WordPress as CMS offers a lot of flexibility. Using WordPress, you can make almost any type of website be it e-commerce, blogging, video streaming, social media, membership, etc.
Speaking more about membership-based website, WordPress offers tons of different addon plugins, scripts, etc. Each of these scripts and plugins have it’s own perks and usp. Many of these plugins are highly rated and are used by huge audience. Among this top rated plugins, one of such plugin is MemberPress.
In today’s article, we will cover MemberPress in more depth, we will go through topics like basics of MemberPress, it’s key features and we will also guide you on whether it is suitable for your website or not. Without further due, let’s get started.
Introduction to MemberPress
MemberPress is a membership plugin for WordPress which is originally created by Blair Williams. It is a plugin which will provide you membership based pages, ability to restrict content and make membership-based community on your website.
MemberPress has a policy of 14 day unconditional money-back guarantee which is unique and powerful way to build customer trust. MemberPress currently is used by more than million users with the count increasing day by day. It is also one of the highest rated WordPress membership plugin.
As for the technical requirements for running MemberPress, it requires PHP version 5.6.2 or higher (7.4 and higher is recommended) and MySQL version 5.1.2 and higher is required.
Key features of MemberPress
In any WordPress plugin, the important part to lookout for is the value plugin will add on our website. In general, any plugin should be is easy to use, feature rich, compatible with many other plugins and lightweight.
MemberPress covers all these points along with some of its standout points which are mentioned below in detail.
1. Easy to setup
The very first feature you will notice while setting up MemberPress is it hardly takes any time and effort to set it up and start using it. MemberPress only needs to be installed and activated, all of the membership pages, default membership setting, email notification settings etc. are provided by default.
MemberPress also allows you to easily tweak these settings. It has an interactive and feature rich settings page in which all the settings are arranged in different tabs and overall are hassle free to update.
In our experience using different membership plugins, MemberPress took us least amount of efforts and learning to start using it for our projects.
2. Full control on access restriction
One of the primary goals of any membership plugin is to restrict website content to make it exclusive to membership owners. Using MemberPress, you can restrict post, page, custom post type or any type of file available on your website.
Along with this, in MemberPress you can also restrict specific section of post or page. Very few membership plugins can provide access restriction up to this level.
3. Deeply integrated with page builders like Elementor, Divi
MemberPress provides its own membership pages which we can use directly out of the box. Along with this, it also has very powerful integration with page builders like Elementor, Divi which in turn helps us to further simplify the design modification of this membership pages.
Due to this integration, MemberPress also provides various widgets which can help us to display different plugin related data on other pages. The Elementor integration of MemberPress also allows editing access restriction using its frontend editor. Using these page builders, you can also make different MemberPress page templates which can help you to easily switch between designs whenever required.
4. All round Subscription Management
In any membership plugin, it is important that it should provide user maximum amount of flexibility related to their membership. MemberPress makes sure it allows user to edit, upgrade, cancel or pay in advance for their membership and thus provides all round editing capability and flexibility related to their membership.
MemberPress also ensures that each transaction of automatic billing and membership is processed at the payment gateway end making sure that payment data communication is clear. Due to this, all the transaction statuses are updated in real-time and any cancellation at the gateway end are instantly recognized by the website.
5. Easy to use user dashboard
Displaying users’ data related to their membership in a systematic and clear UI helps to gain user trust for longer-time membership renewal. It is therefore important for any membership plugin to provide a dashboard for users as a default feature.
MemberPress too provides a user dashboard which is simple as well as feature-rich. Due to the integration of MemberPress with different page builders, editing the UI of the user dashboard is also quick and easy.
Due to this flexibility, we feel that MemberPress has the best user dashboard among all the membership plugin available for WordPress.
6. Highly customizable
One of the best usp of MemberPress is that it is highly customizable. MemberPress allows modifying membership page layout, user dashboard page layout, amount of access for each membership, email notification for each membership milestone, etc.
Due to this, it simplifies the user experience for non-technical users too making it ideal for large no of audience.
Thus, because of all these features, MemberPress is among the most practical and value for money membership plugin.
Who should use this plugin?
MemberPress is among the most feature-rich membership plugin available on WordPress, but it comes with a price tag which would be out of budget for many. If you are looking for a lightweight, feature-rich plugin which provides heavy customization for their default page design and provides section-based access control too and you are okay with the premium price tag and yearly license renewal, then MemberPress is ideal for you.
If you are looking for a lightweight, simple plugin which can provide a basic membership period option, collect automatic payment and design is not concern for you then you should look for other alternatives like paid membership pro etc.
Conclusion
Although MemberPress plugin has a premium price tag, it is among the most flexible and feature rich membership plugin available for WordPress. Its ease to use, easy to modify and ability to provide complex membership logic with minimum effort makes it ideal for large no of audience.
Overall it is value for money package to lookout for if you are planning to build membership website. If you have any queries, you can reach out to us using the contact form below or using our contact us link.
Author Bio:
Dhanashree Sawant is a professional WordPress developer and is actively available on Upwork. She is also cofounder of OnlinewithWP which is online website handled by WordPress developers sharing their knowledge and experience related to WordPress.
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