I spend a lot (no really, A LOT) of time answering the question
“I want to make an online course/membership site. Which plugin should I use?”
And while there is no easy answer, and your choice will depend on a whole heap of variables, I do have some favourites. Today we are talking all about Wishlist Member (You can read more about one of my other faves, AccessAlly here)
What is Wishlist Member?
WishList Member is a membership plugin that can turn any WordPress site into a full-blown membership site.
While you can (and I have) used this plugin for course creation, it is designed to build awesome membership sites.
What does Wishlist Member do?
Wishlist Member helps to protect your content, by hiding it behind a secure log in. Simple as that.
But… it also lets you
Create Unlimited Membership Levels
You might decide you want silver, gold and platinum level access… or maybe standard members, then VIP members who get more.
That’s all easy to do, and you can create as many different membership levels as you want or need.
Sequential Content Delivery
What does that mean? Simply put, you can set it to automatically move members from one level until the next.
For example, after 30 days, you can automatically upgrade members from a trial version to a full version.
You can also use this process to move members from module one to module two.
Control membership content
Making content available to members only is as simple as a click of a button. For each blog post or page you decide if you want to make the content locked for members. You can even decide which membership levels see content, making it easy to create bonus content for VIP members, which standard members can’t access.
Flexible Membership Options
Create Free, Trial, or Paid membership levels — or any combination of the three. You set the payment amounts, frequency of payment and length of membership.
Integrates with your Shopping Cart
Wishlist Member integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems, including PayPal, Stripe, ClickBank, Authorize.net and many more. It will even integrate with Infusionsoft (now Keap) and SamCart.
Manage your Members
From the members page you can view your members, their registration status, membership level, and much more. You can manually upgrade members, move them to different levels, pause their membership, or delete them entirely at any point if you need to (if not, the system can do all of this automatically too).
Control Subscription Length
Control the length of time each member has access to your membership site. You can automatically expire a membership after 3 days, 7 days, or whatever time period you want (including “never”)
Custom Error Pages
When a person tries to access content they don’t have permission to view, they will be taken to an “error page”. You can create as many custom error pages as you wish. Use this opportunity to tell people how they can join, what they are missing out on, or include a login box for existing members who just forgot to login.
“Sneak Peek” Content
You can choose to allow a sneak peek at members content, by setting everything after the “more” tag, to be members only. Non-members get a peek at the title and opening paragraph, enough to give them a little taster of what they are missing out on.
Redirect on Login
For each membership level, you can set the first page your members see when they login. This is great for adding welcome messages, updates, news, and so much more. And because you can send each membership level to a different welcome page, you can make sure the content is specific to them.
What does WishList Member NOT do?
Wishlist Member won’t help you to create your content, or membership pages. It won’t help you to create modules, chunks, etc.
Wishlist member simply controls who accesses which content and integrates with payment gateways and mailing systems to do so.
It won’t create you a pretty membership dashboard and it won’t create course outlines or any structure for you.
You will need to build your course pages and content, just like you would build any other page in WordPress. Then simply tell Wishlist that you want that content to be protected.
How much is it?
(At time of publishing)
$197 for a Single Site License ( Installation Allowance: 1 URL*)
*If you have a WishList Member Single Site License it can be used on one (1) URL at a time. This means that each sub-folder, www, sub-domain, local hosts, etc. would be considered one URL.
$297 for a Multi Site License ( Installation Allowance: Unlimited URLs**)
**The Multi-Site License may be used on an unlimited number of URLs owned by the license-holder. If you wish to purchase WishList Member for clients, you need to contact Wishlist Member directly for a Commercial License.
Make sure you check out current pricing and deals here
My personal opinion:
I’ve been using Wishlist Member for my own projects for over 4 years now, and helping clients to install it on their projects for more than 3 (when appropriate – I’m a firm believer that one plugin doesn’t suit all people, and I have several recommendations up my sleeve for helping people get their course content and membership sites online.)
Part of the thing I love about Wishlist Member is that it is so stable. Because of the popularity of courses and membership sites lots of different plugins became available. The problem I always found is that these new plugins still had lots of bugs, or didn’t have great support.
Wishlist member is simple. It isn’t necessarily fancy, and doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles… but it will protect your content for you, and allow you to make sales from it.
Disclaimer
This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may be rewarded for you purchasing through my link.
This doesn’t impact the price you pay in any way.
I wouldn’t be telling you about it if I didn’t love it. So go on, have a look, and see what you think.