The best membership plugin for nonprofits and clubs
The best membership plugin for nonprofits comes down to one fork in the road most comparisons skip. Do you need to lock content or a course behind a paywall? Or do you just need one accurate list of who your members are, with dues billed automatically? A paywall means you want a plugin built around access control. Dues tied to a club or cause, alongside donations and a newsletter? Nonprofit Manager is the simpler, often cheaper choice. Here’s how the main options stack up.
How we priced this: every price below is from the vendor’s own pricing page, checked in July 2026. We used the renewal price where a plan discounts the first year, since that’s the honest long-term cost.
Quick answer
- Best free all-in-one for nonprofits and clubs: Nonprofit Manager
- Best for paywalling content or courses: MemberPress
- Best budget content-gating plugin: Paid Memberships Pro
- Best for member profiles and community: Ultimate Member
The question that actually decides this
Plugins like MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, and the old Restrict Content Pro exist to bill a member automatically and lock or unlock content the moment payment status changes. That’s the right tool if membership means “pay to get in and see this.”
Nonprofit Manager works differently, on purpose, even with dues auto-billing built in. The free version tracks your members and their membership level as a status, and takes donations through PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe. Nonprofit Manager Pro adds real auto-billing: set a price per level, and members join and pay through a public join form, with Stripe charging them automatically on that schedule going forward. A configurable number of failed payments moves a member to a fallback level automatically, so a lapsed card doesn’t quietly keep someone active forever. What Pro still doesn’t do, on purpose, is lock pages or courses behind a level. For most small nonprofits and clubs, that’s closer to how membership really works: dues get billed, but the point of belonging isn’t a paywall snapping shut on a blog post. Your model genuinely depends on gating content itself, not just collecting dues? Say so honestly, and look at MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro instead.
The options
Nonprofit Manager, best free all-in-one
Free. Tracks members and membership levels, and keeps that list next to your donors, newsletter subscribers, and events in one system. Pro adds custom member fields, segmentation, and auto-billed dues per level through a public join form, with automatic downgrade if a payment fails. Best for small nonprofits and clubs whose members are also donors and readers, not a paid access tier. See the full feature set.
MemberPress, best for paywalled content
The most complete option for charging automatic recurring fees to unlock content, courses, or a private community area. Starts at $399 a year, and the entry Launch plan adds a 4.9% transaction fee on top (that fee drops to 0% on the $699 Growth plan). That’s on top of your payment processor’s own fee. A small nonprofit collecting $10,000 a year in dues on the Launch plan pays roughly $490 in MemberPress transaction fees alone, before Stripe or PayPal takes its cut. Best if paywalling is genuinely your business model. Nonprofit Manager compared to MemberPress.
Paid Memberships Pro, solid budget content-gating plugin
A free open-source core with unlimited sites, plus a $499 a year Standard license for premium add-ons, no per-transaction fee on top. Good if you want content-gating without MemberPress’s price tag, and you’re comfortable with WordPress enough to configure add-ons yourself. Nonprofit Manager compared to Paid Memberships Pro.
Ultimate Member, best for profiles and community
Genuinely free at its center, built around front-end member profiles, registration, and directories rather than paywalling. Paid tiers start at $276 a year and add 21 bundled extensions like groups and social activity, climbing to $348 a year for Pro with Stripe and Zapier integration. Best if what you want is a members-only community space, not dues tracking or donations. Nonprofit Manager compared to Ultimate Member.
Restrict Content Pro, now folded into Kadence
Worth knowing before you go looking: Restrict Content Pro isn’t sold on its own anymore. Liquid Web folded it into Kadence Memberships in 2026. You now buy into a broader page-builder bundle at $299 a year to get the same content-gating feature, whether you need the rest of that bundle or not. Here’s what changed and what it costs now.
Setting up dues auto-billing
With Nonprofit Manager Pro, set this up once: pick a membership level, give it a price and a billing frequency (monthly, quarterly, or yearly), and turn it on. A visitor picks that level on the public join form, pays through Stripe, and their subscription starts automatically, no manual invoicing. Failed payments count toward a threshold you set, three attempts by default. Once that’s reached, the member moves to a fallback level you choose, rather than staying active on a card that stopped working. It’s a flat yearly price for the whole plugin, not a percentage of what you collect in dues.
Switching from a paywall plugin when you don’t need the paywall
A lot of small nonprofits end up on MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro simply because that’s what came up first in a search, not because they’re gating any content. If that’s you, moving is less disruptive than it sounds. Export your member list as a CSV (name, email, join date, level), which every major membership plugin supports. Recreate your levels in Nonprofit Manager’s Membership Settings, matching names and prices where they existed. Import the CSV through the built-in import wizard, which maps columns and skips duplicates on email. If you were charging dues, turn on Pro’s dues auto-billing for the matching levels first. Cancel checkout on the old plugin only after, so there’s no gap where a renewing member can’t pay.
The one thing you can’t migrate automatically is payment history tied to a specific gateway account. Stripe subscriptions created under MemberPress’s Stripe connection don’t transfer to a different plugin’s webhook without re-creating them. Existing subscribers stay on the old billing until their current period ends, and new joins start clean on Nonprofit Manager. Most nonprofits run both for one billing cycle and then retire the old plugin once everyone has rolled over.
Our pick for the best membership plugin for nonprofits
Members who are really your donors and your readers? Nonprofit Manager is the best value. Free membership tracking is tied to the same system as your donations and newsletter, and Pro adds auto-billed dues at a flat price if you need them. Model genuinely depends on paywalling content or a course? Be honest about that and choose MemberPress. See everything the free plugin does on the all-in-one plugin for small nonprofits.
Compare by category
See how Nonprofit Manager stacks up in other areas:
- Best WordPress plugin for donations
- Best WordPress plugin for nonprofits
- Best newsletter plugin for nonprofits
- Best WordPress plugin for churches
- Best plugin for clubs and associations
Frequently asked questions
Does Nonprofit Manager charge membership dues automatically?
The free version doesn’t. Nonprofit Manager Pro does: set a price per level, and a member who joins through the public join form is billed automatically on that schedule going forward, no manual invoicing.
Can Nonprofit Manager lock pages behind a membership level?
No. It’s built to track members and combine that with donations, newsletters, and events, not to paywall content. Need to lock pages or courses behind a paid tier? MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro are built for that.
Is there a free membership plugin for nonprofits?
Yes. Nonprofit Manager’s core membership tracking is free with no per-contact fee. Ultimate Member and Paid Memberships Pro also have genuinely usable free cores if you need content-gating instead.
What happens if a member’s dues payment fails?
You set the threshold, three failed attempts by default. Once it’s reached, the member automatically moves to a fallback level you choose, and their dues subscription is marked lapsed rather than staying silently active. If Stripe cancels the subscription outright, the downgrade happens immediately regardless of the attempt count.
Does Nonprofit Manager Pro cost more the more dues I collect?
No. Pro is a flat yearly price no matter how many members you have or how much you collect in dues. MemberPress’s Launch plan, by contrast, adds a 4.9% transaction fee on top of its base price.
Can I still just track members without charging dues at all?
Yes. Dues billing is opt-in per level. Leave a level’s price blank and it stays a free status label, exactly like the free version’s membership tracking.
Prices are from each vendor’s official pages as of July 2026 and can change.