Paid Memberships Pro Review + Creating a Successful Membership Site with WP Fusion

When you’re setting up your membership site, there are a lot of questions you’ll be asking yourself.

What levels of membership should I create? How much should I charge? How frequently and in what ways should I engage with my users? The list goes on!

All of this is really exciting, but it is a lot to take on.

In this post, I’m going to explain how the plugins Paid Memberships Pro and WP Fusion can support you in creating a successful membership site.

Paid Memberships Pro is a top-tier membership plugin and WP Fusion is an effective marketing automation plugin that connects your website with your CRM.

Using Paid Memberships Pro to set up your membership site will make the whole process more straightforward and will allow you to get started quickly.

Using WP Fusion will enhance your marketing automation and ultimately support your membership engagement and lifecycle automation.

Both plugins are great resources to support you while you’re getting your membership site off the ground and later down the line (both plugins have great scalability), so using them from the get-go is a good idea 👍

#What is Paid Memberships Pro?

#Overview

Paid Memberships Pro is an open-source WordPress plugin that facilitates the site owner’s creation and management of membership subscriptions.

There are free, standard and plus versions of Paid Memberships Pro, with the free version being fully functional ✔️

This plugin is ideal for sites that offer online courses, exclusive content, or subscription-based services. With Paid Memberships Pro you can restrict access to posts, pages, custom content, or even specific parts of a website to paying members.

For example, if you’re a magazine and want some content to be accessible to all users, but other content to only be accessible to those with a paid membership, Paid Memberships Pro allows you to restrict access to certain content based on the user’s membership level.

Paid Memberships Pro also integrates with many CRMs, eCommerce platforms, and other third-party tools for email marketing.

This versatility of integration allows business to use their preferred tools for marketing, payments, and customer engagement, while also reducing manual workload and lending a more unified experience for users.

#Add Ons

Paid Memberships Pro has a lot of functionality built in, but it also has an extensive list of add-on options and is in fact known for having an advantage over other membership plugins because of this feature.

There are some Add Ons that only come with the PLUS license, but many of the most used Add Ons are available with the free version of Paid Memberships Pro.

Some of the most popular add-ons are the Content Drip Add-on, the Advanced Levels page Add On, the WooCommerce integration Add On, the Social Login Add On, and the Subscription Delays Add On.

Some reviewers have made the critique that although they like the Add-on system, some of the Add-ons in PMPro could be considered basic requirements for a membership plugin, and shouldn’t be Add-ons in the first place.

While this critique is valid and is good to keep in mind, overall the versatility of Paid Membership Pro’s features and functionality that stem from their extensive Add-on system is a strength. Some of the Add-on options that users will find with PMPro aren’t available in any other membership solutions on the market right now, which ultimately gives Paid Memberships Pro the advantage.

That being said, some of the functions that used to only be available as Add-ons have recently become core features of the plugin in Paid Membership Pro’s v3.1 update earlier this year 🥳

We’ll cover more on the v3.1 updates later – but now let’s dive into what it means to be open-source and why the free version is awesome.

#Open source

Paid Memberships Pro is an open-source plugin, which allows users to modify Paid Memberships Pro to their specific needs, which in turn gives the software a particular advantage over other membership plugins, as it is suitable for developers.

This open source nature allows for a wide community of developers to collaborate in improving the plugin, as developers can help identify bugs and vulnerabilities as well as come up with enhancements.

This not only accelerates the evolution of Paid Memberships Pro, but also supports their being a community built on trust among users of the plug-in.

Paid Memberships Pro also has multiple tutorials on how to take advantage of its open-source nature by walking you through how to extend certain features with code, like in this post about creating custom user fields with code. And, they also have regular open office hours to answer any coding questions you might have 👩🏻‍🏫

#Free membership advantages

Although there are great elements of the paid version of Paid Memberships Pro, the free version can fully support you to create a all-inclusive membership site.

The starting subscription prices of competitors are around $200 or more annually, with WooCommerce Memberships starting at $199 per year, MemberPress starting at $359 per year and Memberium starting at $370 per year.

This comparison leaves no room for, well, comparison.

I think the free version is really where Paid Membership Pro stands out, and I think the creators of the plugin really take pride in their free version being fully functional.

It’s really great to have the option to try out Paid Memberships Pro for free to get your membership website off the ground when you’re just getting started, and build a full-featured membership site before deciding if you want to pay for the standard or plus subscription.

And, with the v3.1 update, many of the most useful free Add On’s are now integrated into Paid Memberships Pro. However, there are still a lot of great free Add Ons available.

Some of the most popular free Add Ons include the Askismet Integration Add On, the bbPress Integration Add On, the BuddyPress and BuddyBoss Integration Add On, the WooCommerce Add On and the Subscription Delays Add On.

These Add Ons support enhanced security, the ability to create members-only communities, and improve customer satisfaction respectively.

Also, the BuddyBoss and WooCommerce integrations are typically paid Add Ons on other membership sites, which further sets Paid Memberships Pro apart ✌️

On top of these free Add Ons, Paid Memberships Pro has a lot of functionality built in. The list is long, but here are some of the major points:

• Includes recurring payments and multiple payment gateways in the free plan, while almost all other membership sites charge for this feature
• The feature of having multiple memberships per user is included in the free version (also usually a pad Add On)
• Paid Memberships Pro offers a lot of aggregated data on your members for free, which is important to keep track of as your business grows

• Integrations like ConverterKit, Mailchimp, and AWeber are offered as free integrations with Paid Memberships Pro, but are normally paid addons with other membership sites.

You might be wondering, “Well, why would I need WP Fusion if Paid Memberships Pro offers these mailing list plugins for free?”.

Good question. We’re going to go over all the ways WP Fusion optimizes your email marketing and automation really soon in an upcoming section.

With so much to offer with the free version of Paid Memberships Pro, you can be sure that your membership website can run smoothly regardless of your budget.

For example, if you have a subscription to the standard or plus version of Paid Memberships Pro but for some reason have to forgo your subscription for budgeting purposes, you can rest assured that your membership website will still be in full working order 🙌

Ultimately, I think being open-source and having a comprehensive, fully functional free version of the plugin shows that Paid Memberships really cares about their users and puts them first.

It’s also clear that Paid Memberships Pro really had their users in mind when they released the v3.1 update 👀

#What’s new in v3.1?

This new version of Paid Memberships Pro that was released in July 2024 was long in the making and brings a number of enhancements to the plugin.

The most important elements of the update include the improved design settings, enhanced security features, changes to stripe checkout, and some bug fixes and upgrades.

After updating, you’ll notice pretty quickly that the frontend user interface has been completely redesigned to optimize visual appeal, clarity, and accessibility. There are now more options with the frontend design that you can choose from depending on your needs and preferences.

Although I didn’t use the previous version of Paid Memberships Pro, I did see some images of the previous interface, and I have to say, the new interface is way more user friendly and just overall more aestheically pleasing.

Paid Memberships Pro has also now ensured that all of their designs meet the minimum Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the frontend elements are Level AA compliant for color contrast.

The enhanced security features are now all centralized in a tab on the Paid Memberships Pro Dashboard, making it easier for you to manage your security settings.

With the v3.1 update you have the ability to apply settings and tests like reCAPTCHA and the Akismet Integration Add On in order to prevent spam and the option to have an active DNS firewall in place, which is highly recommended for all membership sites.

This update has also made Stripe the default payment form for new sites, which not only lends a super secure payment experience but also integrated global payment support and other features specific to Stripe.

Finally, a number of bug fixes and enhancements have been made, which ultimately ensures a more reliable and streamlined experience for users. These optimizations are described and listed in Paid Memberships Pro’s post on this topic if you want more details.

To learn more about the v3.1 update you can review Paid Memberships Pro’s detailed video about the updates and their blog post that reviews the major changes to the plugin.

As you can see though, Paid Memberships Pro really did a great job putting themselves in the user’s shoes with this update.

#How does Paid Memberships Pro work with WP Fusion?

WP Fusion supports your membership site alongside your marketing automation through different features like creating tags and syncing Paid Membership Pro meta fields to custom fields in your CRM.

Paid Memberships Pro does have a lot to offer, but there are some platforms that it doesn’t integrate with, and this is where WP Fusion comes in.

ActiveCampaign, Hubspot, Drip, Mailchimp, and Keap (Infusionsoft), are all platforms that don’t integrate with Paid Memberships Pro, but can enhance your email marketing and lifecycle automation.

With WP Fusion, you can seamlessly integrate these platforms with your membership website created with Paid Memberships Pro.

Then, using WP Fusion with Paid Memberships Pro allows you to use advanced integration features that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Below is a list of some of these features.

• Automated membership level enrollment
• Syncing custom registration fields for use in marketing
• Syncing membership data to CRM custom fields

If you’re not quite sure what all this means – don’t worry, we’re going to get into it!

Using WP Fusion in conjunction with Paid Memberships Pro will ultimatley help you streamline your marketing automation directed towards those who sign up for your membership site.

This streamlining will then allow you to increase scalability, personalize your marketing, and work more efficiently.

#Using WP Fusion with PMPro: the basics

WP Fusion expands several settings of Paid Membership Pro, so first we’ll go over the basic options you’ll have when combining these two plugins, and then we’ll move on to some more advanced options.

To get started, we’ll look at how to use tags with Paid Memberships Pro. If you’re not too familiar with what tags are, how they work, and how to use them generally, you can refer to our Understanding Tags info post at any time.

This info post explains the foundations for using tags and you can apply this information when you use tags with PMPro, but also when you use tags with other software.

Let’s look at how to use tags when you create a membership level, because this is likely one of the first steps you’ll take when using Paid Memberships Pro. From your Paid Memberships Pro dashboard, you’ll navigate to the tab titled Settings.

Then you’ll choose Add New Level and you can choose if you want the level to be free, monthly, or annually – there are a number of options!

Setting up the information on the membership level is a pretty easy process, and Paid Memberships Pro has a great video to walk you through this if you want some guidance.

After you fill out the information about the membership level, you’ll scroll down until you find the WP Fusion Settings. Here you’ll be able to see the basic options for using tags with your Paid Membership Pro subscription.

You can find a quick summary of how tags can be used when you’re setting up or editing a membership level in our documentation. This documentation further explains the elements of the above image.

An example of using tags might be that the tag Active Membership be applied to any person that signs up for a membership on your site. Then, in your email marketing automation, you can also this apply tag.

Maybe you want to send a welcome email to all new members and let them know about your newsletter. When you’re prompted to automate which users receive this email, you can then use the tag Active Membership, and everyone with that tag will then receive this email automatically.

An automation that uses tags in this way will ultimately save you time and enhance your membership engagement 🙌

#Using WP Fusion with Paid Memberships Pro: next level

Now that we’ve gone over the basic ways that WP Fusion can be used when working with Paid Memberships Pro we can move on to some more advanced ways that you can use WP Fusion to optimize your membership site.

#Syncing member data

WP Fusion allows you to sync certain Paid Membership Pro meta fields to custom fields in your CRM that aren’t normally available as part of the WordPress user record.

This function is really helpful in the long run for automations and workflow, as it allows you to efficiently segment users and therefore saves time. Segmentation also supports personalizing content for users, which is always a best practice.

#Additional meta fields

But what are meta fields, you may ask? For a longer explanation and definition, you can refer to meta fields in our glossary by clicking the term. In short though, meta fields hold metadata, which is extra descriptive data that gives more context and detail about users, posts, or pages in WordPress.

In this context, meta fields refer to the user metadata stored in WordPress. And, WP Fusion can sync this metadata about your users with data about your users in your CRM. This data in your CRM about your users comes in the form of custom fields.

You will have to create the custom fields in your CRM that you want to sync with the Paid Membership Pro meta fields, but this is a pretty straightforward process.

Active Campaign has a great post on custom fields and how to create them. The process is similar in other CRMs, but just google how to create custom fields in your CRM specifically if you’re not using Active Campaign.

Once you’ve created these custom fields in your CRM, you can sync them with the meta fields in the WP Fusion’s Contact Fields. First, you’ll navigate to the WP Fusion Settings Contact Fields tab.

Then you’ll scroll down to the Paid Memberships Pro section in the Contact Fields tab and you’ll see a few options.

To sync these meta fields with a custom field, you’ll have to select a field from the drop-down box. These fields in the drop-down box are the custom fields that you created in your CRM. And, WP Fusion is what allows these custom fields from your CRM to appear here in the Contact Fields tab 😎 Pretty snazzy, right?

To sync the meta fields from WordPress and the custom fields from your CRM, you’ll type in the name of the custom field and select it.

After selecting the field, the small box to the left of the name (in this example, Membership Level) will automatically become checked ✔️

If you’d like more info on how syncing contact fields works, you can refer to our documentation 👍

Also, when you go through this process, be sure you scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes before moving on.

Below is a list of more info on what these fields in the above images indicate:

• Membership Level indicates the title of the member’s current membership level.
• Membership Status will either be “active” or “inactive” depending on their status.
• Payment Method is synced at checkout and indicates the payment gateway or payment method used to make a purchase
• Start Date is the date the membership began.
• Next Payment Date is the date of the next scheduled renewal payment.
• Expiration Date is the date that the membership expires if the membership has an expiration date. You can use this in conjunction with date-based triggers in your CRM to automate renewal reminders
• Subscription Price is the recurring billing amount of the membership

#Approvals

By using Paid Membership Pro’s Approvals Add On, you can approve or deny memberships after someone signs up for a membership level. Having the ability to approve or deny members offers a number of benefits with security and quality control being two of the top advantages.

As we go through this process, a lot of the information in the previous section, Additional meta fields, will be relevant, so have a look at that before moving forward.

First, you’ll need to activate the Add On by going to the Add Ons tab in your Paid Memberships Pro dashboard. Then you’ll search for the Approvals Add-on and select activate.

Now that the Approvals Add On is active, there will be an additional meta field listed in the WP Fusion settings Contacts Fields list available for sync. This additional meta field will be pmpro_approval.

But before syncing the Approvals meta field with a custom field in your CRM, you have to create the custom field in your CRM.

In Active campaign, you’ll navigate to Contacts>Field>Add Field. After selecting Add Field, you’ll name your custom field. We chose to name it as shown in the screenshot below.

Now that you’ve added this custom field in your CRM, you can sync it with your Paid Memberships Pro Approval meta field in the WP Fusion settings.

First, navigate to WP Fusion settings > Contact Fields and scroll down to the Paid Memberships Pro section. Then, you should see the pmpro_approval meta field.

Now you’ll click the drop down menu, Select a field, to find the custom field you want to sync to in your CRM. Here you should find the custom field you just created in your CRM.

After selecting the custom field, make sure to scroll down and select Save Changes before continuing.

#Gift memberships

With the Paid Memberships Pro Gift Membership Add On, you can configure membership levels as gift memberships and allow customers to buy memberships for other people.

This might include gifting a member to a family member (Happy Birthday!) to help them monetize and therefore support their favorite hobby, like jewelry design or their blog.

Someone might also gift a membership in a work context; for example, a company giving away memberships as prizes in the a contest.

First, activate the Add On by navigating to Add Ons in the Paid Memberships Pro Dashboard. The Add On is actually called Gift Levels, so keep that in mind when searching for the Add On.

After activating the Add On, you’ll need to configure a level as a gift membership. When you configure a level as a gift membership level, it can only be accessed by those who are gifted this level by someone else.

Navigate to your Paid Memberships Pro Dashboard>Initial Setup>View Membership Levels>Add New Level. Then you’ll select Gift when you’re prompted to create a level.

Paid Memberships Pro has detailed instructions on this process to support you finish setting up your gift membership level if needed.

While setting up your gift membership level you can choose which tags to apply to the gift recipient – just like with any other membership level.

When the recipient of the gift membership creates their gifted account, a contact record will be created in your CRM for the gift recipient. And, any other tags that are configured to that membership level will therefore be applied to this new user, even though their membership was a gift.

You can also apply tags to those who purchase a gift membership.

For example, say there is a membership level called Super Duper Cat Lovers. When you configure the tags in the Super Duper Cat Lovers membership level, you will apply the tag Gift Buyer. If you need instructions on how to create tags, you can refer to our documentation.

When someone from the Super Duper Cat Lovers membership level purchases a gift membership, the Gift Buyer tag will be applied to the purchaser upon purchasing this membership for another user.

You can use this Gift Buyer tag when developing your customer engagement for your membership site. For example, you could aim an automation towards users who have bought gift memberships in the past by using the Gift Buyers tag.

In addition, any already enabled meta fields, such as Membership Level or Expiration Date these will also be synced with the gift recipient’s contact record in your CRM.

#Batch operations

If you have members who registered and set up a membership with your site before you set up WP Fusion, there are two batch operations tools to quickly and easily bring those historical members up to date.

This process of exporting membership data to your CRM is typically complicated, and usually users would have to manually importing .csv files – and a lot of CRM’s don’t even support this function.

Therefore, having this process be automated through WP Fusion’s segmentation of users through tags saves you a lot of time (and maybe some tears).

First, navigate to WP Fusion on the Admin bar on your WordPress site, and then to Advanced.

Next, you’ll scroll down until you find the Batch Operations heading. The two options are Paid Memberships Pro membership meta and Paid Membership Pro membership statuses.

The Paid Memberships Pro meta operation will query all the members on your site and for each member it will sync any enabled meta fields for that user’s most recent membership.

Examples of these meta fields are Start Date, Expiration Date, Membership Level and Status. This operation does not modify any tags.

The Paid Memberships Pro membership statuses operation will go through all the members on your site and collect information on every member’s most recent status at each membership level (including canceled and expired members) and then apply tags you’ve configured for those membership levels.

Important Note: Both of these operations can take some time to complete if your site has a large number of members (go you! 😎). You can leave the page and come back later to check on the status 👍

For more information on batch operations, please see our documentation.

#How does all of this support membership engagement and lifecycle automation?

If you’re not familiar with what membership engagement and lifecycle automation refers to, first check out these terms in our glossary.

Membership engagement and lifecycle automation are kind of like a big umbrella for various specific processes that you’ll establish as you’re setting up your membership site.

Adding tags to users when they take a specific action ultimately gives you a reservoir of segmentations, which you can then use to create targeting marketing campaigns.

When your marketing campaigns are more targeted and less broad, you increase the chance of connecting with your users and driving retention, both of which support optimized membership engagement.

When you take advantage of WP Fusion’s feature to sync member data and syncing meta fields with custom fields in your CRM, you’re enhancing the lifecycle automation of your business – because you’re automatizing work that would take hours (🥵) to do by hand.

Or, when you use batch operations you’re also saving yourself a lot of time and therein supporting the lifecycle automation in your business.

These individual steps may sometimes seem small, but when you take a step back they all work within a big system, which is the umbrella system of membership engagement and lifecycle automation.

And when you understand how this umbrella system works, it is much clearer what the next steps for you and your membership site are.

Now that you have a little more information on these plugins and how to use them, you can work on creating your successful membership site.

If you’d like any more information about these plugins, or clarification on elements of this post, please let us know in the comments below.

#Glossary

Batch Operations – Refers to the process of applying bulk updates or changes to multiple users’ data at once, such as syncing contact information or applying tags across many records, improving efficiency for large-scale actions.

Content Dripping – The practice of gradually releasing content to users over a set period, rather than providing it all at once. This method helps keep users engaged over time, prevents content overwhelm, and encourages consistent interaction with the material.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management/Customer Relationship Management System – a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and potential customers to improve business relationships and streamline processes.

Custom fields – Custom fields in a CRM allow businesses to capture and store unique, personalized information about their contacts, leads, or deals that standard fields don’t cover.

Level AA compliant – Refers to a mid-tier standard of web accessibility under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), ensuring content is accessible to people with a wider range of disabilities.

Lifecycle Automation – Refers to the use of technology to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks throughout the different stages of a product, service, or customer lifecycle, from initiation to completion. In the context of products or services, this could include phases like planning, launch, growth, and retirement. For customer relationships, the term lifecycle encompasses stages like acquisition, engagement, retention, and eventual exit.

Membership Engagement – In marketing, this refers to the strategies and interactions used to actively involve, retain, and strengthen the relationship between an organization and its members. Includes activities like email campaigns, loyalty programs, and exclusive content that encourage members to participate, renew memberships, and remain committed.

Metadata – Data that provides information about other data, helping to describe, organize, and manage content more efficiently.

Meta fields – Customizable data fields that store additional information about content, such as posts, users, or products, in a content management system (CMS). Meta fields are useful because they allow for better data customization, organization, and retrieval, making websites more dynamic and tailored to specific business needs or user experiences.

Open-source plugin – A software extension whose source code is freely available for modification and redistribution, often used to enhance the functionality of platforms like WordPress. Open-source plugins allow developers and users to access, modify, and contribute to the plugin’s code, fostering collaboration and customization based on specific needs.

Segmentation – Segmentation is the process of categorizing an audience into targeted groups using tags and lists to enable personalized communication and more effective marketing.

User Record – A collection of stored data about an individual user within a system, typically containing information like their personal details, activity history, and preferences. User Records enable businesses and systems to manage user accounts, personalize experiences, and maintain accurate user profiles for better engagement and service delivery.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – A set of international standards that provides comprehensive guidelines organized into four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, which outline how to make web content accessible to individuals with various disabilities, including visual, auditory, and cognitive impairments.