MemberPress Review: How Good Is It? Worth The Money?

MemberPress Review: How Good Is It? Worth The Money? (2020)
  • By Dianna Gunn
  • July 4, 2020

One of the best ways to build a sustainable business online is to create a paid membership program. If you’re a WordPress user, you can do this easily by using a membership plugin. The following MemberPress review takes a comprehensive look at one of the most popular plugins for this purpose.

Promoted as the “all in one” membership plugin for WordPress, MemberPress is known for its easy setup and numerous integrations.  In this guide, I will take a look at the following:

  • What to look for in a membership plugin
  • MemberPress Features
  • How to use MemberPress
  • Pricing
  • The overall quality of MemberPress
  • What types of businesses will benefit most from the MemberPress plugin

By the end, you’ll know whether or not MemberPress is a good option for you and your site.

Let’s jump in…

What to look for in a membership plugin

There are several things to consider when looking for a membership plugin:

Content dripping. This is the practice of releasing content to members at pre-set intervals over a period of time. For example, a course that sends modules out by email once a week. This is a common feature in membership plugins, but some are limited to the creation of locked website content.

Content expiration. This option allows you to limit the amount of time members can access certain content for.

Community creation. One of the best ways to get people invested in your membership site is to turn it into a community. Some membership plugins offer built-in community functions like forums. Others offer integrations with specialized forum plugins.

Subscription types. Some plugins may only allow you to create one type of paid membership, while others offer tiered payment plans.

Subscription management. Your members should be able to change their subscription level, pause their subscription, or cancel their subscription at any time.

Coupons. You want to be able to offer coupons and other types of discounts to new members during promotional periods.

Ecommerce integration. If you might eventually want to sell locked content as products, look for a plugin capable of integrating with WooCommerce or another ecommerce plugin.

Email marketing integration. The membership plugin you choose should integrate with your current email marketing service provider. This will allow you to send automated members-only campaigns via email.

Customization. Look for a plugin that allows you to customize the checkout process. You may also want to be able to customize the appearance of pages involved in the checkout process.

Payment processing options. Some plugins are only compatible with PayPal. Others accept payment via credit card using Authorize.net or Stripe. To maximize your money making capabilities, look for a plugin that allows customers to choose their preferred payment method.

Ease of use. The best membership plugin is the one that feels intuitive to use. You should be able to set things up without extensive tech knowledge.

Documentation and support. When you don’t know what to do, you should have an easy time finding answers. The membership plugin you choose should have comprehensive tutorials available. You also want to consider what level of support is available and look at reviews to determine how helpful the support actually is.

MemberPress review

MemberPress Review: How Good Is It? Worth The Money? (2020) 1

MemberPress features

The following features are available with the Basic plan of MemberPress:

  • Easy setup
  • Unlimited membership levels
  • Ability to create paid content subscriptions
  • Fully customizable access rules for all types of content
  • Fully customizable pricing pages
  • Customizable coupons
  • Content dripping
  • Subscription management options for users
  • Easy connection to PayPal Standard, PayPal Express Checkout, and Stripe
  • Detailed reporting
  • Comprehensive documentation including an excellent user manual and an email course
  • (official features list)

How to use MemberPress

Get MemberPress working on your WordPress site

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for the plan you want. The sign up process is simple, requiring only your email address and your payment. Once you have paid, you will be prompted to enter some information about your business.

MemberPress 1

Once you have entered the appropriate information, you’ll be redirected to the overview tab of the MemberPress dashboard. Click on the “Downloads” link.

MemberPress review: MemberPress dashboard

This will take you to a page where you can download the MemberPress plugin. You can also find the activation key, information about your renewal date, and a full list of MemberPress add-ons here.

Click on the orange “Download” button to grab your plugin.

MemberPress Download

Once you’ve downloaded MemberPress, open your WordPress admin panel in a new tab. Select “Plugins > Add new” from the menu. This will take you to a page where you can upload a plugin or search for plugins in the WordPress database. Click “Upload plugin”, select the MemberPress ZIP file, and press “Install”.

Upload plugin

WordPress will then unpack the ZIP file. This should only take a couple of minutes. You will automatically be asked to activate the plugin when it finishes installing.

Next, go to the “Settings” area of the MemberPress plugin. Copy + paste the license key from your MemberPress account into the box provided on this page. This will ensure that your MemberPress account automatically receives updates.

Connect a payment gateway

The first thing you want to do once the MemberPress plugin is installed and activated is connect a payment gateway. To do this, return to the “Settings” area of the MemberPress plugin and navigate to the “Payments” tab. Once there, click on the grey “+” button.

MemberPress review: payment gateway setup

A box will appear to ask for some basic information. Name the payment method and select the appropriate gateway from the dropdown menu.

MemberPress payment gateway setup

Next, MemberPress will ask you to fill out some account information for the payment gateway you have chosen. This will vary based on the specific platform you have chosen.

When all of the information is completed, you can click “Update Options” at the bottom of the page to save your new payment method.

Create your first membership level

Now that you’ve connected a payment gateway, it’s time for this MemberPress review to explore how to create membership levels. To do this, you’ll need to click on the “Memberships” link in your sidebar. This will take you to an area where you can manage your membership tiers. Press the “Add new” button near the top of the page. This will take you to the membership creation page.

At the top of the page, you’ll find areas for the level title and description. These areas use the WordPress blogging software, allowing you to format your membership description as you would any other page.

Membership creation

The right sidebar on this page allows you to set the terms for this membership level. Enter the desired price first. This will unlock the ability to choose between one time payments and recurring payments. If you choose recurring payments, you will be given further options for customization:

MemberPress review: Membership creation 2

You can require recurring payments on a variety of intervals:

  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Every 3 months
  • Every 6 months
  • Yearly

You can also choose to include a free or paid trial period. If you choose to include a trial period, you can specify the precise number of days and cost of the trial.

Next, scroll down the page to the Membership Options area.

MemberPress review: Membership options

This area allows you to customize numerous aspects of the user experience at this level:

  • The “Thank you” page customers see upon purchase
  • The welcome email
  • Payment methods
  • What information is requested from users
  • Who can purchase this level of membership
  • The appearance of the price box
  • Where customers with this level of membership are sent when they log into your website

When you have finished customizing this part of the membership, you are ready to publish using the “Publish” button in the right sidebar. You may also choose to add a featured image to the membership, although this is not required.

Create rules

The next step of building memberships is to create rules for how they can interact with your content. You can do this by going to the “Rules” section of MemberPress and clicking the “Add new” button near the top.

Rules 1

This will take you to a page where you can determine the specifics of your new rule. You can choose what content is protected by this rule and what requirements users must meet to access the content.

MemberPress review: MemberPress rules 2

Further down the page, you’ll find two checkboxes that allow you to enable content dripping or expiration. If you choose one of these options, MemberPress will prompt you to specify what triggers this event. You must also specify the length of time between the triggering action and the release of this content.

MemberPress review: content dripping

Once you are satisfied with these settings, you can scroll back up the page and click “Save Rule” in the right sidebar. This will immediately put the rule into action.

Add-ons and integrations

You can further improve your membership offerings with MemberPress add-ons. There are two main types of add-ons included with the Basic MemberPress plan:

  • Email marketing integrations. MemberPress offers integrations with numerous email marketing tools including AWeber, Constant Contact, and MailPoet (read our review). These integrations allow you to create automated members-only email campaigns.
  • MemberPress expansions. These are add-ons created to give MemberPress additional functions, like the creation of PDF invoices.

MemberPress also offers some integrations with other tools, like bbPress.

All of these add-ons can be installed on your WordPress site with a single click. If the add-on connects to an outside service, you’ll need to manually connect MemberPress to your account with the service.

Analytics

To review the success of your membership program, go to the “Reports” area of MemberPress. This will take you to a page where you can view the details of how members are interacting with your site:

Reporting

This page also features line graphs to track different types of transactions.

Reporting 2

You can access even more detailed MemberPress analytics through the Pro subscription to the MonsterInsights plugin. For the purposes of this MemberPress review, we are going to assume that you do not wish to purchase any additional plugins.

MemberPress pricing

The Basic MemberPress plan, which we explored in this MemberPress review, is available for $249/year. At this level, MemberPress costs roughly the same as other top membership plugins like WP Courseware.

MemberPress also offer two other plans:

  • Available for $399/year. Offers all features of the Basic plan on up to two sites. This plan also allows you to accept payments through Authorize.net, sell Corporate memberships, and access more integrations.
  • Available for $549/year. Offers all features of the Plus plan on up to five sites, as well as exclusive add-ons. Last but certainly not least, choosing the Plus plan also gives you access to Affiliate Royale, a plugin that allows you to create an affiliate program.

MemberPress review: my experience

MemberPress is, for the most part, a real pleasure to work with. The interface operates smoothly as part of the WordPress admin panel and even the most advanced features are easy to work with.

I did, however, find myself disappointed with some of the things not included in this plugin. Several of the add-ons provide capabilities that feel like they should have been built into the plugin, like the ability to add a Captcha to the signup process.

Another thing I found lacking was the form building capacity. There is no ability to choose custom fields for the user login, registration, or account forms. It is also impossible to customize the appearance of these forms.

MemberPress review: the pros

  • Easy setup
  • Highly customizable membership levels
  • Ability to create as many membership levels as you want
  • Customizable content dripping
  • Customizable content expiration
  • Integration with numerous email marketing services and other tools
  • Highly customizable coupons
  • Ability to segment membership levels with Groups
  • Comprehensive reporting

MemberPress review: the cons

  • Lack of customization for registration and login forms
  • No lifetime purchase option, making the plugin quite expensive over time
  • Features that should be built-in are sometimes billed as add-ons
  • Lack of built-in forum technology

Is MemberPress for you?

MemberPress is a simple, effective plugin for creating a membership site. This plugin is great if you want to:

  • Build a simple membership site with walled content
  • Run courses
  • Offer subscriptions to your content

However, MemberPress isn’t for everyone. If you are looking to build a paid community, you may want to consider a membership plugin with built-in forum technology, like LearnDash (read our review). You may also want to consider another plugin if MemberPress doesn’t offer integration with your email marketing service, such as WP Courseware.

Used/using MemberPress? Thoughts?

MemberPress Review: How Good Is It? Worth The Money? (2020) 2

Dianna Gunn is a freelance SEO strategist, consultant and editor. She’s obsessed with all things marketing and is always studying the latest developments and strategies. Find out more about her at www.thedabbler.ca.

Keep reading the article at WinningWP. The article was originally written by Dianna Gunn on 2020-07-04 07:11:41.

The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the product, We may receive an affiliate commission.

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