A leaner alternative to MemberPress

MemberPress can be a good fit for creators, publishers, educators, and businesses that want to sell protected content, courses, downloads, or paywalled access from a WordPress website. Join It is a better fit when your main goal is managing an organization's members rather than monetizing website content. With Join It, you get member records, online sign-ups, recurring payments, renewal reminders, digital membership cards, event registration, member check-in, and integrations in a hosted platform your team can use without WordPress setup or plugin maintenance. Since 2016, more than 4,000 organizations have used Join It to manage over $100M in membership payments, and Capterra rates Join It 4.7 overall, including 4.9 for customer service.

MemberPress is built around turning a WordPress site into a membership business, with tools for access rules, content protection, online courses, communities, digital products, and checkout. Join It is built around operating a membership organization: managing member records, membership types, dues, renewals, events, digital cards, directories, check-ins, and reporting. If your membership is primarily a paid content site, MemberPress may make sense. If your membership is an association, club, nonprofit, chamber, alumni group, or community organization, Join It is likely the more natural fit.

A content membership and an organization membership are different problems. Content memberships usually need paywalls, course access, drip content, and digital product rules. Organization memberships usually need a clean member database, renewal workflows, dues collection, event registration, digital membership cards, member directories, and admin reporting. Join It is built for the second use case: helping organizations manage their members and member operations without making WordPress the center of the system.

With a WordPress membership plugin, your membership system depends on your website setup: hosting, theme, plugins, payment configuration, security updates, and ongoing maintenance. That can be powerful if you want deep control inside WordPress, but it can also add technical overhead. Join It removes that layer by giving you a hosted membership platform that your team can access directly. This makes it easier to launch, easier to support, and less dependent on whoever manages your website.

You do not need to rebuild your website to use Join It. Your WordPress site can remain your public-facing home for content, marketing, pages, and announcements, while Join It powers the membership workflows behind the scenes. Members can join, renew, update their information, access their portal, register for events, and manage payments through Join It. This gives you the flexibility to keep WordPress for your website while using a purpose-built system for membership management.

Many organizations need more than a login-protected website. They need ways to prove membership, check members into events or facilities, track participation, promote member connections, and keep renewals moving. Join It supports those workflows with Apple Wallet and Google Wallet digital membership cards, QR-code check-in, native event registration, searchable member directories, automated renewal reminders, and member timelines. This makes Join It a better fit for organizations that manage real-world member relationships, not just digital content access.

When comparing Join It and MemberPress, look beyond the headline subscription price. With MemberPress, your total cost may include the plugin license, WordPress hosting, paid add-ons, theme or developer work, and ongoing maintenance. MemberPress' Launch plan also includes a transaction fee on successful payments, with standard payment processor fees still applying. Join It bundles membership management into one hosted subscription — with no separate membership plugin license, no hosting requirement for the membership system, no setup fees, and a free trial. The right choice depends on whether you want a WordPress membership site or a hosted membership management platform.

A good migration starts by separating your membership operations from your WordPress content rules. Bring over the member data your team needs to manage: member names, emails, membership types, statuses, renewal dates, custom fields, and payment-related history where available. From there, Join It can help you structure membership types, import records, configure renewals, and set up your member portal. This gives your organization a cleaner membership management workflow while allowing your WordPress site to remain focused on content and marketing.