Top 4 WordPress Subscription Payment Plugins

Offering subscription options on your WordPress website can help you retain a steady flow of revenue as long as you’re in the right niche, provide quality offerings and use the right WordPress subscription payment plugin to help make the experience as easy and as scalable as possible for your members.

Choosing the right subscription payment plugin is crucial because it will give your business what it needs to serve your clients efficiently as well as the opportunity to grow and scale.

In this article, we are going to explore our top 4 subscription plugins for WordPress, which offer a variety of features that are tailored to meet your organization’s membership needs.

1. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is one of the popular names when it comes to subscription payment plugins for WP. One of the main benefits of this plugin is that it is lightweight, but still holds everything that you will likely need. You can create unlimited number of membership levels including upgrades and downgrades where members can pay for the difference.

Subscription management is quite easy as you can quickly view active, expired, canceled, and pending subscriber accounts. Each account can be modified and added manually, modified in bulk, and can be easily located.

You can also create unlimited discount codes with name, description, unique code, maximum uses, and an optional expiration and start date. Discounts can be provided either in percentage or as a flat rate.

With the help of add-ons, you can extend the functionality of the plugin. Some of the free add-ons include,

• MailChimp
• WP Job Manager
• Campaign Monitor
• bbPress
• Enforce strong passwords
• CSV user import
• EDD wallet and member downloads

Some of the paid add-ons include

• Custom redirects
• WooCommerce member discounts
• Complete REST API for developers
• IP restrictions
• Math verification
• MailChimp Pro

If you’re not satisfied with the paid version, Restrict Content Pro offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The price of the basic package starts from $99/year, check out their pricing page to get more details.

Key features

• Integrates with Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Braintree, and 2Checkout
• Add your own preferred payment gateway with the help of a complete custom API
• Send welcome emails, payment receipts, and account expiration reminders
• Option to moderate member accounts to control who gets access
• Complete report to view total earnings

Free plugin information

• Active installations – 10,000+
• Requires WordPress Version 3.9 or higher
• Tested up to – 5.4.4
• Last updated – January 2021
• Average ratings – 3.5/5 based on 53 reviews

Read our questions and answers from Restrict Content Pro

2. MemberPress

MemberPress is another popular subscription payment plugin that includes all the standard membership features. With this plugin, you can create unlimited membership levels inclusive of trial periods and payment options. The plugin is quite easy to work with as most of the features can be turned on/off by ticking a box.

You can even build upgrade options such as bronze, silver, and gold. If a member decides to upgrade the plan, the prevailing payment is taken into account and the member only has to pay the difference. If you prefer, you can even offer non-members some access to paid levels.

MemberPress allows you to create dynamic pricing pages. You can allow time periods for recurring payments, offer a free or paid trial as per the time frame that you want, and offer one-off payments such as lifetime or fixed expiry dates. There are different pricing table designs to choose from and if you’re not satisfied with the pricing pages of MemberPress, you can create your own CSS styles and fully customize.

If you’re not satisfied with MemberPress, they offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. The price of the basic package starts from $129/year. Check out their detailed pricing page to learn more.

Key features

• Easy setup process
• Generate unlimited coupons and control when they expire
• Integrates with BBPress and other WordPress form plugins
• Works with all the WordPress themes
• Clear reporting
• Works with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net

Free plugin information

• Active installations – 800+
• Last updated – 2019
• Tested up to – 5.0.11
• Requires WordPress version 4.0 or higher
• Average ratings – 3.7/5 based on 3 reviews

Read our questions and answers from MemberPress

3. Ultimate Membership Pro

Ultimate Membership Pro is a WordPress subscription payment plugin that has an impressive list of features. One of the biggest advantages of Ultimate Membership Pro is that it allows you to create unlimited membership levels. You can choose whether the level is free or paid and choose how long a user gets access to the level (permanently or for specific dates). For paid access, you can fix a price, billing frequency either recurring (daily, weekly, monthly) or one-time, or as a trial period.

You can link your account to major payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Bank Transfer, Payza, and BrainTree.

The plugin has a social login tab that allows users to login via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Vkontakte, Instagram, and Tumblr. To handle mailings, you can integrate with external email services like Aweber, MailChimp, Get Response, Campaign Monitor, Mad Mimi and more. You can also easily add single or bulk coupons which come with a ton of customization options. The plugin also gives you an option to send printable membership cards with special designs for premium members.

Ultimate Membership Pro has a detailed knowledge base that will help you to get started. You can also submit tickets to get answers that are not covered.

Key features

• Includes 35 add-ons, 10 login templates, 13 register templates, 8 locker templates and 7 subscription templates
• Drip content protection
• Restrict pages or URLs
• Integrated with Visual Composer
• Ability to sell subscriptions via WooCommerce platform
• Import users or levels via CSV files
• Multiple shortcodes
• Country-specific custom fields
• Taxes related to user’s country

Plugin information

• Price – $49
• Extend support to 12 months – $16.50
• Number of sales – 29,098
• Last updated on March 2021
• Average ratings – 4.55/5 based on 743 reviews
• Live preview

Read our review of Ultimate Membership Pro.

4. ARMember

ARMember is another impressive entrant among the subscription payment plugins. It has an intuitive and easy membership plan dashboard where you can create free or paid plans. Within the paid plan you have additional options where you can give user access forever or make it accessible for a certain period of time.

The good thing is, creating a plan option does not overwhelm you with options, it only shows options that are relevant to the selections you make. You can make your signup form beautiful by choosing skin variations and easily arranging columns. The annoying captcha fields can be eliminated as ARMember has an in-built antispam mechanism. ARMember integrates well with popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout.com, Authorize.net and Bank Transfer.

With the help of free-add-ons, you can enable logins through social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and VK. It integrates with third-party plugins such as BuddyPress, bbPress, WooCommerce, Visual Composer, AffiliateWP, and ARPrice. Also, with the rich library of APIs, developers can also extend the features of ARMember.

Key features

• Brute Force login protection
• IP and specific URL based restriction
• Drip content facility
• Give grace period for expiration and failed payments
• One time and recurring payment plans
• Responsive registration and modal forms
• Invoicing facility
• Accepts basic as well as custom currencies
• Unique shortcode generator
• Wide range of free/paid add-ons

Plugin information

• Price – $29
• Extend support to 12 months – $9
• Number of sales – 6,260
• Last updated on March 2021
• Average ratings – 4.83/5 based on 252 ratings
• Live preview

Read our questions and answers from ARMember

Comparison chart of the subscription payment plugins

Here is a table that compares the main points of the plugins.

Note – All the plugin information mentioned in our blog was collected at the time of writing.

Which is the Best Subscription Payment Plugin?

Now that you have an idea of what each of the plugins has to offer, it’s time to take a decision.

Here’s our take.

• Ultimate Membership Pro – The most feature-packed plugin. It has all the great features you need and comes with good documentation and support. We believe that it is the best subscription payment plugin for WordPress.
• ARMember – Easy on the pocket with good customization options
• Restrict Content Pro – Simplicity and ease of use
• MemberPress – Easy to use with robust features

This concludes our list of top subscription payment plugins. Hope you found the information you were looking for and that this article helped ease your decision when it comes to choosing a membership plugin for your nonprofit WordPress website.

Are there any other subscription payment plugins that you think should make the list? Tell us what your favourite WP membership plugin is. Do share your opinions in the comments section below, we would love to hear from you.