ProfilePress Review: A Modern WordPress Membership Plugin

Membership sites are a great way to build a community and make money online.

Members can purchase a membership to see the content that matters most to them. Fortunately, it’s easy to build a membership website using the ProfilePress Membership plugin.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at ProfilePress, see what it can do, how easy it is to use, and how it can be expanded to suit your needs.

What is the ProfilePress Membership Plugin?

ProfilePress is a powerful and intuitive WordPress user management plugin with features to build membership sites, directories, customizable user profiles, and registration forms.

Create and sell memberships and manage digital products with ease. ProfilePress integrates with all the popular payment gateways and email marketing platforms. Additionally, for those looking to improve their membership site visibility on search engines, the CrawlWP SEO plugin can further optimize your site, helping you attract more visitors and convert them into members.”

Key Features

Here’s a look at the standout features of ProfilePress:

• Create a membership site.
• Restrict premium content to premium members.
• Create a member directory.
• Approve, reject, block, and unblock users.
• Drag-and-drop form builder with customizations, custom fields, and styling options.
• Create custom forms including registration, login, frontend user profiles, edit profile, and password reset.
• Frontend and backend profile editing.
• Detailed analytics.
• Lots of premium addons to expand the features as much as you like, including the most popular email platforms and payment gateways.

Using ProfilePress

First, install and activate ProfilePress and add your license key. Next, you’ll need to go through a one-time setup.

Go to ProfilePress in the WordPress dashboard and select Dashboard. The dashboard menu also shows the membership plans, orders, subscriptions, customers, and other options and settings.

Clicking on Dashboard opens the Reports tab with lots of links and analytics. Until it’s complete, this section appears on each page within the Dashboard menu, so you can access it from anywhere within the plugin’s settings and options.

This section includes links to create the required pages, integrate a payment method, add your business information, set your membership currency, and create a membership plan.

Go through each option. Some of these options take you to a different menu item in the ProfilePress dashboard. Once that option is complete, you’ll see a green checkmark in its corner. This section will no longer show once they’ve all been completed.

Create the Required Pages

To get started, click Create the Required Pages.

The screen will open the General tab and select the Pages tab where you can choose your pages. Here, you can create Global pages including the Login, Registration, Password Reset, and My Account pages.

You can also create the Payment pages including Checkout, Order Success, Order Failure, and Terms and Conditions pages. The Global pages include an editor, while the Payment pages include the page selector and shortcodes.

As an example, we’ll create a login page. In the Login Page dropdown box, you can select your login page if you already have one or create one by clicking the login from shortcode link.

This opens a page where you can copy the login shortcode. Add this shortcode to any page to create the login page. You can also create a page with the drag-and-drop builder or create a custom shortcode by clicking Add New at the top of the page.

You’ll also see a section called Filter by Type, which lets you choose Login, Registration, Password Reset, Edit Profile, Melange, or User Profile. Make sure you have the Login type selected.

Next, you’ll see links to the Drag-and-Drop Builder and Shortcode Builder.

Here, you can enter a name for your form, select the form type, create a form from scratch, or select a form template. I’m choosing the first template, named Tulip.

This opens the drag-and-drop form builder where you can drop standard fields, rearrange the fields, edit them, duplicate them, or delete them. Under the drag-and-drop editor, you’ll see Form Settings. Adjust the appearance, field and styling, labels and text, and the submit button. You can also copy the shortcode to place it on your Login page.

Here’s how the form looks on the front end after pasting the shortcode into the page.

If you choose the Shortcode Builder instead of the Drag-and-Drop Builder, you’ll see different forms to choose from. Add a name and choose the form you want. I’m choosing the first one, Perfecto Lite.

The shortcode editor provides the code structure and includes tabs for CSS and Settings. The CSS is prewritten, but you can edit it any way you want. The Settings tab includes an option for a passwordless login.

The shortcode editor provides a live preview, so you can see your edits in real time. Once you’ve finished, copy the shortcode and paste it into your Login page. The result on the front end will be the same as the preview.

Integrate a Payment Method

Integrate a Payment Method lists your payment method options and shows if they’re enabled and if they support subscriptions.

Click on a payment gateway’s name (or the Configure button) to enable it and then check the Enable/Disable box. You’ll also need to connect to the payment gateway. Continue through the settings to enable the features and options you want and save your settings.

Other settings under the Payments tab cover the settings, checkout fields, taxes, and file downloads. I found the file downloads option particularly interesting. It has an option to require users to be logged in before they can download a file. It can also limit the number of times a file can be downloaded and include an expiration date.

Add Your Business Information

Your business information includes your business name, address, and tax ID. This one is simple but it’s important information.

Set your Membership Currency

Your membership currency includes your currency, checkout, and receipt settings. These settings include one-time trials, the proration method, autorenewals, auto-login, and more. You can write the receipt message and disable it for free orders.

Create a Membership Plan

Membership plans are interesting. It provides a list of your current plans, and you can add new plans by clicking Add New.

The membership plan editor includes several sections. The first is the plan details. This includes the name, description, purchase note, the user role for the plan, and price. It creates a new user role by default, but you can choose from your current user roles if you want.

Next is the Subscription Settings. This includes the billing frequency, subscription length, signup fee, and the option to include a free trial.

The last section is Downloads and Integrations. Here, you’ll upload the digital product files. The files can be eBooks, videos, audio, or any type of digital file you want to provide. Add as many files as you want. You can also include a download limit and set a time for the download to expire.

Once you’ve saved your membership plan you can add the link to any button by copying and pasting the checkout URL. This is found in the membership plan editor and the list of membership plans. This is especially good for pricing tables.

Content Protection

Content Protection is an important feature for any membership plugin and the ProfilePress Membership plugin delivers. To access it, go to ProfilePress > Content Protection in the dashboard menu and click Add a Protection Rule. Once you’ve selected the rules and saved your changes, the content you’ve chosen is automatically protected.

This opens the content protection rule editor where you can create the rule. Give the rule a name and then choose the content you want to protect, the content you want to exclude, and choose who can access the content.

Click the dropdown box to see the content to protect or exclude. Choose between posts, pages, categories, tags, or formats. You can add multiple from the same type, but you can add more types by adding an AND or an OR option.

In this example, I’ve protected posts with the category Design, AND archive pages with the tags Interiors OR the blog page. This is just a quick example, but you can make the rule as simple or as detailed as you want. I found it intuitive to make my selections and easy to understand how they worked together. Content to exclude works the same way.

Access Condition lets you choose who can access the content. Choose from everyone, logged-in users, or logged-out users. If you choose logged-in users, you’ll see more options to choose the membership plans, user roles, specific users, messages to those that don’t meet the requirements, and the design of the message.

This lets you create content specific to the user’s status, which is great for showing hidden content or special deals or information. For example, you can show a sales page to users who haven’t logged in, while those who have logged in wouldn’t need to see it. Those who are logged in and meet the requirements can see the protected content that’s created for members.

The content will display the message you set up. This example shows that my blog is restricted to authorized users. This is the default message, but you can create any message you want.

Member Directories

ProfilePress can also create Member Directories. In the dashboard menu, go to ProfilePress > Member Directories and click Add New. It also includes a default directory that you can use or edit.

It opens options where you can choose between the drag-and-drop builder or the shortcode builder. We’ll look at both options.

The drag-and-drop builder includes two templates- the default and one called Gerbera. Enter a name into the field above the templates and click Select Template on the one you want to use. I’m using the Gerbera template for my example.

The template opens within the editor where you can drag fields, rearrange them, adjust their settings, or delete them.

The Directory Settings include appearance, sorting, search, result and pagination, and colors. This gives you lots of options to customize the form.

Clicking Preview at the top of the page shows how the member directory looks on the front end. I’ve removed the email address and added labels to the name and biography.

The Shortcode Builder includes the option to build from scratch and a template called Tablefy.

It includes the code to build the table, CSS, and settings. This one also shows a live preview.

Reports

The ProfilePress Membership plugin includes some detailed reports and analytics. The Dashboard shows several stats and charts. These are great for seeing a snapshot of your membership website’s revenue performance.

The first set of stats shows the total number of customers, active customers, active subscriptions, and lifetime revenue. Next are charts for revenue, orders, refunds, top plans, and payment methods. You can filter them by time and by plan. The charts are interactive.

You can export them as CVS files and choose the date range, membership plans, and details that are specific to each chart.

Addons

There are currently 26 addons available. You’ll find a list of addons in the Addons link on the ProfilePress dashboard menu. You can activate or deactivate any of your addons from this screen. Each of the pricing plans includes a different number of addons. Those that are available within your plan are in black while those that are not in your plan are grayed out.

The addons include features such as payment gateways, custom fields, 2-factor authentication, email confirmation, and user moderation. Social login, and lots more. These are excellent for expanding the features of your membership site.

Price

There are three plans to choose from:

• Standard – $129 per year, for one site
• Plus – $299 per year, for three sites
• Agency – $499 per year, for unlimited sites

Each plan builds on the last and includes more addons. You can start with the free version and then choose the plan that works best for you.

Thoughts on Using the ProfilePress Membership Plugin

We found the ProfilePress Membership plugin to be easy to use. The site does include extensive documentation, but I didn’t need it.

We like that it includes enough features to get a membership site started, and then, if you need more features, you can upgrade for more addons as you need them. The ProfilePress Membership plugin is an excellent choice for a membership site of any size.