Memberpress Alternatives: Comparing Memberpress to Competitors
Are you looking for a Memberpress alternative for your online course or membership site?
Read our in-depth overview, comparisons of popular competitors, native software features, and pricing.
Before we dive into our memberpress comparison
We’re always curious about who writes reviews for products online, so we want to give you the full disclosure as you dive into this review.
We are the creators of the AccessAlly LMS plugin for WordPress, and we are affiliates for some of the tools that we evaluate in these reviews, which means that we may earn a commission if you click a link in this review to the tool’s website and make a purchase.
However, we never let an affiliate incentive sway us in our reviews, but the commission earned on these referrals makes it possible for us to invest time into researching and writing about our personal experience and knowledge acquired for a lot of the course and membership tools you might be comparing.
Now let’s dive in to see how Memberpress compares to its competitors, and why current users might start looking for a Memberpress alternative in the first place.
Why people choose Memberpress
Before we get into our list of MemberPress alternatives, let’s look at why you might consider implementing MemberPress for your online course or membership site.
- You don’t need a lot of bells and whistles: If you’re just getting started online and don’t require complex or advanced LMS features and functionality, MemberPress is a good choice. You can create basic courses with their course builder, as well as, basic and advanced membership levels.
You can send your welcome emails and transactional emails from the MemberPress plugin and don’t need to rely on a CRM or marketing automation system. However, if you plan to send retention or course-related emails you will need to integrate with one of these tools.
- It’s affordable: MemberPress is an affordable membership plugin priced at just $249/year for their most popular plan. However, it doesn’t include a lot of learning management system features so you may need to purchase additional plugins and add-ons if you’re selling or bundling online courses within your membership.
- You’re already using an LMS plugin: MemberPress is often paired with an LMS plugin such as LearnDash by online course creators who need membership management features to complete their learning environment setup.
MemberPress has recently released a “Courses” feature that functions as a course builder. However, if you’re collecting homework or sending assignments to your users, issuing certificates, and leveraging quizzes to increase content retention, it won’t quite meet your needs.
Why people recommend Memberpress
You might have posted in a Facebook group asking people what they use for their membership site or to sell their online courses, and received a lot of “MemberPress” answers. Why is that?
- Design flexibility: MemberPress is a WordPress membership plugin that works with any theme. They also provide templates for some of your core membership site pages such as check-out pages, thank you pages, landing pages, and your login page. You can even use shortcodes to display the member’s name, the date, or what product or program they’ve purchased to personalize their experience.
- MemberPress has a great affiliate program: We highly encourage you to reach out for recommendations as you research your options. Just be wary that whenever you have someone strongly advocating for a specific tool, without listening to you and your specific needs, it’s a good time to pause and think about what’s in it for them.
Many MemberPress customers can earn a nice income from recommending MemberPress to others so just be sure it checks all of the boxes for your needs before you make the investment.
Why people look for Memberpress alternatives
If you’ve tried MemberPress and found it limiting, or you’ve outgrown the MemberPress system you might already know why you want to move. Here are some of the other common reasons why people look for MemberPress substitutes.
- Lack of functionality: Because MemberPress focuses primarily on your membership management, additional plugins are usually required to add additional functionality to your site – adding costs and complexity to your tech stack. Maintaining these integrations can be a tech nightmare if the integrations fail or you need to troubleshoot customer-specific issues and find yourself unsure of which tool may be responsible.
- Marketing Automation and CRM integration: MemberPress integrates with a few marketing automation systems and CRMs, however, you’ll likely need a third-party tool such as Zapier to connect your membership site built on WordPress, to pass information back to your CRM, adding one more piece of complexity to your setup to achieve a seamless user experience. This type of integration is also a one-way integration so you’re not always able to sync data between both systems, your WordPress site typically passes information to your CRM, but your CRM can’t pass information back to your WordPress site. If this is important for you, take a look at AccessAlly.
- No gamification features: As more and more membership sites and online courses come to market, one thing that can set you apart from your competition is the user experience you create. MemberPress doesn’t have a built-in gamification system that can be used to keep members engaged and coming back for more. There’s no way to award badges and MemberPress lacks the functionality to create a credits/points system to reward users.
- E-commerce features are clunky: MemberPress integrates with Stripe and PayPal, but the back-end payment and subscription infrastructure aren’t very intuitive or easy to manage. You’re also not able to customize your order forms or your invoices generated via Stripe.
- Lacks a member directory feature: Member directories are a great way to showcase build community within your membership. Unfortunately, this isn’t a native feature of MemberPress so an additional plugin or add-on would be needed.
One client's story about finding a MemberPress Alternative
"By stepping through the Course Wizard, even before watching your videos,
I understand how your software works. It’s the same way I would have done it if I were designing such software. (I have done a lot of software and database development.)
Your design makes the best use of WordPress, because your method shows how pages become lessons.
One of the best features in AccessAlly is your use of tags and your direct connection to a CRM. I already use Drip and I find your connections are perfect. It would have been a hookup maze for me to accomplish these connections with other tools. You have saved me a whole lot of time by making things simple.”
-Ed Berry
Compare Memberpress Competitors' Pricing
MemberPress has 3 different pricing plans to choose from. However, the lower-priced tiers will have more restrictive feature limitations so keep that in mind as you’re evaluating each plan.
Their Basic plan is $249 per year which includes 1 site license, unlimited members, and unlimited membership levels or courses. You’ll be able to choose between PayPal and Stripe for your payment processor, and you’ll have access to approximately 10 add-ons and integrations.
MemberPress’s most popular plan, the Plus plan is priced at $399 per year. You’ll get everything included with the Basic plan and your site license will be valid for up to 2 installations. You’ll also be able to use Authorize.net as your payment processor. This tier includes the corporate accounts feature and 20+ add-ons and integrations.
The most expensive pricing tier for MemberPress is the Pro plan, priced at $549 per year. In addition to all the features available on the Plus plan, your license is valid for 5 installs and you receive Affiliate Royale at no additional cost to use as your affiliate management system. You’ll also have access to exclusive Pro add-ons.
Although cost is not the only thing to look at when you’re considering what membership software or LMS to choose, it does factor into the equation.
Here is the cost breakdown for some of the most commonly compared MemberPress substitutes:
| Kajabi | $1490/year Includes only 3 products, and limit of 10,000 contacts |
$3990/year 100 Products, 100,000 contacts, limited email sending |
| Thinkific | $490/year Unlimited courses and students |
$4990/year Additional features and groups |
| Teachable | $390/year Plus 5% transaction fee |
$4990/year No transaction fees, includes bulk student enrollment |
| Podia | $390/year No memberships or affiliate functionality |
$790/year Includes 3rd party code and embedded checkout forms |
| Mighty Networks | $280/year Community forums only, no online courses, plus 3% transaction fee |
$980/year Includes online courses, plus 2% transaction fee |
| MemberPress + LearnDash | $448/year No course or student limits, basic functionality |
$918/year Includes group licensing, affiliate functionality |
| LifterLMS | $299/year Ecommerce and CRM addons included |
$999/year Quizzes, groups, and social learning |
| AccessAlly | $990/year Unlimited courses and students, affiliate, and bulk courses |
$1290/year All LMS functionality |
Want more in-depth MemberPress Replacement Comparisons?
Now that we’ve looked all of the reasons why someone might choose MemberPress, or switch from MemberPress to another membership solution, it’s time to compare MemberPress alternatives!
We’ve done the research for you in our detailed comparisons and reviews. See the best online course platforms and where to shine or fall short for your business needs.
Memberpress might be right for you if...
- You simply want restrict content and not a fully functioning learning management system
- You won’t need a two-way integration with your CRM to allow for customized experiences
- You’re comfortable with purchasing, setting up, and maintaining multiple add-ons, integrations, and plugins
Researching course platforms on your own is great, but if you want to talk to someone, we're here to help!
If you’re wondering whether you’re on the right track or not, we can help you sort out all of the different options.
We’ll let you know if AccessAlly is a good fit or not, too. Not sure what AccessAlly is? Watch the video to find out now, then book a call to discuss further:
