SureMembers – Membership & Content Restriction Plugin

SureMembers turns your WordPress site into a powerful membership platform.

Lock content, build unlimited membership levels, and decide exactly who has access to what. Whether you run a paid membership site, a course platform, or simply want to share content with a select group, SureMembers gives you everything you need to get started.

Set it up in minutes. No complicated configurations. No monthly per-member fees.

Everything runs natively on WordPress, under your brand, with your data.

Try the live demo (no signup required).

Why SureMembers?

Most membership tools either lock you into expensive monthly plans or require hours of configuration. SureMembers takes a different approach: a clean, focused content restriction solution that works the way you’d expect WordPress to work.

You stay in control of your content, your members, and your business. Pair it with your favorite payment platform like SureCart, and you have a complete membership system running on WordPress.

What You Can Build

Membership Sites: Create unlimited membership levels and decide what each level can access.

Paid Courses: Protect lessons and course content based on membership.

Private Content Libraries: Share guides, resources, and downloads with paying members only.

Subscription Communities: Restrict access to community pages, posts, and discussions.

Premium Newsletters: Gate articles and posts behind a membership.

Resource Hubs: Give different access levels to different customer tiers.

Free Features

Memberships & Content Protection

• Unlimited memberships: create as many access groups as you need

• Protect the entire website, any post type (posts, pages, and custom post types), taxonomy and term archives, or hand-picked posts, pages and terms

• Restrict by URL, including regular expression matching, for anything that is not a post

• Exclude specific content from a rule so you can protect broadly and open up exceptions

• Inline content gating with the [suremembers_restrict] shortcode

• Unauthorized access handling: redirect, show a custom message or teaser, or send visitors to a specific page

• Rule priority when several memberships protect the same content

• Restricted content stays restricted on the REST API, in search results, and inside SureDash spaces

• Hide navigation menu items from visitors who do not have access

• Restrict the WordPress admin dashboard and admin bar by user role

• Restrict the current page in one click from the front-end admin bar, and see restriction status right in the block editor

Members & Access Management

• Members screen with search, plus filters by user role and by membership

• Grant or revoke memberships, and set or change expiration dates, from the members list or the WordPress user profile screen

• Membership expiration dates with an automatic background sweep that revokes access on time

• Auto-grant a membership when a new user registers

• Duplicate an existing membership to reuse its rules

• Display members of specific memberships on any page with the [suremembers_list_members] shortcode

Analytics

• Analytics tab with new member counts, growth and trends, upcoming expirations, and recent activity

• Per-membership snapshot and a breakdown of where members came from (SureCart, SureForms, WooCommerce, LearnDash, TutorLMS, manual, and more)

• Access log of every grant and revoke event

AI & Automation

• Built on the WordPress Abilities API, with an optional MCP server so AI clients like Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot and Continue can work with your memberships

• Abilities to create, read, update, duplicate and delete memberships, manage protected content, grant and revoke access, and read member lists and analytics

• Read-only by default; editing and deleting are separate opt-in toggles

• WP-CLI support for listing and running abilities

Login & Branding

• Login page customizer: logo, colors, background image, transparent form, and more

• Custom login URL with a redirect for the default WordPress login page

• Redirection rules for login and logout

• Customizable restriction and login messages

Integrations

• SureCart: grant and revoke memberships automatically on purchase, refund or cancellation

• SureForms: grant memberships when a payment completes, revoke them on cancellation or full refund

• WooCommerce: grant access on order and subscription status changes, plus members-only coupons

• LearnDash: protect courses, groups and lessons

• TutorLMS: protect courses and lessons

• BuddyBoss: assign a membership when an account is activated, and use SureMembers as the access control provider

• SureDash: control access to portals, spaces and member search

• Jetpack compatibility

Everything Else

• Guided onboarding wizard and a Learn tab that walks you through setup

• Clean, intuitive admin dashboard

• Works with any WordPress theme

• Multisite friendly

• Lightweight and fast, no bloat

• Mobile-friendly responsive design

• Translation-ready, with German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese included

SureMembers Premium

Take your membership site further with SureMembers Premium:

• User Role Sync: Create custom user roles, assign them to memberships, and keep WordPress roles in sync automatically

• Block-Level Restrictions: Restrict individual blocks inside posts and pages, right from the block editor

• Drip Content: Release content over time, scheduled from the day a member joins

• Protected Downloads: Serve files from a private folder so only members can download them

• Login Restrictions: Limit concurrent login sessions per user role, block or allow new logins when the limit is reached, and let members log out of other devices

• Email Templates: Branded welcome, password reset and access expiration emails, with merge tags, optional WooCommerce styling, and test sends

• Import Users via CSV: Bulk import users, assign memberships and expiration dates, and send welcome emails

• Team (Corporate) Accounts: Sell team plans with per-team seat limits, shareable invite links, membership variations, manual or CSV member management, and front-end team pages. Members inherit the owner’s access automatically

Learn more about SureMembers Premium

Works Great With

SureMembers is part of a growing WordPress ecosystem:

• SureCart: Sell memberships, courses, and digital products. SureCart pairs perfectly with SureMembers to power your entire membership business.

• SureForms: Collect payments through a form and grant the matching membership automatically.

• SureDash: Build a community right inside WordPress with discussion spaces, courses, and member dashboards. Use SureMembers to control access to portals and spaces.

• Astra Theme: The most popular WordPress theme, fully compatible with SureMembers.

It also works with WooCommerce, LearnDash, TutorLMS and BuddyBoss out of the box.

Each plugin works independently, but together they give you a complete membership and community business, all on WordPress.

Perfect For

• Course creators selling online courses

• Coaches running paid coaching programs

• Bloggers offering premium content

• Membership sites with multiple tiers

• Communities that need private spaces

• Businesses sharing resources with customers

• Anyone who wants to control content access on WordPress

Links

• SureMembers Website

• Documentation

• Support