We Review The Leading Membership Plugins For 2026
We review the leading membership plugins for 2026. Compare features, pricing & performance to find the perfect solution for your site.
In this video, we dive deep into the top membership plugins for 2026, evaluating their features, pricing, and ease of use. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting your online community, we’ve got you covered with honest reviews and comparisons. Discover which plugin best suits your needs and helps you create a thriving membership site.
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:04.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 155. In this episode, we’re going to review the leading membership plugins for the beginning of 2026. Got an extensive list. I’m probably going to be a little bit controversial in this show. I also got my great co-host, Kurt. He’s already smiling. He’s worried there. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:00:49.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I’m the owner of Manjana Nomas, and we work directly with the great folks over at WP Tonic as well.
[00:00:59.440] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s Fantastic. So, like in this show, we’re going to do an extensive review of some of the leading membership plugins. If you’re looking to build your website on WordPress, and you should, for control, for the software that adapts to your needs instead of you having to adapt your needs to the software. So it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I’ve got a message from one of our leading sponsors. We will be back in a few, three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to take the opportunity to say we got a fantastic course done by Kirk himself. You can get this course at half price. Normally around $50; you can get it for around $25. It covers everything, building a membership or community with WordPress and the latest technology. Where can you get this special deal? You can get it by going over to WPA, WP-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. We also got some special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technology and services, all on that page. Fantastic value. If you were discussing this with somebody, how would you describe the landscape of membership plugins at the beginning of 2026, Kurt?
[00:02:33.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Jonathan, as you enter these shows, you always say, How would you approach us? It’s the same answer I always give. We need to conduct a needs assessment to determine what this use case really is and which tool best matches it. That said, there are some very clear winners and losers in the membership space when you look at budget, functionality, longevity, and consistency. I think this will be a really good discussion.
[00:03:04.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, my position on this is that certain of these membership plugins, one in particular that we’re going to be discussing, don’t sell themselves, but in my opinion, they do. There is a certain level at which you would be best served by a learning management plugin. If you’re really thinking of building a real business in the eLearning space, I personally would go with a learning management system. It’s nothing worse than finding you’re restricted, because it is not easy to move away from a membership plugin when you’ve already got subscriptions in it. Fantastic, but it basically no longer really meets my needs. I’ve got a lot of prior subscriptions in this plugin, and it’s just not worth the aggro to try and get away from it.
[00:04:24.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
I feel like I need to jump in on something, Jonathan, and that is: while I agree with you that in many instances, just getting a really good top-shelf LMS system will satisfy the membership requirement of your site. For instance, Lifter LMS, perfect example. There are LMSes that really don’t include membership as part of their platform, or if they do, it’s very entry-level membership control. And so it’s really important that you work with somebody or do research to understand the differences.
[00:05:04.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we’ve got a comment here. He wants to spell WordPress. There we go. So, yeah, that’s a great point. And it also causes confusion. So the whole thing becomes a bit confusing. Right. So let’s start off with one of the more established players, one that I use myself. It’s a fantastic membership plugin. I think it’s one of the leaders. It is not cheap, though. It is fully featured, but it is not cheap. But it is very well-coded, and you do get excellent support through, so you get what you pay for. And that’s Paid Membership Pro. So what are your thoughts on Paid Membership Pro?
[00:06:09.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, big fan of Paid Memberships Pro, but I will be clear because I feel I need to. I feel like I need to be transparent. Yes. They’re very much involved at Lifter LMS now, the founders of Paid Memberships Pro. And so I didn’t use Paid Memberships Pro until they came on board with Lifter, and that gave me exposure to the product. And I did fall in love with it. And I love the way they include a special installation with their Lifter LMS package that really gives you the best of all worlds. You get all the features of the LMS and the extended features of their really great membership platform, along with all the available add-ons. But to be clear, I wasn’t really a user or even a fan until I had that exposure. And it’s that exposure that makes me more sold out to it than ever. It’s a really well-made, well-run platform, and the company behind it is just full of great people.
[00:07:07.600] – Jonathan Denwood
What are some of the features? I’m intrigued that you say this. What are a couple of the features that come to mind that accept that if you got both paid membership pro and Lifter LMS, what are a couple of the add-ons that you think extend Lifter LMS?
[00:07:25.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, they’ve got different things where you can do different add-on packages to, say, purchase access to a page, a post, or a thing. So you could say, Okay, you bought this course, but that course also includes X, Y, and Z. You could send someone a coffee mug, right? They have different levels of memberships. So you could say, I’m part of the ABC membership, but I’m part of the ABC membership level one, level two, level three, as opposed to creating multiple memberships. They have an approval process for a membership that I think is interesting. So it adds a moderation layer to the membership process. It’s not like any Tom, Dick, and Harry can just sign up for a membership. If you have the add on for approval processes, it adds that manual human in the loop thing if we were going to steal something from AI. There’s just some really cool things that you can put into that space, right? And then there’s other things things like an Aweber integration. Like Lifter LMS doesn’t have an Aweber integration. So if you were an Aweber user and you wanted to use Lifter LMS, then it might stand to reason that you would use paid memberships pro, integrate that with Lifter LMS, and then, of course, integrate your Aweber.
[00:08:48.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I say that because it seems like people on Aweber have been on it since dirt was invented, and they have no desire to change to get on anything else. So there’s just a ton of stuff in You have to really go to their add-ons. They have free add-ons, and then they have their plus add-ons. If you go to the All Add-ons page, you’ll get to see everything that you can do with this platform.
[00:09:10.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think obviously the things have changed because they always are. But I think the main thing you’re point in there is that you could combine the two, and you then wouldn’t need to go to utilize WU commerce. For a lot of people, that was something they were looking for.
[00:09:30.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. I mean, you can sell software through it. They have a download monitor integration. They’ve got events. And that’s a big thing. A lot of times with an LMS platform, some LMSes will include events, but the rest of their LMS platform is lackluster. And then in Lifter LMS’s case, they have this great LMS, but no events. And so maybe you want to have a sister platform that works well with it that also does events.
[00:09:58.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Yeah. On to the next one, which, in my opinion, has now become a learning management system or a quasar learning management system, and that’s member press. Now, what’s your views on member press, think?
[00:10:22.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have not been deeply steeped in member press at all. My exposure to member press was when Thomas had left Lifter LMS and went to Member Press for a while, and then that brought me into that space. The experience that we have with Member Press as an agency, this is going to sound so sideways and bad, Jonathan, Our agency generally goes in and migrates people from member press to something else. A lot of people used LearnDash with member press because it was just the two were sold together by a ton of agencies.
[00:11:02.280] – Jonathan Denwood
The original owner of LearnDash promoted it, didn’t he?
[00:11:06.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. If you come across an old setup that’s LearnDash with member press, and there’s just a lot of legacy junk in there, if as an agency, you’re going to redo that site, chances are you’re going to migrate off of member press and go to another tool. And in my case, we’re going to do that migration from… There’s a tool that migrates people from LearnDash to Lifter. So we’ll migrate people from LearnDash to Lifter LMS. And then in most cases, that’ll take care of the learning and the membership requirements. But if they wanted extended membership functionality, then I’d be probably on the paid membership pro channel.
[00:11:47.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, right. I’m probably confusing people the more I talk.
[00:11:55.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m sorry.
[00:11:56.540] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it’s a complicated thing, but It’s owned by Blair Williams, who’s a very experienced WordPress developer, entrepreneur, and his company, Caseproof. They’ve been in the space a number of years. Blair is a fantastic guy. It got investment from Olson Motif, who I have a checkered relationship with. Let’s put it that way. The problem with it is that when I was actively in development area, it’s got a very strange backing system, which isn’t the normal mythology of most membership plugins. It uses something called rules. And if you’re doing customization with it, I didn’t enjoy it, put it that way. It’s unlike other products that automotive, automotive investing, it has been continuously developed. But I really don’t think in 2026, if I was going to use it, I would use Lifter LMS, or I would utilize Creator LMS, LMS or some other learning management plugin, I wouldn’t use Member Press myself. But let’s go on to something that’s the totally opposite of member press, Sure members. So what would you say to somebody about Sure members?
[00:13:56.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have been pleasantly surprised by a a lot of the Sure products, especially recently, which is weird to say because I feel like with Adam and all those YouTube videos he was making years ago, I feel like I knew or was closer to Adam five, eight years ago than I am today, right? Talking about the founder of these products. But it’s only been recently that I’ve really paid attention to the shoreline of things. We do a lot of talk about fluent products on our show because they’re great products. Sure is developing in the same pathway, but with a different strategy. And so they’ve got a whole series of stuff. So they’ve got the shorecart, the shore members, they’ve got a community tool, and now they’re coming out with shorecontact. And so they’re building this suite, this army of tools. And when I’ve used shorecart, it has been extremely internally intuitive. It integrates automatically with Lifter LMS, which is why I’ve used it in the past. And we’ve used it to run the membership side of LearnDash before because it included content restriction tools that Learndash didn’t have for the rest of the site. And so we’ve just had really good success with it.
[00:15:25.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Some people, some purists in the space will point out that it’s a SaaS and not and not a WordPress thing. I think a lot of us get lost on the details. As far as the essentials of working within WordPress and serving customers, I think it’s a really good tool.
[00:15:43.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think the WordPress power user might have some reservations, but fundamentally, it’s pretty lightweight compared to something like member press, but it’s still very effective. It really works. It’s really at its best with Sure member. It can work with other systems like Woocommers, but it’s best with SureCart. And Shilkart does offer a free level, which isn’t really that cut down, or you pay 199 per year. And then I think they do a lifetime offering as well, one-off payment. I think that’s 599, but I’m not just going by my memory there. But it really does offer a lot of functionality, especially with LearnDash. If I was deciding to go with LearnDash, I personally would go with Lifter LMS, but if you wanted that… And most times it’s LearnDash, it’s people looking at Buddy Boss. Buddy Boss, they’re then looking at LearnDash, then I would say look at SureMain. The easiest route if you’re looking What do you reckon?
[00:17:20.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m in that ballpark. It’s weird that you mention it like that because it’s like, well, if you want LearnDash and then Buddy Boss. And then so the average person, when they’re looking at setting up these platforms, there’s assumptions. You would assume if you had an LMS, it would manage your members, or you would assume if you had a community tool, there would be some membership access to access that content. And it’s just not that way. So you need some membership management tool, for a lack of a better phrase. You need some a strategy to manage who gets in, who has access. And SureMembers works out really good there. I should add, SureMembers is one of the tools that’s available with the WP Tonic hosting, so it’s one of our favorites.
[00:18:08.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, Buddy, Bus, Learn, Dash, and SureCart, well, SureMembers, and then with SureCart, three of those is offered with the WP tonic hosting plan. One of the higher plans, I might add. Not our microsite plan. But Because you need really powerful hosting with Buddy Boss, folks. All our hosting is fantastic, but you need a certain level. You really need power. But that’s the combination Buddy Boss, LearnDash, SureMembers, and then SureCart. That’s going to be, in my opinion, the most reliable and the easiest route to go. By our mid-break, let’s talk about one that I haven’t used for quite a while, but it’s $99 a year for one site. It’s still quite popular. I think it’s owned by the people over at LearnDash. Well, the company, Stellar. I think they might own Restricted Content Pro. I’m not sure, actually.
[00:19:25.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
Stellar WP.
[00:19:27.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Pardon?
[00:19:28.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a Stellar WP product.
[00:19:31.620] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to be talking about one of their other plugins as well in this show, Restricted Content Pro. Have you ever used this in Anga? Because it’s been quite a while.
[00:19:43.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
We just used it early 2025 on a client site. It was a learn-dash situation, right? So they needed a way to restrict content, and Restrict Content Pro came to the rescue because they already We had a Woocommerce integration, so we weren’t going to change the whole thing over to SureCart, SureMembers, and do some weird thing that way. So we did Restrict Content Pro, managed the content that needed hidden, and worked out really well.
[00:20:17.040] – Jonathan Denwood
You weren’t tempted to use, which we’re going to discuss later on in this show, the actual Woocommerce members plugin.
[00:20:26.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
I feel bad because we just I interviewed Brian Cordes and stuff. I’m not trying to be negative. I just whenever it comes to the Wu commerce environment, I look and go, okay, so what can we do other than Who? And it’s an instinct for me. I don’t know what my phobia is. I’ve used WhoO commerce on a lot of websites, but when you get into it, the setup is more involved. You set things up and then whatever the client wants to do, it ends up being some other add-on you got to buy for another 150 or 200 or $300 a year. And so if I can identify tools that allow me to build and meet my client’s needs without going down the Woocommerce direction, that’s the path I typically go in.
[00:21:15.120] – Jonathan Denwood
There you go. Good comment there. I think it’s a great time for us to go for our middle break. We got some other membership plugins and other solutions to talk about. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Also, I want to point another great free resource. That’s the WP Tonic Newsletter written by myself. It’s normally a subject that we’ve discussed in this Membership Machine show, plus a curated list of the latest AI and tech stories that I found during the week, which I curate and offer to you. It’s a great read. Not that it doesn’t take all day to read it. In your email box, and it’s totally free, how can you get it? Just go over to WP-Tonic. Com Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter, Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter, and you can get it there. So on to the next one, member mouse. Love the name. I have You haven’t used this for a long time. Do you know anything about it?
[00:22:33.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am not an active user of member mouse, but remember at the beginning of the show, we said examine people’s use cases, their actual needs, their budget, all those things come into play. And when you do a deeper dive on member mouse, you start to see some things that really make you start to think, Hey, this is worth taking a look at. Again, I already have access to other tools that do most of what’s here. So it’s not for me, but for a new listener or viewer that is thinking about getting into the space, member mouse has a lot of functionality. When you start looking at how it sets things up, it’s got a whole section for how to sell products. It’s got a whole section for content restriction, how to allow people into different areas or different things that you want to restrict. You can even limit the number of logins, which I thought was pretty interesting. So you can limit that full membership management, like what we would expect because we’re talking about membership tools, but it also has an LMS in it. Now, I’m sure that they’ll say it’s a full service LMS, but I just have this weird hankering feeling that it’s more of like an LMS light.
[00:23:52.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
I could very much be wrong. I’d love for someone to comment and tell me that I’m dreaming, but this has a lot going on. And after For all of that stuff I just listed, it also has some automation features. If it connects through Zepier and all the common ones, but it also has some built-in automations. It’s definitely worth taking a look at.
[00:24:13.100] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally disagree with you because I think this is when you’ve got a plugin, a membership plugin, and it’s doing automation. You think it’s doing too much? Well, you’re stuck with it. You really are then stuck with it. Well, you’re not totally stuck with it because it’s WordPress. But especially if you’ve got a very active membership site and it starts playing up and it’s doing the automation, I think you need what I call modules, and those modules are key plugins, and I think it’s best to have the optimizations. I’m not talking about administrative emails I’m talking about the marketing side. I think it’s best. Another thing that you got to be aware of, folks, I can’t say I’m totally correct on this, but I’m pretty sure that Blair Williams and his company, Caseproof, owned this plugin. They bought it about a year, 18 months ago, and they utilized their partner, also Motiv, to do it. I see it, and this is only my opinion, folks, it’s a legacy membership plugin situation. If you want to go down this route, I would look at member press. But I say that if you’re not looking at a learning management system, and there’s some lightweight ones like Creator LMS, or you’ve got the big daddy, in my opinion, which is Lifter LMS, you really should look at Paid Membership Pro, but that’s my opinion.
[00:26:04.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Others would disagree with me there, which is fair to you. It’s not the cheapest either. It’s starts at almost $300. I’m giving the prices that after a lot of these plugins give you a discount for the first year, I’m giving you the prices that normally you will be paying. On to another one which was really big in the day, about six, seven years ago, which is Wishlist member. I haven’t used this in donkey’s years myself. What’s your views on this one?
[00:26:42.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is one I’ve never had any interaction on. None, zero, nada at all. I really don’t have any details on it. When I started to do some of the research, I got this weird feeling because the pricing page felt It felt real similar to member mouse, actually. And I noticed, I started noticing a lot of these membership plans. When you go in, it’s like their basic plus or pro or good, better, best pricing was super similar and features were super similar. It’s almost like I got this weird feeling like everybody’s in the same office doing the same thing. I’m sure that’s not the case, but that’s the way it started to feel.
[00:27:27.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the reason for that is that It’s also Motiv too, huh? Yeah, it’s owned by Blair Williams and his company, Caseproof. They bought this one out with the money. I can’t say for sure, but the money that they got from also Motiv, they bought this one out. They own Wishlist member, memberMouse, and they own member press.
[00:27:51.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
What I thought was really hilarious was on the testimonials page, Adam Pryser from WP Crafter was listed, and Chris Lemma from Liquid Web were both listed. And I thought to myself, well, that’s a stretch because they’re both involved in their own projects that compete with this. So I don’t know how old the testimonials are on the page. It made me think that these were dated.
[00:28:15.860] – Jonathan Denwood
A little bit. So this is only my opinion, folks. To me, it’s a legacy membership plugin. It’s not going anywhere, really, but it’s not going away. Blair and his team are very experienced and very credible company, so I’m not making any dispersions on their ability and their ethics. Like I say, I’ve interviewed, I don’t know Blair that well. I have interviewed him once, a few years ago, but he’s got a fantastic reputation. I just have problems with, and I understand it, it’s business. People that get in bed with also Motif, it’s not my favorite company, and the owner isn’t. I’m not particularly on good terms with the owner of it, but it is what it is, isn’t it? On to another one, and this one, I know nothing about it, but it was just on all the lists, the reviews and that I was looking at, and that’s ultimate… Sorry?
[00:29:27.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
It says right on the homepage, it’s the leading WordPress Membership Plugin. Did I lose you? Are you there?
[00:29:46.080] – Jonathan Denwood
We were breaking up a bit there, I’m sorry. No, it’s okay.
[00:29:50.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was joking around. I said it says right on the home page that they’re the leading membership plugin.
[00:29:57.140] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re having some technical troubles, folks. We’re breaking up a little bit. Are you there?
[00:30:07.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I’m here.
[00:30:09.640] – Jonathan Denwood
So you were saying it’s on the home page?
[00:30:14.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, So if you go to Ultimate Membership Pro, it says the leading WordPress Membership Plugin. It says it right on the home page.
[00:30:24.280] – Jonathan Denwood
But is it?
[00:30:27.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?
[00:30:30.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, well, what do you think?
[00:30:33.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
So I probably have a different thought than you may be on this. Because, again, I haven’t used it either. So I said, well, let’s do the research. Let’s go through this thing. They are advertising on their pricing page a $69 lifetime, right, to get started. It’s their starter plan. And when you look at what it does, here are my thoughts. And I know that you might object with me here a little bit, but it’s got some email marketing integration that’s already built in. It’s got like coupon codes and membership tools, things that we’re expecting. It’s got that stuff. It’s got some really good essential features like recurring subscriptions and membership cards. It’s got the basis of a membership platform. Lifetime, $69. If you are doing a proof of concept or this is a startup launch for you, you want to see if you can gain any momentum, this is a great way to sample your idea and try and move forward and things like that. But if you would have success in your venture, if you would gain traction on it, then I would say you might want to entertain switching to something else. Not sure.
[00:31:48.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
When I looked at the the pro add-ons bundle and all the stuff that was in there, I’ll be honest with you, Jonathan, I saw a lot of stuff that, yeah, it’s cool that it’s there, but if you don’t need it, you don’t need it. It’s just it seems like it’s overkill on some things.
[00:32:03.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I know nothing about it, so I can’t make any assertions. My only insight this, and I disagree with you a bit, is that I think Start a concept, but if you start getting subscriptions, you need something that’s rock solid. But you don’t want to spend $300, $400 on one. I would look at Sure members because it’s $99. You then can use SureCart, the free plan, and You’re off, basically. They’ve got a track record. They’ve been in the space a long while and use a lot of their products. You’re happy. I just think using something that really hasn’t got established, I would have some questions about it, but I might be totally wrong there. I’m just giving my honest opinion.
[00:33:16.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
From the list of things, and this is what I want to encourage people on when they look at these things. For instance, when you go to this list of what’s included, it looks like there’s a lot of stuff. You go to email marketing integrations, it lists them all, like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, Aweb, all the stuff’s in there. But remember, you probably only have one CRM to connect to. You don’t need all of them, right? When it lists all these payment gateways, well, what do you use? Do you use Stripe? Do you use PayPal? Then that’s all you need. You don’t need 10 payment gateways. And so don’t let a long list of what’s included sway your decision. Always look for the function, the design, the user experience. See if you can find a sample site that you go through and walk through these things because the user experience is more important than a bunch of tools that you’re not going to use.
[00:34:08.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s go to the opposite. Again, this, which is member-dash. Now, it was developed by the team that own LearnDash. I never understood… Well, I did. I think it was done for… I’m only surmising this. I know nothing. I have no insider knowledge. It’s just my opinion, folks. I think they had a lot of, like with member press and with restricted contact pro, which their parent company owns. They decided that they weren’t going to integrate the membership inside LearnDash. They were going to offer a membership plugin, And which is memberdash, a lightweight. In some ways it’s positioned like Sure members. Released, I don’t think it’s got anywhere, really. But I think in the LearnDash, because they offer it, I think they offer it as part of their hosting bundle. Yeah, it will work. But as a plugin that can be a stand-alone, I don’t think it’s got that much traction, but I don’t know. That’s just the impression I get. What do you think about this one?
[00:35:43.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
As a sister product to LearnDash, I think it makes complete sense. They integrate together. They’re run by the same organization. There’s so many pluses and reasons to stick with Memberdash if you’re in Learndash. That That to me makes sense. I agree with you. If I was going to do strictly a membership website where I just wanted the membership stuff, I would probably go back to paid memberships pro, Jonathan, because anything that I would want to scale into or as the needs of your organization grow, as expansion and scaling becomes a thing, paid memberships pro has all those add-ons. I can fulfill a ton of needs without having to go through a custom development channel. This member It’s cool because it works great with LearnDash, and it’s owned by them. And if you are hosting with them, Bob’s your uncle, everything seems to work out. But if I was just making a membership website, I probably wouldn’t use this tool.
[00:36:44.420] – Jonathan Denwood
On to another one, WooCommerce memberships. You got WooCommerce membership and you got WooCommerce subscription as well. You got to have WooCommerce. That’s one site for 199. I think the subscription, is that slightly under 300 a year now?
[00:37:10.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
299 now.
[00:37:12.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Wow. You got all the power, wooh, commas. I’m not going to say any more, really. What do you think about this?
[00:37:24.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you tripped me up earlier in the show asking me about this because I- Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that.
[00:37:30.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I should have left it to this.
[00:37:33.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
So I’m just not… I’m a capable, smart person, Jonathan. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I just don’t… Why should I have to deal with it if I don’t have to? There are some instances where we have customers that are on WU, and they chose WU. Maybe we have some that are in other countries, and they need the payment gateway flexibility that WU commerce offers. They can’t be on PayPal, they can’t be on Stripe, so they have to do other things. That totally makes sense. That completely makes sense. But if it’s going to be here in the States, some e-commerce platform that I’m building with memberships, I’m probably not going to go the woo route.
[00:38:18.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I got a slightly different view on this, but I do understand. I’m not dismissing your point of view. I just think it’s a really gray area. I think if I If I was looking at a membership site, if I was really looking to sell digital products, physical products, plus membership, I probably would look at WU instead of going with something like paid membership pro. I just think if you’re going to be selling stuff in multiple countries, you’ve got VAT, it’s just the Woo commerce Community of plugins just covers you. But it’s got to be a strong case, which I totally agree with you, it’s a case by case. But if you’re going in to some thinking that level of sophistication, I would prefer to go down the word commerce or the next one we’re going to discuss, then go with Paid Membership Pro. But on the other hand, of all the plugins, unless I was going for something, a specific reason, like Sure members with LearnDash, with Buddy Boss, I think Paid Membership Pro, of this concept of membership plugins is the most powerful, the most feature-rich, the best coded, with the best support team and the best ownership.
[00:39:53.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree with you on those key points. It’s just that I have a slightly different philosophy about this than you, but I’m not saying you’re wrong, and I’m not saying I’m right.
[00:40:07.710] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s just a slight difference of opinion of…
[00:40:14.640] – Jonathan Denwood
But it is a beast, and you need good hosting like you get with WP tonic. All our clients are on Vulture high frequency service. I did that about four or five months ago, didn’t we? We We moved everybody to high folk. In my opinion, that’s some of the best hosting around for membership, for learning management, for eLearning, for community. But you are right, it’s a beast. You got to know what you’re getting into, basically. There’s a lot of add-on plugins, which is good, bad, or indifferent, and a lot of those plugins aren’t cheap. But compared to SaaS, Kajabi or something, it’s still cheap, isn’t it? In some ways. Then you got something that really puts the cat in the pigeons in a way. You’ve got fluent carp from the fluent people. Like I say, they’ve had some aggressive They’ve got some aggressive lifetime deals. Their normal price for a one-site license isn’t cheap, but on the other hand, you’re getting a lot. It’s super fast, isn’t it? And they’re building it out rapidly, aren’t they? And they got a track record of supporting their software and keep building and keep moving forward, haven’t they? So I think when they brought it in the market, I think it was just in the last…
[00:42:03.240] – Jonathan Denwood
How long has it been on the market, actually?
[00:42:06.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Three to four months.
[00:42:07.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the months just fly, don’t they? I think you’ve been working with it a little bit. What are your thoughts on Fluent Cart?
[00:42:16.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you nailed a couple of things there. I did the orientation video for Lifter LMS on Fluent Cart, so I had to complete a fully populated demo website with a bunch of content, which Unlifter LMS is hosting. And so we did this sample site, and I was really impressed. I mean, the back end of that site was flying right along. Pages load quickly. We don’t lose any page speed. Adding that cart was intuitive. And then, right after that, they added the feature to bundle items in your cart. So you can combine items to create unique products, which is really fun. So, yeah, it’s a powerhouse. It’s really fun.
[00:43:12.540] – Jonathan Denwood
The one I’ve said: when it comes to BuddyBoss with LearnDash, I’ll still go with SureCart, SureMembers with SureCart. Anything else, if you’re looking at the easiest route, is what Lifter LMS offers with their own subscription. But if you need anything beyond that, you’ve now got Fluent Cart, which we include in our middle- to higher-tier plans. We offer Fluent Cart with Fluent CRM, with an amazing list of software and services. The best in the industry, don’t we? And I just don’t see the need. If Fluent doesn’t really tick the box, you just add Fluent Cart to it. And the only area is in countries where they haven’t got the extent; they’re building it out. But I doubt if they will ever have the extensive list of gateway providers that WU commerce will have, but it will in the… They’re building it out rapidly, a number of gateway supporters that gateway providers that they do support. But it’s just built, and it’s nothing against WU commerce. Wu Commerce is built on legacy code. It’s got a very large team from Automatic working on it. Where Fluent, they could start fresh with React, JavaScript React code, and it’s just been built with more modern technology, and it’s just super fast, isn’t it?
[00:45:17.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. As I said, it flew. I was impressed with the page speed. I was impressed with simple things, like just adding images and then picking the featured image. It’s just very intuitive, very easy to use.
[00:45:33.780] – Jonathan Denwood
If you want a modern membership shopping cart page, a subscription page, that’s probably me. I think I’m off, though. I think that’s you, actually. You’ve got all kinds of dinging happening. Yeah, that’s your email,l actually. You need to switch off your email. That’s the noise you get. You can switch the noise off, actually. I don’t. I just switched it off. It has put the cat among the pigeons in a way, hasn’t it?
[00:46:13.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Put the cat in the pigeons’ away? Help me.
[00:46:18.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So let’s just finish off. What are some of the key things that you think people need to know to finish off the show, actually, Kurt?
[00:46:31.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, we’re back to the beginning, and that is, you’ve really got to sit down. And I do better with a legal pad or one of those tablets I can write on and really draw up. What are you actually thinking of? What do you actually need? Think of your avatar, your niche, the people you’re going to sell to, and think, well, what do they want? What do they need? And then really figure out what your needs are, and take a look at the products available. My advice and I see a lot of people, especially offshore providers, who talk about, oh, we can build for you. We can build for you. I’m a really big fan of what we have that works well out of the box and requires the least amount of customization, so we can get to our minimum viable product, launch, and start generating revenue. Once revenue starts coming in, I’m totally cool with customizing and modifying things and playing in our playground, but I like to get people launched and to revenue as quickly as possible.
[00:47:35.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the way I explain it to people, if you’re thinking you’re going to build a real eLearning, this is one course that’s probably going to be one of many. You really want to build real success in the membership eLearning space. I think you should look at investing in a learning management system plugin. Now, if you’re thinking of just doing one course, things have got more complicated because you’ve got new players like Creator, LMS, and others out there. So it’s become even more complicated in a way. But the way I used to explain it, if you just think you’re just going to have one course or it’s just going to be a course to promote another product or service, you’re probably better off looking at a membership, or you’re combining it with digital products and physical products, and you don’t want to use WooCommerce. But that’s become more complicated because you have things like Fluent Cart and Short Cart. But that’s how I used to explain it. Then you would add that special one that I’ve repeated. I’m going to repeat now for the third time, which is LearnDash, because, as you said, LearnDash doesn’t have a really effective membership built in.
[00:49:08.180] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s where MemberPress got a lot of its traction. But I think LearnDash with Sure members, and if you can combine it with Buddy Boss, it’s Buddy Boss, LearnDash, and then Sure members with SureCart, that’s the easiest way to do this, folks. You can go to WooCommerce, and you can probably go to Fluent Car. That’s it, really, folks. Hopefully, if we have caused any confusion, all you have to do is go to the WP Tonic website. In the top right navigation, you can book a free consultation with either Kurt or me for a quick chat. That’s always available. You can also think about subscribing to the WP Tonic YouTube channel, where all these shows, plus bonus content and a load of other videos. I shared a screenshot with Kirk. I’m not up to Adam Presler yet, but I’ve sent a note that I’ve got now over 250,000 views on my channel. I think I’m doing reasonably well. It’s a building. I see that’s an achievement in a niche space. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:50:35.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Linkedin. I’m on LinkedIn quite often, so we can connect there. And then the business’s name is Manana Nomas.
[00:50:43.420] – Jonathan Denwood
And I could say, if you’re looking for a great specialist host for your membership Community Learning Management System. Have a look at WP Tonic. We provide some of the best hosting performance, an amazing package of the best software, and support and consultation. You can’t go wrong with us. We will be back next week with another insightful topic to help you get the success that you’re looking for, for yourself and for your family in 2026. We will be back next week, folks. See you soon. Bye.
#1 – Paid Membership Pro
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Free | Standard $347 | Plus $597 | Lifetime $3,00#2 – MemberPress
It uses a strange rules-based system
The “All-In-One” Membership Plugin for WordPress
Prices Launch $399 | Growth $699 | Scale $999
Owner Blair Williams and his company, Caseproo,f Syed Balkhi (founder of WPBeginner and Awesome Motive)#3 – SureMembers + Surecart
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Prices Starter $99 | Pro $199 | Business $299
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Prices Free | $199 | per year#4 – Restrict Content Pro
https://restrictcontentpro.com
Prices $99 per year#5 – MemberMouse
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Prices Basic $299 | Plus $499 | Pro $699 per year
Owner Blair Williams and his company, Caseproo,f Syed Balkhi (founder of WPBeginner and Awesome Motive)
#6 – WishList Member
Homepage
Prices Basic $299 | Plus $499 | Pro $699 per year
Owner Blair Williams and his company, Caseproo,f Syed Balkhi (founder of WPBeginner and Awesome Motive)
#7 – Ultimate Membership Pro
Ultimate Membership Pro
Prices: Starter $69 | Pro Adonis Bundle $109 per year
#8 – MemberDash
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Prices $199 per year
#9 – WooCommerce Memberships
WooCommerce Memberships
Prices $199 per year#10 – FluentCart
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Prices $499 per year
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