Wishlist Member Review: WordPress Membership Plugin Deal

What Is Wishlist Member?

Wishlist Member is one of the longest-running membership plugins for WordPress, with nearly a decade of development behind it. It's trusted by over 101,000 membership sites, which speaks volumes about its reliability and staying power in a space where plugins come and go constantly.

The plugin landed on AppSumo as a lifetime deal starting at $49 for up to 50 sites. To put that in perspective, the regular pricing runs $147 per year for a single site or $197 per year for three sites. Grabbing the LTD version means you're paying a one-time fee instead of recurring annual costs — a no-brainer if you're serious about building membership sites on WordPress.

Dashboard and Member Management

The Wishlist Member dashboard gives you a bird's-eye view of everything happening on your membership site. You'll see total users, active members, canceled members, and expired members all at a glance. The active member count is arguably the most important metric since it ties directly to your projected revenue.

There are also sections for members needing approval and unconfirmed registrations. You can configure the plugin to require administrator approval before someone gains access, and you can enforce email confirmation so members verify their email address before their account goes live. These are smart safeguards that help you maintain quality control over who gets in.

Setting Up Membership Levels

Creating membership levels is straightforward. Each level lets you configure access expiration — ongoing, fixed-term, or ending on a specific date. You can also set up level transitions, so when someone upgrades from a basic tier to a premium tier, they're automatically removed from the lower level and added to the higher one.

One particularly clever feature is the "inherit level status" option. If you offer bonus content through a separate membership level, you can tie that bonus access to the member's main subscription. Cancel the main membership, and the bonus access goes away too. Leave it unchecked, and they keep their bonus material indefinitely — useful for certain business models where you want to reward early adopters.

The registration settings are equally flexible. You can configure access for new members, existing members, or both. There's even a "grant continued access" toggle that lets canceled members still view your content after their subscription ends. Think of it as a goodwill gesture — they paid for it, so they can still browse, even if they no longer get support or new content.

Payment Integrations and Product Setup

Wishlist Member supports a solid range of payment providers including PayPal, Stripe, ThriveCart, and SamCart. The one notable absence is WooCommerce — it's on the roadmap but not yet available. If your sales funnel relies on WooCommerce or CartFlows, that's worth knowing before you buy.

Setting up products is where things get slightly tedious. Products are tied to individual payment providers rather than existing at the system level. So if you accept both PayPal and Stripe, you'll need to create the same product inside each provider's configuration. It would be cleaner if products were universal and you simply toggled which payment gateways to support, similar to how ThriveCart handles it.

That said, the product configuration itself is solid. You can set up subscription payments with custom billing cycles, trial periods, max failed payment attempts, and even request shipping addresses. The cancellation handling is thoughtful too — you can choose whether a canceled PayPal subscription cuts access immediately or lets the member ride out their paid period.

Content Protection and Drip Scheduling

Protecting content is dead simple. Open any post or page, look for the Wishlist Member panel, toggle protection on, and choose which membership levels get access. For non-members trying to view protected content, you can redirect them to a custom page, display a message, or even send them off-site entirely.

The content control features are where things get really interesting. The content scheduler lets you drip out material over time — so Day 1 members see Module 1, and Module 2 unlocks after a set number of days. The content archiver does the opposite: it pulls content away after a certain period, which prevents people from gaming the system by subscribing for one month, canceling, then coming back months later to binge everything.

There's also a content manager that handles moving content between categories and can even repost content to make your membership site look like it's constantly publishing fresh material. If you've got 365 posts queued up, they'll cycle through daily, giving new members a sense of an active, regularly updated site.

Custom Registration Forms and Login Security

Wishlist Member includes a surprisingly capable form builder for registration. Beyond the default fields, you can add text boxes, dropdowns, radio buttons, and checkboxes. WordPress profile fields like nickname are available too, along with Wishlist Member-specific address fields for collecting company names, cities, and other details.

The form styling defaults to your theme's native form styles, which is the smart choice for most setups. If you're using a modern theme like Astra, your registration forms will look polished without extra CSS work. Legacy styling options are still available if you need them.

On the security side, the login limit feature is worth highlighting. You can restrict how many unique IP addresses a single account can use per day, which helps prevent password sharing. A setting of three IPs per day covers home, work, and mobile without being overly restrictive. You'll get notified if someone exceeds the limit, and the error message they see is fully customizable. You can also disable the WordPress admin bar for logged-in members, which gives your site a cleaner, more professional feel.

Email Notifications and Integrations

Email notifications in Wishlist Member are thorough. You get templates for new member registration, incomplete registrations, membership cancellations, and even membership reactivations. Both the member and the site administrator can receive notifications, so you're always in the loop.

Each email template supports merge codes for personalizing messages with the member's first name, email address, or membership level. It's a small touch that makes automated emails feel less robotic.

Beyond payment providers, Wishlist Member integrates with a wide range of email marketing platforms including MailChimp, AWeber, ConvertKit, Drip, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse. Other integrations cover webinar platforms like EasyWebinar and GoToWebinar, plus the recently added LearnDash integration for those running online courses. The team has a lengthy roadmap that includes BuddyBoss and Tutor LMS, though the timeline on those is uncertain.

The Verdict: Is Wishlist Member Worth It?

Wishlist Member earns a strong 9.2 out of 10. For WordPress users building membership sites, this AppSumo deal is genuinely hard to pass up. The plugin has been around for nearly a decade, it's battle-tested on over 100,000 sites, and the lifetime pricing undercuts the regular annual subscription by a massive margin.

The two main drawbacks are the slightly clunky product-to-payment-provider setup and the lack of WooCommerce support. If your business depends heavily on WooCommerce-based funnels, you might want to look at ThriveCart as a companion tool or wait for the WooCommerce integration to land.

For comparison, Restricted Content Pro — which is another excellent membership plugin — runs about $500 for unlimited sites. Wishlist Member's LTD at $49 for up to 50 sites is a fraction of that cost. If you're even considering a membership site in the future, locking in this deal now is a smart move.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.