MemberPress vs MemberMouse: Which Membership Plugin is Better?

As we know, creating quality content is a key aspect of your digital marketing strategy; it’s an excellent way to promote your business and build a community.

However, services like MemberPress or MemberMouse step up the game, helping you monetize that content too.

They allow you to protect premium posts and/or videos and make them accessible only to paying subscribers.

Let’s compare two powerful membership plugins for WordPress: MemberPress and MemberMouse.

How do membership plugins work?

Membership plugins protect your posts from unauthorized users.

When anybody wants to see a premium post or video, they’ll be redirected to a message (that you can customize) asking them to login as an existing active member or register to become one.

You can use them to:

• Charge for memberships.
• Protect your content.
• Create premium online courses.
• Build and manage premium communities.
• Do live consultations.

MemberPress and MemberMouse include all these basics and more.

They are also very easy to use. In fact, we’ll include some quick how-tos in this post so you get a sense of how user-friendly they are. As with other WordPress plugins, you just need to follow these simple steps to start with any of the two:

Download the plugin as a .ZIP folder. Once the plugin is downloaded, go to your WordPress dashboard, and click “Plugins > Add new”. Then press the “Upload Plugin” button at the top and drag and drop the ZIP folder. Click “Install now” and then “activate plugin”.

Now that we know the basics, it’s time to dive into MemberPress and MemberMouse. Although both companies offer high quality services, in this post, we’ll compare them to see which is a better option for you. Let’s go, shall we?

MemberPress

MemberPress is a membership site plugin that was founded in 2013 by Blair Williams and partnered in 2018 with Awesome Motive (a company that owns OptinMonster, among other tools).

MemberPress is easy to use so you can start using it really quickly and give clients access right away. Unlike MemberMouse, MemberPress lets you edit the source code, which can be a huge advantage for developers.

MemberPress Dashboard

The dashboard has a beautiful UX. You’ll see weekly status emails, step-by-step tutorials, and add-ons.

Features

• Integration with PayPal, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, OptinMonster and more. Most integrations are available in the basic tier; however, not all.
• Customize pricing tables to easily fit your brands.
• Reminders: send reminder emails to your members when their subscriptions are renewing or when their credit card expires.
• Coupons: control how many times they can be used, what products they apply to, and more.
• Access rules: establish who gets to see what. Prevent access to posts tagged in a certain way and custom standalone files.
• Reports: see the average of how much each member has paid you so far; dynamic view of transactions (monthly, yearly, or all-time), among others. You can export all the information to a CSV file.
• Use learning reinforcement in your courses to keep members motivated. You’ll get a visual course builder, progress tracking, and a sales feature.
• Bulk course enrollment: great for selling your product to companies and schools.
• Full Spanish translations.

Support and Resources

MemberPress is super committed to making the user experience as smooth as possible. That’s why, apart from a User Manual, they have a YouTube channel where they are constantly uploading new videos and tutorials.

You can even hire a MemberPress expert to help you get you set up your site.

How to use MemberPress?

Creating a new membership in MemberPress is just like creating a new post in WordPress, so you won’t have any trouble with that.

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard, find MemberPress, and click Membership to create a new membership.

2. Add a title and set a price and billing type (one-time or recurring). Decide whether you want to give a trial period or not, of how long and how much. This way, your users can test your site to see if it’s right for them.

3.  Click “Publish.”

Create rules:

1. Go to “Rules” > Add new.

2. Indicate which content you’re going to protect. It could be all content with a certain tag or child pages, for example.

3. Select which users have access to that content.

4. “Save Rule”.

Add a Registration link to the menu:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to “Appearance” > “Menus” and select the drop-down “Memberships”.

2. You’ll see that any memberships that you created using MemberPress will appear here. Select one and then click “Add to Menu”.

3. Finally, click “Save Menu”.

Pricing

• Basic: $279 per year. Use on 1 site.
• Plus: $449 per year. Use on up to 2 sites. Get Blubrry PowerPress.
• Pro: $599 per year. Use on up to 5 sites. Integrates with Authorize.net.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a one-in-all membership plugin founded by Eric Turmnessen in 2009.

They are true experts in marketing and it shows: they don’t only protect your premium content; they also give you different tools to attract prospective members and stop current members from leaving.

Some of the things you can offer to users with MemberMouse are:

• Premium content.
• Content dripping.
• Gifting functionality: users can purchase memberships as a gift.
• Member dashboard with full membership management options.

MemberMouse Dashboard

This is where you view a snapshot of the most important statistics of your membership program.

There’s also a whole set of training videos and a support center area where you’ll find everything you need to get started.

Features

• Integrations: PayPal, MailChimp, Drip, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, GetResponse, iContact, affiliate marketing tools and bbPress for community features. It also has more payment integrations than MemberPress, including Authorize.net, Braintree, Limelight, and Clickbank in all its tiers.
• Reports: top ten affiliates, member count, timeline of when people are signing up, and a lot more.
• SmartTags: fully optimize the sales process with shortcuts. Customize the experience of your clients using shortcodes for their name, company, and purchase information.
• Save the sales pages: if someone wants to cancel, you can make them a special offer.
• Coupons: set start and end dates, set a limit for the number of uses for a coupon, or limit the coupon use only to certain products.
• Protect entire WordPress categories with specific permissions.
• Unlimited membership levels.
• Sell subscriptions or standalone products like individual pages or posts.
• Price split-testing.

Support and Resources

MemberMouse has a blog with its latest news and insights, a podcast, and a YouTube channel hosted by the founder himself with tutorials and Q&A. They also have a knowledge base and custom support ticket available everyday from 9am to 5pm (PST).

And if you’re interested in a demo of what it’s like to use MemberMouse as an admin or a customer, they even have a free demo site!

How to use MemberMouse?

To create a product your customers can purchase:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to “MemberMouse” > “Product Settings”, and click “Create Product”

2. A form will open where you need to add a name, a price, and a rebill period.

3. Click “Save”. To check how it looks, click on “Purchase link”, copy the URL and paste it in a different browser or in an incognito window.

To use SmartTags:

SmartTags let you have more control over your memberships. They have many usages; let’s see how we can use them to show teaser content to non-members, for example:

1. Look for the “Access decision” SmartTag in the Knowledge base and copy one of the examples.

2. Now we’re going to set up basic content protection. Go to your WordPress dashboard and create a new page.

3. Once you have created the content on this page, click “Publish”.

4. Go to “MemberMouse” options, click “Grant Access” and select a membership level.

5. Once the content is protected, you can use the SmartTag. Add a custom HTML block and paste the SmartTag.

6. As you can see, SmartTags are codes, and having a certain idea of how coding works will help you here. If you do, it will be much easier to tweak things, add multiple possibilities, and create complex SmartTags that let you get the exact results you’re looking for.

Pricing

MemberMouse has a 14 day free trial, credit card required. You can choose from these plans:

• Builder: $24.08 per month if paid annually. Basic reporting.
• Advanced: $65.58 per month. Full analytics and reporting suite.
• Premium: $165.17 per month. Sticky.io integration.

Verdict

MemberPress and MemberMouse are great options for offering memberships.

They both have tons of integrations with marketing tools that offer a very complete experience; however, some MemberPress add-ons are available only in the higher tiers.

But less isn’t always bad: for small businesses or beginners; MemberPress simple and straightforward features might be just what they need.

If you are more drawn to fully taking control over your membership, MemberMouse is a better choice. Their SmartTags as well as other powerful features will take your service to the next level.

Plus, MemberMouse is more dedicated to solving doubts and giving you all the possible tools to make it a very smooth plugin.

So there you have it. With all this insight, you’re ready to decide. Tell us which plugin you choose in the comments!