What is WooCommerce Memberships plugin?
WooCommerce Memberships is an official Woo extension that adds a membership system directly into WooCommerce. Its core function is content restriction: you define membership plans and then apply restriction rules to posts, pages, custom post types, and WooCommerce products so that only members can access them. Access can be sold through product purchases, included as a product perk, or assigned manually by administrators.
One of the more useful features is content dripping — the ability to schedule when members gain access to specific content after joining, measured in days, weeks, months, or years. This is practical for course-style memberships where content is released gradually rather than all at once. Memberships also filters restricted content out of RSS feeds and search results depending on restriction settings.
WooCommerce Memberships is most powerful when used alongside WooCommerce Subscriptions. Together they handle recurring billing plus access control, which is the common combination for subscription box sites, community memberships, and content businesses. The two plugins are sold and maintained separately but are designed to integrate cleanly.
Plain permalink format is not supported — switching to plain permalinks breaks content restriction. Caching and optimization plugins are also a common source of issues: cached pages can expose restricted content to non-members. WooCommerce Memberships is sold at $199/year for a single site. Teams that do not need WooCommerce-tied purchasing for access may find MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro more flexible options.
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Get WooCommerce Memberships Expert HelpKey Features
- Content restriction for posts, pages, and custom post types
- Product purchase restriction
- Content dripping with scheduled access
- Manual membership assignment by admins
- Member notes and communication tools
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Official Woo extension with deep WooCommerce integration
- Content dripping is useful for course-style or staged access models
- Pairs naturally with WooCommerce Subscriptions for recurring membership businesses
Cons
- Expensive at $199/year
- Requires WooCommerce even for simple content gating needs
Free vs Premium
WooCommerce Memberships is paid-only at $199/year for a single site. There is no free version. Some hosting providers include it in managed WooCommerce hosting bundles.
Common Problems & Fixes
Why is restricted content still visible to non-members?
The most common causes are plain permalink settings or caching. WooCommerce Memberships does not work with plain permalinks — go to Settings → Permalinks and switch to any other format. If permalinks are fine, check whether a caching or optimization plugin is serving cached versions of restricted pages to non-members. Temporarily disable caching and test. If that resolves it, configure your caching plugin to exclude the restricted content URLs, or at minimum exclude logged-out users from the cache.
Why can members not see content that should be available to them?
If members cannot access content their plan should allow, check the restriction rules on the membership plan for overlapping or conflicting rules. A content drip delay may also be in effect — check the plan settings to see if the content is scheduled to unlock after a waiting period. Also confirm that the member’s status is Active and not Pending, Paused, or Expired in WooCommerce → Memberships.
Why is content dripping not working as expected?
Dripping delays are calculated from the membership start date. If a member was imported or had their start date changed, the delay calculation may not match expectations. Also check whether the restriction rule type is set to “Member for X days” rather than a fixed date. Caching can also prevent dripped content from becoming visible immediately when the delay expires — a full cache purge at the transition point can help.
Customization & Developer Notes
How do I restrict only part of a page or post to members?
Use the [wcm_restrict] shortcode to wrap partial content. Everything inside the shortcode tags is hidden from non-members while the surrounding content remains public. You can also use [wcm_nonmember] to show content only to visitors who are not members. The shortcode accepts a plans parameter to restrict to specific membership plans rather than all plans.
Can I customize the restriction messages that non-members see?
Yes. Go to WooCommerce → Memberships → Settings and find the restriction messages section. You can customize the message shown when a page, post, or product is restricted, including separate messages for content that requires purchase versus content restricted to an admin-assigned membership. The messages support standard HTML for formatting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use WooCommerce Memberships without WooCommerce Subscriptions?
Yes. WooCommerce Memberships handles content restriction independently. You only need WooCommerce Subscriptions if you want automatic recurring billing for membership renewals. Without Subscriptions, memberships can be sold as one-time purchases, manually assigned, or set with a fixed expiry date.
Does WooCommerce Memberships work with custom post types from other plugins?
Usually yes. Custom post types from other plugins are typically detected automatically and available as restriction targets. If a custom post type does not appear in the restriction rules, it is likely not registered as a standard custom post type and may require a specific integration or custom code.
Can search engines index restricted content?
By default, no. Restricted content is not indexed by search engines when using hide or redirect restriction modes. The Hide Content Only mode with excerpts enabled does allow excerpt-level indexing, which can be useful for SEO on membership-gated content you want discoverable.
How do I sell a membership without tying it to a WooCommerce product purchase?
Administrators can manually assign memberships to users directly from WooCommerce → Memberships → Members → Add New. This is useful for imported members, beta users, comped memberships, or any case where a purchase should not be required.