MemberPress renamed its pricing tiers in the past year — the old Basic/Plus/Pro names you’ll still see in a lot of older reviews are gone, replaced by Launch, Growth, and Scale. The bigger change is underneath the new names: the entry-level plan now carries a per-transaction fee that didn’t exist before. Here’s what each tier actually includes, what the fee structure means for your bottom line, and who it fits.
At a Glance
| Plan | First-Year Price | Renews At | Transaction Fee | Sites Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | $199.50/year | $399/year | 4.9% per payment | 1 |
| Growth | $349.50/year | $699/year | None | 1 |
| Scale | $499.50/year | $999/year | None | 1 |
Rating: 4.8/5 from 365 reviews on Capterra. Best for: creators and small businesses building a dedicated membership, course, or community site who want payments, content protection, and course delivery bundled into one plugin rather than stitched together from several.
Short Verdict
MemberPress is a capable, actively developed membership and LMS plugin, and the feature list at every tier is genuinely strong. The catch is pricing: the first-year number on the checkout page is a 50%-off introductory discount that doesn’t repeat, so budget for roughly double at renewal. The Launch plan compounds that by adding a 4.9% fee on every successful payment your members make — on a site doing meaningful subscription revenue, that fee alone can cost more per year than simply starting on Growth, which has none. Read the tier breakdown below before you pick a plan, because the cheapest-looking option isn’t necessarily the cheapest one.
What It Is
MemberPress is a premium WordPress plugin for restricting content, selling memberships and courses, and managing a paying community from inside WordPress. It handles course and lesson delivery (with a drag-and-drop curriculum builder), content protection by membership level, payment processing, member communication, coupons, and — on higher tiers — community features, an affiliate program, and developer tools. Unlike WPForms or Yoast, there’s no free version distributed through WordPress.org; every tier requires a paid license, and the 14-day money-back guarantee is the only way to try it without committing.
What Each Tier Includes
Launch ($199.50 first year, 1 site, 4.9% transaction fee) covers the core product: the ReadyLaunch guided site setup, unlimited members and courses, unlimited lessons, content protection, coupons, automated reminder emails, and Stripe and Mailchimp integration. Stripe is the only payment processor at this tier.
Growth ($349.50 first year, 1 site, no transaction fee) adds the features most membership sites actually ask for: PayPal, Square, and manual/offline payment logging, content dripping (releasing material on a schedule), the ClubSuite community toolkit, the CoachKit coaching package, unlimited quizzes and certificates, and deeper email marketing integrations — ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Drip, and MailPoet, on top of Mailchimp.
Scale ($499.50 first year, 1 site, no transaction fee) adds Authorize.net as a payment option, Zapier integration, a developer API, an LMS gradebook, priority support, the Corporate Accounts, Gifting, and Order Bumps add-ons, and a bundled copy of MemberPress’s own Easy Affiliate platform, which is sold separately for $499/year.
Pricing Details Worth Knowing
Every tier’s advertised price is a 50%-off first-year discount off the standard $399/$699/$999 pricing; the discount does not carry over to renewal, so plan on paying the full listed price from year two onward. Each plan includes one site activation; extra site licenses cost $69/year each, up to 15 extras (16 sites total) on any tier. The Launch-only 4.9% transaction fee applies to successful member payments processed through MemberPress — on a site collecting $2,000/month in membership revenue, that’s roughly $1,176/year in fees alone, which is more than the $300/year price difference between Launch and Growth’s no-fee pricing. Upgrading from Launch removes the fee going forward but doesn’t refund fees already charged.
Pros
- Combines membership gating, course delivery, and community features in one plugin instead of three separate ones
- Growth and Scale tiers have no transaction fee, and Scale bundles a $499/year affiliate platform at no extra cost
- Clear feature ladder tied to real use cases — payment flexibility, content dripping, and community features map to Growth; developer tools and affiliates map to Scale
- 14-day money-back guarantee lowers the risk of trying it
Cons
- Launch’s 4.9% transaction fee is easy to underestimate until you run the math on actual subscription revenue
- Every tier’s checkout price is a first-year-only discount; renewal roughly doubles the cost
- No free or trial-forever tier — only a 14-day refund window to evaluate it
- Content dripping and offline/PayPal/Square payments — common requests — require jumping straight to Growth
Who It’s a Good Fit For
Course creators and community builders who want membership, course delivery, and payments in a single plugin, and who are comfortable budgeting for the renewal price rather than the discounted first-year price. Growth is the realistic starting point for anyone planning to charge real subscription revenue, since it avoids the transaction fee entirely for $150 more in year one.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
Anyone who wants to try membership gating without a recurring plugin license should look at Paid Memberships Pro’s free core version first. Store owners already running WooCommerce and only needing to restrict products or content to members, rather than build a standalone course platform, are usually better served by the WooCommerce Memberships extension.
Bottom Line
MemberPress is a strong, feature-complete membership and LMS plugin, but the Launch tier’s transaction fee makes it the wrong default choice for anything beyond a hobby project — run your expected monthly revenue through the 4.9% fee before assuming the cheapest plan is actually the cheapest option, and budget for the full renewal price rather than the first-year discount.
Sources
- MemberPress — Every MemberPress Pricing Question Answered Here (official)
- Membership Geeks — MemberPress Review, updated for 2026
- CartMango — MemberPress Pricing in 2026
- Capterra — MemberPress vs. Paid Memberships Pro ratings comparison
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