10 Free WordPress Plugins for Membership Sites
Published in Plugins
February 21, 2024
7 min read
It takes a ton of effort to support your membership site, from creating content to attracting new members, isn’t it?
Some of the challenges, however, can be solved with automated and optimized plugins for WordPress. In this article, we’re offering you to take a look at a few recommendations of such helpers.
The WordPress plugins for membership websites that we’ve hand-picked are targeted to solve the most common tasks of this type of website:
ARMember is a comprehensive and cost-effective membership management software for WordPress. It’s a perfect foundation to manage all your content, clients, and payments when you are just getting started with your website or want to switch the plugin.
With plenty of features, it allows you to create a community with all possible content and member management options: recurring or one-time payments, content dripping opportunities, payment gateways, member communication, and more!
Using this WordPress membership plugin, you can create beautiful and spam-free registration, login, and profile forms with drag-and-drop; connect with popular email marketing services, and schedule content release based on numerous customizable conditions.
👉 Download ARMember
There are two main reasons why you would want to have the WooCommerce plugin installed on your membership site: 1) membership plugins typically integrate with WooCommerce for more payment gateways and 2) you can sell products and downloads by direct connection with WooCommerce.
In the end, WooCommerce doesn’t require any advertising; it’s the most powerful plugin to WordPress that will help you solve any e-commerce related dilemma on your membership site.
👉 Download WooCommerce
The Tawk.to Live Chat is a free live chat solution built to help you support your membership communities with instant answers to the prospect and member questions.
It will help you troubleshoot issues and offer guidance in real time, directly within your WordPress member site dashboard. It adds a customizable chat widget to any place on your website and can be used by multiple chat agents at the same time.
You can use it for free, but premium options like branding removal & dedicated support are also available, which basically means you can install a powerful live chat plugin and use it for free forever!
👉 Download Tawk.to Live Chat
Membership websites require a bunch of tools and design know-how to make awesome content and member pages. You can use any content building tool as an add-on to WordPress, whether you’re using the block editor or other builders like Elementor.
Since WordPress is moving towards native editing experiences with blocks, we’d recommend you find the most suitable blocks plugin.
While there are dozens of popular block libraries, Kadence Blocks is one of the most flexible, design-oriented, and constantly improving solutions. They even have their AI tools for WordPress in the works.
Each block in this plugin “is crafted with care with regard to performance, accessibility, and extensibility”, implying you can significantly boost your design capabilities no matter which membership plugins you use!
👉 Download Kadence Blocks
Membership sites are asset-heavy in terms of content, user profiles, knowledge base resources and more. The bad news is that all that richness can weigh down your site speed.
Forms and questionnaires, calculators and quizzes, sliders and carousels, video players and audio controls, gamification elements – all these are examples of content that might use JavaScript on your members WordPress website.
Autoptimize is installed on 1M+ websites and will definitely help your members surf through your website faster and less stressful. It rearranges JavaScript and other heavy files, letting your site show instantly while scripts load invisibly in the background. Animations stay smooth, your server breathes easier, and members happily explore at warp speed.
👉 Download Autoptimize
Grow a list of your prospects with targeted email marketing using this Mailchimp connection plugin. Quickly and easily, you’ll be able to add a subscription box to help potential customers subscribe to your lists.
As any other solution for email marketing, Mailchimp for WordPress is made to simplify the process of capturing leads directly, with multiple tools for personalizing emails based on member actions.
👉 Download Mailchimp for WordPress
This innovative SEO tool helps you organize content using knowledge graphs, visually enrich it with open-source imagery, and tag – just in the way search engines want it. A nice SEO plugin with super positive reviews, worth giving a try.
If keyword stuffing doesn’t help, use smarter SEO that serves search engines better. This plugin does some ‘technical SEO’ work for you, but without requesting any tech skills from you. WordLift even works across multiple languages.
👉 Download Wordlift
Tagembed’s all-in-one plugin allows you to curate, customize, and embed social media content on your membership website. It supports 19+ platforms, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube among them, and this is a pretty good choice to get started.
It’s made to help you use the power of social media to strengthen your community and bring more excitement to your website.
Woven into your member dashboard, such a stream of visual stories can be helpful for both educational and entertaining purposes. Boost engagement, showcase social proof, – and, well, add a bit more of real life to your membership brand.
It’s easy to work with since you can point-and-click to personalize the feed, moderate content, and then track whether there is engagement.
👉 Download Tagembed
SliceWP simplifies affiliate management, letting you promote your membership offerings and create a smooth referral program. Of course, this might not be suitable for everyone, but if you are looking for an organic revenue growth strategy, why not try creating an affiliate program of your own?
The solution allows for smooth communication with potential partners, automating commission tracking, and providing affiliates with all they need to create perfect promos. This awesome free plugin allows you to get your program up and running quickly with a step-by-step wizard and user-friendly interface.
👉 Download SliceWP
This is a bit more advanced yet very helpful plugin for membership websites on WordPress looking for more customizability. It’s a helpful solution for site administrators and developers.
In short, this plugin simplifies content management and expands the functionality of your membership website.
It basically ‘hacks’ (in a positive sense) into your existing website structure to help you establish relationships between different types of content, such as posts, users, and comments; thanks to 25 different input types and 20+ field types, it can be used to tailor your content structure better to your content types on your membership site, and more.
👉 Download Pods
Managing exclusive content for members while ensuring it remains protected and accessible only to subscribers is not enough to keep your WordPress business website successful in the long run. There is always room for improvement, as well as sometimes you just need to troubleshoot things or implement a chat plugin! With our top 10 WordPress plugins for membership websites, you’ll be able to improve various aspects of your business.
Some of the challenges, however, can be solved with automated and optimized plugins for WordPress. In this article, we’re offering you to take a look at a few recommendations of such helpers.
The WordPress plugins for membership websites that we’ve hand-picked are targeted to solve the most common tasks of this type of website:
- Sell content and manage members more easily.
- Improve the presentation of your content.
- Boost your affiliate and traditional marketing.
- Improve members’ support.
- Enhance member experience.
- Decrease member churn and find new members.
ARMember: Manage Your Membership Site
ARMember is a comprehensive and cost-effective membership management software for WordPress. It’s a perfect foundation to manage all your content, clients, and payments when you are just getting started with your website or want to switch the plugin.
With plenty of features, it allows you to create a community with all possible content and member management options: recurring or one-time payments, content dripping opportunities, payment gateways, member communication, and more!
Using this WordPress membership plugin, you can create beautiful and spam-free registration, login, and profile forms with drag-and-drop; connect with popular email marketing services, and schedule content release based on numerous customizable conditions.
👉 Download ARMember
WooCommerce: Increase Payment Options & Power up Content Management
There are two main reasons why you would want to have the WooCommerce plugin installed on your membership site: 1) membership plugins typically integrate with WooCommerce for more payment gateways and 2) you can sell products and downloads by direct connection with WooCommerce.
In the end, WooCommerce doesn’t require any advertising; it’s the most powerful plugin to WordPress that will help you solve any e-commerce related dilemma on your membership site.
👉 Download WooCommerce
Tawk.To Live Chat: Add a Powerful Free Live Chat to Troubleshoot Issues
The Tawk.to Live Chat is a free live chat solution built to help you support your membership communities with instant answers to the prospect and member questions.
It will help you troubleshoot issues and offer guidance in real time, directly within your WordPress member site dashboard. It adds a customizable chat widget to any place on your website and can be used by multiple chat agents at the same time.
You can use it for free, but premium options like branding removal & dedicated support are also available, which basically means you can install a powerful live chat plugin and use it for free forever!
👉 Download Tawk.to Live Chat
Kadence Blocks: Improve the Appearance of Your Membership Content Pages
Membership websites require a bunch of tools and design know-how to make awesome content and member pages. You can use any content building tool as an add-on to WordPress, whether you’re using the block editor or other builders like Elementor.
Since WordPress is moving towards native editing experiences with blocks, we’d recommend you find the most suitable blocks plugin.
While there are dozens of popular block libraries, Kadence Blocks is one of the most flexible, design-oriented, and constantly improving solutions. They even have their AI tools for WordPress in the works.
Each block in this plugin “is crafted with care with regard to performance, accessibility, and extensibility”, implying you can significantly boost your design capabilities no matter which membership plugins you use!
👉 Download Kadence Blocks
Autoptimize: Make Your WordPress Membership Website Faster
Membership sites are asset-heavy in terms of content, user profiles, knowledge base resources and more. The bad news is that all that richness can weigh down your site speed.
Forms and questionnaires, calculators and quizzes, sliders and carousels, video players and audio controls, gamification elements – all these are examples of content that might use JavaScript on your members WordPress website.
Autoptimize is installed on 1M+ websites and will definitely help your members surf through your website faster and less stressful. It rearranges JavaScript and other heavy files, letting your site show instantly while scripts load invisibly in the background. Animations stay smooth, your server breathes easier, and members happily explore at warp speed.
👉 Download Autoptimize
Mailchimp for WordPress: Grow a List of Potential Members
Grow a list of your prospects with targeted email marketing using this Mailchimp connection plugin. Quickly and easily, you’ll be able to add a subscription box to help potential customers subscribe to your lists.
As any other solution for email marketing, Mailchimp for WordPress is made to simplify the process of capturing leads directly, with multiple tools for personalizing emails based on member actions.
👉 Download Mailchimp for WordPress
WordLift: Streamline Your SEO in a New Way
This innovative SEO tool helps you organize content using knowledge graphs, visually enrich it with open-source imagery, and tag – just in the way search engines want it. A nice SEO plugin with super positive reviews, worth giving a try.
If keyword stuffing doesn’t help, use smarter SEO that serves search engines better. This plugin does some ‘technical SEO’ work for you, but without requesting any tech skills from you. WordLift even works across multiple languages.
👉 Download Wordlift
Tagembed: Embed X (Twitter) Feed, Google Reviews & More
Tagembed’s all-in-one plugin allows you to curate, customize, and embed social media content on your membership website. It supports 19+ platforms, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube among them, and this is a pretty good choice to get started.
It’s made to help you use the power of social media to strengthen your community and bring more excitement to your website.
Woven into your member dashboard, such a stream of visual stories can be helpful for both educational and entertaining purposes. Boost engagement, showcase social proof, – and, well, add a bit more of real life to your membership brand.
It’s easy to work with since you can point-and-click to personalize the feed, moderate content, and then track whether there is engagement.
👉 Download Tagembed
SliceWP Affiliates: Grow a List of Your Ambassadors
SliceWP simplifies affiliate management, letting you promote your membership offerings and create a smooth referral program. Of course, this might not be suitable for everyone, but if you are looking for an organic revenue growth strategy, why not try creating an affiliate program of your own?
The solution allows for smooth communication with potential partners, automating commission tracking, and providing affiliates with all they need to create perfect promos. This awesome free plugin allows you to get your program up and running quickly with a step-by-step wizard and user-friendly interface.
👉 Download SliceWP
Pods: Add New Content Types & Fields
This is a bit more advanced yet very helpful plugin for membership websites on WordPress looking for more customizability. It’s a helpful solution for site administrators and developers.
In short, this plugin simplifies content management and expands the functionality of your membership website.
It basically ‘hacks’ (in a positive sense) into your existing website structure to help you establish relationships between different types of content, such as posts, users, and comments; thanks to 25 different input types and 20+ field types, it can be used to tailor your content structure better to your content types on your membership site, and more.
👉 Download Pods
Let’s conclude,
Managing exclusive content for members while ensuring it remains protected and accessible only to subscribers is not enough to keep your WordPress business website successful in the long run. There is always room for improvement, as well as sometimes you just need to troubleshoot things or implement a chat plugin! With our top 10 WordPress plugins for membership websites, you’ll be able to improve various aspects of your business.
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Brian Denim
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