9 Memberful Alternatives: A Detailed Comparison

Looking at Memberful Alternatives for your WordPress membership website? We've got you covered with our detailed comparison of competitors in this guide.

Joanna Taylor Profile

By Joanna Taylor  •  Updated 19 September 2023

Memberful alternatives

Do you want a members-only area in your existing site with robust payment functionality?

You’re in the right place!

Online publishers, entrepreneurs, affiliate marketers, and content promoters handle dozens of members and subscription hassles regularly. But how to keep track of individual members and their membership plans?

Here comes the role of Memberful - a software platform for creating and managing subscription plans through WordPress sites. If you need to manage different membership tiers, allowing you to offer various levels of access to your subscribers, it has got you covered.

In addition, Memberful ensures secured payment processing and offers very basic tracking analytics for membership programs to visualize sales.

Regardless of having a bunch of features and flexibilities, it grabs a hefty amount of transaction charges which is a headache for many publishers.

Another downside of it is accessibility to only the Stripe payment gateway. So, some of your potential subscription counts can go astray due to limited payment options.

Fortunately, Memberful isn’t the only membership service that has your back. In this blog post, we’re going to share the 8 most prominent Memberful alternatives to help you build subscription-based websites with gated access to exclusive content.

Quick Overview: Top 8 Alternatives to Memberful

What is Memberful?

Memberful is a subscription and membership software that empowers digital creators, educators, publishers, and businesses to develop and manage their content, courses, or materials. It was founded in 2013 and till now has been a reliable platform for online creators to monetize their products.

We can have a look at the top 3 Memberful features:

Member Management

Its member management is quite a breeze for the users. You can easily view and manage member lists, track engagement, and communicate with members through this platform.

Flexible Payment

Memberful allows various payment methods, including one-time payments, monthly subscriptions, and even custom pricing tiers.

Integration & Customization

With Memberful, creators can perform extensive customization, allowing access to match the branding of the membership site with their existing websites or platforms.

Also, the seamless integration with the most popular CMS (Content Management System) WordPress provides functional embedding into the WordPress site.

What Should You Look for in Memberful Alternatives?

Though Memberful is a reputed membership WordPress plugin, it has some promising competitors and flexible alternatives to have a look at.

Before we go into in-depth details of those alternatives, let’s explore what to consider in your search.

Content Accessibility

Do you want to provide exclusive access to different membership tiers? Among all the benefits of membership platforms, the first elemental thing to pay close attention is to the content access control options.

Therefore, choose a platform that will allow you to restrict access to specific content, services, or downloading availability depending on membership pricing levels.

Flexible Integration

Chances are, you’re here because you’re tired of Memberful’s limitations to only WordPress CMS and Stripe payment gateway.

However non-WordPress content creators prefer open source platforms or other CMS like Squarespace, Wix, Drupal, and more. So, look for a membership plugin that can be integrated with most of the CMS platforms.

Whoever wants to integrate versatile payment gateways such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Western Pay, Google Pay, and more in the websites should also check payment gateway flexibility before making up their minds.

Monetization

All of your hard work is only going to pay through monetizations. The more monetization ways, the more the revenues! Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, consider alternatives that provide various ways to monetize your courses or digital products like selling controlled access to videos, podcasts, or digital products.

Scalability

Today your business is small, tomorrow it won’t be! As your membership program grows, your selected Memberful alternative should also match with increased capacity you need. To avoid any conflicts of migrating or switching to another platform, ensure that the alternative you’re selecting is scalable.

Support

Technical issues are inevitable. You may face some problems while dealing with the setup, integration, migration, or customization of the software which would require more attention or a helping guide. So, live chat support is crucial to look for in your next membership platform.

Our 8 Memberful Alternatives Recommendations:

Let's take a look at our 8 recommended Memberful alternatives in more detail.

1. OptimizePress & OptimizeMember 

  • Supported CMS: WordPress
  • Pricing: from $199/year
  • Support: Email support, Facebook community
OptimizePress alternative

If you're looking for a Memberful alternative that provides everything you need to build a secure membership site on WordPress, OptimizePress is the solution you're looking for.

The OptimizePress Suite is a complete range of plugins packaged into one product that gives you a landing page and sales funnel builder, online course platform and membership protection software all in one.

OptimizeMentor, the membership and online course component of the Suite includes everything you need to create secure courses and memberships inside WordPress.

OptimizePress Benefits

Complete suite of tools for building and marketing your membership sitge
Create beautiful online courses with wide range of templates
Maintain control and ownership of your content 
Flexibility with WordPress plugins to expand your site features
Build sales funnels that can grow your leads and sales
Protect any WordPress post, page or post type with OptimizeMentor

2. Mighty Networks

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, Salesforce CMS, Webflow, WooCommerce, etc.
  • Pricing: $33/monthly starter package
  • Support: Email support
Mighty Networks Alternative

Mighty Networks is the mighty savior for digital creators. It’s been very handy and popular for transactional online communities to share knowledge, connect with like-minded individuals, and build personal or professional online branding.

Therefore, entrepreneurs, creators, educators, and other affiliate promoters prefer Mighty Networks for its versatile monetization flexibility. It also offers membership tier-based access control for courses and content for your students or audiences.

To share resources with your students through Mighty Networks is safer than ever. If you have been using other platforms like Facebook groups to share documents or other files with your members, it’s better to ditch the idea.

Might Networks is indeed more secure as it doesn’t sell any kind of data to third parties like Meta’s Facebook.

Also, you can maintain members only sections by sharing various forms of content with your members through scalability.

The basic community plan has a lot of feature boundaries that can be frustrating for someone with budget limitations.

3. MemberSpace

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, WooCommerce, Weebly, Shopify, Duda, etc.
  • Pricing: $49/monthly professional plan
  • Support: Weekly scheduled live chat available (Only Wednesday and Friday)
Memberspace alternative

MemberSpace is built to align with branding effortlessly. This software integrates with the most popular website builders and tools, making it versatile for everyone’s needs.

Due to its focus on scalability, you can manage either a small community or a vast audience. Also, the monetization options include payments for subscriptions and membership programs maintaining tiered access.

If you need to handle donor and supporter membership programs, MemberSpace gives that opportunity.

A user-friendly admin dashboard makes it simple to manage your members, courses, and settings. In addition, its automated email marketing feature keeps the member engaged through campaign and sales mail.

Memberspace’s top-notch industry-standard SSL encryption keeps the creators' and members' data as well as payments secure.

It's customization options are too complex for beginners. So, they might find it disrupting.

4. Podia

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, Squarespace, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.
  • Pricing: $33/monthly mover plan
  • Support: Only available to paid users
Podia features

Podia is the game changer for creators to easily build and sell online courses and multimedia support. It offers digital downloads. So, entrepreneurs can sell e-books, courses, podcasts, templates, and other products effortlessly.

Content management and accessibility can be done from one place in Podia. You can set control over the contents and audiences depending on their subscription program.

You can get an ease of relief to host live webinars or share pre-recorded content in the scheduled time with your audience.

Are you an affiliate marketer? No need to be concerned about the affiliate program management anymore. Podia supports affiliate marketers in setting up your programs to expand reach and sales rates.

Though Podia and Memberful are both excellent in their services, Podia differentiates itself for its 24/7 live chat support, dynamic content accessibility, scalability, and more.

Compared to Podia’s high-end specialized features and tools integration, its analytics is somewhat very basic.

5. Kajabi

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, Duda, etc.
  • Pricing: $149/monthly basic plan
  • Live Chat: 24/7 chat support for paid subscribers
Kajabi alternative

Kajabi is widely known and used for its enhanced customization and monetization attributes. To customize your website to blend with your services and offerings seamlessly, Kajabi has no better alternative.

If you want to deal with versatile monetization with one membership software, Kajabi allows all the opportunities.

From selling memberships to monetizing virtual events, you can have everything in one platform.

Want to create sales funnels to guide potential members through a series of steps? Kajabi can help you convert an audience to a potential subscriber.

Moreover, you can keep your users’ data, transactions, or any other sensitive information secure with its high-grade encrypted security.

Even though the pricing is too high for new online entrepreneurs, it’s still worth a try.

6. Patreon

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, WooCommerce, Wix, Webflow, Shopify, etc
  • Pricing: 8% charge fee on pro plan
  • Live Chat: Phone support
Patreon Features

Patreon is a compelling choice to monetize creative resources or educational courses, along with building a dedicated community base.

It has a high-class integration trait to connect with innumerable website builders. Therefore, you can enjoy Patreon’s integration with Mailchimp, Google, Spreadsheets, Spotify, Discord, Slack, and more.

To attract attention and develop a unique brand, you can unleash Patreon’s endless customization level and grasp higher CTA rate conversion on your creator page.

There are also reward options for podcast listeners following bonuses. Besides, you can audit revenue and members of multiple tiers from its flawless analytical insights.

Still, it downweighs its users while it charges on content hosting separately.

7. Teachable

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce, Duda, Shopify, etc.
  • Pricing: $39/monthly basic plan
  • Live Chat: Only for Professional or business users
Teachable alternative

Teachable comes with the most lucrative multimedia support for digital content creators. On top of that, educators can apply their top-class assistance and guidance through interactive quizzes and tests.

Its scalability is what every online instructor or coach is looking for. Whether you’re a solo trainer or a full-fledged institution, Teachable doesn’t care. Your content and courses both can grow with it.

The one-on-one flexibility for coaching and group programs make it our favorite Memberful alternative.

Teachable offers customization on texts, sales pages, author bios, headings, footers, landing pages, checkout pages, and more.

We recommend Teachable for authors to monetize their books and speeches through online courses. Otherwise, educational trainers can also rely on it for sharing their courses and training programs.

On the contrary, its email marketing compatibility isn’t beyond basic.

8. MemberPress

  • Supported CMS: WordPress
  • Pricing: $179.50/yearly on starter plan
  • Live Chat: Email Support ticket
Memberpress alternative

MemberPress comes with the best user-friendly interface. Its customization options and monetization flexibility make it one of the strong competitors of Memberful.

Membership subscriptions and account management of all sizes can be lodged in it due to the unmeasured scalability.

From selling digital products to promoting e-commerce stuff, every monetization is achievable with MemberPress.

Last, but not least, it grants access to paid members of the specific content based on tier level.

Though, its user-friendly interface, the setup and configuration require technical knowledge.

9. Gumroad

  • Supported CMS: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Blogger, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.
  • Pricing: 10% fee on every sale
  • Support: Live Chat. Replies within 24 hours.
Gumroad Alternative

Tired of managing your files on different host servers? Gumroad allows its user to host digital files on their server directly.

Gumord has pro-level email marketing aid. It collects emails and can send marketing campaigns to your members simultaneously.

This software is a great choice for those who want to customize their landing pages to match with brand’s tone and look.

Apart from scalability, Gumorad has the most promising monetization options available.

But its transaction fee is overwhelming compared to our other alternative software.

Final Takeaways For Choosing the Right Memberful Alternatives

Before selecting one Memberful alternative for your membership business, we recommend you go through the top 8 Memberful Alternatives software discussed above.

Every penny counts! So, we thoroughly picked software with a free trial period. Check each of them if possible before settling down with one finally.

If you’re a digital content creator, go for the Mighty Networks but for educators we recommend Teachable. Authors and affiliate marketers can prefer Podia to have a rocket fly growth in their sales and commissions.

The right membership software will bring you close to your customers for seamless management. So, carefully choose software that will keep you organized and your customers satisfied.

Most WordPress nerds will understand the pain of integrating different plugins and services for each business operation. For example, they’d patch together one plugin for payment services and another for online course management.

What if there was a way to pack all the features into one plugin? You’ll not only save a lot of money but also focus on the crucial aspects of your business, i.e., lead generation and customer acquisition.

OptimizeMentor is a WordPress plugin by OptimizePress to make the course-creating journey a breeze for WordPress users. All you need to do is install the plugin, choose your favorite course template, and optimize the page as per your liking.

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