Membership
Membership for a community, not a content locker.
Charge for a place rather than a file. Members subscribe to a plan, get into the spaces that plan opens, and pick up perks that lift what they can do. The community they are paying to join is the same free BuddyNext underneath, so you are adding a paywall to something that already works rather than buying one that comes with an empty room.
If what you want to gate is blog posts, custom post types or downloads rather than community access, this is the wrong tool. Protecting WordPress content is a different job, and it is the one MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro are built for. BuddyNext does not compete with them: it can take the membership grant from either, so they keep charging for the content while BuddyNext runs the community that comes with it. Courses in particular are Learnomy’s job in the same family: Learnomy charges for what people learn, BuddyNext charges for where they belong.
What people actually pay for
Access to a place, not a locked page.
Content gating answers "can this person read this?" A community plan answers "does this person belong in here, and what can they do once they are?" Those are different questions, and they need different software.
- A price and a schedule
- One-time or recurring, monthly or yearly, with an optional free trial. You set it once and the same definition drives the pricing page, the access checks and the reports.
- Perks, not just a gate
- A plan can lift limits rather than only unlock areas: how many spaces a member can create, how many posts they can pin, how large a group message can be.
- Free and paid side by side
- Run a free plan next to one or more paid plans so members can upgrade themselves when they hit a limit, instead of writing to you about it.
- Gated spaces
- Point a plan at the parts of the community you want to charge for. Members who subscribe get in, and the check runs everywhere the space appears.
What members see
Two surfaces, both built for you.
You do not assemble the member-facing side by hand. BuddyNext creates both pages on activation, and recreates the pricing page if it is ever deleted.
/membership-plans/- A normal, editable WordPress page listing every active plan with its price, description and billing interval. Because it is a real page you can add a hero, an FAQ or anything else with the editor you already use. Rename the slug from Settings, Pages and URLs.
/settings/membership/- The member's own billing area, sitting alongside their notification settings rather than in a separate portal.
[buddynext_membership_pricing]- The pricing table as a shortcode, if you would rather put it on a landing page of your own.
Taking the money
Four ways to get paid, and none of them mandatory on day one.
- Stripe and PayPal
- Connect one or both. Checkout submits a standard form, so the buy flow still works for a member whose browser is blocking JavaScript.
- Offline and points
- Take a bank transfer and mark it paid, or let members spend community points on access. Both are first-class gateways rather than workarounds.
- No gateway required to start
- You can create plans and grant access by hand with nothing connected, which is genuinely useful while you are still deciding what to charge.
- Coupons and manual control
- Discount codes, plus the ability to extend or revoke a member's access yourself when a real person needs a real answer.
Already running a membership stack? BuddyNext can take the grant from Paid Memberships Pro, WooCommerce or Learnomy instead of running its own billing, so the system you already trust stays in charge of the money and BuddyNext handles what that access opens inside the community.
Straight answers
Which of ours you actually want.
We sell more than one thing that takes money, so here is the boundary in one place rather than spread across four product pages.
- Selling courses
- Learnomy. A Learnomy plan sells access to a bundle of courses, with its own pricing page, subscriptions and gateways. If your product is the teaching, start there.
- Selling community access
- BuddyNext Pro, which is this page. Plans open spaces and lift member limits. If your product is the room and the people in it, start here.
- Gating posts and downloads
- Neither. A dedicated membership plugin does that job better, and BuddyNext can sit alongside it and take the grant.
- Both courses and community
- Both, running together. Course completions and issued certificates appear in the community feed, and Learnomy notifications reach the same notification center, without a second email for the same event.
Free and Pro
The community is free. Charging for it is Pro.
Said early so nobody discovers it late. Feed, spaces, member profiles, messaging and moderation are in the free core and stay there. Membership plans, gated spaces and the gateways are Pro, from $149 a year, or $399 once.
The honest way to try this is to install the free core first and see whether the community works at all before you put a price on it. A paywall on a room nobody visits is a slower way to learn the same lesson. The free versus Pro breakdown lists what sits on each side.
Questions
What people ask before charging.
Is there a free version of the membership features?
No, and it is better to say so here than after you install. The community itself is free and stays free: feed, spaces, members, messaging and moderation. Membership plans, gated spaces and the payment gateways are part of Pro, which starts at $149 a year, or $399 once if you would rather not renew.
Can I run a free plan and paid plans at the same time?
Yes, and it is the setup most communities should start with. The free plan is marked as the member's current plan on the pricing page, and paid plans sit next to it with their own subscribe buttons, so upgrading is something a member does rather than something they ask you for.
Does it handle recurring billing and trials?
Yes. A plan can be a one-time pass or a recurring monthly or yearly subscription, and either can carry a free trial. Active subscriptions are listed in the admin so you can see who is on what.
Do I need Stripe, or can I take payment another way?
Stripe and PayPal are both supported, and there are offline and points gateways as well. You can also create plans with no gateway connected at all and grant access manually, which is a reasonable way to run a small paid community before you commit to a processor.
I already use Paid Memberships Pro or WooCommerce. Do I have to replace it?
No. BuddyNext can take the grant from an existing membership stack instead of running its own, so Paid Memberships Pro, WooCommerce or Learnomy can stay in charge of billing while BuddyNext handles what that access unlocks inside the community. Keeping the billing you already trust is usually the right call.
Can I sell courses with this?
Not with this. Course memberships are Learnomy's job in the same family, and a Learnomy plan sells access to a bundle of courses the way a BuddyNext plan sells access to spaces. If you want both, they run together: course completions and certificates appear in the community feed.
Where you are now
Pick the sentence that sounds like you.
The right next step is different depending on what you are running today, so here are four, rather than one button for everybody.
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I have not started yet
Then the fastest way to judge this is to use it. The sandbox spins up a real community you can post in, and you can throw it away afterwards.
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I pay for Circle, Mighty Networks or Skool
The bill grows with your membership and the members sit on their servers. Moving is the part people assume is impossible, so it is worth reading what it actually involves before you renew.
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I already run BuddyPress or BuddyBoss
Your members keep their WordPress logins, so nobody re-registers. The free BuddyNext Importer brings the rest across: members, profile fields, groups, activity, forums, media and private messages.
Migrating from BuddyPress Migrating from BuddyBoss What the importer moves
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I am building this for someone else
A full REST API ships in the free core, so a custom front end or an integration is a first-class path rather than a retrofit. The plugin source is public, so you can read it before you commit a client to it.
Build the community first.
Start on the free core, get people talking, and add plans when there is something worth paying to be part of.
Keep reading
- Online community platform
What a community platform has to do, and what changes once you host it yourself.
- WordPress social network plugin
What a social network plugin has to include before it can replace a stack of add-ons.
- How to create a social network
The build itself: the steps involved and what it actually costs to run.
- Community website builder
Building the site around the community, including the parts that are not the plugin.
- Membership site on WordPress
The two kinds of membership site, and which software each one actually needs.