Paid Memberships Pro Review 2024 Is Paid memberships Pro Free? (Pros & Cons)

How To set up a membership site

Paid Memberships Pro’s implementation can rapidly become intricate. You can easily begin with the fundamentals, set up a membership site, create membership tiers, and integrate a payment gateway.

Before registering and installing the plugin, you may choose to determine how your site will be organized. For instance, you will need to determine the number of membership tiers you will employ, the type of content to which you will grant access, the amount you will charge, and the payment processor you will employ.

Setting up Paid Memberships Pro

The plugin is installed using the conventional procedure. After registering and paying for your first year of access, the plugin zip file will be available for download. You can then upload the file to your website, enter the registration key you receive with the file, and configure everything.

You can upload the free version from the WordPress Plugins dashboard if you’re beginning with the free edition.

• Join Paid Memberships Pro and choose a membership level.
• Locate your registration code by downloading the zip file to your PC.
• Open your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins, and then click Add New.
• Choose Upload Plugin at the top of the middle window and then choose Choose File.
• Navigate to the downloaded zip file and select Install Now.
• Select the Activate option once the upload is complete.

After installing and activating the plugin, now you can begin configuring it.

• Select Membership Levels from the new Memberships menu in your WordPress dashboard.
• Choose to Add a New Level.
• Enter a level name, an informative description, a confirmation message after signup, the membership level’s cost, whether the subscription will be recurring or not, and a free trial option, if one is being used.
• Set a membership expiration date if you plan to offer recurring subscriptions.
• Mark the checkbox next to This is the Category to use if you intend to restrict some website content to subscribers only. You will then need to designate posts and pages as Categories for this to function.
• Save your changes.

Setting a recurring billing amount in Step 3 eliminates the requirement to establish membership expiration in Step 4. The setting of a recurring schedule, day, week, month, and year eliminates the need for expiration.

Add membership levels

To create additional membership levels, simply repeat the steps above and give each one a unique name, description, and confirmation message, as well as configure the subscription cost and frequency as desired.

Set up your payment gateway

The next obvious step is to establish a payment mechanism so that members can subscribe. Memberships Pro supports numerous gateways, however, only one at a time can be used. You must have an account with the gateway provider for this to function.

• In the WordPress admin area, choose Memberships and then Payment Settings.
• You can choose a payment provider using the radio button in the top right corner.
• Input your verification code or information in the next window. This may be a keycode or merely an email address and API key, depending on the gateway.
• Set your gateway’s Gateway Environment to Live. Sandbox is only for testing.
• Set your currency and sales tax, if applicable.
• Enable SSL and enter your SSL certificate information.
• Save your preferences.

Depending on who you use, the mechanics of configuring the payment gateway vary. PayPal, for instance, utilizes an email address and API keys, whereas Stripe requires a verification key.

Setting up your pages

Now that the membership tiers are in place, you must create pages for subscribers to access.

• Select Page Settings from the Memberships menu in your WordPress dashboard.
• Select the text link ‘click here to let us produce them for you located at the top of the Pages tab. This will generate every necessary page.
• Alternately, create each page on your website and embed the matching shortcode.
• Save your preferences.

Create an Account Page and then copy the ‘[pmpro account]’ shortcode from the Pages configuration. Create a Billing Information Page and add the code ‘[pmpro billing]’ to it. It is simpler to let the plugin do it for you, but if you choose to do it yourself, it is still extremely simple.

Email setup

Email configuration specifies how your website transmits system messages. This keeps you abreast of all activity on your site and ensures you receive an email whenever a user does an action specified in the filters.

• Choose Email Settings and Memberships from the WordPress dashboard.
• Set the From email address and From name to the domain and username of your website.
• Select the alert types for which you wish to receive email notifications.
• Save your preferences.

Initially, it makes sense to be notified of every event, but as your list of subscribers grows, you may wish to lower the frequency to something more reasonable.

Customize theme templates

Paid Memberships Pro allows you to modify the appearance of pages. As with many plugins, it integrates with your existing theme and allows you to force compatibility with CSS or additional plugins. Some plugins provide templating choices, but if you wish, you may also change the ‘frontend.css’ file.

Using stylesheets, you can also alter the appearance. PMP has a blog post that describes this functionality in detail.

To alter CSS, you must have FTP access to the website’s root directory.

• Create a new folder titled “paying memberships pro” within your Themes folder.
• Create a new folder named CSS within premium memberships pro.
• Copy the frontend.css file located in the Paid Memberships Pro folder.
• Return to your newly created CSS folder and put “frontend.css” inside.
• Make any CSS modifications to the frontend.css file within the CSS folder.

This page explains how to utilize your own theme templates to customize your website’s design.

Advanced settings

Now that you’ve configured the essentials, let’s take a brief look at the advanced settings available in Paid Memberships Pro.

• Select Advanced Settings and Memberships from the WordPress dashboard.
• Configure the messages that will be displayed to non-members and logged-out users.
• If you are utilizing an RSS feed, set a message for it.
• Select the option to restrict searches and archived content, as well as excerpts, if applicable.
• Choose whether to utilize reCAPTCHA and whether to display the Terms of Service.
• Save your preferences.

All of these parameters are modifiable, so you may pick and choose what works best for your website. Using reCAPTCHA to reduce spam is always a good idea, and displaying excerpts is a great way to get new subscribers, therefore I recommend using these features.

Controlling member content

Paid Memberships Pro’s raison d’être, and the reason you’ll be able to charge for access, is the ability to administer member-specific content. The method is rather intuitive and allows you to restrict content on a page-by-page and post-by-post basis. You may also choose to utilize a shortcode.

Once member material has been produced, you control its management. For this example, I utilized an already-created page and adjusted its settings from the page creation page.

• Open the WordPress page you want to limit.
• Check the right menu for Membership Required. It should appear either above or below the Set Featured Image option.
• Select a premium membership option by selecting the corresponding box.
• Select Update.

If you leave this setting unchanged, the page will be visible to anyone who visits it. Changing the membership setting will restrict access to this page to the appropriate membership level. If a user is not a subscriber, the plugin will prompt them to subscribe in order to have access.

The same holds true for posts. Additionally, you can create a member category within blog entries and restrict content by category. It is a clever technique that works as well for websites that contain posts. Check the Categories box on your Membership Levels page if you desire to utilize categories.

Finally, you can restrict content using WordPress blocks or shortcodes. This permits a much more granular approach and could be useful if you wish to display the first few paragraphs of a page followed by a “Subscribe to read more” button. This information is detailed in the PMP documentation.

Testing

You can test as you go by opening a page or post after establishing the limitations, or you can configure everything and go through the complete procedure. There is a test mode for the payment gateway, or you can use live and complete the transaction as a user.

Even though the setup is straightforward, I recommend conducting a few comprehensive tests before going live to verify that everything runs smoothly.

Spending an hour testing your website is more efficient than addressing complaints and losing subscribers due to oversights.