Paid Memberships Pro

What it is

Paid Memberships Pro, usually shortened to PMPro, is a membership plugin for WordPress. The about page puts the job in one line: "Restrict content, accept payments, and manage subscriptions right from your website." It is for creators, publishers and businesses that already run, or are willing to run, a WordPress site and want to sell access to content, courses or a community without handing a share of revenue to a hosted platform. The company says PMPro is "100% free to use," that it has been developed for over 15 years, and that it is "the most used membership plugin for WordPress today." Kim and Jason Coleman started the foundation in 2010, and the about page dates the official launch to July 5, 2011.

What you build and how

The membership site itself. You install the plugin on a WordPress site and build around it. The homepage describes "a complete membership platform": unlimited free or paid membership levels with flexible subscription pricing, customizable member dashboards, user profiles and registration forms, and extensive admin reporting. Content restriction covers "28 different types of website content." In a comparison with Memberful, the company lists multiple membership tiers, customizable trial periods, customizable renewal dates and custom member homepages as customization options.

Payments. The homepage says the most popular payment gateways, including Stripe and PayPal, are all included for free. The company states that it does not take any part of your revenue at the platform level, and the only fees are those of your payment gateway. The comparison page puts that against Memberful, which it says starts at $49 a month plus a 4.9% transaction fee. That figure is PMPro's own description of a competitor.

Add Ons and integrations. The homepage counts over 60 free and premium Add Ons, and describes the plugin as 100% GPL and "integrated with hundreds of third party platforms." Most free Add Ons install from the WordPress dashboard under Memberships > Add Ons. The free list includes email integrations (AWeber, Constant Contact, Keap, Kit, Mailchimp, MailerLite, MailPoet), payment gateways (CCBill, Payfast, PayPal, Paystack, Square), community and forum links (bbPress, BuddyPress and BuddyBoss), commerce (WooCommerce, Avalara AvaTax, Post Affiliate Pro), Courses for Membership, Events for Members-Only, Download Monitor, Slack, SMTP, Zapier Webhook Automations, Roles for Membership Levels, Require Strong Passwords, Akismet and a MemberPress Migration Toolkit. So the community side comes from pairing PMPro with BuddyPress, BuddyBoss or bbPress, and the course side from the Courses for Membership Add On or other plugins.

Customization and the code route. PMPro sits closer to open-source low-code than to a visual builder. The company publishes a library of code recipes, runs a livestream called Coding with Sam every other week, and says its typical customization is "a snippet, a small filter, a configuration change." Its Do It For Me service, included in every Max plan, means the PMPro team builds a requested customization on your live site and walks you through what it did. Back in 2019 the company offered custom development starting at $1,500 per request, and says it changed that approach.

Open source and self-hosting. The company says the plugin's code is not obfuscated and runs on as many sites as you want. The pricing page's free tier reads: "Self-host the open-source PMPro Platform." The about page lists "We Are Committed to Open Source" among five core values adopted since 2022.

What members see. Visitors register through your registration forms, pay through your chosen gateway, and then see a member dashboard and profile on your own WordPress domain. A testimonial on the homepage from a yoga video streaming company that sells monthly and annual memberships says its customer base "has grown 10x" and that it was a breeze to integrate PMPro with the official and third-party Add Ons.

The evidence from the pages

Plans. The pricing page splits into two paths. Under Host Yourself, Free is $0 and Standard is $49 a month or $499 a year, described as a "1-site License with all Premium Add Ons and support." Under Host With Us, the company says it manages "the hosting, email, security, performance, and ongoing implementation work." Max is shown as normally $149 a month but $99 a month or $999 a year, "Best for sites with 0 to 1,000 orders per month." Max 2x is $299 a month or $2,999 a year. A toggle offers monthly or annual billing, with annual billing saving about 2 months. The page also states a 100 day money-back guarantee, "No questions asked."

Support. The FAQ says paid plans add services and expert support, and the support team responds within one business day. It also makes this claim about its free plan: "Our free plan is better than everyone else's paid plan." Judge that for yourself against your own needs.

Pricing philosophy. The Memberful comparison page says that if you pay for a premium plan, "you will pay a flat fee that doesn't change," and that "your growth is not taxed based on the size of your community." Per that page, the only fees on top are those of your payment gateway. The same page lists Memberful as starting at $49 a month plus the 4.9% transaction fee, so the two models diverge as revenue grows.

Live sessions. The live page lists Coding with Sam livestreams every other week, using snippets from the company's library of code recipes, plus other live events.

Compliance. The pages state no SOC 2, HIPAA or GDPR claim.

Who it suits and who it does not

PMPro suits a creator, publisher or association that wants to own the member database and the pricing model. Because the software is free, GPL and installable on unlimited sites, you can start a membership site with Stripe or PayPal at no license cost and pay only for support, premium Add Ons or hosting when you need them. Developers and agencies get the most from it, since the company's own advice leans on snippets and filters, and the Coding with Sam sessions and code recipes are built for that. Teams moving from another membership plugin have the MemberPress Migration Toolkit Add On.

The trade-offs are real. It needs WordPress, and with the Free and Standard paths you manage hosting, backups and updates yourself unless you buy a Host With Us plan, where Max starts at $99 a month. There is no drag-and-drop app builder, so anything past the settings screens takes code or a service from the vendor. The community and course features come from Add Ons and partner plugins rather than one built-in environment. Standard at $49 a month is a 1-site license, which matters to an agency running many client sites.