WordPress makes it easy to build a website, but if you want to build an online community, generate recurring revenue, or offer exclusive content, you’ll need a membership-enabled website. Luckily, it’s easy to convert your website into a membership-based website — all you need is a WordPress website and a membership plugin.
This will allow you to easily restrict content, create paid memberships, offer exclusive perks to your audience, and many other membership-based features. Whether you’re a content creator, educator, coach, or business owner, a membership site can help you generate recurring revenue and build deeper relationships with your users.
However, with so many things to consider when building a membership site with WordPress, it may seem daunting to get started.
That’s exactly why we’re here. Today, we’re going to walk you through the entire process of building a membership site on WordPress from A to Z. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to launch a successful membership site on WordPress.
3 Common Membership Site Use Cases
There are nearly an unlimited number of possibilities when it comes to membership sites. From managing client access to selling digital products or courses, lots of businesses can benefit from a membership-style monetization method. Below are three of the most popular use cases, showcasing how businesses and creators can benefit from using a gated content model.
Below, we’ll outline how a membership site can change the way you do business with just a few examples out of the nearly unlimited possibilities.
Digital Agencies
For agencies handling multiple clients, a membership site can simplify project management and communication. Agencies can use a membership website to create private client dashboards where users log in to access reports, campaign data, and shared files—all without custom coding.
Beyond client portals, agencies can also use membership functionality to sell subscription-based digital products, such as premium templates, toolkits, or exclusive industry insights. The added security and ease of use make it a powerful solution for scaling an agency’s offerings without unnecessary development time.
SaaS Platforms
SaaS businesses thrive on predictable revenue, and a membership model is essential for handling recurring subscriptions. SaaS companies can use membership functionality to automate user sign-ups, payments, and subscription management—letting them focus on product growth instead of backend complexities.
Look for a membership plugin that supports free trials, discount codes, and localized pricing, making it easier to attract and retain customers. Whether running a freemium model for lead generation or a premium-only platform, SaaS businesses benefit from a seamless, scalable membership system.
Online Education
Membership sites are an excellent way to monetize educational content. Whether you’re offering self-paced courses, live workshops, or exclusive training materials, a membership plugin gives educational organizations the opportunity to gate content and provide tiered access based on subscription levels.
Beyond selling courses, educators can build thriving communities where students engage, share insights, and learn collaboratively. Features like discussion boards, downloadable materials, and progress tracking enhance the learning experience, making membership platforms an ideal solution for online educators and coaches.
How to Choose a Membership Plugin (+ the 3 Best Options)
Choosing the right membership plugin is crucial for your site’s functionality, user experience, and scalability. Here’s what to consider when making your decision.
Key Factors to Consider
When choosing a membership plugin, it’s crucial to consider features, ease of use, payment processing, content protection, integrations, and scalability. The best plugin should support your membership model—whether it’s one-time payments, recurring subscriptions, or free trials—while offering essential features like social logins, user roles, and payment gateway integrations.
You’ll also want to find a plugin with a user-friendly dashboard and minimal setup requirements are also key to avoiding unnecessary technical headaches.
Payment and subscription management is another critical factor. Look for a plugin that supports multiple payment processors (e.g., Stripe, PayPal) and gives you a simplified billing, refunds, and cancellations process. Equally important is content protection, ensuring you can control access to specific pages, posts, or files based on membership tiers.
The right plugin should also integrate easily with your existing tools, such as email marketing platforms, CRMs, and learning management systems. Lastly, pricing and scalability play a role—different plugins follow different pricing models, so it’s essential to weigh the costs against the value they bring to your business.
The 3 Best Membership Plugins
1. Memberstack
A modern, no-code membership plugin designed for flexibility and ease of use. It integrates with WordPress via a lightweight plugin and supports recurring payments via native integrations with Stripe and PayPal, social logins, user authentication, and gated content.
Although Memberstack comes with a host of impressive built-in features, the sky’s the limit for those who know how to code. And for those who haven’t launched yet, Memberstack is free to use until you’re ready to go live. Memberstack aims to knock down any barrier for people looking to build a membership site with WordPress.
Pros & Cons
✅ Memberstack is feature-rich offering recurring payments, gated content, user authentication, social logins, and a whole lot more.
✅ With no upfront costs, you can build and test without financial commitment. Only pay when you’re ready to launch
❌ While Memberstack is highly customizable out of the box, users wanting to use complex workflows may need to leverage APIs or Zapier, which can get more complicated.
Memberstack’s Product Hunt Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (110+ reviews)
Memberstack’s G2 Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (110+ reviews)
Learn how to set up Memberstack today!
2. MemberPress
A WordPress-native plugin with built-in payment processing, fairly extensive features, and relatively extensive integrations available. A nice tool for bloggers and online course creators looking to integrate memberships within their website.
Pros & Cons
✅ MemberPress offers built-in payment processing for one-time or subscription-based membership payments.
✅ Supports a variety of membership structures, including tiered plans and paywall access.
❌ G2 ratings indicate that installation and setup are not the most user-friendly.
❌ Difficult to customize unless you have advanced CSS knowledge
MemberPress’ G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (260+ reviews)
3. Restrict Content Pro
A lightweight option that provides access control, discount codes, and detailed member reports. A simple yet effective membership solution.
Pros & Cons
✅ Provides essential membership features like access control, discount codes, and reports.
✅ Integrates with major payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
❌ Lacks advanced customization options, making it less suitable for complex membership structures.
❌ While functional, it doesn’t offer the same flexibility and scalability as newer solutions.
Restrict Content Pro’s WordPress Plugin Rating: 3.1 out of 5 stars (90+ reviews)
6 Simple Steps to Building a Membership Site with WordPress
Thanks to new technology hitting the market, creating a membership site on WordPress has never been easier. All you need is a WordPress website, a membership plugin, and a way to process payments (if you’re looking to accept payments).
Step 1: Choose & Install a Membership Plugin
This is likely the single most important decision you’ll make. Your membership plugin is the core tool that handles user registration, content restriction, and payments.
Based on our earlier list, we’ll be using Memberstack for this tutorial for the user-friendly interface and advanced features available. There are alternatives available, but they may require different steps to get started.
Installing Memberstack is a simple process:
- Sign up for Memberstack and create your account.
- Download the Memberstack plugin from the official WordPress plugin page.
- Head over to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Select File and upload your recently downloaded Memberstack plugin.
- Under the Plugins section of your WordPress website, find and activate Memberstack.
- Then head over to the Memberstack plugin area and follow the activation instructions. You’ll need to enter your App ID from your Memberstack.com account.
And that’s it! Now that you’ve got Memberstack installed, let’s talk about how you can start building out your membership plan options.
Step 2: Establish Membership Levels & Pricing
Before you actually build a membership site in WordPress, you’ll need to decide on your different membership levels based on access and pricing. Memberstack offers many different ways to customize your membership structure.
Make sure to ask yourself; why would someone want to become a member of your business/organization? You can offer 1 option for membership or 100+ options. It all depends on your business model and what makes sense for your customers.
For example, an online fitness coach could use the following structure:
- Basic Plan – $29/month for access to an online training course.
- Premium Plan – $199/month includes a gated nutrition calculator, AI-powered program builder, and community access.
- VIP Plan – $399/month for access to unlimited private coaching & premium perks.
Once you’ve decided on a structure for your own plans, it’s time to actually create them within Memberstack. Memberstack makes this an easy process, so let’s try setting one up!
- Go to your Memberstack Dashboard → Plans → Add Plan.
- Choose a membership type:
- Free plan– No payment required, just sign up (useful for collecting emails).
- Paid plans, which you have 2 different options for;
- One-time payment – Users pay a fee for lifetime access.
- Subscription-based – Users pay monthly or yearly for continued access.
If you’re not sure what membership plans you want to offer, don’t stress. You can always add, edit, and delete your plans in your Memberstack dashboard.
Step 3: Restrict Content to Members Only
Now that your membership levels are set, you need to lock certain content so only members can access it.
Restrict Pages, Posts, & More
- Go to Gated Content within your Memberstack Dashboard.
- Under Select specific plans, choose the plan you’re configuring gated content for.
- Add the URL(s) the selected plan should have access to under Restricted URLs.
- Click Save to make sure your changes take effect.
Check out our gated content support page if you have more questions
You can restrict just about anything:
✅ Blog posts
✅ Online courses & tutorials
✅ Video libraries
✅ Downloadable files (PDFs, templates, eBooks)
✅ Private forums or communities
Step 4: Set Up Payment Processing
In order to offer paid memberships and monetize your website, you’ll need to set up secure payment processing. Memberstack integrates with two of the best payment processors:
- Stripe (recommended) – Best for recurring subscriptions & credit cards.
- PayPal – Good for one-time payments but less commonly used for subscriptions.
How to Set Up Payments
- Go to the Memberstack Dashboard → Settings → Stripe Settings.
- Connect Stripe (our recommendation).
- After clicking Connect, Stripe will open in a new tab, where you’ll need to log in and confirm you want to use Stripe with Memberstack.
Once payments are live, users can purchase memberships and access restricted content immediately.
Step 5: Customize the Login & Sign-Up Experience
A great membership site needs to offer a simple sign-up and login experience. A clunky sign-up experience can result in a huge drop-off rate, and in turn, a lot of money left on the table.
We understand this importance, which is why Memberstack makes it easy to develop an intuitive sign-up and login process with built-in forms.
Set Up Sign-Up & Login Forms
- Go to Memberstack → Forms & Fields.
- Customize the signup form (Name, Email, Password, etc.). Consider what information you may need for your specific business. For example, an online fitness coach may want a user to provide their height, weight, goals, or other information.
- Embed the form on your homepage, pricing page, or a dedicated signup page.
- Create a login page so existing users can access their accounts easily.
✅ Pro Tip: Customize the signup flow with social logins (Google, Facebook) to make it easier for users to join.
Step 6: Test & Launch Your Membership Site
Before inviting users, test everything to ensure a smooth experience.
- Create a test user from the Memberstack Dashboard and test your profile page, password reset, or anything else you may have set up.
- Try upgrading & downgrading plans to ensure payment processing works.
- You’ll want to test your restricted content – make sure you’re only able to access the paid content that you should be able to, according to your test user’s plan.
- Check to make sure the email notifications are working properly. Your members should be receiving verification emails, welcome emails, payment receipts, etc. as outlined within the Emails section of the Memberstack plugin.
Once you’ve made sure that everything is working correctly, launch your site by choosing your Memberstack plan and setting your website live.
Start Building Your Membership Site Today!
Building a membership site with WordPress is a powerful way to monetize content, build a community, or offer exclusive access to premium resources. With the right tools, you can create a smooth user experience for your members, handling registrations, payments, and content restrictions effortlessly.
Memberstack makes this process a breeze, offering a user-friendly, no-code solution that integrates effortlessly with WordPress. Whether you’re launching an online course, a subscription-based blog, or a private community, Memberstack gives you the flexibility to grow at your own pace.
Best of all, you can start for free—pay nothing until you’re ready to go live. Sign up today and start building your membership site with ease!
