Platform Breakdown

MemberPress for memberships

A WordPress membership plugin with courses and community add-ons, an annual licence, and no percentage of revenue on its main plans.

VERIFIED 2026-07-28Official pricing page

What MemberPress is

MemberPress is a WordPress plugin that turns a site you already control into a membership business, with content protection, subscriptions, courses, and, on higher plans, community forums and coaching tools.

Who it’s best for

People already running WordPress, and memberships earning enough that a 2% to 10% platform cut costs more per year than hosting and maintenance would.

Businesses that already run WordPress
Memberships large enough that percentage fees hurt
Anyone who wants complete control of the data and the stack

Who should avoid it

Anyone who does not want to be responsible for a website. Updates, backups, and security incidents become your problem, and that is a real ongoing cost in time.

Anyone who does not want to maintain a website
Creators who need video hosting included
People who want to launch this week with no technical work

Membership models it supports

Not every platform suits every kind of membership. These are the models we consider it a genuine option for.

Pricing and fees

Read from MemberPress's own pricing page on 2026-07-28. Always check the official page before you buy.

MemberPress plans, prices, and fees
Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	Platform fee
Launch$399/year at the regular rate, discounted to $199.50 for the first year when checked. Adds a 4.9% payment fee and excludes community, quizzes, certificates, and drip.	Annual only	$33.25	4.9%
Growth$699/year at the regular rate, discounted to $349.50 for the first year when checked. No transaction fees, plus CoachKit, community forums, quizzes, certificates, and drip.	Annual only	$58.25	None
Scale$999/year at the regular rate, discounted to $499.50 for the first year when checked. Adds the REST API, Zapier, corporate accounts, and gifting.	Annual only	$83.25	None

Payment processing. MemberPress publishes its own payment fee per plan but not processing rates. Payments run through your own Stripe or PayPal account at that provider's standard published rate.

What it costs in practice

Cheapest plan that holds the member count, including the platform's cut and payment processing.

Just starting

25 members at $20 a month

$79.75 / month

On Launch. About 16% of your revenue.

Established

100 members at $25 a month

$161 / month

On Growth. About 6% of your revenue.

Growing

500 members at $25 a month

$571 / month

On Growth. About 5% of your revenue.

Feature support

What is included, what needs a higher plan, and what simply is not there.

Community features
Higher plan required
Community forums start on the Growth plan.
Courses
Higher plan required
Courses are included on every plan, but quizzes, assignments, certificates, and drip require Growth.
Coaching and live events
Higher plan required
CoachKit for coaching programmes starts on Growth.
Video hosting
Third-party integration
No native video hosting. You embed from YouTube, Vimeo, or an S3 bucket you run.
Livestreaming
Not supported
Newsletter and publishing
Third-party integration
Through a WordPress newsletter plugin or an external email tool.
Private podcast support
Third-party integration
Possible with additional plugins, not native.
Payments and monetization
Supported
Stripe and PayPal on every plan, with Authorize.net on Scale. No MemberPress fee above Launch.
Branding and customization
Supported
It is your WordPress site, so branding is entirely yours.
Branded mobile app
Not supported
Audience discovery
Not supported
Email and marketing
Third-party integration
Integrates with Mailchimp, Kit, and others rather than sending itself.
Integrations and API
Higher plan required
REST API and Zapier require the Scale plan.
Migration support
Partially supported
Importers exist, but moving live subscriptions between processors is manual work.
Customer and data ownership
Supported
The strongest possible position: your server, your database, your Stripe account.

Important limitations

The licence is not the whole cost. Hosting, backups, security, and plugin maintenance are yours, and they are not optional.
No native video hosting, email sending, or mobile app.
The REST API is gated to the most expensive plan.

Data ownership and migration

The best available. The database is yours, the payments are in your own Stripe or PayPal account, and no vendor can change the terms of your business. Moving between processors is still manual work.

Alternatives worth comparing

Sources

Every fact on this page traces to one of these official pages.