MemberPress is one of the best-known WordPress membership plugins, and for good reason, but it isn’t the right fit for every site. It has no free version, its entry plan takes Stripe only and adds a transaction fee, and it’s built around selling content and courses. If you’re looking for MemberPress alternatives, this guide compares seven, from free plugins to full membership platforms, and says plainly where MemberPress is still the better choice.
We make one of the plugins here, WP User Manager, so read our section with that in mind. Prices and features come from each plugin’s own site and wordpress.org, checked in October 2026.
What MemberPress does well, and why people look elsewhere
MemberPress is a complete paid-membership platform: membership levels, content rules, a checkout, and a built-in course builder on every plan. Its ReadyLaunch templates give you pricing, checkout and account pages without design work, and the higher plans add content dripping, quizzes and certificates, community features (ClubSuite) and more payment gateways.
The reasons people look for an alternative are usually these:
- No free version. Every plan is paid, so you can’t build and test the whole site before paying.
- The entry plan has limits. The Launch plan, $399 a year ($199.50 for the first year), takes payments through Stripe only and charges a 4.9% transaction fee. PayPal and no extra fee start on Growth, $699 a year.
- It’s a lot of platform if you mainly need registration, profiles and a few members-only pages.
- It’s built around selling content, not around members finding and talking to each other.
What to compare
Membership plugins look alike on a features page. These are the differences that matter once the site is running:
- Payment gateways and fees. Which gateways each plan supports, whether recurring payments work on all of them, and whether the plugin adds its own fee on top of the gateway’s.
- How access is decided. By membership level, by role, by product bought, or by plan. This decides how easy it is to add a tier later.
- What members see. Some plugins give members only an account page; others add public profiles, a directory and groups.
- What’s free. A free version lets you build and test the whole site before paying, and tells you how much of the plugin is held back for paid plans.
- Courses and dripping. If you teach, check for a course builder and content dripping, or plan to add a course plugin.
MemberPress alternatives at a glance
| Plugin | Free version | Best for | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| WP User Manager | Yes, including Stripe payments | Member sites with registration, profiles and directories | $149 a year |
| Paid Memberships Pro | Yes, with 25 add-ons | Paid membership levels with lots of options | $499 a year |
| Kadence Memberships | Yes, with Stripe | Membership levels and content restriction | Paid Pro version |
| Simple Membership | Yes, free | A straightforward free membership site | Free |
| Ultimate Member | Yes | Community sites with profiles and social features | $276 a year |
| ProfilePress | Yes | Selling memberships and digital products | $129 a year |
| WooCommerce Memberships | No | Memberships inside a WooCommerce store | Paid yearly |
1. WP User Manager
WP User Manager is our plugin, built for member sites where the members themselves matter: front-end registration and login, an account page, public profiles and member directories, all free. The free plugin also charges for registration with Stripe, one-off or recurring, and members manage their plan and card from their account page. Our guide to building a membership website walks through it.
Paid addons add content restriction by plan, several registration forms, custom profile fields, groups and more, in bundles from $149 a year.
Where MemberPress is stronger: courses, content dripping and PayPal. WP User Manager takes payments through Stripe only (or WooCommerce, with the WooCommerce addon), has no course builder and doesn’t drip content. The free plugin’s Stripe connection adds a 2% fee per transaction; the Stripe Pro addon removes it.
2. Paid Memberships Pro
Paid Memberships Pro is the closest like-for-like alternative: membership levels, recurring payments and content restriction per level, with a free plugin that includes 25 add-ons. It’s no longer on wordpress.org, so you download it from their site. Paid plans start at $499 a year for Standard and add premium add-ons and support. Choose it if you want MemberPress-style membership levels with a free starting point.
3. Kadence Memberships
Kadence Memberships, formerly Restrict Content, offers unlimited membership levels, free and trial plans, content restriction down to individual blocks, prorated upgrades and downgrades, and a member account area. The free version even takes Stripe payments, and a paid Pro version adds more. It suits sites already using the Kadence theme.
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4. Simple Membership
Simple Membership does what the name says: membership levels, protected posts and pages, and free or paid memberships through PayPal, Stripe or Braintree, including recurring payments with PayPal and Stripe. It’s free. Choose it for a straightforward members-only site on a small budget.
5. Ultimate Member
Ultimate Member is a community plugin first: registration, profiles and member directories in the free version, with paid extensions for groups, activity walls, followers and more from $276 a year. Payments come with its Pro plan’s Stripe integration ($348 a year), or from another plugin alongside it. Our Ultimate Member alternatives roundup compares it with others.
6. ProfilePress
ProfilePress has grown into a membership and payments plugin with its own checkout, selling memberships, subscriptions and digital products through Stripe, PayPal and others, alongside profiles and login forms. The free version adds a 2% fee to Stripe payments, and plans start at $129 a year.
7. WooCommerce Memberships
If you already run a WooCommerce store, WooCommerce Memberships adds memberships to it: member pricing, members-only products, content restriction and dripping, with WooCommerce Subscriptions for recurring billing. Both are paid yearly extensions. Our guide to WooCommerce membership plugins covers the options.
Switching from MemberPress
Moving an existing membership site takes some planning, whichever plugin you move to:
- Member accounts come with you. Members are ordinary WordPress users, so their logins, names and emails stay put when you change plugins.
- Recurring payments are the hard part. Subscriptions live in your payment gateway and are tied to MemberPress’s own records. Check whether the new plugin can import them; if it can’t, members usually need to subscribe again in the new plugin, so plan the timing around renewal dates and tell them first.
- Access rules need rebuilding. Which content each level can see is stored in MemberPress’s settings, so recreate those rules in the new plugin and test them as a member of each level before switching over.
- Pages and shortcodes change. Pricing, checkout and account pages built with MemberPress’s shortcodes or ReadyLaunch need replacing with the new plugin’s.
Run both on a staging copy of the site first, and switch when you’ve tested sign-up, payment, access and cancellation end to end.
Which MemberPress alternative should you choose?
- You sell courses or want content dripping: stay with MemberPress, or look at a course plugin alongside a membership plugin.
- Members should register, have profiles and find each other: WP User Manager, or Ultimate Member for a bigger community.
- Membership levels like MemberPress, with a free start: Paid Memberships Pro or Kadence Memberships.
- The simplest free option: Simple Membership.
- You sell through a WooCommerce store: WooCommerce Memberships.
To try ours, install the free WP User Manager plugin, and see pricing for the addon bundles.