How to Create a Membership Website in WordPress (Complete Guide)

Do you want to build a membership plan for your website?

It’s a great way to monetize your site as well as build a thriving community. You could offer exclusive content or premium services to your members. The best part? You don’t need to be a coding expert to make it happen.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ll show you exactly how to create a professional membership site that generates recurring revenue.

From choosing the right membership plugin to setting up payment gateways and creating member-only content, I’ve got you covered.

With the right tools and guidance, you can launch your membership site in just a few hours, maintain full control over your content, and keep all your profits.

Ready to unlock the potential of membership websites? Let’s dive into this complete guide and get your membership site up and running.

What You Need To Set Up a WordPress Membership Site
Recommended Membership Plugins
How to Create Membership Plans with MemberPress

What You Need To Set Up a WordPress Membership Site

Before diving into creating your membership site, let’s make sure you have all the essential components in place:

1. A WordPress Website

There are website platforms you can use to set up membership sites, but they often come with high fees and force you to compromise on flexibility and control of how you grow your site.

In my opinion, WordPress is the best way to go. It’s free to use, you get complete control over your website and the backend files, plus you have access to thousands of plugins and themes to customize your site exactly how you want it.

Why go through the hassle of building from scratch or paying expensive monthly fees to third-party platforms when WordPress offers everything you need?

If you haven’t set up your WordPress site yet, you’ll need to do that first. Here’s what you need:

Domain Name: This is your website’s address (e.g., www.yoursite.com)
Web Hosting: This gives you access to a server that acts as a place to store your website files
WordPress Installation: The platform on which you’ll create your website

Now all this might seem a bit much which is why users tend to opt for readymade platforms. But in my opinion, you only need to set this up once.

After that, you have complete freedom to design, monetize, and grow your site the way you want. It’s more affordable in the long run as well.

Need more help with that? Follow our step-by-step guide: How to Create a Website from Scratch Using WordPress

If you’re looking for a good deal on a domain and hosting plan, then check out: Best WordPress Hosting. Which One is Right for You?

I recommend getting started with Bluehost. We’ve used Bluehost for many years and have found their services to be reliable and worth it. So we’ve worked out an exclusive deal where our users get a hosting plan along with a free domain (for 1 year), free SSL, free CDN, and a 1-click WordPress installation, all for just $1.99 per month.

Claim this Bluehost deal here »

Once you have your WordPress site ready, it’s time to get the Membership plugin to add all the membership features you’ll need.

Which Membership Plugin to Choose?

If you’re new to WordPress, a plugin is like an app for your WordPress website – it adds new features and functionality without you needing to code anything. Think of it as adding a new tool to your toolbox: a backup plugin lets you take backups and a security plugin adds protection features like malware scans and a firewall.

If you want to start a membership site, you’ll need to find a membership plugin. If you’re focused on building a course website, then you may prefer LMS plugins.

Our WP101 site is built to offer online courses and membership plans. We’ve also helped partners and clients set up their own membership plans. So I can tell you that choosing the right membership plugin can make or break your site. Let me share what we’ve learned from actually using these plugins, not just reading about them.

MemberPress

We’ve been using MemberPress on several of our sites for the past few years, and it’s become our go-to recommendation for most people. Here’s why: it simply works. The setup is straightforward, and you won’t find yourself digging through documentation for basic features.

What we love:

Creating membership levels takes minutes, not hours
Content protection is intuitive – just tick a box
Payment integration is surprisingly smooth
Their course builder is solid

The downside? The price tag might make you hesitate ($179.50/year), but trust me – it’s worth it considering the features and ease they offer.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse offers a bundle of features to create a membership site for a lower price. You’ll get courses, along with Stripe payments, email integrations, Zapier integration, bulk content protection, and drip content scheduling.

The pricing starts at $149.50 per year. If you’re serious about understanding your members’ behavior and optimizing your funnel, it’s worth considering.

Just be prepared for a bit of a learning curve – we spent a few days getting comfortable with all its features.

WishList Member

Wishlist Member is reliable and gets the job done without fuss. Perfect if you want something simple and straightforward.

The interface feels a bit dated compared to MemberPress, but don’t let that fool you – it’s solid under the hood.

You can get started at $149.50 per year. There are no transaction fees, and you get unlimited memberships, unlimited upgrade paths, unlimited content protection rules, and so much more. There are plenty of email, payment, and LMS integrations.

Thrive Apprentice

If you’re primarily creating courses (like we do), Thrive Apprentice is a great pick. It’s perfect for video-based courses because the learning experience feels more polished than traditional membership plugins.

Just keep in mind – it’s more of a course platform with membership features than a pure membership plugin. Works best if you’re already in the Thrive ecosystem.

It costs $149 per year. You can also opt for Thrive Suite for $299 per year that comes packed with 9 tools that make it worth every penny. The bundle includes a theme builder, page builder, comments manager, A/B testing, countdown timer, automation, testimonials, quiz builder, and more. It pretty much serves as an all-in-one package with everything you need to build and grow your website.

For more options, I’ve done a full review of membership plugins here: 7+ Best WordPress Membership Plugins.

After testing all these options (and dealing with their support teams), we typically recommend MemberPress to most of our clients and friends starting membership sites. Why? It hits the sweet spot of features, usability, and reliability.

So for this tutorial, we’ll be using MemberPress to set up a membership site with WordPress. Keep in mind, that most plugins follow similar steps and they usually come with a setup wizard that makes it easy to get started.

Pro Tip: Whichever plugin you choose, set up a test site first. Play around with the features you’ll actually use. We’ve saved countless headaches by doing this before committing to a plugin for a live site.

How to Create Membership Plans with WordPress

Step 1: Add MemberPress to Your Site

The first thing you want to do is sign up for a MemberPress plan. There’s a 14-day money-back guarantee so you can get started with peace of mind and try the platform before committing to it.

Once sign up, you’ll get a plugin file to download and a license key to copy.

Now, head over to your WordPress dashboard. Go to Plugins » Add New Plugin and choose the Upload Plugin option.

Select the MemberPress plugin file you downloaded and install it here.

Once it’s installed and activated, a setup wizard will launch.

The wizard will take you through all the important settings of your membership site. First things first, you can enter the license key and activate it here.

This will unlock all the MembersPress features you get in the plan you’ve chosen. If you need to change your license at any time, you can find this under Settings » License tab.

The setup wizard is pretty straightforward and self-explanatory so I won’t go into detail here. The MemberPress team has done a great job of making it easy for you even if you’re brand new to this.

You can enable different features like Course Creator and create content such as a course or specific page.

This wizard also takes you through setting up Stripe but I’ll also show you how to set up payment gateways later on.

First, let’s learn how to create your membership plans.

Step 2: Add Membership

Navigate to the MemberPress » Memberships tab and choose the ‘Add New Membership’ plugin. (When you create memberships, this is the page you’ll use to edit, view, and delete them.)

Now an editor will open up that’s similar to the WordPress post/page editor. You’ll add a title for your plan along with a description and any media you want. On the right, you can add details like:

Membership price
Billing type such as one-time or recurring
Whether it’s a lifetime deal or it expires after a period of time
Whether you want to allow early renewals

To give you a visuals through this tutorial, I’m creating a photography course with a membership model that has 3 tiers: Basic, Premium, and Advanced.

Scroll down on this page to the Membership Options section. Here you can configure settings that decide how a user registers.

So for instance, I’m naming the Registration Button text as ‘Sign Up’. Below that you can enable a thank you page and an automated welcome email. You can customize payment methods and form fields that will appear for this particular membership plan.

Like this, you can explore the Permissions, Price Box, and Advanced tabs and set up your plan according to what you need.

Step 3: Add Membership Rules

Now you’ll want to add rules for your membership plans. This will make content available only to those who have subscribed to that specific plan.

Head over to MemberPress » Rules tab and ‘Add New Rule’.

Add a name for your rule. Then in the Content & Access section, you can choose how you filter your content. So under Content Protection, I’m using ‘All content with category: Basic’.

Under Access Conditions, I’m adding ‘Basic Plan’.

This means any time I create new content such as a page or post in WordPress, all I have to do is select the category ‘Basic’. Then it will become available under this plan.

It’s that easy. You can add rules like this for all your membership plans to create members-only content.

Now it’s time to create your membership pricing page.

Step 4: Create Membership Pricing & Sign Up Page

You can create a landing page for your memberships using any page builder you like. However, MemberPress comes with a built-in option to set up your pricing page from the plugin dashboard.

First, you’ll need to create a group. Go to MemberPress » Groups tab and ‘Add New Group’.

On the next page, you can add a name for your group. This group is for my photography course membership, so I’ve simply named it Photography

Now, scroll down to the Group Options section. Let’s understand the options here.

Upgrade Path: This means users can only be subscribed to one of these memberships at a time. If un-checked, users may be subscribed to each of these memberships simultaneously.

Downgrade Path: Select which membership in the group to fall back to when the paid subscription expires or is cancelled. This is usually a free or basic plan. If you are unsure, leave the default.

Memberships: This lets you add/remove memberships from this group pricing page. I’ve added the 3 tiers of my membership plan here.

Keep in mind that the order of the memberships is important here. This is how it will appear on your pricing page. So you want to add the memberships with the lowest tier membership at the top of the list and the highest tier membership at the bottom, with the other memberships in order in between.

Now publish this group and you’ll get a URL for the pricing page.

Visit this URL and you’ll see a pricing page created for you and it should look something like this depending on what theme you’re using:

Step 5: Adding a Payment Gateway

To collect payments from your members, go to the MemberPress » Settings » Payments tab. Here, you’ll see Stripe is the default gateway.

Below that, there’s an option to ‘Add Payment Method’. When you click on this, more options will open up where you can accept offline payments, or configure Authorize.net and PayPal Standard.

Simply follow the onscreen instructions to connect your payment account.

There you go. You’ve created your membership content, pricing plans, payment options as well as the pricing page. Now there are a few settings you’ll want to know. Let’s head to that.

Step 6: Configuring MemberPress Settings

Go to the MemberPress » Settings page. Under the Pages tab, you can edit and view essential pages created by MemberPress. These include the Thank You, Account, and Login page.

You can also set up the group pages slug. If you remember the URL that was generated in the previous step was https://demosite.com/plans/photography. You can change this to anything you like here.

Switch to the Emails tab where you can enable/disable automated emails that are sent out to your members. There are premade emails for welcoming users, sending payment receipts, cancellation and refund notices, and more. You can edit and test emails here.

Again, the MemberPress team has done a fantastic job of making things user-friendly and beginner-friendly as well. So I suggest going through the settings here and tweaking it as you like.

With that, you’ve learned how to create a membership website or even a subscription site with recurring payments.

Step 7: Tracking Membership Performance

One of the things I love about MemberPress is its readymade reports. Under MemberPress » Reports, you can check metrics like active members, inactive members, free members, and average member lifetime value.

You can filter by month, year, and all time. This gives you a good idea of how your membership plans are performing. You’ll be able to make data-driven decisions on what you need to improve, remove, and add as you build your membership site.

That’s it! You can go ahead and create content that’s protected behind different membership gates.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. In case you have questions, feel free to drop a comment below.

If you’re new to WordPress, you’ll find these guides helpful on your journey:

These comprehensive guides contain our picks of the best WordPress plugins, hosting, themes, and more. I’ve also included a security guide because it’s important to get that right from the beginning.

If you prefer to learn how to use WordPress through videos, then check out our WordPress 101 course.

It’s designed to teach you the ins and outs of WordPress in just under 2 hours. You’ll also get a personal WordPress “sandbox” site for free. This is a demo WordPress site where you can experiment and follow along with the video tutorials in WordPress 101.

How to Create a Membership Website in WordPress (Complete Guide)