Best WordPress membership plugins (free and paid)

Short answer: For most paid membership sites in 2026, MemberPress is the safest commercial pick (deepest payment-gateway support, built-in dunning, included LMS), Paid Memberships Pro is the strongest open-source option (free core, unlimited levels, paid add-ons à la carte), Paid Member Subscriptions is the easiest free starting point on wordpress.org, and WooCommerce Memberships only makes sense if your store already runs WooCommerce. Most “best membership plugin” reviews skip the question that actually decides revenue: how the plugin handles failed recurring payments. That is where money quietly leaks for years.

Plugin	Free or paid	Best for	Skip if
MemberPress	$199.50/yr+ (commercial)	Paid memberships with built-in courses, multi-gateway support	You only need free-tier signup or a tiny site
Paid Memberships Pro	Free core + paid add-ons ($297/yr+)	Open-source membership stack you can extend without vendor lock-in	You want everything in one license fee
Paid Member Subscriptions	Free + Pro from $79/yr	First-time membership site on wordpress.org with Stripe out of the box	You need group memberships or LMS in the free tier
WooCommerce Memberships	$199/yr (woocommerce.com)	Sites already running WooCommerce that want to gate products and content together	You do not already use WooCommerce
Restrict Content (StellarWP)	Free + Pro	Content-gating with light membership features	You need active vendor support (recent reviews flag slow responses)
Ultimate Member	Free + paid Stripe extension	Community sites where profiles + directories matter more than billing	Billing is your main feature – it is a paid add-on
BuddyBoss Platform	Free core + $299/yr theme	Course communities, social-network-style membership	You only need basic content gating

The first thing to know: two of the most common picks – MemberPress and WooCommerce Memberships – are not on the wordpress.org plugin repository. They are sold directly by their vendors. Paid Memberships Pro was on .org until October 2024 when its author voluntarily moved distribution to paidmembershipspro.com. None of these closures indicate the plugins are dead. But it does mean the wordpress.org “best plugin” search results mislead readers into thinking the lineup is smaller than it is.

Why payment handling matters more than the plugin#

Membership sites are recurring-revenue businesses. If a card declines on the renewal date and the plugin does not retry intelligently, that member’s access expires, they get a generic email, and most of them never come back. Industry data on subscription billing puts involuntary churn (failed payments, expired cards, declined CVVs) at roughly 20-40 percent of all subscription cancellations – and most of it is recoverable if your billing layer handles retries, card-update prompts, and dunning emails properly.

Three things determine recovery rate:

1. Smart retries. Stripe’s built-in Smart Retries logic schedules up to four retry attempts over two weeks based on machine-learning signals about when the issuing bank is likely to approve. Plugins that pass payment handling to Stripe in subscription mode get this for free. Plugins that handle their own retry schedule usually do not.
2. Card-update prompts. When a card is about to expire, Stripe can email the customer to update it before the next renewal. The plugin has to actually enable this flow.
3. Dunning emails. Templated emails when a payment fails – polite, branded, with a one-click update link. Generic “your subscription expired” notices a week after the fact lose customers permanently.

When you are evaluating plugins below, the column you should care most about is “what happens on a failed renewal.” Feature lists and pricing pages bury this answer in support docs. We surface it explicitly.

How we picked these seven plugins#

We skipped:

• WishList Member – still sold but the gateway integrations are aging and recent third-party reviews cite reliability issues with renewal handling.
• s2Member – functional but the UI is unchanged from the early 2010s and recent updates are sparse.
• MemberMouse – solid SaaS-style billing, but the licensing model (per-member tiering with overage charges) makes it hard to recommend for sites that scale unpredictably.
• WP-Members – 50,000+ active installs and still maintained, but the free version focuses on registration gating without payment processing, and the paid extensions are limited.
• WishList Products / WordPress Membership Plugin clones – many CodeCanyon-tier plugins look like deals, but turn into orphaned code within a year.

We included one community-focused option (BuddyBoss) and one general user/profile plugin (Ultimate Member) because they are routinely searched alongside membership plugins, even though neither is a billing-first tool. We flag the limitation in their sections.

Verified status as of May 2026 against wordpress.org listings or vendor sites:

Plugin	Source	Last update	Active install signal
MemberPress	memberpress.com	Active development	Vendor cites 100,000+ sites
Paid Memberships Pro	paidmembershipspro.com	Active development	Open-source, GitHub-tracked
Paid Member Subscriptions	wordpress.org	1 week ago (3.0.3)	10,000+ active installs
WooCommerce Memberships	woocommerce.com	Active	30,000+ active installs
Restrict Content	wordpress.org	1 month ago (3.2.26)	9,000+ active installs
Ultimate Member	wordpress.org	6 days ago (2.11.4)	200,000+ active installs
BuddyBoss Platform	buddyboss.com	Active development	Vendor cites 70,000+ sites

MemberPress#

Use it if: You want a single commercial license, deep payment-gateway support, and included LMS features (courses, quizzes, drip content) without bolting on LearnDash separately.

Don’t use it if: You expect free-tier capability. There is no free version. Pricing starts at $199.50/year (Launch) and the cheaper tier only includes Stripe.

What you get: Three tiers (Launch $199.50/yr, Growth $349.50/yr, Scale $499.50/yr – intro pricing, renewal at full rate). Built-in course module across all tiers, payment gateways depending on tier (Stripe at all tiers; PayPal and Square at Growth+; Authorize.net at Scale only). The course module alone replaces a $199/year LearnDash license, which makes Growth competitive on bundled cost.

Failed-payment handling: subscriptions run through the chosen gateway, so Stripe Smart Retries work natively when Stripe is the processor. MemberPress sends configurable expiration-warning and renewal-reminder emails. There is no built-in deep dunning workflow at the lower tiers – if you need automated email sequences after each retry attempt, that is layered through the email-marketing add-ons or a third-party tool.

Common gotchas:

• The cheapest tier (Launch) only includes Stripe. If a card is declined and the user wants to switch payment methods, you cannot offer them PayPal as a fallback unless you upgrade.
• Renewal pricing is roughly double the intro discounted rate visible on the site – confirm the year-two number before committing.
• The course module is solid but is not a full LMS replacement (no advanced gradebook in Launch, no certificates in Launch).
• Add-ons add up. Affiliate program, Corporate Accounts, Downloads, ConvertKit/Mailchimp integrations are separate per-tier features.

Paid Memberships Pro#

Use it if: You want a free, open-source core that you can extend with only the paid add-ons you actually need – and you are comfortable with the fact that distribution moved off wordpress.org.

Don’t use it if: You need a single fixed license fee. The price scales with the add-ons you pull in.

What you get: Free core with unlimited membership levels, content restriction, a basic Stripe and PayPal integration, member emails, and discount codes. Paid plans (Personal $297/yr, Plus $597/yr, Builder $797/yr) bundle the official add-ons – currently 75+ add-ons covering things like recurring subscriptions with Stripe deeper integration, BuddyPress integration, drip content, group accounts, and integrations with email marketing platforms.

The plugin was removed from the wordpress.org repository on October 17, 2024 at the author’s request. This is not a security closure – the team chose to consolidate distribution on paidmembershipspro.com to control updates and licensing. The plugin is open source on GitHub, actively maintained, and in active production use on tens of thousands of sites. You install it by downloading from paidmembershipspro.com instead of through the WordPress plugin installer. Auto-updates work through their licensing system.

Failed-payment handling: depends on the gateway add-on. The Stripe add-on supports Stripe’s webhooks for invoice.payment_failed events, which you can use to trigger custom emails or hold the membership in a “past_due” state before cancellation. Out of the box, behavior is to send an email and downgrade access on a configurable schedule.

Common gotchas:

• Installation is one extra step (download a zip, upload it). New users sometimes assume the absence from wordpress.org means it is dead.
• The “free” sticker is real for the core, but most production sites end up needing one or more paid add-ons. Budget for the Personal plan minimum if you want recurring revenue with Stripe done properly.
• The admin UI is functional but dense – it predates the modern WordPress design language and the learning curve is steeper than MemberPress.
• Custom checkout flows require either the official add-ons or theme work. There is less drag-and-drop polish than in commercial competitors.

Paid Member Subscriptions#

Use it if: You want a free, actively maintained membership plugin from the wordpress.org repository, with Stripe support in the free version and a clear upgrade path when you outgrow the free tier.

Don’t use it if: You need group memberships, LMS integration, or multiple subscriptions per user without paying. All three are paid add-ons.

What you get: Free version (10,000+ active installs, version 3.0.3, last updated April 2026, tested up to WordPress 7.0, 4.7-star rating across 261 reviews) includes unlimited subscription plans, Stripe and PayPal recurring payments, content restriction by plan or login status, free trials, signup fees, install-in-billing, hierarchical plans, discount codes, automatic refunds from the dashboard, member email customization, GDPR features, reCAPTCHA support, and WooCommerce integration. Pro plans (Basic $79/yr, Pro $189/yr, Agency $297/yr – vendor pricing as of writing) add email reminders, fixed-period memberships, content dripping, group memberships, multiple currencies, EU VAT handling, and pay-what-you-want.

This is the plugin that gets least mentioned in “best of” lists, but for a first-time membership site on a budget, it is the most honest free starting point. The free version actually handles paid subscriptions – which is unusual. Most “free” membership plugins force you to upgrade the moment you want to charge anyone.

Failed-payment handling: relies on Stripe webhooks for recurring payments. The Email Reminders add-on (paid, in Basic tier and up) lets you build automated sequences for upcoming renewals, expired memberships, and failed payments. The free tier sends one configurable email per event.

Common gotchas:

• The free tier’s email automation is minimal. If renewal recovery matters (and it does), the Email Reminders add-on in the paid tier is essentially required.
• The styling can clash with some themes – one recent reviewer flagged conflicts with Kadence theme. Test on staging before launch.
• Documentation is thorough but written in technical voice; less hand-holding than MemberPress.
• Profile Builder is a separate plugin from the same vendor and pairs naturally – but you may end up running two plugins from the same author for a complete UX.

WooCommerce Memberships#

Use it if: You already run WooCommerce. The plugin gates content and products to members, integrates with WooCommerce Subscriptions for recurring billing, and uses your existing payment gateway and email setup.

Don’t use it if: You do not already use WooCommerce. Adding WooCommerce just to use this plugin adds significant overhead.

What you get: $199/year for one site (annual subscription, sold via woocommerce.com). 30,000+ active installs and a 4.0/5 rating across 148 reviews. Functions as a standalone membership solution, but unlocks recurring billing, free trials, and upgrade/downgrade flows when paired with WooCommerce Subscriptions ($199/year separately). Integrates cleanly with WooCommerce’s order, customer, and reporting infrastructure.

The killer feature: members get automatic discounts on WooCommerce products, and you can restrict shop categories to specific membership levels. This is the only plugin in this list that handles “members get 20 percent off the store” naturally without custom code.

Failed-payment handling: handed off to WooCommerce Subscriptions, which handles its own retry schedule (configurable, default is three retries at 12 hours, 1 day, and 3 days). For Stripe specifically, you can also enable Stripe’s Smart Retries on top of that. Dunning emails are templated through the WooCommerce email system.

Common gotchas:

• True recurring billing requires WooCommerce Subscriptions as a separate purchase. Total: ~$398/year for the recurring-membership use case.
• WooCommerce overhead is non-trivial. If your site is content-only and has no products, this is the wrong tool.
• High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) compatibility is in place but verify your other WooCommerce extensions before enabling.
• Auto-renewal failure handling is decent but tied to the WooCommerce Subscriptions retry schedule – not as sophisticated as Stripe-native dunning.

Restrict Content (StellarWP)#

Use it if: You want a content-gating plugin with optional membership functionality, you are familiar with the StellarWP/iThemes ecosystem, and you have realistic expectations about support.

Don’t use it if: You are starting a new project today and need confidence in vendor responsiveness.

What you get: Free version on wordpress.org (9,000+ active installs, version 3.2.26, last update April 2026, tested up to 6.9.4, 3.1-star average rating). Includes membership levels, Stripe and manual payment support, member account pages, registration and login forms, content restriction by role or membership level, prorated upgrades, and basic email notifications. Pro version (Restrict Content Pro, sold at restrictcontentpro.com starting at $99/year) adds discount codes, free trials, more payment gateways (PayPal, Authorize.net, Braintree), advanced reporting, and 34 add-ons.

This is the awkward one in this list. The plugin works, has a long history, and StellarWP is a real company. But the recent wordpress.org reviews tell a less encouraging story: a 1-star review from February 2026 cited a documented free-tier feature (“Basic Membership Emails”) that does not actually function, with no support response over 10 days. A June 2025 review from a longtime customer flagged that StellarWP no longer lists RCP in their main product lineup – the link from their site redirects to a different membership plugin (LearnDash Membership Add-on). The plugin still receives security and bug-fix updates, but the support flagship treatment has clearly moved elsewhere.

Failed-payment handling: Stripe webhooks handle the standard invoice.payment_failed events. The plugin can be configured to send renewal-failed emails. There is no built-in advanced retry scheduling beyond what the gateway provides.

Common gotchas:

• Support quality has dropped per multiple recent reviews. Plan for self-serve and community forum support.
• The plugin’s documentation links go to ithemes.com pages, some of which are broken or out of date.
• If you already have RCP running and it works, it is fine to keep. Reviewers consistently say “if you are starting fresh in 2026, look elsewhere.”
• The plugin name and product positioning are confusing – “Restrict Content” (free) is a different product than “Restrict Content Pro” (paid), and they were once separate plugins that converged.

Ultimate Member#

Use it if: Your site is community-first – you need beautiful user profiles, member directories, and registration flows, with content restriction as a secondary feature.

Don’t use it if: Billing is your main requirement. Paid membership functionality is a separate Stripe extension, not built into core.

What you get: Free core (200,000+ active installs, version 2.11.4, last update April 30, 2026, tested up to 6.9.4, 4.4-star rating across 1,447 reviews) includes front-end user profiles, custom registration forms with conditional logic, member directories, content restriction by role, custom user roles, conditional navigation menus, and a drag-and-drop form builder. Paid extensions sold individually or in bundles include Stripe (paid memberships), Social Login, Private Messages, Followers, Groups, Verified Users, MailChimp integration, and more. Pricing for the bundle is on ultimatemember.com – current intro pricing varies but typically starts around $249/year for the all-extensions bundle.

This is the only plugin on this list with serious community-network DNA. If your site is a paid community where the social layer (profiles, member-to-member messaging, groups) matters as much as the gating, Ultimate Member is the more natural fit than the billing-first plugins.

Failed-payment handling: when using the Stripe extension, falls back to Stripe’s webhook events. Email handling is functional but less developed than the dedicated billing plugins.

Common gotchas:

• The Stripe extension is a paid add-on. Without it, you cannot charge for memberships. This is the most-missed limitation in user reviews.
• Support quality has been mixed in recent reviews, with multiple complaints about response times in 2025-2026.
• Past security incidents (CVE patches in 2023 and again in 2026) require keeping the plugin auto-updated. The vendor has been responsive on patches.
• Pages with Ultimate Member shortcodes need to be excluded from page caching to avoid showing one user’s profile to another. The plugin handles this for its own pages automatically; custom pages need manual cache exclusion.

BuddyBoss Platform#

Use it if: Your site is a course community – paid memberships unlocking access to a social network, with discussion forums, group spaces, and LMS integration. Think a private Slack-style community plus courses, on WordPress.

Don’t use it if: You need basic content gating. BuddyBoss is heavy and the learning curve is significant.

What you get: Free Platform plugin (foundation – groups, profiles, activity feeds, messaging, forums via bbPress integration, courses via LearnDash/LifterLMS/TutorLMS integration). Paid components: BuddyBoss Theme & Platform Pro from $299/year (intro), Plus tier from $349/year, native mobile apps from $79-$219/month. The platform itself does not bill memberships – it integrates with MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, or WooCommerce Memberships for that.

This is a stack, not a plugin. You commit to BuddyBoss as the foundation, then layer billing through one of the dedicated membership plugins above. For paid online communities (the modern equivalent of “membership site” for many creators), this combination is genuinely best-in-class. For a simple paid newsletter, it is wildly over-engineered.

Failed-payment handling: depends entirely on the membership plugin you pair with it.

Common gotchas:

• The “free” plugin is not the full product. To get the actual community experience, you need the paid theme.
• Native mobile app pricing is steep ($79/month minimum). Many sites do not realize the mobile app is the major paid lift.
• Performance impact on shared or low-tier hosting is real – the platform loads multiple JavaScript modules and can push page weight past 2 MB on community pages without aggressive optimization.
• You still need a separate billing plugin. BuddyBoss is the substrate, not the cash register.

Quick reference: which plugin for which scenario#

Scenario	Best pick
Single paid course on WordPress, want courses + memberships in one plugin	MemberPress (Growth tier)
Free starter site, will charge for content later, do not want to migrate plugins	Paid Member Subscriptions (free, then upgrade to Pro)
Open-source-first, hate vendor lock-in, comfortable adding paid add-ons à la carte	Paid Memberships Pro
Already running WooCommerce, want to gate products and content for members	WooCommerce Memberships + WooCommerce Subscriptions
Building a paid community with groups, discussions, mobile app	BuddyBoss + MemberPress (or PMPro) for billing
Membership site is mostly profiles and member directory, billing is secondary	Ultimate Member + Stripe extension
Just need to gate one page behind a Stripe one-time payment	Paid Member Subscriptions free, or even just a Stripe Payment Link
Multi-tier subscription with corporate / team accounts	MemberPress (Corporate Accounts add-on) or PMPro (Group Accounts)
Drip content release after signup	MemberPress, PMPro Content Dripping add-on, or PMS Content Dripping add-on
EU VAT handling required	Paid Member Subscriptions Pro (Tax & EU VAT add-on) or PMPro
You inherited a Restrict Content Pro site and it works	Keep it for now, plan a migration when next major work is needed
Highest priority is recovering failed renewal payments	MemberPress (Stripe Smart Retries native) or WooCommerce Memberships + Subscriptions (configurable retry schedule)

How long does it take to see results#

Membership site metrics that matter, and how they typically progress:

Metric	First month	Months 2-3	Months 6-12
Conversion rate (visitor to paid)	0.5-2 percent typical	1-3 percent with optimization	2-5 percent at maturity
Trial-to-paid conversion (if free trial offered)	5-15 percent first cycle	10-25 percent with onboarding emails	15-35 percent with strong onboarding
Involuntary churn (failed renewals)	5-10 percent of renewals	3-8 percent with smart retries	2-5 percent with full dunning
Voluntary churn (cancellations)	10-30 percent first month	5-15 percent	3-10 percent at maturity
Net revenue retention	Varies wildly	90-110 percent	100-130 percent with upsells

Two patterns in this table matter:

1. Failed-renewal churn is recoverable. The gap between 10 percent involuntary churn (no recovery system) and 2 percent (full dunning with Stripe Smart Retries) is enormous over 12 months. On $10,000 monthly recurring revenue, that gap compounds to roughly $9,600 per year recovered. This is why the plugin’s payment-handling architecture matters more than its feature list.

1. Voluntary churn is largely about onboarding. New members who do not engage in the first 14 days have very high cancellation rates. None of the plugins above will fix that. Email automation, content-dripping schedules, and a strong day-one experience matter more than the plugin choice.

Common mistakes when picking a membership plugin#

1. Choosing on feature count, not failed-payment handling. Plugins with 200 features and a poor recurring-billing story will lose more revenue than plugins with 50 features and proper Stripe Smart Retries integration.
2. Not budgeting for the full stack. “MemberPress is $179” forgets renewal pricing. “PMPro is free” forgets you will buy add-ons. “WooCommerce Memberships is $199” forgets Subscriptions is another $199. Real annual cost is usually 1.5-2x the headline price.
3. Using a “free” plugin that doesn’t actually charge money in the free tier. Many free membership plugins gate the payment-processing feature behind a paid upgrade. Paid Member Subscriptions is one of the few that doesn’t.
4. Forgetting cache exclusions. Member-only content cached at the page level can leak between users. Every plugin in this list documents which pages need cache exclusion – read it before you flip caching on.
5. Treating Restrict Content Pro as a current recommendation. It works, but recent vendor signals and review patterns suggest it is in maintenance mode. Avoid for new projects.
6. Not testing the renewal flow before launch. Use Stripe test mode to simulate a card decline, an expired card, and a successful retry. If you cannot easily test these on your chosen plugin, you have already found a problem.
7. Skipping the email-template setup. Default emails are bland and unbranded. The single highest-leverage thing you can do post-launch is rewrite the renewal-reminder, payment-failed, and welcome emails. Members read these.
8. Using two membership plugins simultaneously. Different plugins with overlapping content-restriction logic create unpredictable access bugs. Pick one, migrate, then deactivate the other.
9. Building on a plugin without an export path. If you ever need to switch plugins, you need to export members, subscriptions, and payment history. Check that the plugin supports CSV export of all three before committing.
10. Ignoring the LMS question early. If you might add courses in 6-12 months, MemberPress’s bundled course module saves you a future LearnDash license. If courses will never be relevant, the bundled feature is bloat.

How Hostney handles membership sites#

Hostney does not bundle a membership plugin. This is intentional – membership is a content and business decision, not an infrastructure decision. Pick the plugin that matches your model from the list above, install it normally on your Hostney site, and the platform handles the layer below.

What we do provide that matters for membership sites:

• Container isolation per account. Your member database and payment-processing state live in an isolated container, not shared with other tenants. A noisy neighbor on a shared host can degrade your checkout flow at the worst possible moment.
• Daily off-server backups. Membership sites are recurring-revenue businesses. The cost of a 24-hour data loss for a 500-member site is real money plus support tickets. Our snapshots ship to off-server storage daily and can be restored without contacting support.
• DNS management with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for major SMTP relays. Membership sites send a lot of transactional email – signup confirmations, renewal reminders, payment-failed notices, expiration warnings. If those land in spam, your churn rate goes up. We make the relay setup straightforward.
• PHP version control per site. Newer membership plugins increasingly require PHP 8.0+. We let you select PHP versions from 5.6 through 8.5 per site, so upgrading is a settings change, not a server migration.
• Edge caching tuned for WordPress. Cache exclusions for member-only pages are configurable, so you can cache marketing pages aggressively without leaking gated content.

What we do not do, to be honest about it:

• We do not process payments. Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net are your relationship, not ours. We do not see, store, or proxy payment data.
• We do not bundle a membership plugin. Pick one from the list above based on your model. We do not have a preferred or “official” pick.
• We do not act as your SMTP relay. Port 25 is blocked, as is industry standard for shared hosting. Use SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, SMTP2GO, Brevo, or Amazon SES for transactional email – we provide DNS records to make those relays work cleanly.

Summary#

For most paid membership sites in 2026: MemberPress if you want one commercial license that bundles courses and dunning is a priority, Paid Memberships Pro if you prefer open-source with à la carte add-ons, Paid Member Subscriptions if you are starting on a budget and want to scale up paid features later, WooCommerce Memberships only if you already run WooCommerce, and BuddyBoss + MemberPress if you are building a paid community with social and course features. Restrict Content Pro is a “keep it if it works, do not start fresh on it” pick. Ultimate Member fits community-first sites where the billing is secondary.

The decision that matters most is not which plugin has the longest feature list. It is which plugin handles failed recurring payments well enough to keep involuntary churn under 5 percent. That choice compounds into thousands of dollars per year on even modest membership sites. Test the renewal failure flow before launch, set up real dunning emails, and pair whichever plugin you choose with proper DKIM, SPF, and DMARC so those payment-failed notices actually reach the inbox.

For the broader picture of what you’ll need around your membership site – reliable backups for your member database, strong caching so signup pages stay fast, newsletter tooling for member communication, popups for upgrade prompts, image optimization so course thumbnails do not slow pages down, and review collection for social proof on your sales pages – the rest of the WordPress plugin landscape we have covered will fill in the gaps.