Everything You Need to Know About Membership Plugins

Discover everything you need to know about membership plugins, from setup to monetization, and choose the best one for your WordPress site.

Unlock the secrets of membership plugins with our comprehensive guide! In this show, we explore the must-know features, top plugins to consider, and how they can transform your digital business. Whether you’re starting a new venture or optimizing your existing site, we’ve got you covered. Don’t miss out on these valuable insights.

#1 – Picking the Right Plugin:

How to match a membership plugin to your business model, whether that’s courses, communities, content, or a mix.

#2 – Payments and Pricing Models:

Subscriptions, one-time fees, tiered access, free trials, and choosing a payment gateway.

#3 – Content Protection and Drip Strategies:

How to lock down content, schedule releases, and keep members coming back.

#4 – Performance, Hosting and Security:

Why membership sites need more from hosting, plus caching issues and how to protect member data.

#5 – Plugin Stacks and Integrations:

Connect your plugin to an LMS, a community tool, email marketing, and a CRM without turning it into a mess.

#6 – The Big Players Compared:

MemberPress

• The most complete commercial membership plugin. It handles content restriction, recurring billing, Stripe and PayPal, and has a courses add-on.
• The Launch plan is $199.50 a year plus a 4.9% transaction fee. Growth is $349.50 a year with no fees and adds full LMS, coaching tools, and member directories.
• Best for: serious membership businesses that want one polished, all-in-one license.

https://memberpress.com

Prices: Launch $399 plus transaction fees | Growth $699 | Scale $999 per year

Paid Memberships Pro

• Open source, with the most generous free version and the most installs on WordPress.org.
• You add paid features one at a time with add-ons.
• Best for: starting free, or for developers building custom setups.

https://www.paidmembershipspro.com

Prices Free | Standard $499 | Max $999 | Max 2x $2,999 per year

Restrict Content Pro

• A lightweight, focused plugin for gating content by membership level, with free, trial, and paid tiers.[fluentcart]
• One of the cheapest options, with no transaction fees on any paid plan.
• Best for: simple paywalls on sites you already have.

https://www.restrictcontent.com

Prices: Pro $49 | Advanced $79 | Ultimate $119 per year

WooCommerce Memberships

• Ties memberships to WooCommerce products and checkout. It only makes sense if you already run WooCommerce.
• Best for: stores that bundle members-only perks or discounts with product sales.

Prices $199

Paid Member Subscriptions

• A good fit if you’re starting on a small budget and want to add paid features as you grow.[hostney]
• Best for: new membership sites testing an idea before paying for premium tools.

https://www.cozmoslabs.com/wordpress-paid-member-subscriptions

Prices Basic €99 | Pro €169 | Agency €299 per year

This Week’s Sponsors

Jetpack: Jetback

Ninja Forms: Ninja Forms

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:16.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 190. In this episode, we’re looking at the best membership plugins, what you need to know, how to make the right choice, and my opinion, which is going to be a little controversial. Surprise, surprise. I’ve also got my great co-host, Kirk, with me. We’re like to say we’re going to go through what the main things are you’ve got to think about when making this choice. And then probably in the second half, we’re going to look at some of the main players. It’s not going to be a totally exclusive list because there’s loads out there, but the main ones that probably are on our radar should be a great show. Kirk, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:09.160] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, Jonathan, my name is Kirk Von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Más, and I work directly with the WP-Tonic team.

[00:01:16.850] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Kirk. He’s had a busy day. Thursdays are busy for him, and he’s been dealing with urgent stuff, so it’s been a busy day for Kirk. Um, so this should be a great show. This is a really important decision. If you, um, I’m gonna go in on why it’s probably really more important than you think, um, as we go through the show. Um, like I say, it’s really important, but before we go into the main meat and potatoes, as I would say, um, we got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments.

[00:01:59.880] – Speaker 4

WP-Tonic is sponsored by Jetpack. Managing WordPress sites shouldn’t mean stitching together a pile of disconnected plugins. Jetpack brings security, performance, publishing, growth, and AI tools together in one WordPress-native Toolkit. Use what you need: backup, scan, boost, social, video press, stats, and more, all with modernized dashboards built into WP admin. For your site or your clients’ sites, see what Jetpack can do. jetpack.com. WP-Tonic is sponsored by Ninja Forms, and let’s talk about one of their powerful tools. Conditional logic. Conditional logic is the clearest example. Every rule for the whole form lives in one panel instead of being buried field by field. On client work, build speed and low maintenance are part of your margin. A form that is fast to configure and that a client can run afterward without coming back means less friction during build and less support load after the handoff. Ninja Forms. Powerful and genuinely easy to work with without being dumbed down. To learn more, go to ninjaforms.com.

[00:03:19.300] – Jonathan Denwood

We’ve got great special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technology and services that might interest you. To get all these goodies, just go to wp-tonic.com/deals. wp-tonic.com/deals. .com/deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there. So this goes— so how would you introduce this if you were discussing with a client, Kirk, about the right plugin?

[00:03:52.990] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, Jonathan, same as, you know, all these topics, it really is a use case-driven conversation. And sometimes customers think they need a membership plugin, or they think they have something envisioned and they’re like, oh, I saw this and I want it. You know, like, it’s like people shopping for e-commerce. They’re like, they saw it on an Amazon website, so it’s normal, right? Mm-hmm. All of these plugins, all of these tools have different nuances that fit different use cases. And so I think it’s really important, especially if you’re the agency, that you ask some specific questions. How big is your audience now? How big is your intended audience? How do you see this thing scaling? What did you wanna do in your membership? Some people think a membership is really just restricted access to certain blog posts or information. And then, of course, other people think a membership website is like a social thing where people talk to each other. And so you really need that information to be able to make the best call and the best recommendation.

[00:04:56.280] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, totally agree with you. I’ve got to say, actually, if you’re going to build an actual business in learning, I just call it learning. At the end of 2026, I just call the whole thing learning. If you’re going to base a real business in learning, I think you should use a learning management system plugin. But there’s a, as we go into the second half, there’s a bit of overlap there. But there are circumstances if you’re not planning to build a learning business and build it on WordPress, and we both believe that you should base it on WordPress because of ownership, owning your intellectual property, owning your business, all the things we’ve discussed. We sincerely believe that, um, if you’re not into that, there are other circumstances where a learning management plugin is not the right solution, and some of these membership plugins are a better choice, basically. So I drew up a list, didn’t I, Kirk, and number one is how to match your membership plugin with your business model, whether courses, community content, or a mix. And I think with your introduction, you kind of covered that in some ways because I don’t think a lot of membership— well, there’s one we’re going to discuss that isn’t— well, it’s a hybrid.

[00:06:43.710] – Jonathan Denwood

So, um, um, It’s all in the detail, isn’t it? But I don’t think your traditional membership plugin is right for communities. And if you’re going to do multiple courses, I don’t think a traditional membership plugin is the right choice. I think a learning management system plugin is the right choice. But on the other hand, if you’re just going to do one course and you’ve got no plans to do multiple ones, But a lot of people, they do one course and then they’re gonna do another. So yeah, what do you reckon to start off with number one?

[00:07:25.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I go back to that use case scenario, Jonathan, and that is, you know, there’s a lot of people that got started in the membership idea without having courses in mind. It was like, Hey, become a member of like a Patreon thing, right? Like, hey, become a member of Patreon and see our exclusive content. And so in the WordPress space, it was like, become a member and get access to our exclusive content. Kind of like sometimes someone will send you a link to a news article and you click on that news article and the excerpt opens up, but then there’s a pop-up that says you need to subscribe to see, to read the rest of the article. That kind of experience is technically, that’s a membership site. That’s where, you know, you need to subscribe or buy access to see restricted content. And that’s just one example. And so there’s tools that work really well in that space. But to Jonathan’s point, if there’s even a chance that a year, 2 years from now, you’re going to be releasing any kind of learning material, then I would probably bypass a membership setup and go directly to the LMS, even if it meant, you know, holding the course menu and that to the side until you were ready to launch.

[00:08:46.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

Because the membership tools that come with some of these LMSs are very proactive and very, very good to have.

[00:08:54.110] – Jonathan Denwood

Fantastically put. On to the next one on my list, payment and pricing models. Well, this catches out a few people, doesn’t it? And it’s all in the detail. You’re just gonna have to look at your plugin, but a lot of people that— and just don’t— just doesn’t affect the world of WordPress. You gotta be— you gotta do your due diligence, whatever system you’re going to use, because you can get really caught out. And that’s around payment and pricing, subscriptions, one-time fees, tiered access, free trials, choosing the payment gateway, blah, blah, blah. A lot of people just presume that it will meet their particular payment structure and they invest time and money in, in it and they find it doesn’t, it doesn’t fit, does it? Doesn’t work. A

[00:09:50.600] – Kurt von Ahnen

lot of times it doesn’t fit the imagination that the course creator came with or the member coordinator came with. And so, and these are the things that people don’t bring up in discovery calls. I’ve just gone through this with a client recently where they made the assumption that every payment gateway had certain features. Specifically referring to like conditional logic, right? If somebody buys this course, they can get this course at 50% off, or I can, I can sell someone a 5-course package and let them pick any of the 5 courses out of, out of a menu of 10.

[00:10:26.050] – Speaker 4

And it’s like, those are things that in your mind, in your mind’s eye, you think that’s easy. That’s not easy. That’s not out of the box. And that’s not what these things typically do. And so You know, if you’re thinking in terms of conditional logic or special deals or different purchase scenarios, you definitely want to do your research first on what you put into place because changing payment gateways and payment methods in a website is very difficult if you’re working with subscription content because you can’t just migrate somebody’s payment details to another payment gateway. They would have to re-sign up. Which means you stand a chance of losing a lot of recurring revenue due to attrition. So this is one subject that’s very touchy and very real life to me. And in this moment in time, this conversation is very real life for me. Another obstacle is people assume PayPal does everything. A lot of people can’t do recurring— Can’t do recurring revenue at PayPal. It takes a special account and they call it reference actions or reference transactions. You need to qualify for those reference transactions in order to set up a recurring revenue payment system.

[00:11:39.640] – Speaker 4

And so if you don’t qualify for that and you set the whole website up and then you go to launch some kind of recurring subscription thing, you’ll get the first payment, but you won’t get the following payments.

[00:11:52.150] – Kurt von Ahnen

That’s why Stripe seems to have such a stronghold right now in, in some of this online payment gateway traffic.

[00:11:59.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, unless you really, really, for specific reasons, and there’s been only like one or two that I know that have signed up with WP-Tonic, your preferred hosting provider if you’re in membership or community. Unless you— there’s only been one or two. I would avoid PayPal like the plague. I just Um, it’s a legacy, you know. They’ve been hammered anyway. Their stock price has been hammered anyway. Uh, I think they’re in trouble. Um, but that’s another story, another, another different show really. Um, but my— I don’t know if you agree with this. Um, there’s one or two of the membership plugins that we’re going to be talking about in the second half that has the capacity to deal with this. But apart from that, you normally end— if you’ve got something really complicated, you’re going to end up in the world of WooCommerce. You’re going to end up in that world if you want the kind of— at a price that you probably could afford. I not have a full custom solution, but even that’s changing. But that’s another other show. But that’s based on my experience. If you, you will end up in the world of WooCommerce, do you think I’m on the right track?

[00:13:36.090] – Kurt von Ahnen

I avoid WooCommerce whenever possible. It’s heavy. Sometimes the updates can be a little tumultuous. And the design is just quite frankly, it’s old. So most of the time it’s dated looking. That’s the way to say that. And so when we create WooCommerce for our clients, we typically find them, you know, they just have the kind of the air out of their, out of their sails, you know, they just go, is that really what it’s gonna look like? Can we style that up? Can we change this? Can we update this? And next thing you know, you’re in for another, you know, custom payment gateway. The reason that—

[00:14:12.000] – Jonathan Denwood

You know, there’s something like CartFlows, isn’t it? You know, you know, it does the job, but unless there’s a real Really strong. I’m agreeing with you. Unless there’s a real strong reason, I wouldn’t recommend it myself going down the WooCommerce. But based on my experience, if they want very elaborate pricing gateway structures, they kind of— they are in the end forced into the WooCommerce area.

[00:14:43.360] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. And there’s so many add-ons for WooCommerce that, you know, you can get it to do whatever you need it to do if you can swipe enough credit cards to pay for it all.

[00:14:50.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Content protection drip strategies. Well, that’s probably the area, if it’s Pantheon, that what you brought up, using a membership plugin probably is the best way for you rather than learning. Um, I don’t know if you’ve got anything to say about that. Number 3 on my list.

[00:15:20.310] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m big on content protection because I use it in a lot of different ways. And so, and it’s— I use content protection more like a marketing strategy than like locking people out.

[00:15:32.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:15:33.130] – Kurt von Ahnen

So, and again, I’m jumping the shark here on you, Jonathan, but like our favorite tool, LifterLMS, content restriction is like block by block. I can literally have 2 2 videos on one page and one video can play to enrolled users and one video can play to unenrolled users. And of course, whether you’re enrolled or unenrolled, you only see, you know, one of the videos. And so you can do that with any kind of content using content restriction. And so to me, it’s a really good marketing tool. And then the drip strategies, I think that’s more in the learning section of stuff, but from a membership-only standpoint, I don’t see it’s too, too relevant or too required. It’d have to be a special use case.

[00:16:15.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. On to number 4, performance, hosting, security. Well, that affects any, any WordPress SaaS membership learning management system. Good hosting, updating your plugins, not having too many membership administrative accounts. If you do have to give one temporary, remove it. Just down, just really basic stuff. It’s not no jet science here, rocket science, whatever. Just really basic stuff. Using a password manager, um, if you’ve got a few websites, blah blah blah. But, um, not going crazy with the plugins. Not— don’t mean, oh, you can’t install a plugin Should have— if it’s a live site and you’re taking money, you should have a staging site. It’s really just common sense stuff, but it’s caused a lot of aggro for WordPress because there’s a lot of misinformation out there, isn’t there? So what do you reckon?

[00:17:24.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, this is actually something that’s been on our plate a lot this month at this— at Mañana No Más. We used to— like somebody would say, oh, I have, you know, BuddyBoss and LearnDash and some, like a Groundhog, and they would, and these things are heavy tools, and they would say, oh, the website seems slow, and I used to think, well, of course it’s slow, you got all these giant, giant plugins in here, now you add in 500 users, and of course it’s gonna crawl, you know, what kind of hosting do you have? And you would start to think that way, but now with the advent of AI and so many ways to audit a website and look at what’s really happening on a server, I’m seeing that we’re able to get some better performance out of these sites, even though they’re highly technical and deep, with these heavy plugins. But to your point, Jonathan, it’s not going to happen instantly out of the box. You’ve got to have people working with you that know what they’re doing. And so we’ve had some really strong results in the last month with a couple of deep websites with courses and memberships and CRM tools and stuff, and we’re pulling 96, 98, 99 scores down on page speed.

[00:18:37.420] – Kurt von Ahnen

But this is— I’m going to tell you, that’s, that’s even a new experience for me. Like, because I normally, if I saw like an 86 or an 84 for a page speed on a, you know, a heavy website, I’d be like, oh, that’s okay. But now I’m realizing we can do better. It just takes more work, more prep, more babysitting, maybe a little more maintenance. And then that comes into play with, you know, what’s the customer looking for? Yeah.

[00:19:03.150] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, you know, um, it’s a balance, folks. You know, um, $10 hosting ain’t gonna do it. You know, you’re gonna be looking, um, for small to medium-sized membership site on WordPress between $50 to $100. If you’ve got a membership site, um, and you can’t pay $50 to $100 a month, you’ve got bigger problems, in my opinion. And it totally matches the competition out there, the realistic competition out there anyway. So, and you’ve got the benefits of ownership, control, building a business on your own platform. Obviously there’s a little bit more work, but a lot of the time I think it’s totally exaggerated, and a lot of it’s down to bad practices, bad information. Yeah, so that’s my opinion. Plugin stack and integrations. Well, it’s kind of linked to what we just said, you know, go with well-known solutions from people that got a good history. Don’t go crazy. If you’re trying stuff out, it’s best to do it on a staging site, just try stuff out, and then you push the live from the live site and you start, you know, you’ve got a fresh— if you’re trying stuff, don’t do it on your production site.

[00:20:37.130] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s all I’ve got to say. What do you reckon?

[00:20:41.790] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m kind of in that same spot when it comes to, you know, plugins and integrations and performance, all of that together. Jonathan, I think I think you hear the same thing from me over and over again, and that is simplicity. Like, I think the real value of working with our agency and WP-Tonic for that matter is, yeah, there’s 65,000, 70,000 different plugins available for WordPress out there, but we’ve identified, you know, a core of like 20 that are just rock solid home run hitters that we, that we’re familiar with, that we can put in websites, that we understand how they perform, how they work, how they interact. with each other, how they integrate. And we’re able to build some really cool things without putting a bunch of junk into a website and weighing it down. So I think your notes kind of hit it right on the money here, man. It’s, you’ve got to have, I think the membership lane, you know, and I’m saying membership over e-learning, but I think the membership lane has gotten really crowded with a lot of kind of fluff and junk. Yeah. in, especially in the repository. And so I think there’s a few really rock-solid tools that people could use, but I don’t think there’s enough people really promoting that message.

[00:22:02.290] – Jonathan Denwood

And I think the days, the days of having to install, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80 plugins on a website, that’s, that’s rapidly going to disappear. I think there will always be some core plugins. You know, it’s just not worth trying to do it yourself, really. There’ll always be a group of core plugins that will still have a good future in WordPress, and there’ll be some new players. But the, but the days of, of getting some minute bit of functionality and having to go to the directory and downloading it and I think they’re rapidly disappearing myself. Um, I, I just don’t see any future there myself. And I think that’s good for WordPress because I, I think that caused, caused some problems as well. Um, as well, I think it’s a good place for us to go for a middle break, folks. When we come back, we’re going to be looking at some of the major players in the membership area and giving you our thoughts on them. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:23:17.350] – Speaker 4

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[00:23:53.220] – Speaker 5

This podcast episode is brought to you by LifterLMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code PODCAST20. That’s PODCAST20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:24:32.050] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out I do a weekly newsletter, totally free. I take one of the subjects that we discuss in the podcast and I expand it, and then I find some interesting weekly stories that come on my radar and I combine it into a free newsletter. And I normally send it out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And to get it, to sign up for it, just go to wp-tonic.com/newsletter. Wp-tonic.com/newsletter. So let’s go, let’s start off with a major player, and that’s MemberPress. Um, been around a number of years. I’ve interviewed the founder on my other podcast, which Kirk is a co-host of, the WP-Tonic Show. It’s one of the largest podcasts in the WordPress space. And one of the longest running continuous podcasts in the space. I’ve run— I have interviewed the owner. It was a few years ago. Um, it merged with a large WordPress player. Um, well, in my opinion, they’ve become a kind of— they’ve become a learning management system. De facto. It’s not quite— they don’t use the term in their documentation, but they have, in my opinion. And the pricing, it’s always— I’ve always had mixed feelings about it because it uses a rule-based— I’m not going to go into a lot of detail because I might lose a lot of you folks.

[00:26:24.080] – Jonathan Denwood

But it’s got a rule— it’s a rule-based system that gave it a lot of flexibility, but it’s very different to a lot of other membership plugins and learning management systems in the nitty-gritty of how it works. And it’s not the cheapest. It has got a lot of power. One of the things you’ve got to be a little bit careful is the lower plan. They actually They actually charge you a transaction fee. I think it’s 4.9%. I haven’t checked it. I wouldn’t touch it just for that reason. I wouldn’t go near it myself. But what’s your feelings?

[00:27:06.070] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, in my mind, it’s $700 a year.

[00:27:09.310] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:27:09.540] – Kurt von Ahnen

You know, because you get the discount the first year.

[00:27:12.700] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:27:13.670] – Kurt von Ahnen

And then it’s $700 a year. And to your point, it does kind of act like an LMS, but it’s not really built as an LMS. As a membership only, like if I’m just focused on memberships, it is one of the strongholds in the space. I mean, it’s ubiquitously known. If you didn’t have a consistent like service provider, let’s say you don’t want to run the website yourself, you like having people help you with your website.

[00:27:41.370] – Speaker 4

You’re always going to be able to find someone that’s familiar with MemberPress or able to work with MemberPress. The, you know, the code’s out there. AI’s familiar with it.

[00:27:48.940] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like, like you can use MemberPress really well because it is, you know, so well known, so well used, so ubiquitous in how it’s, how it’s applied. When I look at the cost and then I factor in like, would this be a good LMS? And then I start to like push the envelope on how I would use it. I think there’s other options I would go to.

[00:28:11.880] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Onto the next one, which I actively use. Well, This is the point, folks. I started off in training myself, and I’ve got Paid Membership Pro on the— and I’m still using it because I would love to get away from it. Not because it’s terrible, but I just— it’s a legacy bit of technology basically for what my requirements are, but I can’t. Um, and, and I can’t be bothered. So, um, the founders, great people, and they all— I think we’ve got to be upfront here, they’re also partial owners of LifterLMS. And, um, if I was looking at MemberPress or Paid Membership Pro, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’ll go with Paid Membership Bro, no, no worry about it. They’ve also gone there. They don’t do which you know this thieving that Member Press does. I for their lower plan. I just don’t know how to get away with it. I just don’t know they’ve got the gumption to do it. I think they. I think. Where the only problem Paid Membership Pro, and it’s only a slight criticism, they do offer a free version, but it doesn’t do much. You’ve got to go standard, which is $500.

[00:29:50.660] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m in a legacy price structure with them, $500. And they’ve also gone into hosting as well, but they don’t offer anything like what WP-Tonic offers. And I’m not being flippant there. They don’t basically, you know, when people realize what WP-Tonic’s offering, they normally say, can’t be for real. But it’s, it’s a really strong platform with really great people behind it. So like I say, if you’re not looking at a learning management system, you’re not in learning, I would have no hesitation in saying you should look at it rather than MemberPress. What do you reckon?

[00:30:39.820] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, when it comes to all of it, you know, when it comes to the overall picture, you know, besides the fact that I think Jason and Kim are great folks, when I compare things, Paid Memberships Pro, I think out of the box, even the free version, does what a lot of people need to do with a membership site. Can you sign people up as members? Yes. Can you, can you take a payment? Yes. Um, but when you look at like the pro version, it does a ton of stuff, right? And you can do subscriptions, all that stuff. But their list of integrations and add-ons is really impressive.

[00:31:17.700] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:31:18.590] – Speaker 4

And, um, I, I may— maybe I’m being too much of a commercial here, but they have like this Coding with Sam thing they do every week. Someone from their team gets on and they’ll say, this is how we’re going to make custom code this week to do XYZ. This is how we’re going to integrate this, this, and this, and this is custom code for this. And they’re very open to their community and feedback and collaboration to make things work for each use case. And so just because I see the way they run their business and the way that they interact with their customers, Mm-hmm. Paid Memberships Pro to me is just one of the ones to jump on with.

[00:31:57.270] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the only slight difference we have, and you’re probably right because I haven’t worked with it for a long while, is what you get out of the free version. But that’s fair enough. You’re probably right about that. On, on to the next one, Restrictive Content Pro. Really quite a different animal. Um, been around a long time, been around a long, long time. Um, starts at $49. I don’t think it’s got anything like the functionality of Paid Membership Pro or MemberPress, but it doesn’t— it’s not, it’s not there for that. Um, but it’s a pretty solid if it does meet your requirements. And I just wonder if, if you really want those high functionality. Like I say again, you’ll probably be better if you’re in learning for the long term as an individual organization, you’re probably better off looking at a learning management plugin, not one of these. So I think it’s got its place. The only thing I find a bit confusing is their pricing structure because they’ve got a one-site license for $49 a year, which is I think if it, if it does what you’re looking for, I think that’s a great price, right?

[00:33:20.150] – Jonathan Denwood

But then they got the Advanced at $79, and that’s free. It’s a free site license. And then I thought, oh, and then Ultimate I think is 5 sites. But I looked down, but the Ultimate has more functionality. But I almost missed that because the middle one, the Advanced, doesn’t have any additional functionality. It’s just a free site license. So I found that a little bit confusing. I’m sure a few other people have missed that. But what’s your views on restricted content then?

[00:33:56.640] – Kurt von Ahnen

For me, Restricted Content Pro is like this, it’s this really great tool that like fills the gap when you’re using a membership tool that doesn’t include content restriction.

[00:34:08.860] – Speaker 4

And I know that that sounds like maybe I’m being two-faced or talking out of the side of my head or something, but like I’m used to using LifterLMS. LifterLMS comes with content restriction. Boom, I can do this, part of the membership setup that it has. But you and I, Jonathan, we’ve worked on client websites where they didn’t have, you know, a content restriction element to the membership tool that they had selected. And we had— Had to add Content Restriction Pro to their websites so that we could restrict certain elements of pages or, or certain, you know, elements of the site from people without certain user roles.

[00:34:44.520] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so it’s a valuable tool. I think it works great for what it’s billed as. But again, if I was coming in blank slate, starting a membership website, it probably wouldn’t be my go-to out of the box.

[00:34:59.540] – Jonathan Denwood

No, I think that’s totally fair. On to the next one, which is— we’re opening a can of worms here. Like I say, It’s WooCommerce Memberships and it’s part of Automattic. And I am correct, if you’re using Memberships, you’ve got to buy the other plugin Subscription. You’ve got to buy both of them, haven’t you? Am I right about that or wrong?

[00:35:24.070] – Kurt von Ahnen

I would have to double-check you on that, Jonathan. I was under the impression that you had to, that you had to get Memberships and Subscription.

[00:35:32.360] – Jonathan Denwood

So you’re looking at these prices, at this price, you’d be looking at $400 to $500 A year just for one site license, folks. Like I say, if you’ve got a specific need to utilize WooCommerce, there’s been countries that are not covered by Stripe. There’s industries that Stripe won’t touch. There’s particular areas where you can’t use Stripe, where you’re going to have to go and use a traditional gateway provider. Yeah. Go, you know, or the other reason is what we discussed in the first half, that you’ve got this elaborate— and I’ve, I’ve been involved in a couple of them and I suss them out pretty quick. And then if they won’t listen to advice, I send them somewhere else where they’ve got this— they’ve got— they haven’t even got one student. They haven’t even in an association, a nonprofit, or it’s normally business to consumer. They haven’t even got one student and they’ve worked out this labyrinth, complicated structure. And the only way it’s going to be dealt with is through massive custom coding or WooCommerce. And I’ve learned to walk away from it because it never works out. But it has— it’s got its place for the things I’ve said.

[00:37:11.910] – Jonathan Denwood

But I think there’s much better solutions that we’re talking about. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:37:19.190] – Kurt von Ahnen

You nailed it on so many points about the need for a different payment gateway. Again, other countries, other industries, you know, sometimes Stripe just isn’t viable.

[00:37:33.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, Stripe won’t deal with gambling. I think I’m correct with this. I might be— I’m sorry to interrupt. I’ve not been Oh, it’s okay. But gaming, I think if you’re selling weaponry, they won’t deal with you. Naked bits. Yeah, that weed, you know, even if it’s legal in specific states, they won’t deal with it. They won’t touch it.

[00:37:58.740] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve helped people use WooCommerce in that situation.

[00:38:05.240] – Speaker 4

I remember when I first started doing some of the support with LifterLMS, We used to get a lot of requests about having to use WooCommerce, and I’m gonna tell you over the years that that request has dwindled down quite a bit because Stripe’s done a much better job of filling in those gaps. But there’s still some of the— gotta remember, we’re in a global community, folks. So, so, you know, things change substantially from country to country.

[00:38:31.560] – Kurt von Ahnen

Sometimes you gotta use the cart and sometimes Woo’s the one, but with, with their pricing structure for their add-ons. And again, with the kind of that antiquated but, but heavy heaviness to it, I try to stay away from it whenever possible.

[00:38:47.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. One I don’t know much about, but the people behind it, I have dealt with them because they’re the same people that do TranslatePress, and that’s paid member subscription. You know, pretty solid people, been in the WordPress community a long while. Um, came on my radar because it’s because of the people. They price it in euros. I find that— I found that a little bit odd. It’s a lot more expensive than, uh, restricted content, but it’s got a lot more functionality in it. Um, What I have heard, it’s a little bit easier to set up than Paid Membership Pro, um, and the interface. It’s all a month. I’m going to draw back because it’s in the eye of the beholder, really. Um, but it starts— it’s, it’s cheaper than the first 2 that we were talking about because it starts— even though it’s in euros, it’s €99, which Probably what— I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what the exchange rate is at the present moment for euros to dollars. Um, so, and it’s a pretty reputable company, isn’t it? They’ve been around a long while. Um, I presume because they’ve got the pricing in euro, it’s more European focused than most of their— and because they haven’t got dollar Pricing.

[00:40:26.520] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m just surmising that its focus is very much Euro-focused. Have you got any knowledge about this one?

[00:40:34.390] – Kurt von Ahnen

No, this is one that I have not used. I did some quick looks, you know, before the show. I got the same information you got, Jonathan. We’ve both used TranslatePress, you know, with a fair amount of success. The support’s been, you know, decent. So, you know, I look at it and I go, okay, You know, what do we really get for the money? What does it really do? But I don’t have any hands-on experience with it, so I feel like I don’t have really good input for the— for this category.

[00:41:03.270] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think, yeah, we’re in agreement. And finally, we got LifterLMS. And like I say, I think if you’re in learning for the long term, you know, you really do want to build a business. And because of AI and that, I really see LifterLMS being around for the long term, as much as you can say that. I think it’s going to be able to deal with integrating with AI. We’re still in very early days about using AI to improve online education. I just feel it’s got a lot of promise, but it’s— Yeah. A lot of, of what’s been sold, sold, and doesn’t really gel with me at the present moment. I think it’s a lot of hot air. There’s one geezer who, who sells a, um, a whole AI school in, in a, in a subscription, but It doesn’t do much for me. I think what you’re seeing with the SaaS companies, not particularly that impressive either. But I think the beauty of Lyft, it’s been around a long time. You’ve got the free product. You can buy a Stripe add-on for about— what is it now? $175 or is it still around $150 for the Stripe Add-on.

[00:42:43.550] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think the normal price is— I thought it was $199. I thought it went

[00:42:47.090] – Jonathan Denwood

up. It’s $199. Yeah, sorry, I’m a bit out of date. Obviously, if you host with WP-Tonic, you get in the Affinity bundle as part of your hosting bundle, which is normally $1,500, and you get that part of your hosting bundle. But I think for a couple hundred bucks now, you can get Stripe. They have got a free and with just the Stripe add-on. They’ve got these bundles as well. They’ve got the Earth bundle at just under $400. They’ve got the Universal bundle just under $600 and they’ve got the Infinity around $1,600. They do discount and for the first year you get a break. I don’t, And I understand why they do that. They were, you know, because MemberPress was doing it and everybody had to do it. But I’m not, I’m not that keen on ever giving a discount for the first year and that. But it is what it is, isn’t it? But I think for what you get, the amount of flexibility, power, Integrations is unbeatable, isn’t it?

[00:44:06.370] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, again, I’m, I’m connected to them.

[00:44:10.970] – Jonathan Denwood

Send me the check next week, actually.

[00:44:12.790] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I’m connected to them. So full disclosure, you know, I work with them quite a bit, but I don’t think, Jonathan, I honestly don’t think there’s really much better for the category that we’re talking about today.

[00:44:26.060] – Speaker 4

When it comes to memberships, it handles the memberships. You got 6 access plans for every membership you create, you know, that you can build. You can, you can vary the pricing, you can vary the intervals of, of, of collecting money. You could have a quarterly membership, a monthly membership, a yearly membership, a lifetime membership, and it could all be like the same membership with different payment structures. Um, LifterLMS gives you an incredible amount of freedom in that space. That content restriction we talked about is there, right? And then if you ever want to create a course, the course building’s built in. So it’s got a course builder; it has a course catalog. You can sell courses à la carte, you can bundle courses, you can include courses as part of the memberships. So you can do all of those things. And then periodically, usually around, you know, Black Friday and usually one or two other times of the year, they’ll have some kind of lifetime deal. And Jonathan, you know, I’m a sucker for a lifetime deal. And if that pops up, that’s usually somewhere around $3,000, and then you’ve got the Infinity Bundle for the rest of your life for $3,000.

[00:45:28.260] – Speaker 4

There are a few things I really like about LifterLMS. A, they’re still owned by the founder. They haven’t been sucked up or, you know, taken in; they haven’t been bought by some conglomerate, and their website’s not getting shut down, and, you know, they’re still there. We do 2 live calls a week. We do an Ask Us Anything call on Thursday. Around noon Central Time. We do an office hours call at 2 PM. That’s where people with the Universe or Infinity bundle can join a Zoom call, ask questions, share screens, and talk to other users worldwide. It’s, um, I just don’t think there’s a better product or environment to build in than that right now, if it meets your use case. I always go back to that. I don’t want to oversell you if you don’t need it. But,

[00:46:14.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

But if that’s even on your radar, I think LifterLMS is the best product.

[00:46:18.790] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And I think what I said is simplistic in the way I worded it. There are, you could criticize me, but I think if you really see it, because I think LifterLMS and I think Chris and the team at Lifter, they’re serious about learning. Right. And I think if you’re serious, your organization, your nonprofit, your association, it does have elements of community to it, but it will also work with Fluent Community, and then it will work with some of the other larger community solutions. You know, you just got an enormous amount of flexibility. And like I say, I think the owner, the team at LifterLift, is committed to learning. And if you’re committed to learning, online learning, and you really want as much control over your intellectual property and your business as an organization or as an individual, it’s the solution. But if you’re not really committed to learning, it probably isn’t the right solution.

[00:47:31.840] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:33.210] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you think, do you think there’s some— I’ve explained it reasonably well. Well,

[00:47:39.860] – Kurt von Ahnen

The only, the only word that I center on is the committed part, right? You’ve got to be committed, like committed to not developing learning. If you know you’re never going to make a course, then I would probably go the Paid Memberships Pro route, you know? Yeah. But if there’s even a hint, even a hint that you might put out a course in the near future, I would say just use LifterLMS, leverage the membership tools

[00:48:03.360] – Speaker 4

To get started, and then add your course when you’re ready. Note: I don’t think we’re doing the audience any favors by not mentioning this. Paid Memberships Pro has a special integration for LifterLMS. So if you go with Paid Memberships Pro and want to add courses later, you can add a trimmed-down version of LifterLMS, and they complement each other well.

[00:48:27.890] – Jonathan Denwood

Right, fair enough. Um, but I think, um, yeah, I, I think it— and you’ve got to understand, folks, learning, learning is going to dramatically change over the next few years. And you’ve seen it now: people combine it with community, you know, different levels of access to the expert or the expert team. You know, just the idea, you know, apart from your first course that you’re— that it’s just gonna be some video lessons. But that still works. A lot of people say it doesn’t work, but it still does. It really depends on the topic and the value proposition that you’re bringing. But if you’re in learning and you’re in it, you know, for the reasonable long term, you really want to build a real business, I have no hesitation in saying LifterLMS is the right choice to go. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:49:41.090] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I’m usually on LinkedIn doing something on there, so you can find me there on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt Von Ahn in there. Mañana No Más is our business, so mañananomas.com, or they can reach out through you, Jonathan, at the WP-Tonic.

[00:49:54.320] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, we are, we are full. We do SEO, PPC; we do development, we do hosting. Hosting is very passionate about that, and we provide, you know, we’ve got clients that have been with us 6, 7 years. I take that as a testimonial about— with Kirk and the other members of the team, um, dedication to service. Um, we’d love you to come over, and you can always book a free chat with me. We’ll see you next week with another topic. See you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:50:33.650] – Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine Show. Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes, and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.

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