Wishlist Member Review: The Pros and Cons

Today we are talking all things Wishlist Member, and I’ll run you through the reasons I love using the plugin… but also, the reason you may not want to use it.

What is Wishlist Member?

Wishlist Member is membership site plugin, which I use on my WordPress based website to create a membership area.
Within a membership area you can create a single course, or a series of courses, or offer specials to VIP clients… it is completely up to you.

What Wishlist Member does, is integrate with a payment gateway to take money from your clients (or not if you want to offer free membership), create log on pages and processes, creates a secure area, and an easy to secure certain pages or content.

There are heaps of membership plug ins on the market now, but when I first built a membership site several years ago, there were a lot less around, and especially not many that had been around for a while and were reliable.

The Pros

Stability

Wishlist Member has been around for years now, but is still actively updated and improved.
It’s not a flash in the pan membership plugin that appears on the market all of a sudden, and disappears again quickly when they don’t get the sales they want… Wishlist Member is stable and has been here for ages.

Support

Because Wishlist is well established it means their systems and processes are well established too. There is a great video library to help you with things like installation and integration, and the support team is there if you need it too.

Easily allow you to upgrade your members.

Wishlist member allows you to easily set up a variety of membership levels, and to create automations that moves members between those levels.
So, if you have a free 7 day trial, you can set Wishlist Member to allow a free access level for 7 days, and then send them to a payment portal and move them up to a paid level.
Or if you want members who have been with you for a longer period of time to get access to extra things, to encourage members to stick around… then you can set Wishlist Member to automatically upgrade them to a VIP member after 365 days.

Set certain content to members only

Whenever you create a new page or post on your website, simply scroll down to the bottom and tick the button that says “Make this content available to members only”. You can also pick which of your membership levels you want to be able to access the content.
Then, anyone who isn’t signed in to your site, will simply see a page that says “sorry you are not a member” or can be redirected to a page that encourages them to sign up to see what they are missing out on.

Integrates with your payment gateway

Wishlist Member integrates with PayPal, Stripe, ClickBank, Authorize.net and many more, which makes it really easy for you to take money from your members in order to allow them to access special content.

No Monthly fees

Wishlist Member is a one off payment that comes with 12 months of support and updates.
You don’t have to pay a monthly fee, or a fee per user, you simply buy the plugin and off you go.

The Cons

It’s membership site plugin, NOT an online course plug in

While you can definitely build drip fed courses within Wishlist Member, and I do on a regular basis… it is not a course builder. This means you can’t build quizzes, or tests or anything. You can do this with extra plug ins, but Wishlist Member isn’t designed for that by itself.
This is a membership site plug in, it is not a Learning Management System (LMS).

It’s not the cheapest thing on the market.

Wishlist Member is not the cheapest thing out there at the moment, although, it’s not the most expensive either. It’s a mid range product. But if price is the only thing that you are worried about, then Wishlist Member might not be the option for you.

Just like with your email marketing system, it is important to find something that works for you.

I really love using Wishlist member, and if you think it suits you to (or you want more information) you can click here to find out all the details –> Wishlist Member Website

Note:
The views in this post are mine, and mine alone.
The links above are affiliate links, and I may receive a small payment if you chose to use the service.
However, you know I wouldn’t tell you about a product or service if I didn’t use it and love it.