Do you want to boost your revenue further with your WooCommerce site? Selling your products and services might be the mainstream source of income, but if you want to go a step further, you need to create more income generating channels in your site. And one of the most beneficial features you can add to your site is a ‘Membership Plan’. And the best part is that setting up a membership system on your site is quite easy these days with the help of various WooCommerce membership plugins.
There are a lot of WooCommerce membership plugins available online – some are decent and some are excellent. You will have to do some research on different WooCommerce membership plugins before you can decide which one would be the best for your site. So to make things easier for you, we have done most of the research.
In this post, we have compiled a list of top 7 WooCommerce membership plugins in 2020. But before we move on with our list, let’s just discuss a few things about setting up a membership plan for your site.
What are Membership Sites and How Do They Work?
Membership plans are growing popular these days. A lot of websites are launching members-only sections with the help of WooCommerce membership plugins where they can provide exclusive content and products for a membership fee. If you want to start a membership plan for your site, you mainly need the following things:
- A section on your site that only members can access.
- A registration page for customers and visitors to apply as a member.
- A payment plan to accept regular membership fees.
Now that is just the start, and once your membership system is set up nicely, you need to focus on a few more things, such as:
- Creating regular content for members that gives them value for the money they pay.
- Creating special offers and discounts for them on your store.
- Granting them some extra benefits as compared to regular visitors.
- Offering them exclusive services and customized bundled products.
Any of the top WooCommerce membership plugins will ideally have all these functionalities and even more customization options.
And that’s basically how it works – those customers who pay for the membership get access to special content and sections of your site. However, the success of your membership plan depends on your ability to provide those features, information, products, or services that will be worth the money they are willing to pay.
What are the benefits of a Membership Plan?
The reason why many sites are using WooCommerce membership plugins to create a membership plan is because it has a lot of benefits to offer. Let us look at some of the benefits:
Generating extra revenue
Membership plans are an excellent way to boost your site’s income. Of course, you shouldn’t expect to make thousands of dollars from the first month itself. But even if you manage to get just 20 members paying $25 a month, you will be earning an extra $500 every month.
With a little effort, if you can manage to get those numbers up to 100 members, you will make $2500 a month or $30,000 a year. And this is just basic calculations considering that the number stays at 100 members for the whole year. So as your members list grows, you can be making six figures a year solely from your membership plan. Also, the best part is that it’s a highly scalable system – the more members you get, the more money you make.
Excellent Time vs. Money ratio
Another benefit of a membership plan is that you don’t need to invest a whole lot of time into it. It’s isn’t entirely a passive source of income. You cannot and should not expect your membership plan to bring in regular money while you just and observe from the side lines. Having said that, it still isn’t going to be exhaustively time consuming. Therefore, if you play your cards right, you can successfully run a membership site by spending very little time on it.
With any of the good WooCommerce membership plugins, setting up and managing your membership plan can be a simple and quick task. After that, you need to plan in advance what features or content your members can avail in return for their money. So most of the time will go into the planning stage, and if you have a solid plan then the execution will be much faster. So if all goes well, you can make a huge income by spending very little time on your membership site.
Building a loyal community
Membership sites are not just about you earning some extra bucks. You can essentially build an interactive community of loyal customers with an excellent membership plan. First, you must ensure that your plan provides something valuable to the members so they don’t feel it’s just a cash grab. If your members love what you offer them, you will successfully create a loyal community of members who will probably stick with you for many years. That’s why you should go for one of the best WooCommerce membership plugins available online.
Easier to Get Members
Don’t get us wrong. When we say it’s easier to get members, we don’t mean that you can easily get hundreds of members in just a few months. What we mean is that converting an existing customer to a member is easier than converting a new visitor to a paying customer. You’re existing customers are already associated with your site and what it offers. They have already spent some money on your products or services. So getting to sign up for a membership plan will require less convincing.
Now that you have a decent idea of how membership sites work and what benefits they offer, we hope that you are excited to get started with one of the best WooCommerce membership plugins for your own site. We have reviewed all the well-known plugins available online, and carefully picked the best 7 WooCommerce membership plugins in 2020.
Top 7 WooCommerce Membership Plugins in 2020
YITH Membership is another excellent plugin to launch a membership plan on your site. Let’s dive straight into the features that this WooCommerce membership plugin has to offer.
Creating Multiple Membership Plans
This plugin allows you to create different membership plans where each section will have different content. It is perfect if your site deals with multiple niches, so that you can create a separate membership program for each niche.
Access to Multiple Membership for Every Member
If you have created different membership plans in your site, you can allow members to join more than one plan if they wish to. You can also set up a payment plan where members pay separately for each membership or purchase a plan that grants them access to multiple membership for a fixed price.
Messaging Widget
The plugin also offers a messaging widget as a shortcut for members to instantly get in touch with you or a staff member. With just a few clicks, your members can contact the administrators in case of any queries.
Content Customization
You can customize the content of your membership section based on various factors. Some of the options available are:
- Making the content visible only for members.
- Offering downloadable content for members.
- Making content visible members after a specific time of purchasing the plan.
Other features of this WooCommerce membership plugin are:
- Creating products section for members only.
- Choosing what message to display when a non-member tries to access members-only content.
- Allowing customers to become members by purchasing a certain product.
- Free or discounted shipping for members.
- Discounts and special offers for members.
- A separate admin dashboard for staffs.
- Customizing email notifications.
YITH membership is priced at $99.99 for a single site, $249.99 for 6 sites, and $399.99 for 30 sites. All these plans offer one year of update and support. This is one of the most popular WooCommerce membership plugins online.
Restrict Content Pro is an excellent WooCommerce membership plugin with simple but powerful features. Here’s what you can expect from this plugin:
Members Dashboard
With this plugin, your members can view all the important information about their plans with a dedicated members’ dashboard. They can also upgrade or cancel their membership anytime from the dashboard.
Level-Based Plans
You can create different levels of membership plans with this WooCommerce membership plugin. The plans can even start from free or trail versions, and gradually increase in price as well as the amount of content and features they provide.
Scalable Membership Plans
When you set up different levels of membership, this plugin also allows members to move to a higher plan or drop to a lower plan by compensating the difference. For example, if a member with a $10 plan wishes to upgrade to the $15 plan, they only need to pay a small amount based on how much time is left on their current membership and the amount they have already payed.
Other features of this plugin are:
- Integrated with multiple payment gateway to make transactions easier.
- Create discount codes and special offers for members.
- Automated emails for all important notifications such as payment, expiry of membership, new member registration and much more.
- A separate admin dashboard to control and manage the memberships for all members from a single page.
- A reports section for statistics and analytical insights.
Pricing for Restrict Content Pro is as follows:
- $99/year for 1 site
- $149/year for 5 sites
- $249/year for unlimited sites with extra add-ons
- $499 (one-time payment) for unlimited sites, extra add-ons, and lifetime support and updates.
All in all, it is a reasonably priced and one of the best professional WooCommerce membership plugins available online.
MemberPress is one of the best WooCommerce membership plugins when it comes to simple and easy features. You can get started with this plugin with very little effort on your part. Take a look at the features that this plugin offers:
Multiple Pricing Options
With just a few clicks, you can create different pricing plans of your choice for the membership plans. And it’s not just about the prices. With different themes and layouts, you can customize your pricing page to look neat and professional.
Content Management
MemberPress offers you great flexibility in handling the membership content. You can set your exclusive members content to publish automatically over time and even create settings for the content to access be revoked for certain members after specific time. You have total control over what content is visible, who can see them, and for how long they have access to it.
Highly Convenient Payments
MemberPress can be integrated with multiple payment gateways for easy transactions. When a member purchases, upgrades, or cancels their plans, MemberPress will manage the billing with the payment gateway so you don’t have to worry about managing the transactions from your end at all.
This plugin has many more features to offer such as:
- Create and control different discount coupons.
- Timely reports to give you all the statistical data you need.
- Affiliate program also included when you but the MemberPress Pro version.
- Compatible with multiple WordPress themes.
- Create an interactive forum for members to interact with each other.
There are three pricing plans for this plugin:
- Basic: $249/year for one site
- Plus: $399/year for 2 sites
- Pro: $559/year for 5 sites, includes Affiliate Royale plugin as well.
All plans come with a 14-days refund policy so you can try out this plugin without any risks.
Members only is the next product in our list of top WooCommerce membership plugins. You will find the following features in this plugin:
Content Restriction
There are mainly four levels of content restriction that you can manage with Members Only. You can restrict content based on pages, products, categories, or the entire site. If you want to build an entirely separate membership site, then this plugin will be a suitable choice.
Content Protection
In order to restrict the content and protect them, this plugin offers quite a few options. You can set passwords on restricted pages, posts, and products. These passwords can be set to work for all restricted content or you can even set different passwords for various sections. Then you can notify the appropriate members about the passwords so only they can access the content.
Create User Roles
A useful feature of this plugin is that you can create different user roles and assign them to members. So it makes it easy for you to control the accessibility and permissions as you can assign access and permission to different user roles instead of individual members.
There are many more features in this plugin such as:
- Set expiry date for memberships.
- Allow or restrict certain payment and shipping methods for specific members.
- Launch exclusive products for members.
- Shortcut menus and widgets for easy access.
- Choose what message to display when non-members try to access restricted content.
Members Only plugin has 4 different pricing plans:
- Basic Yearly: $59/year for 1 site
- Pro Yearly: $99/year for unlimited sites
- Basic Lifetime: $149 for 1 site
- Pro Lifetime: $249 for unlimited sites
14-days refund policy is applicable on all the plans.
Due to its various features and one of the cheapest and best pricing plans, we have picked Members Only as one of the top 8 WooCommerce membership plugins.
Paid Member Subscriptions is a simple plugin that seamlessly brings together multiple aspects of a successful membership plan for any site. They have a lot of well-designed features which are explained below.
Shortcodes for Membership Forms and Managing account
With this plugin, you can instantly add membership registration forms to any page on your website with the help of shortcodes. The registered members can also be allowed to manage their account info with shortcodes. It makes the experience fast and easy for both you and your members.
Flexible Content Access and Restriction
Another excellent feature of this WooCommerce Membership plugin is that you have full control over how you put out members-only content.
- Schedule the content to be released automatically at certain times.
- Control which members get access to which content.
- Restrict content based on posts, pages, and categories.
Membership Management
You get multiple options to manage your membership plants with this plugin. You can create different tiers or levels of membership so the members can upgrade to better plans it they desire. And you view and control all details of your members from an easily accessible dashboard.
Some other features of this plugin include:
- Creating different payment plans such as free, trial, monthly subscription, or one-time payment.
- Can be integrated with PayPal and Stripe.
- Sent email notifications to members and even control the design of your emails with in-built templates.
- A report section which provides data and statistics on different aspects of your membership plans.
These and many more features are available on Paid Member Subscriptions under two pricing plans. The ‘Hobbyist’ plan costs $69, supports one site and offers 1 year of updates. The ‘Pro’ version costs $149 for one year of updates along with unlimited sites and extra add-ons. So looking at all the features and the reasonable pricing, it is definitely one of the best WooCommerce membership plugins.
This WooCommerce membership plugin has many easy-to-use features that will help you to conveniently create and sell a membership plan on your site. Let’s take a look at their primary features:
Page Customization
MemberMouse offers you a lot of options to customize different pages, such as the home and accounts page, login/logout and confirmation pages, and forget/reset password page. You can make these pages as simple and straightforward or as dynamic and interactive as you deem fit.
Offers both Free and Paid Memberships
This WooCommerce membership plugin allows you to create both free and paid membership plans. The free membership plan will have limited content and access but can be useful to give your customers and visitors a basic experience of what they can gain from a paid membership.
Product Selling
This plugin offers many options to create and sell any product and not just your membership plan. You can sell the membership as a product on its own and you can also add other digital and physical products inside your membership plan which remains exclusive for paid members only.
Content Access Options
There a lot of different options to control the access to members’ content using this WooCommerce Membership plugin. You have full control over which content can be viewed by which users, and you can even hide the content for non-members. You can also limit the login attempts from the same device or IP, prevent users to login from multiple devices or IP address at once, and even create a separate protected members section.
Other features include:
- Includes affiliate program integration as well.
- Can integrate with different payment services.
- Send email reminders to members whose plans are about to expire.
- Automatic release of content at specific time intervals.
- Exclusive discounts and special offers for members.
This WooCommerce membership plugin offers three flexible plans to choose from. The plugin itself is heavy on features and very extensive, and its pricing plans are as follows:
- Builder: $33.17/month for up to 5000 members.
- Advanced: $82.17/month for up to 50,000 members along with advanced reporting and management features.
- Premium: $248.17/month for up to 100,000 members, includes all features of advanced version along with phone support and extra integrations.
WooCommerce Memberships is a great plugin that seamlessly brings together multiple aspects of a successful membership plan for any site. They have a lot of well-designed features which are explained below.
Flexible membership options
With this plugin, you can:
- Assign memberships manually to any customer you want.
- Sell your membership as an individual product for a one-time price
- Offer membership to customers who purchase a specific product.
Flexible Content Access and Restriction
Another excellent feature of this WooCommerce Membership plugin is that you have full control over how you put out members-only content.
- Schedule the content to be released automatically at certain times.
- Control which members get access to which content.
- Set requirements for members to get access certain content, for example a particular post can only be viewed by members who are at least one month old.
Membership Notes
This feature allows you to quickly note down all important info about a particular member so you can keep track of things easily. You can even use this feature to communicate with the members, as you can send the note to customers through email, or by clicking on a ‘Notify Member’ box.
Some other features of this plugin include:
- Creating a members-only store with exclusive products.
- Setting cheaper shipping rates for members.
- Offering special discounts to members.
- Design your membership plan as a subscription (monthly payments) or a fixed time plan (for example a one-time payment for one year of membership).
These and many more features are available on WooCommerce Memberships for the price of $199 per year. The good thing is that they have a 30-day refund policy in case you are not happy with the plugin. So looking at all the features and the reasonable pricing, it is definitely one of the best WooCommerce membership plugins.
Final Verdict
All these WooCommerce membership plugins are equipped with multiple features that allow you to create, manage, and customize a membership plan for your WooCommerce site. The main difference lies in their advanced features and prices. If you’re setting up a membership site for the first time, you can go with any of the lower priced WooCommerce membership plugins in the list above. But if you want a plugin for a professional or corporate site, then you should choose the ones with more advanced features, such as Restrict Content Pro.
In the end, it will be your decision to evaluate these plugins so you can know which one is best for your website. And as a final note, we would like to remind you once again, that even after successfully starting a membership plan on your WooCommerce site, you must ensure at all costs that your plan actually offers something valuable to the members in return. After that, you can grow your membership and significantly boost the income for your site with the help of above mentioned WooCommerce membership plugins.