“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” applies well to business. While customer acquisition is important, what’s even better is to drive repeat sales and increase your business by retaining your existing customers.
An excellent way to do this is by offering memberships on your online store. By making customers a part of an exclusive club or giving them privileged access to content and offers, you can make them feel valued and enhance their loyalty towards your brand.
Take it from the 76% of businesses that claim a subscription-based model helps them retain customers and create long-term relationships with them.
And this is not it – by limiting access to premium content, you can also compel non-members to convert and purchase from you.
Now, the thought of creating and managing memberships on your online store can seem scary, but WooCommerce membership plugins can make the job simple for you. With their ease of use, features, integrations, pricing, and support, these plugins are some of the most sought-after when it comes to memberships.
This article will explore 6 WooCommerce plugins you can use to start a membership program in your store from scratch. But first, let’s take a look at the benefits of a membership website.
Why Build a Membership Website
There are several ways you can go about memberships – you can create one where members get special offers on your products/services or access to exclusive content on your website. Or, you can turn it into a subscription-based model where you deliver specific products to members regularly.
In all cases, it brings immense value and convenience to members. But as a store owner, here’s why you should consider creating a membership website.
1. Increase sales and build loyalty
By offering special discounts or deals to your members, you can grow your revenue. As members continue to get value from their membership, they’ll also be likely to recommend it to their friends and family, which will again help boost purchases.
Thus, a membership website helps you create a loyal community of customers who value your brand and look forward to what you offer.
2. Build solid relationships with customers
Memberships are all about providing value to customers – be it through resources or products – which helps strengthen their relationship with your brand.
The longer they stay subscribed to you, the more they’ll realize the benefits of your products/services, enhancing their faith in your brand.
3. Set up a recurring stream of income
Memberships are an excellent way to bring recurring income, in addition to the sales you make. That’s because members pay a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee to access premium features – and they are billed automatically until they choose to cancel their subscription.
This also makes a membership program a reliable and predictable source of income, as you’ll know exactly how much you’ll earn from your ongoing memberships.
Top 6 WooCommerce Membership Plugins
Without further ado, let’s explore some WooCommerce membership plugins that can help you enjoy all these benefits.
If you have an eCommerce store that’s up and running, creating an entirely new website to include memberships can be costly and time consuming. Good news is you can use plugins to smoothen the process for you.
1. Yith WooCommerce Membership
Yith WooCommerce Membership lets you activate sections on your eCommerce store – pages, posts, products – that only members can access. So, you can create private shops with members-only products, hide certain pages from non-members, or even give them previews of content only members can completely read, nudging them to sign up.
It allows you to create multiple membership plans, like Bronze, Silver, and Gold, and define what content/products will be available at each level. Besides giving privileged access to members, you can also offer them free shipping or discounts.
Its clean dashboard lets you monitor memberships, while the “My Account” tab gives customers all necessary details about their membership.
Top Feature: Its “Messages” widget helps members communicate directly with you – so you can resolve their queries instantly and improve customer experience.
Pricing: $149.99/year with 1-year updates and support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
2. WooCommerce Memberships
With WooCommerce Memberships, you can create a fully functioning membership system on your website by limiting content access.
It also gives you immense flexibility in creating memberships – you can sell them separately, tie them to a product purchase or registration, or assign them manually to make an invite-only members area.
Further, you can also create members-only products by restricting product viewing or purchasing to members and offer discounts to them. What’s even more interesting is that it lets you “drip” content and schedule when members should have access to it – helping you release content at your pace.
Top Feature: You can choose to make your memberships valid for unlimited or a set amount of time. But combining it with WooCommerce Subscriptions also lets you make them recurring.
Pricing: $199/year with 1-year extension updates and support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
3. WooCommerce Members Only
WooCommerce Members Only allows you to create a membership program on your store by controlling user access to pages, posts, products, and categories. You can do this based on user roles, whether they are logged in or not, or through passwords.
Like other plugins, it lets you enable (or disable) different payment and shipping methods for members, offer members-only products, and create a multi-tier membership program.
What’s more, it lets you choose where to redirect users when try to access restricted content – so you can send them to your homepage or landing page to motivate them to sign up for your membership.
Top Feature: It comes with detailed documentation, blogs, and tutorials to help you set up and manage memberships.
Pricing: The Basic plan (one site) and Pro plan (unlimited sites) cost $59 and $99 per year, respectively. It also offers lifetime plans.
4. WooCommerce Membership Plugin by Rightpress
The WooCommerce Membership plugin by RightPress lets you create and sell unlimited memberships on your online store by restricting content on posts and pages. Its bulk editing functionality makes protecting content easy and quick.
Using the plugin, you can convert any simple or variable product into a membership product. When customers purchase it, the plugin activates their membership. And if they cancel or refund this order or cross the expiration date, it automatically cancels their membership, making the whole process hassle-free for you.
While it lets members “pause” their membership, it also gives you the freedom to grant or revoke memberships.
Top Feature: It removes posts that users don’t have access to from lists and menus, making it convenient for them to use your website.
Pricing: $59 (one-time payment) with future updates and six-month support.
5. Restrict Content Pro
Developed by Pippin’s Plugins, Restrict Content Pro is feature-rich and one of the most popular membership plugins.
Like other plugins, it allows you to lock and drip content. But what makes it different are its easy settings, email features (you can send welcome and reminder emails to members), and flexibility in pricing memberships (you can charge a set fee plus optional sign up free).
With Restrict Content Pro, you can create unlimited subscription levels, including a free, trial, and premium plan. Customers, however, can opt for only one membership plan – they can upgrade or downgrade to different ones, and it automatically adjusts the amount they pay.
Top Feature: It comes with inbuilt integrations with Stripe and PayPal—meaning you don’t need extra extensions and can easily start using these payment gateways.
Pricing: Plan start from $99 (for the first year).
6. MemberPress
MemberPress lets you create unlimited memberships with different levels of access, trial periods, and prices.
It also allows you to release locked content on a schedule, send notification emails to members automatically, and even set content access expirations. Moreover, it gives you detailed insights on the performance of your membership site, like which products are selling the best and how much you’re earning.
This plugin further stands out because it lets you create and easily manage coupons in your store. You can configure coupons’ expiration dates, the products they apply to, the discount percentage, and more.
Top Feature: Also a Learning Management System (LMS) plugin, MemberPress has a “Courses” addon that lets you create and sell online courses on subscription.
Pricing: It offers three plans—Basic ($179/year), Plus ($299/year), and Pro ($399/year).
Conclusion
Memberships are a great way to build a loyal following for your store and make customers come back for more – given the immense value and perks they’ll gain from them.
These 6 WooCommerce plugins can make starting and managing memberships in your store easy and trouble-free. While they work in a more or less similar way, each plugin has its specialty and unique features – so choose wisely based on your needs and budget. Good luck!
