plugin, allowing you to protect your content in all ways possible.
• Ultimate Member: Ultimate Member is a perfect choice if you want to focus more on building communities with membership. 

Final Thoughts: Are WordPress Membership Plugins Worth It?

In a nutshell, A membership plugin is a powerful tool for creating and managing your membership site. It allows you to protect your premium content with a paywall and set content access rules based on membership plans.

Lastly, it’s time for the final question, “Are WordPress membership plugins worth it?”

The answer is clear as day. A membership plugin is worth your time and investment if you are looking to monetize your content and generate recurring revenue. It comes with a robust set of powerful addons, payment integration, content access rules, drip content and more. 

Thus, choose your right membership plugin now and get started!

FAQs About WordPress Membership Plugins

What is the best membership plugin for WordPress?

ARMember is the best membership plugin for WordPress with a robust set of advanced features. You can create unlimited numbers of websites with different access rules and pricing. It is ideal for both beginners and advanced users.

How to Create a Membership Site with WordPress?

Here are the simple steps for creating a membership site with WordPress:

• Install and activate your membership plugin 
• Create your membership plans and set access rules and pricing.
• Create your gated content or member-only pages.
• Set up payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal. 
• Lastly, launch your site and manage members through its user friendly dashboard.

Is WordPress good for membership sites?

Yes, WordPress is the perfect for creating and managing a membership site. It offers multiple WordPress plugins and themes with a friendly user interface for your membership site.

Read this also:

• Build a Successful Online Membership Business with ARMember
• Subscriptions vs Memberships: Which Model is More Engaging?
• Restrict Content in WordPress Easily with ARMember