8 MemberPress Alternatives in 2026, and the 3 Made by the Same Company

Paid Memberships Pro, SureMembers, WishList Member, Memberful and CartMango are the real MemberPress alternatives, from a free self-hosted plugin to a $10 a year hosted checkout. They split on renewal price, the cut per payment, and who owns the plugin. Every price here was read live at each vendor’s own page, on the year 2 basis.

I went looking for MemberPress alternatives the way you probably did. I opened the guides ranking on page 1, wrote down every name they recommended, then started checking prices at each vendor’s own site.

2 things stopped me.

The first is that the same handful of names keeps coming up, and 3 of them are made by the company that makes MemberPress. None of the guides ranking for this search says so.

The second is that most of the prices I checked were out of date. 1 page compares its own product against a MemberPress price that MemberPress has not charged for years. Another recommends a plugin you can no longer buy.

This post gives you the current prices, read live at each vendor’s own pricing page, on the year 2 basis rather than the discounted first year. It also tells you who owns what, so you can decide whether a swap is really a swap.

Key Takeaways

• MemberMouse, WishList Member and AccessAlly are all owned by Caseproof, the same company that owns MemberPress. None of the page 1 roundups mentions this.
• 3 of these alternatives discount year 1 and renew at full price, so their entry prices compare discounts rather than real costs.
• MemberPress Launch is $399 a year once the intro year ends, plus 4.9% of every payment, and it takes Stripe only.
• Restrict Content Pro, still recommended at $99 a year, is no longer sold on its own. It ships inside a $299 Kadence bundle.
• SureMembers gates your content but cannot take money on its own. It needs SureCart, which is a second bill.

MemberPress alternatives, priced on what you pay in year 2

People leave MemberPress for 3 reasons, and price is usually the first. The entry plan doubles from $199.50 to $399 in year 2, it takes 4.9% of every payment, and it accepts Stripe only until you pay for a higher tier.

MemberPress, MemberMouse, WishList Member and SureMembers all discount the first year and renew at full price, so for those 4 the entry price tells you almost nothing. Paid Memberships Pro, Kadence, AccessAlly and Memberful charge the same every year, and CartMango is free until its beta ends in October 2026. The table below shows both columns, and the second one is the one to read.

Before the numbers, 1 thing worth doing regardless of which tool you land on: the free 5-day Online Selling Mistakes Challenge walks through the profit leaks most solo sellers only find after they have already paid for a full year of something.

Counting the price you pay every year after the first: Paid Memberships Pro’s free tier is $0 and takes 2% unless you connect your own Stripe keys, SureMembers has the cheapest paid plugin licence at $99 but needs SureCart alongside it, CartMango is $10 because it is a hosted checkout rather than a plugin, MemberPress Launch is $399 plus 4.9% of every payment, and AccessAlly is $2,999.

I should say plainly that CartMango is mine, so read that row with that in mind. It is in the table because it genuinely does 1 of the jobs people buy MemberPress for, and it plainly does not do the others. More on that at the end.

In 1 line each: Paid Memberships Pro if you want free, or a paid plugin that takes nothing per sale. SureMembers if you want the lightest gate and do not mind running a second plugin for payments. WishList Member if the price is right and the shared ownership does not bother you. Memberful if you want out of WordPress. CartMango if you are billing members on a schedule and there is no page that needs locking.

The reasoning behind each of those is further down. Every figure above came off each vendor’s own pricing page, and prices move, so open the vendor’s page in a second tab before you commit to anything.

3 of the most recommended alternatives are owned by MemberPress

MemberPress is made by a company called Caseproof. Caseproof also owns MemberMouse, WishList Member and AccessAlly.

The 4 WordPress membership plugins under 1 owner, with what each entry plan costs at renewal.

That is not a guess. MemberPress announced both purchases itself. In October 2023 its co-founder wrote that WishList Products “has joined Caseproof”, and said MemberMouse had been acquired that February.

In March 2026 the same person announced that AccessAlly “is now part of the Caseproof family”.

Here is that second announcement, on MemberPress’s own blog.

MemberPress’s own announcement, naming all 4 products in 1 sentence.

So when a roundup tells you to leave MemberPress for MemberMouse or WishList Member, you are being pointed at the same company. All 3 of the page 1 roundups that list WordPress plugins recommend both of them.

I searched the full page source of each one for “Caseproof”, for “parent company”, for “owned by” and for “sister product”. None of the 3 mentions it. Google’s AI Overview names MemberMouse too, and does not mention it either.

The plugins do not mention it either. MemberMouse’s homepage and WishList Member’s homepage carry no reference to Caseproof or to MemberPress.

You can see the family resemblance in the pricing. MemberPress, MemberMouse and WishList Member all sell year 1 at half price, and all 3 carry the same footnote, word for word: “Special introductory pricing, all annual renewals are at full price.”

MemberMouse and WishList Member both run the same ladder, $299, $499 and $699 at renewal. MemberMouse copies the gateway ladder too, Stripe on the entry plan and PayPal only a tier up. WishList Member does not, it lists Stripe, eWay and PayPal on Basic.

AccessAlly and MemberPress even run the same money-back guarantee, signed by the same named person, once as CEO of AccessAlly and once as co-founder and CEO of MemberPress.

This is worth knowing, and it does not rule them out. WishList Member Basic renews at $299 against MemberPress Launch’s $399, and WishList Member states “No Transaction Fees” where MemberPress Launch takes 4.9%. On a $12,000 a year membership that gap is $588 of transaction fees, so the sister product is genuinely the cheaper buy. Just go in knowing that your renewal notice, your support queue and your roadmap all end up at the same address.

One more ownership note, because it runs the other way. Memberful is owned by Patreon, and Memberful says so in its own website footer. That is the difference: same situation, disclosed.

Why the prices in those guides do not match what you will pay

I checked every MemberPress price quoted on page 1 against MemberPress’s live pricing page. Most of them are out of date, and the errors all point the same way.

The most-cited guide, published by the makers of the Astra theme, tells readers that “SureMembers licenses (starting at $69) are more cost-effective than MemberPress licenses (starting at $179.50)”. MemberPress does not charge $179.50. Its entry plan is $199.50 in year 1 and $399 after that.

The same page repeats the $179.50 figure in a second comparison and in its main table, and it never mentions the 4.9% fee anywhere.

That page is published by the company that sells SureMembers. Its own site footer lists SureMembers under “OUR PRODUCTS”, and the article’s author is a co-founder of that company. So the page that Google’s AI Overview leans on first sells one of the alternatives it recommends.

The other prices drift in the same direction. BlogVault, the number 1 result, lists Paid Memberships Pro at $249 a year for Standard. Astra lists it at $174. The live price is $499.

Only 1 page on the whole first page, an agency write-up by FatLab aimed at nonprofits, states both MemberPress’s real renewal prices and the 4.9% fee.

Then there is Restrict Content Pro. 2 of the guides recommend it by name at “$99 a year for 1 site”. Type its address into a browser today and you land on a Liquid Web page for a Kadence bundle.

The plugin is not sold on its own any more. The feature now goes by Kadence Memberships and lives inside Kadence Pro at $299 a year, priced per site.

If you want the full breakdown of what MemberPress itself costs, including where the Growth plan gets cheaper than Launch, we took that apart in a separate post on MemberPress pricing.

Staying on WordPress: what the real options cost

Paid Memberships Pro

The free version is real. It is open source, it has no site limit, and it handles membership levels, content restriction and payments without paying anyone.

The catch is in how it connects to Stripe. Paid Memberships Pro’s own documentation says: “There is an additional 2% application fee per transaction for Stripe connected sites without an active license key.” Wire up your own Stripe API keys instead and that fee disappears.

Its paid tier is $499 a year for Standard, which covers 1 site and includes every premium add-on and support. Above that, Max is $999 a year and Hosting comes with it. Note that the pricing page loads on the monthly toggle, so the first numbers you see are $49 and $99 a month.

Pick it if: you are comfortable creating a Stripe API key, or you want a paid plugin with no per-sale cut at all.

SureMembers

$69 in year 1, $99 after that, 1 site. That is the cheapest paid entry here by a wide margin.

It is also only half a system. SureMembers restricts access. It does not take money. Its own homepage points you at SureCart for that: “Sell memberships, subscriptions, or bundles seamlessly using SureCart.”

SureCart’s free plan costs nothing and takes 2.9% of every sale. Its paid plan is $199 a year with no cut. So the honest yearly number for this route at renewal is either $99 plus 2.9%, or $298 with nothing taken per sale. Neither is $69.

If a WordPress checkout is really what you are shopping for, our SureCart alternative comparison covers that side of it.

Pick it if: you want the lightest possible content gate and you are happy running a separate checkout plugin.

WishList Member and MemberMouse

Both are Caseproof products, so read the section above first.

WishList Member Basic is $149.50 in year 1 and $299 after, covers 1 site, and states no transaction fees. Plus is $499 at renewal for 2 sites and Pro is $699 for 5.

MemberMouse Basic matches it at $149.50 and $299. 2 things it does not publish anywhere on its pricing page: how many sites a licence covers, and whether it takes anything per payment. I looked and could not find either. Ask before you buy.

Pick either if: the price is right and the shared ownership does not bother you. WishList Member is the clearer of the 2 on what you are actually getting.

Every plugin here caps how many sites a licence covers, so running the same membership on several domains means buying more activations. MemberPress charges $69 a year per extra site. And if you were planning to solve that with a WordPress Multisite network, MemberPress states in its own documentation that it does not officially support Multisite.

AccessAlly

$2,999 a year for Essentials, 1 site, no transaction fees. Pro is $4,499 and Community is $5,999.

It is built for people running serious course businesses, and it is priced that way. Worth knowing today: every buy button on its pricing page reads “Coming Soon” and links nowhere, so the published plans are not something you can actually purchase right now.

Kadence Memberships, formerly Restrict Content Pro

$299 a year inside Kadence Pro, priced per site. You also get a theme, a page builder, WooCommerce tools, security and backups in that price, which is either good value or a lot of software you did not want.

Pick it if: you were going to buy the Kadence stack anyway.

Building courses rather than a members area? Our comparison of LMS for online courses prices 7 platforms on what each takes per sale, and LearnDash pricing covers the biggest WordPress course plugin on its own.

Leaving WordPress: what changes and what it costs

Leaving WordPress means dropping the plugin licence, the hosting bill and the update cycle, and paying a hosted platform a monthly fee instead. Some people searching for a MemberPress alternative want exactly that.

Memberful is the closest hosted equivalent. It is $49 a month, billed monthly only, with unlimited members.

On top of that it takes 4.9% of every successful charge, and your card processor takes its own cut, which for Stripe is 2.9% plus $0.30 in the US. Stack those and roughly 7.8% plus $0.30 of each payment is gone before you see it. Memberful is a Patreon company, which it states in its footer.

Podia, Kajabi and Mighty Networks come up constantly in the hosted half of this search. They are whole platforms rather than plugins, and they are priced that way. We priced 8 of them at 100 members in our guide to what a membership site platform really costs, and did the same exercise for course tools in the best course platform comparison.

CartMango is my own product, and it belongs in this section rather than the plugin one. CartMango is free until October 2026 and $10 a year after that on the Silver plan, with no cut on any sale. Subscriptions, one-off products, order bumps and protected file delivery are on every plan, and the money lands in your own Stripe or PayPal account.

What it will not do is gate WordPress content, and that is not on the roadmap. Affiliate management arrives September 2026, and courses and community arrive October 2026, all on the $30 a year plan. Video needs external hosting either way.

What happens to your members when you stop paying

When a MemberPress licence lapses, the front of your site keeps working and the admin screens stop. None of the 5 guides ranking for this search says so, and I checked each one. MemberPress’s own documentation puts it plainly. You “can continue to use MemberPress on the front end of your site indefinitely when your subscription ends”, but you “won’t be able to access the plugin’s admin screens or functions”.

Drawn from MemberPress’s own documentation on an expired licence.

Read that again with your members in mind. Your subscribers keep getting charged. You cannot issue a refund, add a member, or change a membership until you pay again. You also stop getting security updates.

A creator in an r/Wordpress thread from September 2025 put the cost of that in 1 line while talking someone out of the plugin:

“You mentioned a reasonably priced solution, and MemberPress is certainly not a reasonably priced solution. You are locked into the product. If you don’t renew MemberPress the following year, you’re locked out of all the settings, and they add a transaction fee to all transactions, which makes it difficult because the price essentially doubles in the second year.”

The lockout part is exactly right, and I have quoted MemberPress’s own wording for it above. The transaction fee part is not: the 4.9% applies to the Launch plan whether you renew or not. The doubling is real, because $199.50 becomes $399.

Paid Memberships Pro has a version of the same lever. Its release notes for version 3.5 say that “sites with lapsed Premium licenses will now see the 2% application fee applied to all active subscriptions”. Stop paying and it starts taking a cut of every renewal, unless you moved to your own Stripe keys.

Ask any vendor on this list what happens on day 366 before you hand over a card. It is a fair question and the answer varies more than the price does.

Which one fits what you are actually selling

4 honest routes, depending on what your membership really is.

You are gating articles or a resource library on WordPress, and money is tight. Paid Memberships Pro free, with your own Stripe API keys. $0 a year, no cut, unlimited sites. You will do a little more setup.

You want a paid plugin and no per-sale cut. Paid Memberships Pro Standard at $499, or WishList Member Basic at $299 after year 1 if you can live with the ownership overlap. Both cover 1 site.

You want to stop maintaining WordPress. Memberful if a hosted members area is the whole job, keeping in mind the roughly 7.8% total. A full platform if you also need courses and a community, which the membership site platform comparison covers.

Coaching packages, a paid newsletter, a monthly file drop, a retainer. None of these needs a locked WordPress page, and the case is far more common than the plugin market admits. A membership plugin is the wrong tool for it. See the last section.

FAQ

What is the best free membership plugin for WordPress?

Paid Memberships Pro. Its free core is open source, has no site limit, and handles membership levels and content restriction. Read the payment setup carefully: connecting through its own Stripe Connect setup adds a 2% application fee per transaction, which does not apply if you use your own Stripe API keys.

How much does MemberPress cost?

Launch is $199.50 for the first year and $399 every year after, plus 4.9% of every successful payment, and it accepts Stripe only. Growth is $349.50 then $699 with no fee. Scale is $499.50 then $999. All 3 plans cover 1 website, and extra sites are $69 a year each.

Which is better, MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro?

Paid Memberships Pro is cheaper to start and more flexible, since its free core has no site limit and takes nothing if you supply your own Stripe keys. MemberPress is easier to set up and bundles courses, community and affiliate tools that Paid Memberships Pro sells as separate add-ons. If budget is the deciding factor, Paid Memberships Pro wins. If you want it all in 1 install, MemberPress does.

Is Restrict Content Pro still available?

Not as a standalone plugin. Its website now redirects to Liquid Web, and the functionality ships as Kadence Memberships inside the Kadence Pro bundle at $299 a year, priced per site. Any guide still quoting $99 a year for a single Restrict Content Pro licence is out of date.

Can I move my existing members to a different plugin?

Usually yes for the member records, and it is the active subscriptions that need care. Your subscriptions live at your payment processor, so whether they survive depends on how the new tool connects to Stripe or PayPal, not on the member export. Ask each vendor directly what happens to in-flight recurring payments before you switch, and never cancel the old licence until the new one is billing correctly.

Do WordPress membership plugins charge a fee on top of Stripe?

Most do not. MemberPress Launch takes 4.9%, Paid Memberships Pro takes 2% on its own Stripe Connect setup, and SureCart’s free plan takes 2.9%. WishList Member and AccessAlly state no transaction fees. In every case your card processor still takes its own cut.

When a content gate is not what you needed

Most of the money in a WordPress membership stack pays for 1 job: deciding who can see which page on a site you host and maintain.

Plenty of people buy that stack without needing that job. If you sell a coaching package, a paid newsletter, a monthly pack of files or a retainer, nothing has to sit behind a WordPress login at all. The job is a checkout that bills people on a schedule and delivers the thing.

CartMango does that half and nothing else. It will not gate a WordPress page, and that is not on the roadmap either.

CartMango is free until October 2026 and $10 a year after that, with no cut on any sale and the money going straight to your own Stripe or PayPal.

If none of the MemberPress alternatives above fit, because the gate was never the point, that is the one worth a look.

About the Author

👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.

Related Reading

• MemberPress pricing: the 4.9% fee, the renewal that doubles, and where Growth beats Launch
• What a membership site platform really costs: 8 hosted platforms priced at 100 members
• LMS for online courses: what each course platform takes per sale
• Easy Digital Downloads alternative: for readers who want a WordPress checkout rather than a member area