You know, those sites where you offer private content under a subscription, or even a one-time payment.
It is ideal if you want to create a training platform, a private community, offer exclusive content to “premium” users, etc. You will be able to protect any type of content and offer it to your users for a fee.
This plugin has a free basic version called “WordPress Membership Plugin – Restrict Content”, which you can install and test from the official WordPress repository.
But as I say, it is so basic, that it does not allow great frills, nor the most basic, which is precisely why a plugin like this may interest you the most: charging users for the subscription. So I recommend that you take a look directly at the Pro version .
So today, we are going to see how Restrict Content Pro can help you offer private content for a fee , thus creating a super membership site.
Features of Restrict Content Pro
Restrict Content Pro has a number of features that make it a great option. We are going to review some of the most relevant ones.
Restrict content
To begin with, and as its name suggests, it allows you to restrict access to the content you want .
On each WooCommerce page, post, product, etc., a section is displayed where you can choose who should have access to that page (or post, or product…).
By default, the “Everyone” option is the one that appears selected, therefore, the page is visible to everyone. But you can choose any of the 3 options below:
- Membership level members : In Restrict Content Pro you can create as many membership levels as you need, it is something that I will explain in the next point. The point is that you can restrict each page to a different level. For example: you have a “Basic” membership level with access to certain content, and a “Premium” membership level with access to other content that “Basic” subscribers do not have access to.
- Members with an access level : To each membership level, you can assign an access level (from 1 to 10), and you can restrict content so that it can only be seen by users with a certain access level or higher.
- Members with a certain profile : Finally, you can restrict content so that it is only visible to users with certain profiles (administrator, editor, subscriber, client, etc.).
On the other hand, apart from restricting entire pages, you can also restrict specific fragments using a shortcode : [restrict] restricted content goes here [/restrict]
You can assign various parameters to define which users the restriction affects ( paid, level, subscription, userlevel ).
Creation of membership levels
As I mentioned before, you can create as many membership levels and provide different content to each of them. You can do this from “Restrict – Membership levels”.
An example would be having a “Basic” membership, with access to certain content, and a “Premium” membership, with access to extra content for a higher price than the “Basic” one.
For each one of them, you can indicate its level of access, the duration it will have (or if it is until it is cancelled), duration of the trial period (in case you want to put a free trial), the maximum number of renewals that will have (or unlimited), the price, if it will have an initial cost (such as a “registration” for first students), and the user profile that will be assigned to users who subscribe to that membership.
For example, if you want the membership to be with a monthly subscription, in “duration” you would have to indicate 1 month.
online payments
Restrict Content Pro has integration with Stripe, PayPal, 2Checkout and Braintree , so you can use any of these platforms to allow users to pay directly on your website for subscribing to any of the memberships you have created.
Although it goes without saying (there is always someone clueless out there 😉 ), if the membership is recurring, payments are made automatically from the first renewal.
That is, when a user signs up for the first time, he indicates his payment details, but the next payments are made automatically.
discount codes
As with other eCommerce solutions like WooCommerce , you have the ability to create discount codes for users to apply when signing up for a membership .
Name and description, code that users must use to apply it, type of discount that will be made (percentage or fixed amount), amount of the discount, if it will only be valid for the first payment of the subscription or for all, for what membership levels is valid, what is the expiration date of the code (if any), and the number of times it can be used.
User Management
Each member of a membership has access to a section to manage their subscription.
You can download your invoices, cancel your subscription, or even do an “upgrade” or “downgrade” to change your membership, in case you have several with different prices.
For your part (as an administrator), you have access to the information of all the subscribers, and you can see the active members, those pending approval by you, those who have an expired or canceled subscription, export the data of the subscribers, etc. .
Messages for unsubscribed users
In the general settings of Restrict Content Pro, you can configure the message that users who have not purchased a subscription on the web or who have not logged in will see.
You can put something like: “This content is only visible to subscribers. Sign in or subscribe”, adding a link for the user to buy a subscription, in case they have not already done so, and another link for a subscriber to sign in.
Registration and login page
To create a registration and/or login page, you have to enter the following shortcodes:
[register_form]
[login_form]
These shortcodes will display the registration and login form respectively, and you can put them either on a blank page, or on a page along with other elements, either made with the default WordPress editor or some builder. like Elementor .
In the event that you have more than one membership level, the registration form allows the user to select which one they want to subscribe to, although you can also add a registration form for a specific membership, with the following shortcode:
[register_form id=”1″]
Where the “id”, would be the id of the membership for which you want to show the record. You can see this id in the “Restrict – Membership Levels” tab.
Restrict Content Pro Addons
Apart from all the features that come by default with Restrict Content Pro, you can extend its functionality with the different addons that are available, both from the plugin developers themselves and from third parties.
There are addons for many different purposes: to integrate with other platforms like Mailchimp, bbPress or Easy digital Downloads, to create group accounts, restrict old content, set restrictions by time, to redirect users after registration or login, etc. , etc.
You can see all the available addons on this page and see if there are any that could be useful for your project.
Restrict Content Pro Pricing
As is often the case with premium plugins, Restrict Content Pro has several pricing plans that you can choose from based on your needs (or budget). They are the following:
- Personal : $99 a year for a website.
- Plus : $149 per year for five websites.
- Professional : $249 per year for unlimited sites and all paid addons included.
- Ultimate – One time payment of $499 for unlimited sites and all paid addons included.
All plans except ultimate include one year of support and updates. After the year, you have to renew the subscription to continue receiving updates and support.
If you decide not to renew it, you will be able to continue using the plugin with the latest version you have at the end of the year, but you will not receive updates or use support.
Conclusion on Restrict Content Pro to create a membership in WordPress
After having tried it and installed it on some website, I can say that Restrict Content Pro is a plugin that works wonderfully to create a subscription membership in WordPress .
Not only because it comes standard with everything you need to restrict access to the content you want and make it visible for a fee, but also because of its catalog of addons that add new specific features that you need.