If you’re looking to transform your current website into a fully functional community, you can easily find tons of different paid memberships plugins on the market. However, aside from installing the right plugin, you'll need to use the right WordPress membership themes to leverage the full potential of the community you're trying to grow.
Top Themes Summary
If you're in a hurry or want to get straight to the action, here's the list of best WordPress membership themes.
- Divi
- Astra
- Academy Pro
- Kallyas
- OceanWP
- Hestia Pro
- Kickcube
- Seeko
- Julia
- LoveStory
- Listable
- Estate Pro
- Shoppe
- LaunchPad
- Ultra
- Vayvo
- Maya
- WP Rentals
- Thrive
- Zelle Pro
- Authority Pro
- Magazine Pro
- MH Magazine
- Indigo
- Extra
- Binder Pro
- Public Opinion
- Mesmerize
- Tusant
- Spencer
Best WordPress Membership plugins
Here are the best WordPress membership plugins we'll be highlighting in this post.
WordPress Membership Theme Options 2024
We believe that once you're going to use a good premium members-only plugin, you'll be doing a website a huge disservice if you go for a free membership WordPress theme.
Premium themes are so much more refined and give such a breadth of functions that we do believe they are worth the investment.
To help you customize the site for your own needs, with brand colors, imagery, logos and everything else that needs tweaking, you'll find that most of these have flexible theme options to make it ready for your business.
Remember, you're asking people to pay to access your premium content, so you need to make sure your site looks worth paying for.
Here's our top pick of premium membership WordPress themes.
1. Divi
The Divi WordPress theme is one of the best choices if you’re looking for a multi-purpose and membership website theme.
It lets you create an eye-catching layout without having to know the nitty-gritty of designing and coding.
In Divi, you can find tons of different features such as theme options and also includes a drag and drop visual builder (Divi builder) that allows you to create almost any kind of layouts you can imagine, to create an impressive result.
The Divi WordPress theme is bundled with a login module for member sites that allows you to display a login form anywhere.
This is a cool membership feature, so you don’t necessarily need to rebrand the default login form.
It is also bundled with one of the most popular page builders around - the Divi Page Builder.
Read our complete Divi 4.0 theme review here or check out our Divi vs series of articles.
If you're also interested in how to create a members site using Divi - this is a great article.
Click here for the lowest price on Divi (10% off until November 2024)
2. Astra
Astra, one of the fastest-growing WordPress themes, is an excellent choice for a membership site.
It is incredibly fast out of the box and has native integration with course and membership plugins such as LearnDash and Memberpress. It also has many starter sites that you can install on your site.
It also has excellent integration with WooCommerce and works very well with the Elementor page builder.
All-in-all, it's all you could ask for from a WordPress theme for a membership website.
The Astra WordPress theme has become one of the most popular WordPress themes available due to its speed and flexibility.
Check out all the Starter Sites from Astra
3. Academy Pro
This is a perfect membership WordPress theme for online courses. Powered by the Genesis Framework (which we've wrote looked at this in-depth article), this product from StudioPress is a perfect choice for those who want to profit from any training they have, and which they want to post online.
Given that it is powered by Genesis, you can rest assured that this is a very well-supported, with a superb feature set and flexible configuration possibilities, which does not limit you in any way.
If you're looking to create any sort of online courses with a theme that offers drag and drop responsive features and advanced customization features, you can't go wrong with any theme from StudioPress.
Academy Pro has been specifically designed for this use case...
Compatible with: RCP (Restrict Content Pro)
4. Kallyas
Kallyas is another incredibly successful WordPress theme. It's built to work the Restrict Content Pro but can be used with other membership plugins as necessary.
Kallyas also has built-in WooCommerce integration and an impressive set of features. It also includes the Zion page builder.
The Kallyas WordPress theme is super flexible, has a clean design (and code), and is one most complete WordPress theme ever created.
In fact, it has been a best-seller for a number of years.
It uses the latest technologies and trends and is a great fit for a membership site. 
5. OceanWP
OceanWP is available as both a free WordPress theme and also a pro version to take things to the next level.
It comes with many different built-in demos and readymade websites, including templates for membership sites.
It works well with a number of premium WordPress page builder plugins such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, and others.
OceanWP is a WordPress theme we've reviewed and recommended before because it has several built-in premium extensions.
It allows extensive colour choices, custom widgets and integrates with popular drag and drop page builders, meaning you can create and customize the membership site you need easily.
Check out the Learn OceanWP Demo
6. Hestia Pro
Hestia Pro, a WordPress theme from Themeisle, is another multipurpose WordPress theme that can be used to create a membership site thanks to its ranges of features.
It features a modern design and can be used as a single page or multiple page layout.
Themeisle is renowned for products that have very flexible theme settings, theme colors fonts, and backgrounds.
It is also fully compatible with WooCommerce and the top page builder plugins.
7. Kickcube
One of the best things we love about Kickcube is that aside from the usual site login, it enables social login as well, so your users don't need to create a separate account.
This is an optimal feature for members area WordPress themes especially if you're struggling to convert more visitors into registered users. It also comes with 6 demo sites to help you get started quickly.
The Kickcube membership WordPress theme also gives you the ability to create a page layout via the front-end of your membership website theme similar to Pinterest or Zergnet.com.
This membership WordPress theme also supports Restrict Content Pro (RCP), one of the best premium plugins for this niche. Do keep in mind that Kickcube is not bundled with this. But if you’re looking for an option that supports Restrict Content Pro, Kickcube could be a nice choice.
KickCube costs $59 on ThemeForest.
Supported plugin: RCP (Membership theme is not bundled with it. Installing this plugin is optional).
8. Seeko
Seeko is a fast theme from ThemeForest with two demos. One is for a mentoring website and one for dating. While you can change these to be anything you like, they both showcase the modern design and flexibility this theme offers.
Whatever type of WordPress membership website you’re trying to create, you can do it with Seeko. It uses the Bootstrap framework and is compatible with the WordPress block editor. Anyone should be able to build something with it, regardless of skill level.
Seeko is also designed to be fast, with modular code so it only loads what’s required for each page. With good speed ratings from YSlow, it’s a great theme to try.
9. Julia
Julia is a WordPress theme that lets you create sites for the talent/model industry. As you can see it plays around with shifting colors and a monochrome look and feel.
Julia is a neat fit for creating sites for talent agencies or agents. Once a user registered on the site, they can update their profile via backend.
Alternatively, you can send the details to the agency through a contact email address or the prominent social media contact details.
Julia has been tested and works very nicely with the Paid Memberships Pro plugin. In case you want more details about this specific plugin, visit our detailed review.
10. LoveStory
LoveStory is a WordPress theme best suited for creating a dating site. It has almost all the built-in features you’ll need in this kind of theme such as extended user profile, different roles, and levels, chat messages and more.
Let’s look at a few features of LoveStory theme below
- Extended profiles: It allows users to easily edit profiles and upload pictures.
- Chat messages: Users can read and write messages. The built-in chat feature provides live chat notification.
- WooCommerce support: LoveStory has a built-in system in which all payments are processed with WooCommerce. You can also limit the number of messages and photos for each user based on the user level.
Whilst this is perfect for a dating community, it is a wonderful choice for websites requiring subscription-based WordPress themes
Recommend Reading: If you're looking for setting up a network or dating site, you might want to look at our article: 10 Amazing Themes to create a community or social network.
11. Listable
Listable is best suited for creating and monetizing a local or global directory that asks for a fee for listing a business or product.
It includes WooCommerce, such that you can have various ways of making money. Options include listing packages using paid listings, or subscription-based packages.
The look and feel of this WordPress theme is inspired by Airbnb, which is minimalistic but very user-friendly and functional, giving enough attention to the right elements at the right time, while also being SEO friendly.
Let’s look at a few features of Listable – Friendly WP directory below
- Listing cards: Allows a popup or detailed display of a business or product listing such that all the attention can be shifted to the specific items
- Monetization-ready: By including WooCommerce and other extensions such as paid listings, you can start making money immediately
- Flexible, customizable and fully supported: Listable has plenty of options to customize the look and feel of the site, with such stuff as filters, search, Maps for locations and other built-in functions. It integrates nicely with popular design plugins such as the Beaver Builder page builder plugin, you can also use a form builder to customize the entries. It comes from a Power Elite Themeforest author, meaning full peace of mind.
- Drag and drop layouts - PixelGrade create WordPress themes that are very easy to customize. In particular, Listable uses layouts where you can use drag and drop widgets which will snap to their places.
- Page builder ready - works with a number of page builder plugins such as Beaver Builder, MotoPress and SiteOrigin.
A sound choice and we highly recommend you check out the Preview of Listable here.
12. Estate Pro
While Estate Pro is a real estate oriented membership site theme, you can create any kind of member-only website that requires unlimited user levels, restricted page access, and post creation limits.
It offers out-of-the-box support for most of the payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, and Stripe.
It also gives you advanced search features so you can filter searches based on taxonomies, meta fields, and post types.
For this kind of membership website, these searches improve the user experience.
(Recommend Reading: If you're planning to create a Real-estate based sites, we've selected the best WordPress themes for creating a property site)
13. Shoppe
Shoppe is an eCommerce WordPress theme from Themify that is built specifically for eCommerce membership websites.
It comes with 4 website skins, multiple layouts, several header styles, and unlimited colors and uses the Themify builder plugin too.
Shoppe has several demo WordPress themes that you can use to kick off your site using the 1-click demo installer.
14. LaunchPad
With LaunchPad membership WordPress theme, you're ready to build an online course using LifterLMS.
LaunchPad is a perfect choice for teaching languages, real estate training, online music teaching, business courses, marketing and digital marketing, online health and fitness and many other niches.
The Launchpad premium WordPress theme allows you to modify all aspects of the design, layout and typography of your online courses website.
If you're planning to use LifterLMS to power your online course, you can't go wrong with LaunchPad.
15. Ultra
Ultra often appears in our top theme lists. That’s partly because it’s so flexible but also because the demos are so well designed. It’s no surprise then, that Ultra can also deliver for a membership website.
There isn’t a dedicated membership demo but each could be turned into a community website with minimal customization. It’s then just a matter of integrating your membership plugin, creating tiers, locking content and you’re ready to go.
Whatever type of membership site you want to create, there’s a demo for it here. The theme works with the Themify page builder, so customization is simple and you have all the tools you need to build a unique website.
16. Vayvo
The Vayvo premium WordPress theme caters for a different niche - the media streaming niche that can be great for a membership WordPress theme.
Some of the features of Vayvo include free membership trials, membership plans, premium content restriction via armember (built-in), premium slider, video rating system and full support for all languages.
As with most membership WordPress themes Vayvo includes a drag and drop page builder to customize the look and feel of your membership website.
Themeforest purchases and Vayvo customers also get access to their support team for a full 6 months as part of the purchase.
Check out the Media Streaming Membership Demo
17. Maya
Maya Reloaded is a creative multipurpose theme that allows you to create different kinds of websites.
It gives you 30+ different layout concepts to pick from, so you can create almost any design using it.
It also consists of premium WordPress plugins such as Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, Visual Composer for Google Maps, and a whole lot more.
18. WP Rentals
This multi-featured product is a WordPress theme that allows you to create a booking platform for properties.
Users can list their properties which are ready for daily rent. You can make a commission for each submission or each confirmed booking.
(Recommended Reading: 7 Best WooCommerce Themes and plugins for online bookings)
It also allows users to sign up with their social login credentials, such that users are not required to create a separate account. You can sync booking to iCal.
With WP Rentals, you can create a system with control for each package with a recurring option
19. Thrive
If you’re looking for a BuddyPress supported item to build a collaborative online community, online courses, or a niche social network on a WordPress platform, Thrive could be a perfect choice.
All of the features are added as WordPress plugins.
So you can enable only those functionalities you’ll need for your eventual members' sites.
Best of all, it is a lightweight download with no tied-in framework so it is a great community membership WordPress theme.
20. Zelle Pro
This is another great membership WordPress theme option from ThemeIsle.
Zelle is a neat WordPress theme and is a multipurpose theme, but still a great product to use for a WordPress membership website.
Using parallax effects, custom content blocks, Google Maps integration, portfolio, packages and pricing table suitable for your membership plans multi-lingual and RTL-ready.
Zelle Pro is also built for performance, something that needs to be kept in mind given the heavy traffic generated by a membership site.
21. Authority Pro
Authority Pro is one of a number of Studiopress themes in this list. We rate them because they tend to be well-coded, flexible and works with the Genesis Framework. While you pay for the privilege, it’s a good framework to use and performs well in most tests.
The Authority Pro demo is a simple design that could be turned into literally anything. It has lots of whitespace, a simple header with image and introduction and a nice layout that draws you down the page.
Whatever memberships you’re going for, you can customize this theme to suit. It supports eCommerce, membership plugins and the WordPress block editor. All the tools you need to build an amazing community.
22. Magazine Pro
If you want to create an online magazine where the members will have exclusive access to specific premium content, the Magazine Pro theme from StudioPress is a great option.
While its homepage features an area for your featured articles, it then gives different sections for different news or category items.
Given that this is for a magazine, the theme has been optimized for readability with awesome typography and easily readable fonts and spacious layouts.
This design will easily give you a beautiful result out of the box - and is very easy to set up even if you are not too technical yourself.
23. MH Magazine
The MH Magazine WordPress theme is one of those home page layouts perfectly suited exactly for paid access to content.
It follows the exact structure which you would expect from an online magazine, with scrolling headline articles and then other titles in different categories.
There's lots of room for advertising within this modern and one of the best WordPress membership theme, whilst you can also use the background for additional advertising space (both to push people towards conversion or for external advertising to monetize the site).
It integrates very nicely with plugins listed below allowing for a smooth implementation of a paid magazine or newspaper and has full documentation to go with it.
24. Indigo
Given that we've brought up the subject of magazines, we also love this theme from WPZoom - Indigo.
This is an awesome WP multi-purpose template with flexible features that can be used to create a restricted area.
The homepage features two navigation menus, a featured slider for top news items, a 3-column widget area for giving special attention to specific articles, a sticky menu, featured categories, various fonts and colors available and many more features you'll find useful.
25. Extra
Extra! Extra!
Another great WordPress for you, and it's fitting that this is one of the most popular WordPress themes for magazines out there.
From the ever-popular ElegantThemes, this is one for those who believe less is more. These guys know it all, an excellent look and feel and how to design a winning product, they are also the authors of the most popular Divi, used by literally hundreds of thousands of users.
Extra is a clean modern magazine theme for membership sites for those who want to take their things to the next level, and of course, given that we're in this to build a members-only area, this template supports that very nicely.
Extra is an excellent choice with great support to be used as a membership WordPress theme. As part of your download, you can also get access to a page builder to customize layouts and pages as necessary.
(Buy through this link and get an exclusive 10% OFF until November 2024)
26. Binder PRO
Binder PRO is a magazine theme that would work exceptionally well for news outlets or news-based membership websites. As it integrates with most WordPress plugins, you could drip content, sit your best content behind a paywall or have exclusive member-only areas.
The included demos can provide the foundation to build almost any type of community with minimal editing. The theme is well-designed, easy to customise and supports any compliant WordPress plugin. It’s fully responsive too.
The theme itself is modern, flat and engaging. It’s set up for news, with a latest or featured slider at the top and a news grid down the page. Each demo is set up in a similar way, so you can easily visualise how page will look with minimal customisation required.
27. Public Opinion
Public Opinion is another magazine theme that would work as a membership website. It has a completely different vibe to Binder PRO even though it has a similar layout. It has similar flexibility too, so it’s easy to customise and make your own.
The design has a featured news header up top with category blocks below. There’s a sidebar with the usual widgets and the option for ads and engagement. There’s also scope to include video, breaking news tickers and a lot more.
Public Opinion is compatible with Elementor so editing is a breeze. Blocks are easy to add, remove and customise without impacting performance. It’s also compatible with WooCommerce and is fully responsive too.
28. Mesmerize
Mesmerize and Mesmerize Pro are both more than capable of working for a membership website. Mesmerize is the free version and Mesmerize Pro builds on it with premium demos, more blocks and tools to help build your site.
The designs are clean, modern and flat, providing a foundation for your site. We like Mesmerize Pro School as it’s colourful, engaging and could be turned into any type of website. The other demos are good too and cover many other niches.
All designs are clean, include lots of whitespace, imagery and content blocks. It supports a tone of customization options, Google fonts, video, audio, Google Maps and most other elements you would want to add to a website.
29. Tusant
Tusant is something different. It’s a dark theme with the demo designed for podcasts. It could work amazingly well for a membership website built around podcasting, video, audio or any creative work.
The dark design stands out for all the right reasons. The simple, modern design allows images to stand out and the contrast colour to have real impact. The demo has podcast elements, such as playlists, built-in audio player, a blog section, social areas and some extra pages to build out the site.
Tusant is build using the WordPress block editor so it’s easy to customize and make your own. While it works amazingly well as a fark theme, you could switch it if you like, change the contrast colour and personalise it however you like.
30. Spencer
Spencer is a generalist blog theme with attractive colours, typography and layout. We like this theme because it could be turned into literally any type of membership site you put your mind to.
As it’s built with Elementor, you can move, add or change blocks as you see fit. While the default layout is good, there are improvements that can be made and Elementor makes it easy. The theme is also compatible with most WordPress plugins including WooCommerce, which should help create your membership website with ease.
The design includes a soft colour palette that could be switched in seconds. There’s plenty of whitespace, a blog style layout with sidebar and opportunities to include audio, video, ads and any type of content you want.
Best WordPress Membership plugins
Now that we've reviewed a collection of best WordPress themes/templates, let us introduce and guide you to the best WordPress membership plugin options that will instantly transform your existing website into a members-only site.
While these plugins will work on your site regardless of the design you’re using, we strongly suggest you pick an appropriate theme to leverage the full potential of the plugins you’re using.
Let's get started with our preferred options!
1. WooCommerce Memberships
If you're planning on using WooCommerce as your eCommerce product, you can enable restricted access through an additional extension to this most popular of online shop extensions: WooCommerce Memberships.
This is one of the most popular and probably the best WordPress pro plugin for membership sites - and we've looked at this product in detail here.
As you can see below, this extension allows you to create specific rules to be able to restrict specific parts only to users who are paid-up members of the site.
Given that this is an approved software by the WC team, you can rest assured of the quality. It has been given a very good rating by reviews from actual users of the extension, so it isn't just us that like it.
The beauty of this extension is that it has tons of features.
For example, you can choose to drip premium content (i.e. release the articles strategically, let's say over a number of weeks to mimic an online course.
You can use it subscriptions, you can send customized emails, and most of all, it's very easy to manage, as you can see from Chris Lema's comments below.
Pricing:
- $16.59/month billed annually at $199
If you are a web designer, we would suggest going for the top tier plan, because this will more than pay for itself with multiple clients.
2. Restrict Content Pro
The basic version of the Restrict Content is probably the best WordPress membership plugin.
It's a simple option that restricts specific areas of your site to registered users only. Restrict Content Pro utilizes the default user roles like administrator, editor, author, and subscriber to restrict the content.
It's also got full documentation to help get you started. It also works well with most WordPress themes.
This is another great pro plugin for membership sites.
Please visit our full review here.
The premium version offers the following features.
- Unlimited number of discount codes
- Reports to see how well your members' site is performing
- Unlimited subscription packages
Pricing:
- 1 site: $99/year provides a license for one site
- 5 sites: $149/year
- Unlimited: $249/year
Wondering what people think about Restrict Content Pro? The following is probably something to keep in mind.
3. MemberPress
MemberPress is another option worth trying.
By downloading the premium version, you’ll also get access to Affiliate Royale Premium product that lets you create an affiliate program for your members' site.
Visit our full MemberPress review here.
MemberPress is a perfect fit for anyone who wants to restrict digital download resources from regular visitors.
Some features of MemberPress include but not limited to
- Coupon support
- Send email notification to your members as reminders
- It also lets you group your digital items based on member level.
Pricing:
- $179.50/year for one site
- $239.60/year for 2 sites
- $279.65/year for 3 sites
- $349.65/year for 5 sites
4. Simple Membership Plugin
Our fourth option is from wp.insider - a highly-rated (4.5-star average) which is available as a free download both via the WP repository and it's own website.
The product supports both one-time fees and subscriptions to the site, you can have sections of the site which are free and other sections which are members-only, and payments can be accepted via Paypal primarily.
Pricing: Free
We've now seen all the tools you need, you should be all good to go to start your new venture!
Let us know if you need any more information and of course, we'd be more than happy to provide this!
Other options we have not mentioned here include Paid Memberships Pro, which we will eventually add to this review.
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WordPress Membership Themes and Plugins Frequently Asked Questions
How do I create a membership site on WordPress?
To create a membership website, you'll need a WordPress installation on a good hosting server such as InMotion hosting and a WordPress membership plugin such as WooCommerce memberships or another membership plugin that we have listed here. Using a Membership theme such as the ones listed in this article also helps you create a design that is targeted for a membership site. The plugins will typically guide you to create all the necessary stuff such as membership plans, a payment gateway, restricted content and everything else you may need.
How much does a membership site cost?
Creating a membership site costs from around $500 to easily about $10,000 per year. Essentially, it pretty much depends on what you use. You can create a WordPress membership site that will be fairly cheap to set up, excluding time to set up. If you had to outsource the development, expect estimates to cost from $3,000 to $10,000 or more. Maintenance, in general, depends on how much traffic your website will generate. The higher the traffic, the higher the costs.
What is the best membership site software?
If you are setting up a membership site on WordPress, the 3 best plugins to use are 1) WooCommerce Memberships, 2) Restrict Content Pro, 3) MemberPress and 4) Paid Memberships Pro. These are tried and tested tools and you can't go wrong with them. They are all paid software, but you'll get excellent ROI by using these highly-rated plugins.
Does WordPress have a membership plugin?
Yes, WordPress has a variety of membership plugins available to help you create a membership-based website. Some of the most popular options include MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, and Paid Memberships Pro and other options that are mentioned in this article. These plugins allow you to easily create and manage member profiles, restrict access to certain content based on membership levels, and handle recurring payments for memberships. They also include features like email notifications, integration with payment gateways, and detailed reports of member activity.
Is there a free membership plugin for WordPress?
No, none of the membership plugins for WordPress are free or offer a free version, however a number of the ones lifted above offer trial periods.
Conclusion
Have you tried any of the choices for WordPress membership theme listed in this post? What is your experience with them? Share your thoughts with us by dropping a line below.
Please leave a useful comment with your thoughts, then share this on your Facebook group(s) who would find this useful and let's reap the benefits together. Thank you for sharing and being nice!
Disclosure: This page may contain links to external sites for products which we love and wholeheartedly recommend. If you buy products we suggest, we may earn a referral fee. Such fees do not influence our recommendations and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.
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