Memberships Plugins
Learn about the difference between the three different memberships plugins, as well as the subscriptions plugin approved for use in PWS, and when to use which.
Simple Memberships
Plan Type(s): Premium, Woo | Plugin Name: WP-Members
Plugin Details:
WP-Members that turns your WordPress site into a membership site and restricts selected WordPress content to registered site members. Powerful customizations can be constructed with over 100 action and filter hooks, as well as user accessible functions. This plugin offers simple memberships for multiple site visitors upon registration with no charge to sign up (no payments involved).
When to use WP-Members:
Use WP-Members if the customer wants a system for users to register as a member free of charge. This is best for if the customer wants to restrict premium content, create custom registration fields, display a member login, and display a page for registration.
When NOT to use WP-Members:
Do NOT use WP-Members if the customer intends to sell memberships or take subscription payments on the site. In such a case, they may need Woo Memberships or Woo Subscriptions. Also, this plugin does not work as a social network or forum of any kind.
DEMO VIDEOS and publicly accessible info FROM PLUGIN RESOURCES:
This video covers the default custom fields that the plugin installs and how to create and use your own custom fields. It also includes a discussion of the various field types that the plugin can create.
This video is a demonstration of how to configure moderated registration. It covers initial basic configuration and how to handle configuration if users create their own password at registration.
Multilevel Memberships
Plan Type(s): Premium, Woo | Plugin Name: Members
Plugin Details:
A plugin that extends your control over your blog. It’s a user, role, and capability editor plugin that was created to make WordPress a more powerful CMS. It puts you in control over permissions on your site by providing a user interface (UI) for WordPress’ powerful role and cap system.
When to use Members:
Use this plugin to assign roles and capabilities to preexisting users or users that you manually add. This plugin is mostly for delegating access to different users and controlling what those users are allowed to contribute or actually see.
When NOT to use Members:
Do NOT use Members if the customer expects front-end registration or membership sales. This plugin is not going to allow users to register as a member, nor will it accept payments of any kind.
Details and and publicly accessible info from plugin documentation:
Default roles in WordPress are: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber
Users are: People that have registered on your site.
What this plugin does: Each user is given a role on your site. Each role is given a set of capabilities (i.e., permissions) that grant/restrict their access.
Paid Memberships
Plan Type(s): Woo | Plugin Name: WooCommerce Memberships
Plugin Details:
Sell access to memberships, include memberships with product purchases, manually assign memberships, and completely integrate member perks within your store. WooCommerce Memberships is not just another plugin for restricting your site’s content: it’s an easy-to-use, site-wide membership solution that brings your content, shop, and memberships together.
When to use Woo Memberships:
Use this plugin when customers want the option to sell their membership plan.
The three options for gaining access to a membership within the scope of this plugin are: by creating a membership manually, via a user registering for an account on the site, or via purchasing membership access as a product. Use WooCommerce Subscriptions along with Memberships to enable reoccurring payments for members.
When NOT to use Woo Memberships:
Do NOT use this plugin if the customer has no necessity for a memberships platform or if they don't want their memberships tied into their products at all. Also, this plugin does not work as a social network or forum of any kind.
Details and and publicly accessible info from plugin documentation:
Memberships are not a specific type of WooCommerce product; instead, membership plans are created independently from products. This lets you determine how access is granted for maximum flexibility. You can assign 0 or more products (of almost any type) to a membership plan to support several types of memberships:
- sell a membership as stand-alone product — create a product for the membership, then tie the plan to that product to sell it
- grant access to a membership as part of a product purchase — i.e., buy a subscription for a meal box, get access to the recipes section for free
- grant access to the same membership from several products (i.e., a yearly purchase or a monthly subscription)
- assign memberships manually for an invite-only members area
You can manually create members or view / edit existing memberships from the WooCommerce > Memberships > Members screen. Each member is a WordPress user and WooCommerce customer; the membership login and account is handled by WooCommerce, and Memberships adds additional information to the account, such as the Member Area.
If you’d like further details on creating or managing memberships, please view the user memberships document.
Reoccurring Payments
Plan Type(s): Woo | Plugin Name: WooCommerce Subscriptions
Plugin Details:
An add-on to WooCommerce Memberships where members can subscribe to reoccurring payments. Capture More Residual Revenue with Recurring Payments. This plugin allows you to introduce a variety of subscriptions for physical or virtual products and services.
When to use Woo Subscriptions:
Use this plugin to enable reoccurring product payments for customers. You can sell physical, virtual and downloadable products as a subscription. You can also offer services and memberships by setting a subscription to be virtual.
This plugin can only work when guest checkout is disabled - all customers will be required to create accounts when purchasing a subscription product. Use WooCommerce Memberships along with Subscriptions to enable reoccurring payments for members.
When NOT to use Woo Subscriptions:
Do NOT use this plugin if the customer doesn't need reoccurring payments, or if they don't want customers to be able to create accounts.
Demo videos and publicly accessible info from plugin resources:
Details and publicly accessible info from plugin documentation:
A user must create an account when signing up for a subscription, regardless of whether it’s required in WooCommerce. This is because subscriptions persist beyond a transaction and must be associated with a user account.
- Subscriber Default Role – control the role assigned to customers when they create a subscription. By default, this is the WordPress built-in Subscriber role.
- Inactive Subscriber Role – control the role assigned to subscribers when their subscription expires, is canceled or suspended (by you, the payment gateway or the customer). By default, this is the WooCommerce’s built-in Customer role.
To assign roles outside of WordPress and WooCommerce roles, use a membership extension such as Members.
To get detailed fine-grained control over permissions given to a user on a per-product basis, use WooCommerce Memberships.
While WooCommerce Memberships works very well on its own to help you sell set-length memberships, it’s very tightly integrated with WooCommerce Subscriptions to let you sell recurring memberships, as well as take advantage of some additional features that Subscriptions provides.
Subscriptions allows your customers to upgrade, downgrade, or pause their own subscriptions, which will also affect memberships associated with the subscription. You can also offer free trials and recurring billing (instead of set-length, expiring memberships).