LifterLMS vs MemberPress ( Best Membership Website For 2025?)
Compare LifterLMS vs MemberPress to find the best WordPress LMS plugin for your site. Features, pricing, and ease of use revealed.
In this video, we dive deep into the world of online course and membership site creation by comparing two popular platforms: LifterLMS and MemberPress. We explore their features, pricing, ease of use, and integrations to help you determine which is best for your needs. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, this video will provide valuable insights.
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 131. In this episode, we’re going to do a comparison between one of the most popular WordPress learning management system plugins and one of the most popular membership plugins. This causes a lot of confusion. What is the difference? I don’t personally think there is, but what we’re going to be doing the comparison with is. Let’s do this again because I’m waffling, so three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine show. This is episode 131. In this episode, we’ll be comparing two of the most popular membership solutions for WordPress, LifterLMS against MemberPress. It should be a great show. We’re going to give our honest opinions. I’ve got my ever-patient co-host with me, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:23.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. My name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I own a company called Manana no Mas here in Kansas, and we focus largely on membership and learning websites.
[00:01:31.720] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. And also Kirk helps at WP Tonic. As I mentioned, we’re going to be comparing Lifter LMS to MemberPress. Should be a great episode. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of the show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, folks, before we go into the main bit of the show, I also like to point out we’ve got a fantastic course, normally around $50. You can get it for half price, and if you do the course and send us your invoice, you can get WP Tonic hosting for the year at half price. So it’s a great solution, folks. The course, basically done by Kirk, shows you how to build a website, a membership website, using the most up-to-date technology from beginning to end. Like I say, plus you can get a load of other special offers from the sponsors and a load of other stuff. Where do you go to get all these goodies? Basically, you go over to WP=Tonic.com/deals, wptonic.com/deals, and you get the calls for half price.
[00:03:03.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Plus, if you send the invoice to us, you can get a year’s hosting plus a load of the best WordPress plug-in technology for half price. What more could you ask for? So let’s go straight into it, Kirk. If somebody was coming for a consultation and they were looking at LifterLMS, but they were also looking at MemberPress, what would you say to them?
[00:03:33.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, the comparison of these two, Jonathan, it really is a fine line, and I think, just to be blunt, if you’re a customer and you’re shopping in this arena, you need to be consulting with people who are knowledgeable because the differences are minute but important. For instance, and I’m just going to pull one out of my hat, Lifter LMS Native Payment Gateway does a great job at selling courses, selling memberships, managing members, doing those things which we can discuss later in the show, but it doesn’t do VAT from tax and things like that. Whereas my understanding is that MemberPress does have that baked in, and that could be a big thing for some folks. So, you know, with LifterLMS, you end up going to third-party tools to get that kind of functionality. So if we’re looking at the tools, bare bones, just the tools, without all the other bells and whistles we can plug in from third parties, it’s really important to understand the nuance and the details between the two.
[00:04:34.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it is really. And it can become their code’s great. Well, well, I know.
[00:04:43.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, well, well.
[00:04:45.470] – Jonathan Denwood
But let’s just take the vat. VAT folks, if you’re not based in the UK and certain parts of Europe is valued Added Tax, I think they have the same title in certain European. But since England chose to leave the Common Market, it might only apply to the UK and it’s called that. And as Kirk said, member press does have that. But what you’ve got to take into account when most people looking at systems like that, they want integration into their accountancy system as well. Now I’m not sure that they provide that because it’s been a while since I looked at it, what normally happens and they normally do want integration into their account system, you can only get that by integrating WooCommerce into the system. So seems attractive at the beginning but you soon find out you can’t get integration with your. And in the US QuickBooks is really popular. It has popularity in the UK but there’s like Sage and there’s a couple others that have quite sizable market share in the UK and you just won’t get that integration. You can and you end up going with WooCommerce anyway. Kurt.
[00:06:13.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, well the, the thing with Member press that it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. Jonathan and that is the sheer number of add ons and integrations that it has. Literally there’s hundreds. And so like Quick Bit, QuickBooks is one of them. The VAT tax feature that they have is based on Tax Jar and so Tax Jar is another one of Those like big third party things that connects to WooCommerce, it connects to QuickBooks, it connects to these different tools. And so it comes down to. Yeah, you have to be really knowledgeable about the differences. And let’s, let’s just be honest. I can start with Lifter for free if like sampling the market. I can take the freemium example and I can start for free and I can try some stuff. But if I want to sample the market with, with member press, I have to come out of pocket to buy a version.
[00:07:05.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m going to put this to you and then you can comment and see if you agree or there’s bits that you don’t. I think excluding member press, just looking at Learning Management system or membership plugin in general, I think if you’re just doing one course and it’s very unlikely that you’re going to do another course and that course is going to be a lead generative, lead magnet or you only got plans ever to do one course, I would say probably using a membership. A membership plugin is a good idea. If you’re going to be selling just single physical or digital products, you could look at a membership plugin. I started with a membership plugin with WP Tonic. I bitterly regret it. I’m still with it because it would cause me so much aggro ditching it. But when I. At some stage this year or the beginning of next year, we’re doing a total refresh of the WP Tonic website. I’ll be ditching my membership plugin because hopefully I won’t need it and I’ll be finding a way of ditching it. I won’t name which one it is, but it’s not Member Press. So that’s number one.
[00:08:49.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Number two is Member Press is a pretty rock solid plugin from a really great founder and a team that know what they’re doing. That’s the member press team. They were bought out a few years ago by a larger company, which I don’t particularly like that much and. But even when it was owned by the original owner who’s still involved in the plugin, they’ve got their own way of dealing with, with membership levels, with content protection. It’s a priority. It’s a very, it’s rule based but it’s very priority, very done in a way that no other membership plugin in the WordPress space does it. And when I was actively, it could really bite you on the bum because it’s, it’s done the code in the way it’s done. I don’t particularly like it because it works fine until you really, really want to customize it and then it gets very complicated very quickly. Other people would disagree with me with this, Kurt, but I’m just based on. And it was a few years ago, so things change. And lastly, and I’m not sure you probably would know better than me, but when they got bought out, they had this terrible decision that if you stopped paying for the membership plugin for member press, you were locked out of the back end of MemberPress.
[00:10:43.970] – Jonathan Denwood
And I know no other core plugin that’s really important to the core functionality of a business that went down this path and I think it’s deplorable. So how would you respond to the three things I’ve outlined?
[00:11:02.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the whole locking you out of the plugin when it expires or when the, you know, subscription is up or something like that. That’s. I really don’t think that follows the spirit of WordPress very well. Right. Typically the subscription is for updates and support and the plugins continue to work. And so that is odd that that would go away like that. LFTR certainly doesn’t. So. So I know that that is, is the way that LFTR is when you were talking about, you know, one class, one course, one thing. The, the problem with that description, the problem with that strategy is that it’s really impossible to see the future. And if you have a product, if you have a course that that actually gets some momentum and has some teeth and gets people in it. Yeah, you have the membership management tools and that’s great. But the member press LMS is rather limited in what it does. It hosts the course and the lessons, but it doesn’t allow for multiple instructors, it doesn’t allow for certain roles that Lifter LMS does to manage courses when you have a high, higher professional level of students coming through.
[00:12:20.370] – Kurt von Ahnen
So it, like I said at the beginning, it really comes down to nuance and fine lines about some certain things. You know, for some people. I mentioned that VAT tax, that could be a thing. Multiple instructors could be a thing for people. So that would swing back towards Lifter lms, the membership controls. When I compare like apples to apples, I really feel like they give each other a really great run. For the money because Lifter LMS includes all these content restrictions, all this granular level of content restriction that MemberPress has in terms of pages, post types, even blocks within a post you can say oh I only want logged in users to see this video or logged out users to see this video instead. And both tools offer that kind of flexibility. So it really, really is kind of difficult to pick based on the two products. I think you almost have to look at the whole environment to go based on my use case what’s the best fit And Lifter gives some great customer service and support and documentation and the LMS is a higher level of functionality so I tend to lean towards Lifter LMS.
[00:13:36.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Now they introduce a add on called Coach Kit. You as I was doing the research it seems to be only offered on their higher plan or higher plans and it’s aimed at coaches around offers functionality. If you’re going to be offering course material drip drip in it to and it’s got other features around marketing, email marketing optimization, sending out drip content which maybe you can explain the concept and but I haven’t used it in anger and you like I say you can only get it on one of the higher plans. I think that plan would be the Pro. They did have a plan called Elite but they’ve seemed to have dropped that. I think they because they used to have four plans but now I think they’ve only got three Basic plus and Pro and they were only offering the Coach Kit on the Elite plan but I think they’ve dropped that. But the thing when I looked at it it was brought out about a year ago and they were marketing it heavily was that I found this very misleading. I’m not sure if it was done on purpose or by accident. I can’t pass a comment is that they seemed obviously a coach.
[00:15:27.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Having a scheduler and having people be able to book on the schedule is rather important, isn’t it? We offer that because we offer fluent booking. They seem when I was looking at it they seemed to suggest that they had their own booking which when you actually delved in they didn’t. They. They didn’t even have it any kind of real integration with Calgary. And I understood that because unless you’re. You’re at a certain volume Calgary is a kind of SAS based most popular SAS based Canada scheduling SAS product out there folks. But it’s a private API. I know this is a load of jargon folks but we have to go there and they own it. They don’t offer it. You got, you got to pay for it. And you gotta have a certain volume to have access to it. And they just had, they didn’t even have advanced third party integration with Calgary. So I don’t know how aware you are of this, Kurt.
[00:16:45.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
I know that Calgary is where they held the Winter Olympics when I was a kid.
[00:16:48.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, I’m pronouncing it. Why am I.
[00:16:54.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, so, so the Coach Kit to me, like you said, kind of seems deceptive to me. It’s more than a kind of situation. It, it talks about email automation, but then what email are you integrated with? What premium platform are you integrating with? Right, so same thing. So you can have calendly or is, I think it’s called really Simple Appointments is the other plugin that it integrates with. And so when I looked at the coaching platform, the Coach Kit platform, it’s, it’s like, it stores like milestones and goals and things like that. But realistically, I mean, there’s some CRM tools out there that have like, you know, lead progress tools in it and stuff. I mean that’s almost what it feels like. It’s, it was, I think that that phrase or the push that they made with Coach Kit was, was greatly oversold, overhyped on what it actually was.
[00:17:58.150] – Jonathan Denwood
So did you look at it in. When it came out and that. Did you have a look at it or.
[00:18:03.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
I used to have a client that was on Member press. And here’s the weirdest thing about, you know, and I’ll just say I’ll just blurt it out. I used to run into a lot of Lifter LMS clients that had MemberPress installed. So they were, they were using member press to run the membership even though LFTR had member capability. And then what I found out the more I worked with these clients is they were clients that were learndash and Member press.
[00:18:32.480] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s amazing how our minds work because I was just about to bring.
[00:18:38.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And so they, they got tired of learndash and they’re like, well, I want to try lifter LMS. So they install lifter LMS but then they still rely on MemberPress because they still have all the members and activity and all that, that historical data is still there. And so yeah, My experience with MemberPress is generally from the perspective of now I have a MemberPress website and I’ve added Lifter LMS because I want that extended LMS functionality. But every time I worked on those websites, every time I consulted with those clients, I couldn’t help but think why in the world don’t we use WP all import or something and just grab that data, transfer it over to LFTRLMS member management and run a much simpler, straightforward website.
[00:19:24.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you just touched on one of the other main drivers for this plugin in my opinion and it’s still out there. It’s changed a bit and that’s because learndash didn’t have a proper subscription. It does have some of this inbuilt but it’s done in a way that unless you’re very experienced it is not user friendly. So most people have to get a third party plugin and that third party plugin they used to promote it, they used to promote it on the learndash website heavily. They do do this to some extent. Still things have changed because learndash have got their own membership plugin off what’s it called? I forgot Number Dash, Member Dash and they used to, when they first unleashed Member dash they used to do a bundle, used to be like they were selling it heavily on the same website. I’ve noticed about over a year ago they split it up again and it’s on its own separate website. But also you’ve got other third party membership plugins like Shore members which I think is a much better than member press. But it’s one of the reasons why the situation because a normal people, they do a Google search and all this stuff around Learn Dash and Member press and it’s really a lot of this is outdated content and they get the impression that they’ve got to get member press if they want to get learndash.
[00:21:20.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think I’m on the right road here?
[00:21:24.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it’s conditioning over time. It’s what you hear people say and a lot of it, you know, I’m an agency person and a lot of the stuff comes from agencies. They get comfortable with a certain tech stack and because of that comfort level they’ll keep recommending the same build over and over even though the environment’s changed and there’s more direct ways to do things.
[00:21:46.480] – Jonathan Denwood
But it is confusing, isn’t it?
[00:21:49.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I gotta tell you, and I think the reason I started out the show the way with the voice that I did about you gotta consult someone that knows the granular level of these platforms. Lifter lms I love Lifter lms but when you get into all of the add ons that are available it can get confusing like what do I need to do what I said I wanted to do with this platform? And then you get tempted. Well, I’ll just buy the Infinity bundle because it comes with everything. When you look at MemberPress you’re literally looking at like hundreds of add ons and plugins and things that will integrate with it. And I think that their website actually does a less than fantastic job of trying to smooth out, you know, for a DIY kind of a client for someone that’s coming into the space. I don’t think their website does a really great job of saying hey, if you just want to get started, this is all you need and then you can add these features as you go. I think it gives you too many choices and it’s like, it’s like a newbie going computer shopping at Best Buy.
[00:22:50.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, there’s too many choices, you don’t know what to get.
[00:22:53.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Well I think with Lift LMS you can get the free, you can get the core product for free. And I think was it $120 or was it $149 for the stripe add on?
[00:23:07.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
I want to say it’s 149. They’re almost always running some kind of a coupon for the first year but then you know we try to on the show we try to use, you know what the recurring amount is going to be.
[00:23:18.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Well that’s the other thing. You know I’m not going to have a go at Lifter for this because so many other plugins but this whole business was because it works. That’s why this whole business of giving a discount for the first year and then putting that price on your pricing table and just having a very gray out version for the renewal price. I expect the renewal, you know, a plugin. Maybe I’m wrong. I expect a discount for the reno not, not to be, not, not to be hit at a higher price. But maybe I’m, maybe I’m wrong here because it works and everybody else has adopted it but I think I my understanding and not in a number, not, not a large number but a significant number of states this doing that is illegal but they get away with it because they can’t be. It’s not gone the Fed Fed’s radar so but I find it very misleading myself and I wish it would die out but it must work so it hasn’t. But this whole I think lifter LMS have a much easier you with the core with $150 you can start taking your subscription.
[00:24:43.510] – Jonathan Denwood
To have a learning membership plugin and not have a really easy way of taking subscriptions to me is bit mind numbing. But on the other hand a lot of the initial People that were, that started to use learndash, they, they weren’t, they weren’t worried about subscriptions because they were doing training for the internal company, the organization, the, the church, the school, the college, the association, whatever it was. They weren’t taking subscriptions, were they?
[00:25:22.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. I try to think back, you know, what was it really like, you know, 10, 11, 15 years ago. And you know, selling a course was like selling the course and that’s it. And then over time it’s morphed into more of a community membership, you know, ongoing touch point situation. So when you have a plugin now that can do recurring payments, and I think it’s fair to say we should probably point this out, both Lifter LMS and Member press, when you use their payment systems, there’s no, there’s no transaction fee on top of whatever stripe or PayPal’s deal is. So whatever process you have through stripe or paypal or authorized.net or something like that, it’s just that, it’s just those fees and that and that’s it. And both of them do the recurring payments now, which is, I mean, it makes it real straightforward for people that are trying to start a business on this.
[00:26:24.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we’re gonna go for our mid break. Hopefully we haven’t confused you too much. We’ve tried to keep it paired down and keep everything in English and I think Kirk’s done a great job. I haven’t. But we will be back with a second half where we go into key elements that both plugins should do and see what, what you need to know. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, I sorted out my mic problems that I had last week. I think I’m reasonably crystal clear now. I’m getting a double thumbs from Kirk. Before we go into the second half, I just want to point out we’ve got a great free resource for you. That’s the membership machine show Facebook group. It’s totally free and we’ve got any questions that come up in these podcasts or if you’re looking on YouTube, the video version, if you’ve got any questions, why don’t you go over to the membership machine shows Facebook group, join for free. And if you’ve got any questions or you need any more further advice, you can put it there and I will attempt to ask it and I’m sure Kirk will as well.
[00:27:45.310] – Jonathan Denwood
And we’ve got a great little community there. It’s a great resource, folks. So let’s, let’s go on Kirk, let’s look at my list. What are the main differences between Lifter NMS and member press? So key E Learning Functionality Quizzes Pro Progress tracking Homework certificates let’s start with member press around this. Quizzes, Progress tracking Homework certificates how does member press cope with these four subs necessities? As I would say.
[00:28:21.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to be real honest with you, I got confused myself and that’s going back to how the website was laid out for looking at these features and add ons I originally thought that Courses was a free add on to the member press platform. So it’s not like you install member press and just start building your course. You have to add the supposedly a free no charge add on for the courses. And then it said in the courses thing it said you know, does quizzes and all these things but I thought there were add ons for the quizzes. So when I did the search for the add on for quizzes it was there, there was an add on for assignments, it was there, there was an add on for certificates. Everything seems like it has to be built and stitched together in order to.
[00:29:08.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Function, which does not necessarily a bad way of doing it.
[00:29:12.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. If you think about it and, and you know Lift, Lifter and a couple of other larger platforms do similar things where you add these other features in. So if you have a really simple product you could have a really simple site like with one made, you know, one plugin, two plugins, three plugins and do it the thing with trying to track all of that stuff like with lifter LMS pretty soon you’re gonna have 9, 10 plugins on your website, you know, to run your LMS. MemberPress is going to be the same way. However, I think you’re going to end up with more quizzes and things like that come as part of the core part of Lifter lms. And so with the member press I’m going to end up installing more plugins and add ons. And I had some confusion and maybe you know this better than I do Jonathan but there were a lot of things that you needed the, the higher tier on to buy into to get functionality with. For instance like there were some integrations with Zapier. You need to have a different tier to integrate with Zapier. You can’t do it with the basic level.
[00:30:22.650] – Jonathan Denwood
It was yeah when they had this elite that I think that was in the Elite package when I was last looking having to deal with it. But they got look I need to check. I think they’ve Got, they have got rid of the Elite, they just got the Pro now I need to check again.
[00:30:40.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it made it confusing for me because I was trying to figure out if I wanted to match Lifter LMS apples to apples, oranges to oranges on a member press build, what would I have to integrate or buy? And I’ll be honest with you, I couldn’t give myself a clear cut answer.
[00:30:56.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I am right. They’ve only got the Pro now, they’ve got rid of the Elite and that. Like I said, I’m not going to go with the half price discount because I think it’s misleading. I’m going to go with what you I after the first year, what you’re going to be charged which is 800, 799. Right. I think that’s a bit pricey myself. I’m sorry. Yeah, I think if you’re looking for quizzes progress, just go with lifter, the free 150 for the stripe integration and off you go. Right. So course design flexibility.
[00:31:42.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
That part I gotta, I’m gonna apologize to my friends at Lifter up front. There are some things in the MemberPress Course Builder that are pretty refreshing. For one in the right hand sidebar, any lesson that you’ve already made is just kind of floating over there. So you could drag it right into the course you’re working on. So if you’re building a course that is sharing lessons with another course, that lesson is just sitting over there on the right hand side. You can search it up and slide it right over.
[00:32:14.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Now as the situation improved with Lifter with, with Gutenberg and blocks around customizing the course views and that.
[00:32:26.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’S a mixed bag. So if you build out a template in Elementor, in bricks, in Kadence Pro, in full site editing, you can build out templates and those templates apply to the course or the lesson structure that you’re trying to do. You could say go to this custom post type, which is the course or the lesson that template will take effect. If you’re an Elementor user, you can use Lifter elements or Liftor to add some more design flexibility to those, to those pages. But as far as the actual course building goes, which is, which is different than page styling, course building is like sections. So course sections, lessons within the sections. Couple of things that MemberPress does, it’s really, really nice if you have a website that’s full of media like thousands of pictures and thousands of this and then you’re trying to put content that you want to use as resources in your courses in Lifter, you install it to the media library and then you link it to the course. Right. Somehow in member press there’s an area for MemberPress downloads and so it’s like a separate library from the media bin.
[00:33:41.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:33:42.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Makes it really easy to find.
[00:33:45.150] – Jonathan Denwood
I, I see where you’re coming, but that means, that means more headaches if you want to get away from them.
[00:33:52.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I mean it’s. That does kind of add the walled garden effect. But like I. My personal website, my Manana Nomas website has something like 18,000 images in the media library and I use happy files to kind of split things up and categorize stuff. But for people that don’t have that, you know, trying to say, oh, where are my PDFs at? Where are my word docs at? Where am I? Whatever. If you have a big media library and you’re trying to sort through that to find stuff to put into your courses and lessons, it’s a task and member press makes it a little easier. Also, Lifter LMS on the course builder has a ton of options. So it’s going to say, you know, added assignment, add a quiz, add, you know, all these things, drip settings, all that stuff. And it’s all in there and it’s fairly intuitive but it’s a little crowded sometimes the member press interface is just like, do you want to edit this thing or do you want to preview this thing or do you want to delete this thing? And then you do your options from there.
[00:34:54.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, this is the media library works, folks. Oh yeah, but it needs, it’s needed some more love for a long time and I think a lot of the energy went into Gutenberg and it really does. Then I could like Kirk. There are some third party plugins that help with it, but it does need. It does. It should be refreshed urgently. But I’m a bit using member press for that. You got to be aware you’re going to be really sucked into the world of member press to never escape. I’ve been sarcastic here, to be serious. It’s one of my main critics. I really love Lifter LMS and the team there, but it’s one of my biggest criticisms of Lifter LMS is the course layout. The course set up a minute, it’s clunky, it, it needs improving and it’s needed improving for a long time. It’s not bad enough for me to fall out in full out in love with Lifter lms, but it could do with some improvement. Would you? Well, I don’t know if you can agree with that because you might get into trouble.
[00:36:20.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no, no, I can certainly comment on that because over the last year they’ve made a lot of changes to the course builder interface and to the course editing. Page interface most notably is like Access plans, for example. Now here’s what’s really weird about the changes they’ve made. Does it change the functionality? Does it add or delete features? No, it’s the same, but the interaction with the pages is a little bit different. For instance, now when you go to build a course in Lifter lms, the course builder automatically populates the first section, the first three lessons. So it kind of leads people into, oh, this is how I build this. I don’t have to figure it out. It’s already here. It’s like a template. But here’s the truth of it. If you’ve been working with it for a decade like I have, it’s annoying as heck because I gotta delete stuff to put my stuff in. Same thing with the access plans. It’s more intuitive for new people to get started. But for experienced people that have worked with the platform for years, it’s like this extra thing, the way I would.
[00:37:27.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Have dealt with that. And it’s not only Lifter, it’s any kind of SaaS software as a service product, a core large WordPress plugin like Lift LMS. You’ve got different audience types looking for different requirements. The way I would have dealt with that is to have options in setting that you could switch it off. And so for people that are more experienced, I think having those options in the setting would be a great idea. But that’s easy for me to say. It’s harder when you’ve got deadlines and everything. Let’s go on to E commerce. I think both integrate, it’s basically woo in it. WooCommerce. They both do a pretty good job integrating with WooCommerce. Would you say so?
[00:38:20.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, they both integrate great with WooCommerce. It’s just WooCommerce is usually the one I try to avoid. You know, I, I, I’ve been real happy with Shortcut and my understanding is it works well with Shortcut too. So Shortcut though is always going to try and push shore members. Right. So now you’ve kind of, we’re opening up into this other, this can of worms here. I think the, the straight, you know, stripe and, and PayPal connections are the way to go with both of those platforms.
[00:38:51.520] – Jonathan Denwood
We got, we got relief from this. Another discussion that I don’t like you’ve got you pointed it out. Love shore members but it really, it works fine but it will attempt to push you into shore car. And sure, cart’s a lovely system and they offer a really fabulous free level that’s not crippled and the paid aren’t ridiculous but it, the paid subscriptions you do have to pay every year. But it’s not ridiculous. But I, I’m really looking with great interest in what fluent cart’s gonna do. But that’s another discussion, isn’t it? Integrations and add ons. I think both do, both do a great job, don’t they?
[00:39:44.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think and this is treading on dangerous waters here because it’s all come down, comes down to preference. I really like the way Lifter LMS says here’s our add ons, like here’s our add ons. And then it does this other page called Recommended Resources which is like here’s some third party tools that might work really well on your project. And then what’s interesting is there’s a ton of stuff that’s not even on the recommended resources page that still integrate on their own automatically with Lifter lms because Lifter is big enough that other companies, other plugins want to integrate with it from their side. Right. When you shop on Member Press’s website, it’s like they blend it together. Like here’s our integrations and add ons and it’s again, I have experience in the field but I’m trying to think of this from the consumer’s perspective. I’m new, I’m signing in, I want to have, I want to make my first course and I get to their website and I’m like, well which tools are theirs and which tools aren’t theirs and how much does this stuff cost and, and a lot of times they’re not specific with hey, this is an integration.
[00:40:52.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
But this integration requires this tier with us and this tier with the third party plugin. So you could be making a multiple hundred dollar decision.
[00:41:03.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, great points, Kurt. Selling group access to teams cohorts as well because with their convert Coach kit they’ve got, they push this other element where you can do cover cohorts. We’ll struggle with that cohorts. But on the other hand it, it Lifter LMS is really big in the functionality it offers in that as well, isn’t it?
[00:41:33.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. So Lifter always had a way to kind of work around the idea of cohorts. Like it was, the tools were there. You could always make a Cohort, but about two years ago they came out.
[00:41:45.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you quickly explain what a cohort is?
[00:41:48.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A cohort is simply a group of people doing a course at the same time. That’s the way I always describe that. And so typically, online learning is an asynchronous event, right? So it’s usually it’s an organization like you’re the course creator and you’re selling one to one so that people can sign in and take the course on their own time. But then there’s the idea of selling one to many. So you’re going to sell access to that course to an organization that has multiple people, 25, 50 people, whatever, and all those 25 or 50 people are going to take the course at the same time. So typically a cohort is going to have a starting date and an ending date. And so that coach kit solution kind of fits that cohort requirement. Like the way I describe that, it fits it really well because it says, okay, you know, from a coach kit perspective, here’s your students, here’s when they’re going to access the course, and this is what they’re going to do. LFTR LMS kind of takes the approach a little bit differently. It automatically clones the course, allows you to set your access dates, your enrollment dates, and gives you separate tracking for that cohort.
[00:43:05.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
With that course, it basically duplicates the course. So now you have two copies of that course running, but you have the choice on whether you want to add that copy of the course to the course catalog or run it in the background so people access it through their dashboard. Either way, it’s super intuitive for the user.
[00:43:24.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Affiliate management, I’m not sure if Member Press was. Obviously they’re part of Automotive and they’ve got a really great quality affiliate. So imagine into WP affiliates or is it affiliates? WP always get back to front. I imagine it must integrate with that. Great. But I think Lyft LMS has got good integration with the leading two to three affiliate platforms out there. Third party, doesn’t it?
[00:43:58.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
Lifter LMS on the Recommended Resources page mentions affiliate wp, but I’ve used it with WP Affiliate as well. And there’s a couple of others. One is called Siren by Alex Standiford. That’s who made that. About a year and a half ago or so, Alex Standiford released Siren, which is kind of an advanced affiliates program. It can do a lot of things. So, yeah, Lifter is really active on the integrations with affiliates. Member Press works with a bunch, works With Easy Affiliate Affiliate wp, which I think is theirs. Something called IDEV Affiliate that I’ve never heard of before and it mentions a couple of other names in their integrations listing. So yeah, they didn’t just shoehorn it to their own product, they integrate with others.
[00:44:51.900] – Jonathan Denwood
And lastly, let’s look at customer support. And I think when I was using it, Member Press had a good reputation. I don’t but I think lifter LMS in the words WordPress space has some of the best support going. What do you think?
[00:45:18.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Extremely partial because I’m part of that support team. So it’s, it’s difficult to talk on and not sound like I’m bragging but if you think about it, how many other plugin companies are hosting a free weekly call where you can sign in and ask any question you want? LFTR does that every Thursday. And then for people that have the Universe or the Infinity Bundle, they have what they call an office hour mastermind call. That’s where people from all over the globe you know, sign in and discuss their projects or their integrations or things that they’re going through With Lifter. Sometimes they’re just fun conversations because there’s nothing to talk about but, but it’s just cool that they offer that. Plus they have the ticketed support, the email support, they have chat support, they even have a phone number that they will answer which kind of freaks me out. But it’s on the website. So yeah, the support at Lifter is crazy good. My understanding of the support at Member Press is they have the knowledge base, they have ticketing like email level support, but that’s really it. I don’t know of any other workshops or anything that they do beyond that.
[00:46:32.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think in the norm they had reasonable reputation but I don’t think it’s at the level that that Lifter LMS offers. Let’s finally look at price before we go to final thoughts. I’m like, I say I’m gonna dis, I am not gonna quote the first year highly discounted prices. And I, I’m not going to do that with Lifter LMS because both Member Press and Lifter LMS do that. I’m not having to go anybody because it must work. But I don’t agree with it. That’s my position. So basic 359. I think that’s a, I’m talking about Member press here. So basics 359/plus is 599pro is 799 and I think that’s one website license, I think, I think there is some critical functionality that is not part of the basic plan. You really do have to look at plus at 599 in my opinion. And if you want the Coach kit, I presume you can only get that on the pro. Like I say, until a year ago they had a fourth plan, Elite, which that’s. You could only get the Coach Kit on the Elite plan, but they’ve dropped that. I think it’s a great plugin, but I think these prices are a bit rich.
[00:48:07.270] – Jonathan Denwood
What would you say about that statement?
[00:48:12.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have such a hard time talking about value of things.
[00:48:14.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it goes. Because you come from the world of cool. These prices look dirt cheap, don’t they?
[00:48:19.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
It all looks dirt cheap. It does, you know, and I, I really struggle if someone thinks they’re gonna open a business and sell courses and they don’t have 400 bucks to. They don’t, they don’t have a business. Right. So that’s, that’s like where I go with that. Where my confusion came in was I had done some research on some third party sites trying to figure out what was really being offered by member press because I didn’t see it on the pricing page, but everywhere else it was saying this tier you get one website, this tier you get two websites, this tier you get five websites, this tier you get ten websites. And, and the third party sites I had mentioned that I researched mentioned the Elite package that you had mentioned and that was for 10 websites. And it was I think $900 a year or something.
[00:49:10.660] – Jonathan Denwood
They might have it, they might have it hidden somewhere there. And so missing this.
[00:49:16.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
So it’s really hard to have an apples to apples conversation when I can go and say, okay, so with Lifter LMS I can download it for free. So that’s one. Right. So it’s free. As many websites as I want. And then I can do the Earth Bundle if I want those, you know, E commerce options. And that’s going to be the one site. Okay, great. One site.
[00:49:35.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, they do offer bulk member press license price. Oh, you, you got to fill in a form to get that to find.
[00:49:44.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Out what the price is.
[00:49:45.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s whatever they think.
[00:49:47.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s, that, that’s, that’s a sign that you don’t want it. So then the Universe Bundle gives you five sites and the Infinity Bundle gives you unlimited websites. And so I’ve been a lifetime Infinity member for a long time because I knew I was going to build my business on this product and I knew that whatever I spent on that lifetime license for unlimited websites was going to give me the freedom to execute and never have to worry about oh what if I run out and and so value wise I definitely feel that Lifter was the, the better deal in my use case. But again I go back to if I was just starting out, if I was doing my first, you know, online membership site and I thought I might have a lead, a lead magnet course member press might be attractive.
[00:50:41.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, yeah. I think, I think the free, the lift of the free and just buying a couple plug or just going with the earth bundle for 299 it’s going to cover about a lot of people’s needs and then they can look at either the Universal or the Infinity when they get some traction. And I think, I think over 150 for the stripe. But also look at the earth bundle for 299. It’s just a great offer to get you going.
[00:51:15.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the Universe Bundle where you can do up to five websites and a lot of times people get hooked up on the. Well I don’t have to build five websites. It’s not just the five sites with the Universe Bundle. You get access to that weekly office hours call, you get the email and CRM add ons that you can integrate with. It integrates with different form tools like Gravity or wpform Form. A lot comes in that bundle. Whereas when I look at again this is just. I’m paranoid when I think about what I’m going to build with member press and I get into that series of pages with add ons and integrations it there there’s a lot of confusion about what’s included, what’s not included, what it.
[00:52:01.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Gets to the level where you could do a course about the membership plug evening being sarcastic there or you could look at hosting at WP Tonic and you get the Infinity bundle plus almost $7,000 of other software. The best in one hosting bundle starting at 35 a year per, per month if you pay annually. Is that not the deal with the Century Kit?
[00:52:33.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, it’s the deal of the century if you think about half. My half of my tentative nature today is worried about what do I get for the price of this thing. And if someone hosts with you, it just comes with the hosting so you.
[00:52:44.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Don’T have to worry. We regularly at WP Tonic I regularly get emails. Is this for real?
[00:52:52.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
Is this for real?
[00:52:53.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Are you a legit company? Is this, is this offer for real? This can’t be for real, this offer.
[00:53:01.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you were a fake company that made a thousand episodes of a podcast. That would be really weird.
[00:53:06.520] – Jonathan Denwood
It would. When it was I’m just an AI invention anyway. I don’t actually exist. So. Final, final thoughts. So how would you, you know, what are your final thoughts on this journey we’ve taken around member press and Lifter lms?
[00:53:28.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s so. So the final thought is this. If you inherit or if you have already built a site with LFTR or MemberPress, I am not the one who’s going to tell you to throw it away. You know, throw away the baby with the bath water and start over. That’s not the conversation I’m going to have with you, however, based on a needs assessment, an extended conversation, and your specific use case. Unless it’s super specific and nuanced, that member press for some reason has some hidden benefit for you in your specific use case, I’m probably going to steer you towards Lifter LMS and build you a fantastic platform.
[00:54:09.970] – Jonathan Denwood
I think not exclusively, but a lot of people in our space, folks, which is learning management systems and community focused websites, a lot of people getting into get member press on their radar because they’re looking at learndash Now, I think you’ll be fine using learndash with member press, but personally myself, if you’re committed to using learndash and it’s a great learning management, we offer it at WP Tonic as part of our hosting package. I think you’re better off looking at Shore members and then looking at Shore Cart. It’s just going to be an easier experience if you don’t want to use WooCommerce. Understandable, but it isn’t really quite so problematic. But I just think some members with Shore Car at the present moment, obviously, we’ve got fluent CART coming on the radar. My recommendation might change because of that. But I just.
[00:55:18.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
And you know what? We. We got to do the audience a solid on this one, Jonathan, because they’re probably wondering why you just said that. This comes again if you’re, if you’re an agency, you know all these tools, and you know the other things. The other thing in this example is that if you went with WooCommerce and tried to set up the subscription, you would need the subscription add-on for recurring revenue. If you want a sure Cart, it does recurring with it as part of it. And so if you did share members with Shore Cart, you wouldn’t have to pay the extra 300 a year for the WooCommerce subscriptions at all.
[00:55:52.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Unless you’re hosting with WP Tonic again, but that’s not really. You’re totally correct, but that’s not the main reason. It’s just, it’s just the most simple. Even though you think well, shore members, and then I’m going to have to get your car. That’s two steps. Jonathan, that doesn’t sound simple. Take it, folks. It’s the simplest route possible because the short car, the basic plan, is totally free, and it does almost 80% of whatever you’re going to want, and the support team just really works well with it, and it works with LearnDash, and it’s all going to be sweetness and roses. Just really. And it’s a really simple membership plugin to set up, and it uses more standardized content control mechanisms than what MemberPress uses, which, as I mentioned, I found. It’s a little bit contributed. It’s really easy up front, but when you peer behind the curtain, the code and the. And how it was developed isn’t so nice in my opinion. A lot of people disagree with me, and that’s fair due. I’m just giving you my opinion, folks. So my final thoughts. I just go with Lifter LMS with the Stripe plugin.
[00:57:19.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I think what you’re getting for free with the Stripe plugin for $ 149, or if you’ve got a coupon, you can’t go wrong. It’s essentially the Lifter core with the Stripe plugin. If you’ve got a bit more budget I just, I would still go with Lifter LMS because you’re just future-proofing yourself, and I just think it’s a better solution, folks. Basically, that’s what my words or not of wisdom for you, my beloved tribe. So Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you?
[00:58:01.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
To make a connection personally, on LinkedIn, I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen
. That’s easy. And then if it’s business manana no mas anything manana nomas leads to me.
[00:58:12.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ve got asks from you if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re watching this on YouTube. Why don’t you think about going to iTunes or Spotify and leaving a review? If you’re using the app for both, it’s really easy to leave a review. It’s really prominent on the apps for iTunes or for Spotify, and it really does help us to promote the show. We’ve been growing recently. We’ve been getting a lot of new people listening to and watching the shows. I would love some more feedback from you, but if you want to show some appreciation for all the great advice and content, that’s the best way. And it really does help the show a lot. We will be back next week with another great show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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