Paid Memberships Pro vs s2member

Whether you’re a content creator, a small business owner starting out, or a brand manager creating a discussion space, one of the best ways to add value to a growing community is through memberships.

Member programs give you a direct connection with your community and, when combined with protected content, create a financially sustainable model that benefits everyone involved. Fortunately, with so many plugins to choose from, it’s straightforward to set up a membership program on your existing WordPress site.

If you decide to start selling memberships, you’ll want to start with a lot of research into the best membership platforms out there. There are hundreds of WordPress-based and non-WordPress membership software options available. But, when it comes to developing and maintaining a membership community on WordPress specifically, two long standing products jump out. In this post, we provide a comparison of Paid Memberships Pro and s2member.

Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is the most complete membership plugin for WordPress. It’s a great fit for any site looking to add a membership program or content restrictions. The complete plugin is free and offers a wide range of tools, including unlimited membership levels and a robust set of member management tools. Paid Memberships Pro 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.

With the Standard plan offering unlimited support, Paid Memberships Pro doesn’t just give you the tools to create a membership tier; it also helps you customize, maintain, and grow your community once you’ve started. The plugin integrates with major payment providers like Stripe and PayPal, and popular third-party email services and automation platforms.

Paid Memberships Pro Features

Paid Memberships Pro is not the only service offering membership management, but it is the one designed to be used out of the box by anyone—regardless of your development experience. Its setup and installation process is user-friendly even for the less tech savvy, and those tools give you everything you need to curate a successful and active member hub.

Notable PMPro features include:

• Content Restrictions. With PMPro, there’s no cap on the number of levels you can create in your membership program and no limitations on how you release content to those levels.
• Member Management. With unlimited membership levels available in PMPro and no limits on the unique ways you might release content, you are free to scale as much as you want. End users can manage most aspects of their profile via PMPro’s tools, saving valuable time for site administrators.
• Unlimited Support. Especially for small businesses or creators, there are sure to be questions and challenges that arise. PMPro offers unlimited support from a dedicated team of experts.
• Member Email Services. Once you have members, PMPro gives you what you need to stay in touch with them. You can customize the content and design of every message sent to members, including invoices and any other automated notices.
• Flexible Payment Options. PMPro supports many payment options, including Stripe, PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and more.
• Regular Data Reports. With extensive information gathered, PMPro presents the most useful information to you in an easy-to-use dashboard. That includes up-to-the-minute sales and ecommerce data, exit interviews with members, and trends in views, signups, and content, allowing you to tailor your offerings in real time to what your membership is responding to.

Paid Memberships Pro User Experience

PMPro makes it simple for users to control their experience with no additional work for you.

PMPro’s tools also allow you to restrict content via metrics like post views. This allows your site to nudge visitors into becoming members (free membership levels are possible) and into upgrading their subscriptions once they max out on free views. Users can subscribe and cancel whenever they want. You’ll see these same marketing tactics by huge publications like The New York Times. With PMPro, you can offer the same soft paywall without any cost to develop it.

As for what the end user sees, PMPro can be used seamlessly with any existing WordPress theme, so there’s no disruption for your users. PMPro also includes a free Memberlite theme that is built to be clear and clean for any WordPress membership site.

Paid Memberships Pro Pricing

PMPro offers a free plugin that includes many of the tools a growing site might need and 34 free Add Ons that focus on increasing engagement, integrating with other plugins and platforms, and enhancing your site’s security.

There are two premium plans that provide tools for more customization, and both come with advanced support from a team of dedicated experts. The Standard plan is $347 a year. It adds premium support, Google Analytics and ecommerce tracking tools, plus robust tools to drip content over time across levels.

The Plus service is $597 and is popular for building advanced membership sites. It comes with a second site license, functionality for a public or private member directory, multisite and WordPress Network features, corporate or group accounts, and priority support.

s2Member

s2Member, in comparison, is also an option for WordPress membership, especially for sites that are more comfortable with custom coding their websites already. It allows for content restriction, membership tiers, and subscription options, as well as the ability to sell one-time packages without tying it to membership.

s2Member Features

s2Member provides customization options for users of the free plugin. It integrates with an existing WordPress site, and higher-tier plans include the use of advanced shortcodes, allowing site administrators to restrict content dynamically on pages. You can create any number of tiers, including free ones. s2Member also allows for “Buy Now” buttons to be placed strategically behind membership-restricted pages.

s2Member leans heavily on using shortcodes that can be inserted into any theme, which can be intimidating for less tech-savvy users to set up. s2Member’s tools can be used to restrict most types of content, including audio/video streams and downloads, and the plugin integrates with most major payment services.

You can also create a custom email message to be sent to users upon checkout. However, there are no built-in tools for additional emails to members outside of automated renewal reminder messages. Mailchimp is one of the services that s2Member can integrate with, along with AWeber, GetResponse, BuddyPress, and several affiliate program plugins.

s2Member User Experience

s2Member integrates into almost any existing WordPress theme. Using individually embedded shortcodes, s2Member sites can tailor what individual users see or are offered when they visit. These shortcodes also provide control access to content, which means that while access can be easily restricted, it cannot be easily dripped without updating the shortcode.

Users can access a profile page if you set one up via shortcode. You can also use shortcodes to set up unique pages for users to upgrade or cancel their membership level.

s2Member Pricing

The “framework” version of s2Member is free, and comes with the basic tools necessary to create a membership program, as well as restrict content across membership levels and add a PayPal “Buy Now” button.

The Pro version costs a one-time payment of $89 and includes a single site license and lifetime access to updates. The Pro version integrates with Stripe, PayPal Pro, Authorize.Net, and ClickBank payment processors. There is also an option to upgrade to unlimited site licenses for $189.

s2Member’s support is on a volunteer basis. While there is a large existing library of resources and FAQs, like most things with s2Member, it requires more energy and effort for the user.

Paid Memberships Pro vs. s2Member

Paid Memberships Pro and s2Member offer ways to host membership programs on WordPress sites. While both tools can accomplish similar results, the path to getting there is different between them.

The biggest benefit to s2Member is the cost. One-time payments are the exception in an industry where most services are monthly or annually. The tradeoff is that s2Member requires additional steps to accomplish things that are built into Paid Memberships Pro. The use of shortcodes enables s2Member to do a lot of custom and dynamic designs, but it’s also a user-intensive process that comes with fewer built-in tools and ways to effectively manage a community at the individual level.

Additionally, there’s a stark difference in support options. While Paid Memberships Pro has a dedicated team of experts available to troubleshoot any problems or address any needs that might arise, s2Member support comes entirely in the form of volunteers.

Why Choose Paid Memberships Pro?

When you’re ready to launch your membership program, you want to make sure you have the right team and tools at your disposal from the beginning. The last thing you want to happen is to make one choice and then run into a roadblock that is not easily solvable—then face the tough decision to migrate to a new plugin.

The premium support options available with PMPro guarantee that won’t happen. With a squad of experts driving the design and a dedicated support team available should you need any assistance at all, PMPro can help you grow your community. PMPro has been in active development for over 13 years, making it the most complete plugin available.

Ready to find out more? You can read case studies from some of our partners here and then choose the right plan for you.