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Which Plugins Should You Choose to Use With a Membership Plugin? -

Apr 4, 2022

When creating an online course using WordPress you'll find that many paths to the desired destination.

WordPress is the perfect tool for creating and selling online courses because it is adaptable and you control the platform. Yet there are so many plugins available which can get a little confusing.

Perhaps you are currently facing this dilemma for your own online course , and aren't sure of how to proceed. If you decide to self-host your WordPress site, you'll end up making the following choices for your courses:

  1. Make sure you only use it for your classes.
  2. Use a membership plugin only
  3. Use both

The answer is dependent on the particulars of your project, so unfortunately I cannot give you a hard-set guidelines on when you should make use of every. But let's look at some common scenarios.

1. Using only

If you're considering it, you actually aren't need a plugin for membership for protection of content. Our LMS will protect your content, without the use for a membership plugin by using the Access Settings.

For example, let's say you're trying to sell three classes. The content of the courses (lessons or quizzes.) can not be seen by those who are not yet enrolled. Only registered users to the course are able to view the course's content. If someone purchases one course, they won't have access to other courses. Only access is granted to the one.

If your class isn't free then you may be wondering how to add the option of paying for your course. Integrates with the most top shopping carts

  • Simple Digital Downloads
  • SamCart
  • ThriveCart (beta)

The WordPress shopping carts (1 and 2 above) integrate with many payment gateways. The carts include the following payment gateways , if you choose to not use a shopping cart

  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • 2Checkout

It is very easy to use one of these methods to accept payment. will protect your course contents without having to use a membership plugin. People who choose this approach appreciate the streamlined process for designing their courses because it eliminates having to learn another solution.

2. Utilizing a Membership Plugin (Only)

It's important to remember that there may be situations when using an LMS plugin isn't required.

If your project just requires protection of a few posts, pages or even assets that are within your WordPress site A membership plugin is what you really require. The use of a learning management software for this scenario is excessive.

An example is if your site offers a community forum as well as maybe some useful downloads for the members. In this scenario there is no need for plug-in like this because there isn't a need for course enrollments, quizzing, badges, certificates as well as points report.

3. Utilizing Both and a Membership Plugin

Although a membership-based plugin isn't essential however, there are advantages of using a membership plugin depending on the requirements you have.

In the case of instance, if you want to have additional metrics on the members of your organization, then a membership plugin will be an excellent value-added feature. Most membership platforms offer reports built-in to them. When used in conjunction with it, it will give you more information about your users.

Another scenario where you can use both is if you have an existing membership website and just want to add courses with a formal, organized fashion. Inserting makes it easy to add value to your membership site by creating courses for your members to take. You don't have to change how you manage your members either since the case is that you're still by using the membership plugin.

can be directly connected to the following membership solutions:

As a word of caution Beware of vendor lock-in!

Programs for learning can be different in demands and at times, these demands are changed. With you can start your learning program using one option above, and switch to another program as you need.

The thing I've learned from over a decade in the e-learning industry is that learning courses as well as online courses aren't universally applicable. The way we learn changes and with it the demands.

Whether you use or not whether you use or not strongly encourage you to avoid any product that promotes an e-commerce site that is a singular solution for protecting content. Also Be wary of any solution that is billed by the name of "all-in-one". It's rare to find this claim true and if it's the case, it means that you're locked in too. Don't take on this kind of risk. I've seen this cause people major headaches over the years.

Still confused? Check out this video!

In this webinar we discuss the most common scenarios where the use of a membership plugin in conjunction could make sense.