How to Set Up a Membership Site with MemberPress

Quick Verdict

MemberPress is the WordPress membership plugin I keep coming back to, even when I resent it. It does recurring billing, content protection, and access rules without you touching a single line of code — but the UI feels like it was designed in 2014 and the add-ons nickel-and-dime you. If you’re already on WordPress and want to sell access to something this week, it’s the move. If you’re starting from zero and hate plugins, go look at a hosted platform instead.

ChatGPT **** (4/5) — best generalist, decent for drafting the boring legal-ish copy Claude ***** (4.5/5) — best for writing the sales page and emails that actually convert

Alright. Here’s the actual setup.

Step 1: Get the boring prerequisites out of the way

You need three things before MemberPress does anything useful: a WordPress site, a payment gateway, and SSL. That’s it. Don’t overthink it.

For hosting, avoid the $2/month shared plans. I moved a client off one of those in January because Stripe webhooks kept timing out — every failed webhook means someone paid you and didn’t get access. That’s a refund and an angry email. Get something with decent PHP memory, or at least go in and bump WP_MEMORY_LIMIT yourself.

Payment gateway: Stripe or PayPal. Stripe if you’re in a supported country, PayPal if you’re not. Set up SSL through your host or Let’s Encrypt — a checkout page without HTTPS is a conversion killer and also just embarrassing.

What goes wrong: people skip SSL, then wonder why Stripe won’t let them create a live webhook. That’s the whole reason. Fix the certificate first.

Step 2: Install MemberPress and actually read the welcome screen

Buy the license, download the zip, upload it under Plugins → Add New → Upload. Activate it. Paste your license key when it nags you.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: you can run MemberPress without a valid license for a while, but you lose updates, and an outdated membership plugin is basically a security hole with a nice dashboard. Just pay for the license. Mine renews every August and I grumble every time, but fine.

Don’t touch the settings yet. Finish the wizard first, then circle back.

Step 3: Run the setup wizard (and yes, it’s worth it)

MemberPress throws a wizard at you on first activation. Let it. It configures pages, sets up the login/account pages, and creates the default rules. If you skip it — which I did once, out of spite — you end up manually creating six pages and forgetting one, and then nobody can reset their password. Ask me how I know.

The wizard will ask for your payment gateway. Pick Stripe, paste your API keys (you get those from the Stripe dashboard under Developers → API keys). Test mode keys first. Always test mode first.

What goes wrong: people paste live keys during setup, run one test transaction, and now there’s a real $9.99 charge on a card they were using to test. Then they have to refund it. Don’t be that person.

Step 4: Create your first membership

Memberships → Add New. Give it a name ("Monthly Pro" — something a human would recognize), a price, and a billing type. Recurring monthly is the default and it’s fine.

Set the expiration behavior. This is where people get weird. If you set it to "expire and remove role," lapsed members lose access the second their card declines. If you set it to "expire but keep role," they linger forever with access they’re not paying for. I usually do a 3-day grace period, mostly because card declines are flaky and I got tired of support emails.

What goes wrong: you forget to set a thank-you page, and new members land on a blank confirmation screen wondering if they got scammed. Set the thank-you page in the membership’s options. Takes ten seconds.

Step 5: Set up content protection rules

Rules → Add New. Pick "All content" and your membership, or get granular and protect a specific category. This is the actual point of MemberPress: you check a rule and now that content is members-only.

The shortcut everyone uses: protect by category, not individual posts. Tag every post you want gated with a "members" category, write one rule, done. You’ll thank yourself in three months when you’ve published 40 posts and don’t want to hand-select each one.

What goes wrong: you protect a category and forget your homepage pulls from it, so logged-out visitors see an empty blog. Check your homepage after you set the rule. Seriously, log out and look at it.

Step 6: Test the whole thing like a paranoid person

Use a Stripe test card: 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future date, any CVC. Sign up. Get the confirmation email (or don’t — check spam, MemberPress emails get flagged constantly). Log out. Log back in. Try to view a protected post as a logged-out user. Try it as a member.

What goes wrong: the most common thing is email deliverability. Your signup emails go to spam because WordPress is sending mail from a shared server. Install an SMTP plugin and route through a real service, or half your members never get their welcome email and you get accused of running a scam.

Step 7: Hook up a real email service before you launch

Not optional. FluentCRM, MailPoet, whatever. MemberPress has integrations built in. When someone buys, tag them in your email tool automatically so you can send onboarding sequences without touching it again.

Slightly questionable hack: if you’re not ready to pay for an email service, you can use the MemberPress → Mailchimp integration on the free tier for your first few hundred subscribers. It works. It’s cramped. It’s fine for month one.

What goes wrong: you launch, get 30 signups, and realize you have no way to email them a receipt or a welcome sequence because you never connected anything. Fix it before launch, not after.

Step 8: Set up your account page and password reset

MemberPress creates an account page automatically. Check that the password reset flow works. Actually do it — request a reset, click the link, set a new password, log in. If that’s broken, every locked-out member emails you personally. Forever.

That’s it. Go get the gateway out of test mode and turn it on.