Wishlist Member vs. Paid Memberships Pro – Full Comparison

Looking for a full comparison of Wishlist Member and Paid Memberships Pro?

Don’t know which plugin will do a better job at managing your membership site properly?

In this post we give you a full comparison between the two plugins, including core important membership features and different integrations.

You can navigate through the different settings according to your needs to find what you are looking for faster:

Core Membership Features

Depending on the membership features you need, Wishlist Member offers more options than Paid Memberships Pro.

Both plugins support the following features, including:

• Unlimited membership levels
• Free and paid memberships
• Subscription length
• Redirection pages (login, registration etc.)
• Members export
• Members Management

The below features are available only in Wishlist Member:

• Creating bundles – You can use Wishlist Member’s sequential upgrade to create bundles, or you can use Wishlist Bundles, which is a 3rd-party plugin, to create more advanced and complex bundling options to maximize your revenues
• Allowing social login – You will need to use a 3rd-party plugin called WLM Social

Managing Member with Wishlist Member vs. Paid Memberships Pro

Having the ability to manage your members easily is highly important, and as you can see in the screenshots below, with both Wishlist Member and Paid Memberships Pro you get the same members’ information and you can also easily export your members’ list to a CSV file.

Wishlist Member:

The main difference is that with Wishlist Member you can manually add new members by clicking the Add New button from within the members’ list and assign them to new membership levels or change their membership level by selecting the member and choosing the right option from the “Select an Option” drop down.

Managing Member with Wishlist Member

Paid Memberships Pro:

With Paid Memberships Pro you can add new members and assign them with membership levels from the WordPress Users menu.

Managing Member with Paid Memberships Pro

Protection Settings

Both Wishlist Member (WLM) and Paid Memberships Pro (PMP) support the following protection settings:

• Total content protection – So the content will be seen only to logged-in members
• Teaser content display – So content above the “more” tag will be available for non-members also
• Content dripping – To drip your content with Wishlist Member you will need to use a plugin called Wishlist Content Scheduler (developed by the Wishlist team themselves)
• Secure your RSS feed
• Set pay-per-post feature for individual posts

Pay-per-view feature is available with Paid Memberships Pro only.

Creating Membership Levels with Wishlist Member vs. Paid Memberships Pro

Wishlist Member:

You can easily create new membership levels and manage existing ones from the Levels tab.

In this screen you can sen an expiration date, set the redirection pages (after login / after registration), limit access to certain content and more, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Creating Membership Levels with Wishlist Member

Paid Memberships Pro:

You can add new membership level and add existing ones from the Membership Levels tab:

Creating Membership Levels Paid Memberships Pro

And by clicking the Edit button in a specific membership level you can determine the billing information, including: initial payment, trial periods, expiration date and more:

Billing Details Paid Memberships Pro

With Wishlist Member the payment details can be set inside the payment gateway and not inside the integration settings, except for Stripe and PayPal Pro payment gateways, which the amount is set inside the integration settings, for example:

Wishlist Member Billing Details

Payment Models

A variety of payment models can help you provide better and more convenient payment options for your members, as well as increase your sales and revenues at the same time.

Both WLM and PMP support the following payment methods:

• Trials periods, upsells/ one-time offers – Available in Wishlist Member depending on the shopping cart you are using
• Discount coupons – Available in Wishlist Member using Wishlist Coupon 2.0 plugin

Shopping Carts Integration

Wishlist Member offers more integrations with different shopping carts services than Paid Memberships Pro.

Wishlist Member allows integration with some of the most popular shopping carts: Clickbank, Authorize.net, PayPal Standard and PayPal Pro, InfusionSoft, Stripe, SamCart, 1 Shopping Cart, 2 Checkout, eWay, JVZoo, Premium Web Cart and many more.

PMP allows integration with: PayPal Standard, InfusionSoft, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2CheckOut, and also with Braintree that Wishlist does not integrate with.

Another important feature you can achieve with Wishlist Member is allowing automatic registration using a 3rd-party plugin developed by our company HappyPlugins called Wishlist Auto Registration.

PMP does not have an automatic registration feature.

Autoresopnders Integration

Wishlist Member integrates with more autoresponder services than PMP.

Both WLM and PMP integrate with: GetResponse, Aweber, MailChimp and Constant Contact.

In addition, Wishlist also integrates with:  iContact, OntraPort, Mad Mimi, OntraPort, Inspire Email Marketer, Maropost, Autoresponder Plus and more

Affiliate Platforms Integration

When it comes to managing your affiliates, Wishlist Member offers integrations with the most popular affiliate platforms, including: iDevAffiliate, AffiliateWP and Affiliate Royale.

Paid Memberships Pro integrates with Post Affiliate Pro, AffiliateWP and WP Affiliate Platform.

PMP also developed an add-on called PMPro Affiliates that can be added manually and it can be used mainly if you have a small number of affiliates, as you will need to run your own reports and handle payments by yourself. The plugin simply generates affiliate links.

Get a full comparison of the most popular affiliate plugins for WordPress in this link

eCommerce Integration

Both WLM and PMP integrate with one of the most popular eCommerce plugins – WooCommerce.

Our company, HappyPlugins, has developed an enhanced and advanced plugin for integrating Wishlist Member with WooCommerce called  – Wishlist Member WooCommerce Plus.

Neither integrate with Easy Digital Downloads.

Get a full comparison of the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress in this link

Forums Integration

Wishlist integrates with SimplePress, Vanilla forums and also with bbPress using the Wishlist bbPress Protection plugin. You can read more about the forums that integrate with Wishlist in our Wishlist Member Tips Series – Tip #18: Which Forums Integrate with Wishlist Member? (you need to be logged-in to the site to read the tip).

Paid Memberships Pro integrates with SimplePress as well as with BuddyPress and bbPress.

Add-Ons / Extensions

Add-ons allow you to extend your membership site and add more features to it.

Both WLM and PMP offer different add-ons.

You can find the complete list of add-ons / extensions for Wishlist in one big repository and PMP’s add-ons in this link

Pricing

Wishlist Member is a paid membership plugin that is offered as a single license ($97) and unlimited licenses ($297), both include support and access to documentation and video tutorials.

You can also register to Wishlist’s closed community, Wishlist Insider, for $20/month and get access to premium members-only content, bonus materials (add-ons, mini workshops and more), forums etc.

Paid Memberships Pro offers a free version and a paid version. The main difference between the 2 versions is that in the paid one you also get access to premium content, videos and members-only forums.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that the best way to choose a membership plugin is to first make sure the plugin supports all the features and settings you need in order to build your membership site

Both Wishlist Member and Paid Memberships Pro offer an extensive number of features and integrations.

You can try the free version of PMP and Wishlist Member offers 30-day money back guarantee, so both plugins are worth trying.

Wishlist Member vs. Other Membership Plugins

• Wishlist Member vs. Digital Access Pass
• Wishlist Member vs. Restrict Content Pro
• Wishlist Member vs. MagicMembers
• Wishlist Member vs. MemberPress
• Wishlist Member vs. MemberMouse
• Wishlist Member vs. s2Member
• Wishlist Member vs. WP-Member

Useful Resources

• Popular Membership Plugins Comparison
• Wishlist Member Version 2.9 Review (Latest Version)
• Wishlist Member Official Site
• Paid Memberships Pro Official Site

You May Find These Posts Interesting:

Wishlist Member vs. MemberMouse – Full Comparison

Wishlist Member vs. s2Member – Full Comparison

Wishlist Member vs. Optimize Member – The Full Comparison

Wishlist Member Version 2.9 Review (Latest Version)

Do you know of a non-official Wishlist Member & WooCommerce extension?

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