Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is a membership plugin for WordPress that lets a site owner define membership levels, charge for them and control who can see which content. It is aimed at premium content sites, clubs and associations, subscription products and newsletters.

Visitors choose a level, complete checkout and become members straight away. Members can log in, look at their payment history, update billing details or cancel from the site itself. Recurring subscriptions are processed through gateways such as Stripe and PayPal, and the site owner decides what each level unlocks.

The project is fully open source under the GPL and runs inside your own WordPress installation, so you keep control of your data and hosting. Its documentation also links to guides comparing WordPress plugins with hosted SaaS membership platforms such as Kajabi and Podia, which is the decision many site owners weigh before adopting it.