Paid Member Subscriptions is a powerful membership plugin both for WordPress and WooCommerce.
Creating and managing a membership website isn’t easy, especially for newbies. From subscription management to content dripping, there are various aspects to execute on a membership website.
To create and manage a profitable membership website, you need a robust plan and, more importantly, a reliable membership plugin.
Because of its ease of use and powerful features, Paid Member Subscriptions stands apart from competitors.
Paid Member Subscriptions is a powerful membership plugin that is extremely easy to set up and use.
While trying our hands with this plugin, we found some exciting features like prevention of account sharing, forum creation, hassle-free member management, and more.
On top of that, it provides easy to use shortcodes for everything, such as member registrations, login, content restrictions, managing memberships, etc.
Place the shortcode on any page, configure some basic options, and you’re up and running in minutes.
In this Paid Member Subscription review, we’ll take an in-depth look into its features and benefits, add-ons, pricing, integrations, and so on. Additionally, we have also featured a step by step walkthrough to create a membership website with Paid Member Subscriptions from scratch.
Let’s dive in
Paid Member Subscriptions Review: In a Nutshell
Paid Member Subscriptions is a simple, lightweight, and easy to configure WordPress membership plugin. When it comes to value for money membership plugins, Paid Member Subscriptions shines with its easy to use features that enable you to create fully-functional membership websites quick and easy.
With this plugin, you can create a membership website on the go and start getting paid in no time. Most membership plugins have a complex interface where the membership creation part is tricky. Luckily, that isn’t the case with Paid Member Subscriptions; it has an easy interface where you can create and manage your membership with ease.
The Paid Member Subscriptions plugin doesn’t have complicated setup pages; it integrates with your existing WordPress website and content, where you can create a membership area without any complexities.
The best part is it seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce and allows admins to easily restrict users/visitors from product viewing and purchasing along with rewarding special product prices to your members.
The Paid Member Subscriptions WooCommerce integration enables you to:
- Restrict product viewing
- Restrict product purchasing
- Setup free trial on membership site
- Restrict access to entire WooCommerce store
- Add member discounts per subscriptions
This isn’t the end of features; the plugin has a lot to offer. For in-depth insights into Paid Member Subscriptions, we’ll go through its features to learn firsthand how it can help you create and manage your membership website.
Paid Member Subscriptions Features and Benefits
We all know that running a membership is a complicated task; there are a lot of membership aspects to manage. Luckily, plugins like Paid Member Subscriptions can help you create and maintain a fully-fledged membership website.
The Paid Member Subscriptions come with all the essential and advanced features you need to create, manage, and sell your membership subscriptions.
Let’s have a look at the features the Paid Member Subscription has to offer.
Basic Subscription Management
Paid and Free Subscriptions:
The plugin allows you to add paid as well as free membership subscription options. You can add a basic registration form where users can sign up for a subscription plan quickly.
Robust Content Restriction:
You can display content based on subscription plans for the authorization of a user/visitor using the content restriction features. It gives you the ability to restrict posts, pages, custom post types, forums, specific pages, WooCommerce products, shop pages, and more.
Simple Membership Management:
Membership management with this plugin is super easy. You can easily manage every aspect of your membership website. The Paid Member Subscriptions gives an overview of all your members, their subscription plans, and membership level. You can also easily add/remove members and their subscription details and other information quickly.
Account Management:
Your members can manage their account information, edit their account information, and manage their subscription plans.
Export Members Data:
With the help of this plugin, you can easily export members’ data from your membership website. You can easily export members’ data to a CSV file without hassle.
Hassle-free Payment Management:
The Paid Member Subscriptions come with easy payment management. The plugin seamlessly integrates with all major payment processors to help you receive payments quickly. You can also keep track of all member payments, payment status, purchased subscription plans, and other aspects too.
Free Trial and Sign-up Fees:
You can offer a free trial with your membership subscriptions. You can even configure your subscription to have a membership, a free trial period, one-time fees, and recurring payments that give you more flexible subscription startups.
Prevent Account Sharing:
This plugin comes with a compelling account sharing restriction. It automatically prevents account sharing from multiple places at the same time. This will help you protect the content of your membership.
Customizable Email Templates:
Paid Member Subscriptions provides fully customizable email templates you can send to your members quickly. You can modify the email sent to your members on membership registration, subscription activation, and expiration for cancellation of the membership. Customize many email formats for various situations and send them right away to your members whenever you want.
WooCommerce Membership Management
As I mentioned earlier, Paid Member Subscriptions also helps you to create a membership area for your WooCommerce store. There are various restrictions you can add to your WooCommerce products pages.
Restrict Products:
You can restrict products of your WooCommerce store for both viewing and purchasing.
Restricts Entire WooCommerce Shop:
With a Paid Member Subscriptions plugin, you can choose what members can access your shop page. According to their membership and subscription levels, you can provide access to various products and pages.
Create Members Only Discount:
This plugin allows you to create a members-only discount. You can easily add coupon codes and membership discounts based on subscription plans or per product individually.
Paid Member Subscriptions Add-ons
Paid Member Subscriptions provide many add-ons that extend the capability is of your WordPress membership plugin. It offers paid as well as free add-ons, basically it offers 9 basic and 7 pro add-ons. Let’s have a look at these add-ons.
Basic Add-ons:
- Global Content Restriction: Allows you to add a global content restriction rules to all of your subscription plans based on post type, taxonomic keys, and terms. This is a super-easy way to restrict content globally based on subscription levels.
- Discount Codes: Allows you to create discount codes to run promotions, making price reductions, and so on.
- Email Reminders: Enables you to easily create multiple email reminders that can be automatically sent to your members.
- Navigation Menu Filtering: You can filter and add specific posts and pages that are visible in the menus for members.
- Fixed Period Membership: Allows your subscriptions to automatically and at a specific date regardless of subscribing to it.
- bbPress Integration: This add-on helps you integrate with bbPress. Using this addon you can easily create and add a forum to your membership website.
- Pay What You Want: Allows subscribers to pay what they want simply by offering flexible pricing options at the time there are purchasing the membership plan.
- Labels Edit: Allows you to edit any label, string, or messages coming from this plugin.
Pro Add-ons
These add-ons only come with Paid Member Subscriptions paid plans. Let’s have a look at these pro add-ons.
- Content Dripping: Allows you to create a schedule for your content, making posts and categories available for members only after a certain time has passed after their registration. You can easily drip your content and control the way you give access to your content.
- Group Memberships: Allows you to sell group subscriptions to your members. There is various membership that contains multiple states that can be purchased and managed by a single account.
- PayPal Express: Allows you to accept payments from your members via PayPal Express checkouts.
- Stripe: With this addon, you can accept credit card payments directly to your membership website.
- Invoices: Enables you to create dynamic invoices for subscription payments. You and your members can download these invoices.
- Multiple Subscription Per Users: You can easily set up various subscription label groups and allowed members to sign up for more than one subscription plan quickly.
- Tax and EU Vat: With this addon, you can easily collect tax or vat from your users depending on their location. Also, you will have full control over the tax rate is and home to charge these taxes.
Paid Member Subscriptions Pricing
The pricing plans offered by Paid Member Subscriptions are flexible and affordable. Paid Member Subscriptions come with free as well as paid plans. The free plugin enables you to create a membership website with essential features and functionality.
While the pro version of this plugin unlocks powerful features that not only allow you to create a membership website, but it also makes it super easy to manage your membership website.
Let’s have a look at paid plans offered by Paid Member Subscriptions:
1. Hobbyist: This plan costs $69/yearly for a single website uses only. The Hobbyist Plan is perfect for beginners who are looking to create a fully-fledged single membership website. This clan is fully loaded with all essential and advanced features that you need. The only restriction in this plan is, it doesn’t come with the pro add-ons.
Hobbyist plan includes:
- Single site uses
- Account management
- Restrict content
- Easy members login
- Members management
- Subscription management
- Payment management
- Customizable email templates
- WooCommerce integration
- Provides 9 basic add-ons
- Unlimited PayPal standard and free subscriptions
The Hobbyist plan also includes one year of plugin updates and priority customer support.
2. Pro Version: The Pro version costs $149 for usage on unlimited sites. If you are a freelancer or an agency who is looking to create multiple membership websites, this plan is perfect. This plan is loaded with all premium features and the pro add-ons as well.
The Pro Plan Includes:
- All the features in the Hobbyist plan
- It also includes the 8 Pro Add-ons: Tax and EU VAT, Group Memberships, Recurring Payments for PayPal Standard and Express, Stripe, Invoices, Content Dripping, Multiple Subscription usage.
On top of that, the premium plan comes with 15 days money-back guarantee. If you don’t like the services of a Paid Member Subscriptions you can request to claim the refund.
Is The Premium Version Worth Your Try?
Yes, the premium plans offered by Paid Member Subscriptions are definitely what’s your try. The free version only allows you to create a membership website with some basic features and functionality.
The premium versions of this plugin allows you to create and manage a fully functional membership website quick and easy. Not only, e pattern locks premium features, but it also comes with powerful add-ons that can enhance the functionality of this Paid Member Subscriptions plugin. There are 9 basic and 7 Pro add-ons that come with the premium plan.
Also, the premium plan comes with free plugin updates and priority customer support that you may need in the future.
Paid Member Subscriptions Integrations
Paid Member Subscriptions seamlessly integrates with other plugins to enhance the performance and functionality of this plugin. It fully integrates with WooCommerce, bbPress, Profile Builder, and other premium plugins.
- bbPress Integration: The bbPress integration allows you to create a password-protected forum.
- Profile Builder Integration: Allows you to get complete control over your member’s profile. It enables you to add custom fields to the sign of form, requirement of email confirmation from the users and so on.
- Elementor Integration: With the help of this integration, you can restrict Elementor sections and widgets based right on the login status and subscription plans.
- WooCommerce Integration: It seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce that enables you to create a fully-fledged membership WooCommerce store in no time.
- MailChimp for WordPress: This integration with MailChimp allows you to sync account with MailChimp and start sending and automating email tasks.
How to Create a Membership Website With Paid Member Subscriptions
Creating membership websites with Paid Member Subscriptions is quite easy and straight forward. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the plugin enables you to create a fully functional membership website. If you want to create membership websites from scratch, follow our step by step walkthrough to set up your membership website from scratch and start collecting online payments in no time.
Step #1: Install and Activate The Plugin
Once you purchase the premium Paid Member Subscriptions, you can download the premium version of this plugin in a zip file from your Cozmoslabs account.
To install the plugin on your WordPress site, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard >> Plugins >> Add New. Then choose the ‘Upload Plugin’ and select the zip file from your pc and then click on ‘Install Now.
Once the installation is finished, activate the plugin right away. When you will activate the plugin, it will redirect you to the Paid Member Subscriptions setup wizard. In the setup wizard, you can come to your couple of options.
Also, you can skip the setup Wizard and go back to your WordPress admin dashboard, where you can easily find the Paid Member Subscriptions menu right on your dashboard.
Step #2: Configuring Paid Membership Subscriptions
After activating and validating your license, it’s time to configure and set up your membership site.
Creating a subscription plan:
To create a subscription plan, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Subscriptions Plans and then simply click on the ‘Add New’ button.
In this section, enter all the necessary details, and once you are done don’t forget to hit the ‘Save Subscription’ button at the right top of the page.
Also, once you create a subscription plan, you have the option to add an upgrade or downgrade if you want to create a free trial for your membership subscriptions.
Members Management:
To manage and see your members, just navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Members. Once you click on it, you have the option to manage every aspect of your members’ subscriptions.
Adding Payment Methods:
In this step, we are going to add the payment methods through which you will get paid for your membership subscription. To add and manage payment method, simply navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Subscriptions.
WooCommerce Product Restrictions:
As I have mentioned earlier, the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce. The integration enables you to restrict WooCommerce products, and also you can create members-only discounts and coupons.
To configure this plugin for WooCommerce, just navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Subscriptions Plans. To view all your WooCommerce products, navigate to WooCommerce >> Products >> All Products.
Restricting The WooCommerce Product Viewing and Purchasing:
To easily restrict any products, just click on the edit link on any particular product you want to restrict. Once the page load, you need to scroll to the bottom of the page, when you get to see the Content Restriction meta boxes, just from various restrictions options.
Here you need to configure, Types of Restrictions, Purchase Options, and the Restriction Message. You can easily configure all these options, and once you are done don’t forget to save the changes you have made.
Additionally, you can also customize the restriction role and messages by merely navigating to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Settings >> Content Restrictions. Once you’re there, configure all the changes that you think are necessary, such as custom messages, templates, and redirects.
Creating The Members Only Discount:
You can also create members-only discounts with the help of the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin. To create members-only discounts, you need to download the PMS Discount Codes add-ons. You can find this addon right on your Cozmoslabs account. Just download it from there and easily install it like we installed this plugin.
Once you install and activate this Discount addon, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions >> Discount Codes >> Add New. From there you can create a discount and enter all the necessary information required. After the final configuration, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Discount’ button.
Step #3: Registration Form
A registration form is required where users can register to your website. To create a sign of, navigate to WordPress Dashboard >> Pages >> Add New. It will open up the backend editor, just give the page a name and simply enter the shortcode [pms-register] into the editor.
Also, don’t forget to configure other page options if required. Once you’re done, publish the page right away.
This was a quick walkthrough to help you create a membership arena on your WordPress website. Just follow the steps given above, you’ll be up running in minutes.
Paid Member Subscriptions Review Conclusion
Paid Member Subscriptions is easy to use and deploy membership plugin both for WordPress and WooCommerce.
The best part is you don’t need to create restricted content from scratch; the plugin seamlessly integrates with your WordPress website and content. You can easily restrict any existing pages, posts, custom post types, and so on.
One line that explains Paid Member Subscription is it’s a membership plugin that is extremely easy to set up and use.
The free version enables you to create a membership website with pretty basic features. While the premium plan unlocks the library of robust features and add-ons that helps you create and manage a profitable membership business. On top of that, the premium plan comes with free plugins updates and priority customer support.
If you’re on the verge of choosing a reliable and straightforward membership plugin, we highly recommend you get started with Paid Member Subscriptions. Paid Member Subscriptions not only help you to create a membership website, but it also makes membership management straightforward and hassle-free.
Have you ever created a membership website or are you just getting started? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
We hope this Paid Member Subscriptions review helps you get better insights into this membership plugin.
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