Paid Memberships Pro vs. Memberful

Imagine yourself at a crossroads. One sign reads “Paid Memberships Pro.” The other “Memberful.” Both seem like good options for building your membership site, but you want to pick only the best path forward. Which one do you choose—PMPro vs. Memberful? 

Choosing a membership platform is a common concern among business owners starting out in the memberships space. After all, 75% of online businesses want to offer memberships to their customers, and you want to get the backend right the first time. 

Don’t sweat it. We’re here to clear the fog and help you make an informed choice. In this post, we’ll compare two popular membership plugins — Paid Memberships Pro, a Memberful alternative — so you can make an informed decision. 

Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is a robust and modern membership platform. PMPro integrates directly into WordPress, with a user-friendly process to install the plugin and launch the entire frontend and admin backend of your membership site.

It’s designed to easily handle membership needs, making it a popular choice for associations and nonprofit organizations, blogs and news organizations, communities, courses and coaching, paid newsletters, and more. PMPro works perfectly, even for less tech-savvy users, so you can start your membership site with minimal effort.

Key Membership Features of PMPro

• Content Restrictions: You can restrict unlimited content, create personalized content for each member, and drip content over time to improve engagement. 
• Payment Options: Integrates with popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet. PMPro allows you to process recurring payments, create flexible pricing, offer trials, introductory, or front-loaded pricing, and even refund payments right from your WordPress dashboard.
• User Control: Your members and subscribers can manage their profiles, view their membership status and invoices, change their payment methods, or cancel their membership at any time without reaching support.

Administrative Features of PMPro

• Member Management: Paid Memberships Pro enables you to create unlimited membership tiers with free, one-time payment, or a recurring subscription such as annual, monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly charges, depending on your needs. To manage the various types of memberships you offer, you can customize registration and profile forms with User Fields to distinguish who signs up for what type of membership.
• Free Service: PMPro is free with the option to upgrade to paid plans that allow you to add premium Add Ons, read in-depth tutorials to customize your membership, and access our premium technical support for members only. But you can do key functions, like integrating with Zapier, as part of the free core.
• Admin Reports: PMPro includes multiple detailed reports, including sales and revenue, signups and cancellations, active members by level, as well as data for member visits, views, and logins.
• Scalability: The core plugin is free and comes packed with features, making it a cost-effective solution for those just starting. There are no limits on the number of members, types of content you can protect, or levels you can offer in the core version. However, there is an option to upgrade if you need premium Add Ons or greater support.
• Support: PMPro offers basic free support via our contact page or community- based support via Slack. Premium members gain access to advanced technical support and plus hundreds of tutorials for advanced customization. The support team works closely with our developers to quickly resolve issues or create code patches.

User Experience in Paid Memberships Pro

PMPro offers an excellent user experience. For admins, you have a simple yet comprehensive interface that displays all the essential settings, like member management, order history, content protections, activity statistics, and more, right on your WordPress dashboard. 

Along with a powerful admin dashboard, PMPro also gives your members control of their memberships. Your members can manage their profiles from the site’s front end and do things like:

• Reset their passwords
• Manage their profiles with custom user fields
• View their membership status and invoices
• Change their payment methods
• Upgrade or cancel their membership

By giving members the power to make basic changes on their own, you can reduce admin responsibilities. Who doesn’t love saving support time with fewer mundane tasks.

Paid Memberships Pro Price Points

Paid Memberships Pro’s plugin is free to download and install. The plugin includes 33 free Add Ons. It offers everything you need to launch and build your membership, including unlimited restricted content, unlimited membership levels and members. You can offer free or paid subscriptions through built-in integration with Stripe, PayPal Express, and more.

As your online business grows, you may want features beyond what’s in the standard plugin. PMPro supports those needs, too.

PMPro Offers Two Premium Plans

• Standard: Priced at $347 per year, the Standard plan adds premium support, advanced code recipes, automatic updates. There are 20 Standard Add Ons included in this tier for a single production site.
• Plus: The Plus plan is priced at $597 per year and is best for building advanced membership sites. It includes everything in the Standard plan plus 29 Plus Add Ons for up to two production sites.

Memberful

Memberful is a hosted member database that caters to a wide range of membership needs. It’s designed to work well for any type of content and offers various monetization options. Memberful doesn’t require a WordPress site. Instead, you can use Memberful with their website builder and add checkout buttons to your existing website. This may seem somewhat disconnected, but it’s the only path they offer.

Key Features of Memberful

• Easy Setup: Memberful is easy to use with a focus on the basics so you can set up your plans.
• Flexible Subscription Plans: With Memberful, you can create any kind of subscription plan that makes the most sense for your audience. It supports a monthly, annual, weekly, quarterly, fixed number of times, and more.
• Full Control: Memberful gives you full control of your membership site if you use their website builder. It offers a visual editor, allows you to add custom fields to collect information, and lets you personalize the account emails sent to your members. This level of control is only accessible with the website builder, not if you incorporate the platform into an existing site.
• Member Management: Memberful provides the tools to manage subscriptions, process refunds, create staff accounts with targeted permissions, add private notes, and monitor integration status.

User Experience in Memberful

With Memberful, members manage their accounts outside the WordPress site, within Memberful’s app. Members can then access their content, manage their subscriptions, and access their account through this external interface. 

Memberful Price Points

The Pro Plan, at $25 per month with a 4.9% transaction fee. It provides unlimited membership levels, all integrations, and additional features like group subscriptions.

The Premium Plan, costing $100 per month, with a 4.9% transaction fee, includes all Pro Plan features. 

All plans offer unlimited members and backups.

Why Choose Paid Memberships Pro?

Do you want a membership plugin that puts your members at the heart of everything? Look no further than Paid Memberships Pro. 

When comparing Memberful alternatives, it’s clear that PMPro focuses on providing a seamless and enriching experience for admins and members. PMPro makes it easier for you to engage, upsell, and maintain a strong relationship with your community.

Unlike other membership plugins, PMPro offers a high level of flexibility and customization. No matter the feature you need to handle your memberships, PMPro has you covered. And since PMPro is free, you can easily launch and grow your membership without paying fees each time you scale.

In fact, PMPro is 100% free. If you decide to pay for one of our premium plans, you will pay a flat fee that doesn’t change. Unlike Memberful, your growth is not taxed based on the size of your community. This feature makes PMPro a strong alternative to Memberful if you plan for your community to get bigger. And who doesn’t plan on growth?

Also, we don’t take any part of your revenue at the platform level. The only fees you have to worry about are those associated with your payment gateway. 

Plus, with its advanced data and reporting, you have everything you need to monitor and optimize your membership business for success.

But it’s not just about the features. PMPro empowers you to build and grow your online community with full control and flexibility from your current WordPress website. 

Grow Your Membership with Paid Memberships Pro

Make the process of creating your membership site simple. As the most robust membership platform, PMPro provides everything you need to run a successful online business. Aside from the plugin itself, PMPro also offers in-depth support, live events, and the confidence that you fully own your platform and data.

So, if you’re ready to take your online community to the next level, try the Memberful alternative, Paid Memberships Pro. It’s the partner you need to build an engaged business.

View plans and pricing starting at $0 »