SureMembers vs. MemberPress vs. Paid Memberships Pro – Which one is best?

Creating a membership website is a great way to monetize content, sell courses, and provide exclusive access to resources.

With the multitude of membership plugins available in the WordPress ecosystem, it can be tough to decide which one to pick.

In this article, we will compare the three most popular membership plugins: SureMembers, MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro.

Whether you’re a content publisher, membership website owner, developer, or course creator looking to build a paid membership site, this article will help you understand what each plugin is capable of.

It will also provide an unbiased opinion.

First, we’ll tell you why you can trust us, and then we’ll share a few real-life examples of membership websites.

After that, we’ll look at some points explaining what a membership plugin can do.

Finally, we’ll dig deeper into each of the membership plugins to help you make an informed decision about which you might want to choose.

Why should you trust us?

Why should you trust us? We’re the creator of SureMembers, one of the plugins we’ll discuss today.

We developed the plugin as we were bombarded with questions to find an intuitive tool with a lifetime deal to protect and sell website content.

Unfortunately, we did not find a solution that could meet most users’ demands on a tight budget. So, we had to come up with a unique and exclusive solution. SureMembers.

But no worries, we promise this comparison will be completely unbiased as we won’t directly tell which is the best, but will tell you which is best for what purpose.

We know every plugin has some unique features that others don’t and will be perfect for specific purposes.

That’s why we’ll provide a helpful summary at the end of this comparison so you can easily choose the best option for your specific requirements.

Examples of top membership websites in action

We have gathered a few top membership websites which you can take inspiration from.

Learning subscription website – Linkedin learning

Linkedin Learning is a subdomain of Linkedin and a professional development and career advancement site.

It’s a great example of how membership websites work. You can see all content and learn a little about it, with the final step being signing up for a subscription.

A personal training website – WOW FIT

WOW FIT is a good example of a subscription website where visitors can enroll for online personal training courses.

The company has set up a free trial to entice visitors and included a section explaining the difference between traditional in-person and online one-to-one training.

They also showcase reviews from Trustpilot to increase credibility. If you’re considering creating a personal training website, take inspiration from them.

Community membership website

Elite Matchmaking is a great example of a subscription website where users can message each other as long as they are a member.

If you plan to create a community membership website, there is lots of inspiration you can take from here.

What should a membership plugin do?

A membership plugin should help you manage and control access to your content or areas of your site.

It lets you create access groups or membership levels, restrict content to only paying members, and handle recurring payments.

All the ingredients of a successful membership website.

A membership website plugin should allow you to:

• Easily set up access groups or membership levels and assign content to each level.
• Manage recurring payments like monthly or yearly subscriptions and keep track of subscription status.
• Integrate with popular payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Razorpay or Authorize.net for seamless transactions.
• Drip feed content such as posts, pages, and courses to members.
• Create and customize the registration and login forms with the help of the system.
• Get a bird’s eye view of the whole scenario of you with robust reporting and analytics.
• Offer strong security features, such as encrypted passwords and secure member management via SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
• Provide easy communication options with members, such as automated event based emails.
• Integrate your membership plugin with other platforms. To name a few: SureTriggers, SureCart, LearnDash, TutorLMS, WooCommerce, EDD and MailChimp.

SureMembers vs MemberPress Vs Paid Membership Pro: Overview

Overview of SureMembers

SureMembers is a versatile WordPress membership plugin that allows you to create, manage and sell memberships on your website.

It’s perfect for creating online communities with subscription-based services by protecting your pages, posts and any type of multimedia content.

Key features of SureMembers

• Marketing analytics tool and retargeting system using metrics like order bumps, cart abandonment, upsells and down sells.
• Drip feed content with a custom schedule.
• Digital download feature lets users download any type of file.
• Customizable checkout forms with dynamic tax features.
• Event based automation using SureTriggers.

Pros of SureMembers

• Setup unlimited membership levels or access groups using an intuitive user interface.
• Integrated payment gateways with SureCart.
• Dedicated user dashboard for every member.
• Set paywalls with custom access rules for any type of content.
• Great for agencies who want to create 10 websites with a single payment.
• Customizable coupons.

Cons of SureMembers

• It’s a new plugin with not much of a track record as yet.
• No free version available. (But there is a 30-day money-back guarantee!)

Overview of MemberPress

MemberPress is an all-in-one WordPress membership plugin that makes it easy to create, manage and sell memberships on a website.

It offers a variety of membership options, from free to paid, and provides you with the tools to manage and protect your content.

Key features of MemberPress

• An all-in-one solution that allows you to create course memberships using MemberPress courses.
• Tax rates and VAT collection feature using TaxJar.
• Corporate membership accounts.
• ​​Paywall and content dripping feature.
• ​​Built-in reporting and analytics so that you can keep track of your membership site’s growth and success.
• Express checkout features.

Pros of MemberPress

• Create unlimited membership plans with unlimited access rules.
• Custom registration forms to collect user data.
• Includes native LMS or learning management system membership courses so no need to install third-party plugins.
• Thorough documentation and tutorials.
• Memberships with customizable checkout forms and coupons.
• Tax rates and VAT collection feature.

Cons of MemberPress

• Doesn’t offer advanced sales techniques such as order bumps, upsells or downsells.
• Checkout is unattractive and complex to customize.
• Number of options makes it a bit overwhelming to set up at first.

Overview of Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is a comprehensive WordPress membership plugin that allows you to create and sell memberships on your website.

Just like the other two plugins, you can create unlimited membership levels, have full control over setting up the content access rules and can sell any type of digital content.

Key features of Paid Memberships Pro

• A great number of extensions to scale your membership website over time.
• Customizable membership renewal dates for flexibility.
• Limit post views so you can offer some articles or lessons for free each month.
• Restriction on the number of times a post can be viewed to provide articles or lessons for free.
• Member directory features and profile pages make it an all-in-one solution to build a community-based membership site.

Pros of Paid Memberships Pro

• Unlimited membership levels with content restriction rules and drip-feeding.
• Complete eCommerce platform with multiple payment options.
• Third-party invoicing feature for customers and future references.
• Robust reporting and analytics feature to track the growth and success of your membership site.
• Freemium pricing plan.

Cons of Paid Memberships Pro

• Upgrading pricing plans can be quite costly.
• Paid knowledgebase so you need to buy premium support to get access.
• You can not pick and buy addons separately.
• Difficult to determine which plan best suits you as addons are pre-bundled for the different plans.

SureMembers vs. MemberPress vs. Paid Memberships Pro – Feature comparison

All three plugins ship with many features that are enough to create subscription based membership websites with different payment options.

Now, let’s take a closer look at them:

Dedicated dashboard

First of all, let’s take a look at the dashboards of the three membership platforms.

Item	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Dedicated dashboard	✅Via SureCart	❌	✅

SureMembers – Third-party dashboard for a seamless user interface.

If you’re talking about ease of use, SureMembers ships with a minimalistic user interface. Meaning you’ll only get the most essential features.

Since you won’t see any single menu item on the left side of the plugin’s home page, it feels more intuitive than its rivals.

The home page does not have a dedicated dashboard. Rather, you’ll find the dashboard in SureCart.

SureCart is an eCommerce plugin that makes SureMembers a complete package by allowing it to sell its membership plans and receive payments. SureCart is completely free to use and it will remain free forever.

Here’s a sneak peek of the dashboard:

MemberPress – No dedicated dashboard

MemberPress does not have a dedicated dashboard and has quite a lot of menu items on the left side. This makes this plugin a little overwhelming for first-time users.

Since it does not have any dashboard, it feels intuitive, just like SureMembers.

But it doesn’t provide such easy access to content and you’ll need to dig around a little to find data and some of the controls.

Paid Memberships Pro – Includes a dedicated dashboard yet not so intuitive as the others.

Paid Memberships Pro has a home page with a great dashboard. But it would have been better if they had developed a graphical user interface to get a bird’s eye view.

It has a lot of menu items on the left side, making it a little complex for first-time users amd finding your way around will take time even if most things can be found in the tabs

Events and triggers automation

The ability to automate processes can be a big time saver with larger websites..

For example, automatically sending a welcome email after signing up or sending a Slack notification when you receive a support request via your website can make a big difference.

Item	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Automation platform	✅Via SureTriggers	✅Via Zapier (plus plan)	✅Via Zapier (Free plan)

SureMembers – automation system

SureMembers allows you to automate events using SureTriggers just like Zapier. But don’t worry! SureTriggers is completely free to use.

Assume that someone submitted a subscription application using a form builder. You can use SureTriggers to add that user automatically to a membership group in SureMembers and send them a welcome email at the same time.

In this case, you can connect SureMembers and WP Forms with SureTriggers. It’s easy!

MemberPress – automation system

MemberPress also allows you to create an automation system for events and triggers with the help of Zapier.

But to get the feature, you’ll have to upgrade the Basic plan to the Plus plan for an additional $90 which adds to the running costs of your website.

If you do go that way, you get all the flexibility of Zapier to help you automate all manner of tasks.

Paid Memberships Pro – automation system

Paid Memberships Pro will allow you to use Zapier in their free version. However, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version to get support if you get stuck.

Like MemberPress, you can automate many functions with Zapier to make running your membership website a little easier.

Payment options

The more payment options a membership plugin has, the more flexibility you have to accept payments.

Now, let’s see which one has what payment options:

Payment options	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Stripe	✅	✅	✅
PayPal	✅	✅	✅
Authorize.net	✅(Upcoming)	✅	✅
Mollie	✅(Upcoming)	❌	❌
RazorPay	✅(Upcoming)	❌	❌
Square	✅(Upcoming)	❌	❌
Apple Pay	✅	✅	❌
Google Pay	✅	✅	❌
Amazon Pay	✅	✅	❌
PayFast	❌	❌	✅
CyberSource	❌	❌	✅

In most cases, Stripe, PayPal and Express checkouts (Apple Pay, Google Pay or Amazon Pay) get the job done.

It’s not required to have all of the payment options in place, but the more you have, the more flexibility people have to use their preferred method.

This flexibility is a powerful motivator that can help convince people to subscribe.

Reporting and analytics

Reporting and analytics enable you to get the big picture of your membership website, like how good or how bad your website is performing.

All of these membership plugins come with reporting and analytics features. However, SureMembers will have the edge over the other two options.

Why?

Well, SureMembers works in tandem with SureCart.

You’ll be able to access reports on sales, subscriptions, income, profit, tax and lots more metrics.

If you use sales techniques such as order bumps or cross sells, you’ll also see data showing how effective they are.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
General reporting and analytics	✅	✅	✅
Order bumps analytics	✅	❌	❌
Cross selling analytics	✅	❌	❌
Up selling analytics	✅	❌	❌
Cart abandonment analytics	✅	❌	❌

MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro both offer basic analytics that give a general overview of subscription numbers and activity.

Content lock rules

All three plugins ship with excellent content locking rules based on pages, posts, categories, tags and navigation bar menu items.

Now let’s look at what types of content you can lock with them.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Lock posts and pages	✅	✅	✅
Lock custom post types (CPT)	✅	✅	✅
Lock parts of a post or page	✅	✅	✅
Lock all templates	✅	✅	❌
​​Lock files/downloads	✅(Via SureCart)	✅	❌ (Only possible via coding)
Lock URL	✅	✅	❌

Each membership plugin covers the main types of content you’re likely to want to lock, so each scores well here.

Paid Memberships Pro falls slightly behind but only in niche areas not many membership websites would need to lock.

SureMembers – Good at locking parts of a post or page

SureMembers will help you lock parts of a page or parts of a post easily.

Whether you use the WordPress block editor or Elementor page builder, SureMembers has you covered.

SureMembers, MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro – Good at locking CPTs

As you can see in the above table all three rivals are capable of locking custom post types or CPTs. It’s really important.

With this feature, you can create an eCommerce store and make it accessible to particular user access groups.

Paid Membership Pro – Locking files or downloads, URLs and templates are tough.

With Paid Memberships Pro, it’s quite tough to lock files and downloads as you manually insert code into the system. It’s not very end-user friendly.

It also does not allow you to lock templates and specific URLs.

Showing excerpts

Excerpts tease visitors by giving them a glimpse of what’s available behind the paywall. It’s a powerful incentive to subscribe and can be very effective.

When a visitor gets to see the exciting part of a story, article, video or audio, they are much more likely to pay the subscription.

Which is why we look for the features in a plugin.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Showing excerpts	✅	✅	✅

All of the above plugins boast of this important feature, which is great news for you!

Content dripping

Content dripping is an integral part of a membership website, especially for course websites.

If you don’t want your visitors to binge-read or binge-watch your content, a drip content strategy can be a great solution.

Dripping can be especially useful for course websites. You can release courses on specific dates or after a set time period. This gives students a chance to absorb previous lessons before the next.

Luckily all three plugins offer content dripping.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Drip content	✅	✅ (From Basic Plan)	✅ (Plus addon)

Expiration rules

Expiration rules help you control access to content using specific date or duration settings.

You can set content to expire using a date, number of views, a period of time and often other ways too.

All three solutions will help you do it easily, which is more good news.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Expiration rules	✅	✅ (From Basic Plan)	✅

View post limits

When you want to let unauthorized users read or watch a certain number of posts before you want them to pay for the subscription, view post limits come into play.

Both SureMembers and MemberPress are yet to roll out this feature, whereas Paid Memberships Pro allows you to limit post views using addons.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
View post limits	❌	❌	✅(Addon)

Tax and VAT collection

When it comes to calculating tax and VAT, all three solutions are great. This can be a lifesaver if you operate in the EU region!

All three membership plugins use reliable third-party solutions that let the systems collect taxes and VAT.

Please note that calculating sales tax and VAT can be a bit complicated while using Paid Memberships Pro and you will need to install a separate addon for this purpose.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Sales Tax and VAT	✅	✅	✅(A bit complex)

Even though membership plugins may handle tax for you, we would strongly recommend having them checked over by your accountant, just in case.

Backend shortcut lock icon for admins

Imagine you’re editing a page or post and you quickly want to know whether that page or post is restricted to specific members or not.

We’ve tested them all and found that only SureMembers shows a content lock shortcut icon.

When your page or posts are locked with SureMembers, you’ll see this purple icon otherwise you’ll see it in gray color.

It’s a niche feature for sure, but can be important if you use different styles or elements for different membership tiers.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Backend shortcut lock icon	✅	❌	❌

Redirection rules

When a user logs in to your membership website, you can direct them to your preferred page.

For example, you could direct them to their member dashboard when they log in or to a payment page when their subscription is about to expire.

All three contenders have redirection rules where you can assign your preferred URL.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Redirection rules	✅	✅	✅

Menu item visibility

If you want to hide specific items in your website navigation menu, you need this feature. Luckily, all of them will allow you to do so.

This can be useful if you want to only show certain menu items to paid members and not to free members, or show additional features to different membership tiers.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Menu item visibility	✅	✅	✅

Integrations

Integrations will allow you to get the most out of membership tools. The more integrations you have, the better you can extend the features of your website.

We touched on how useful automation can be earlier but there’s so much more you can do with integrations.

Items	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Event based automation integration	SureTriggers	Zapier	Zapier
eCommerce integration	SureCart, WooCommerce	WooCommerce	WooCommerce
Other relevant integration	LearnDash, TutorLMS, LifterLMS, BuddyBoss	Mailchimp, Active Campaign, Learndash, Wp-CourseWare	ConvertKit, MailChimp,AWeber, BuddyPress

Pricing

Finally, the most important aspect, price!

Pricing is everything, so how do these three membership plugins compare?

Plans	SureMembers	MemberPress	Paid Memberships Pro
Cheapest plan	$99/Year	$179.50/Year	Free
Most expensive plan	$149/Year	319.60/Year	$697/Year
Site licenses (from cheapest to most expensive)	1 to 10	1 to 5	1 to 5

From the above table, it’s clear that from individuals to agencies SureMembers offers the best value for money

If you’re an individual looking for a solution, $99/year can be a great value.

If you’re running an agency, the $149/year plan allowing you to create 10 membership sites will be a perfect deal.

MemberPress has a higher pricing tag and fewer site licenses but offers a lot of features in return.

If you’re an agency, MemberPress can quickly become expensive as it only allows you to use up to 5 websites.

The freemium model of Paid Memberships Pro can work well if you want to start with a basic membership site.. Unfortunately, you can’t go far with the free plan.

If you only need one addon, you may have to pay quite a lot as they are all locked into different pricing plans.

Verdict – which membership plugin is best?

Now, it’s time for the outcome. Each of the rivals shines in their own way.

Here are the takeaways:

SureMembers is best if you…

• Want to start any type of membership website, even if you’re a complete beginner.
• Are running an agency it’ll help you reduce the production cost significantly.
• Are worried about the performance of your membership website.
• Want to create restriction rules effortlessly, including drip feeding content and user group expiration.
• Wish to collect sales tax and VAT automatically.

MemberPress is best if you…

• Want an all-in-one solution for a course website.
• Already have experience in handling WordPress and other complicated plugins.
• Want to collect sales tax and VAT automatically.
• Want to impress your customers by using a complex platform.
• Want to create a corporate membership course website.

Paid Memberships Pro is best if you…

• Want to experience the basic functionality of a membership website for free.
• Don’t need to scale your website using a bunch of expensive addons.
• Don’t have concerns about collecting sales tax and VAT automatically.
• Want to create a community-based membership website where you’ll showcase user directory.
• Want to allow the visitors to view posts a few times before you tell them to buy a membership plan.

Final verdict

As you can see, all three membership plugins have their strengths and weaknesses and are ideal for different scenarios.

SureMembers is a great all-rounder and ideal for beginners. Memberpress is an all-in-one solution at a cost and Paid Memberships Pro has a free option so you can try it out but can become really expensive really fast.

Even though SureMembers is our own plugin, we have tried to be as unbiased as possible and not tell you which to buy or what to do.

So which membership plugin will you choose? Which do you use already? Tell us about it below!