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Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin

By Blair Williams

User Management & Authentication / User Registration & Login

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin Review - In-Depth Analysis

Members is a powerful WordPress membership and user role editor plugin. It allows you to manage user roles and capabilities easily, restricting content access with just a few clicks.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.76/10

User Rating

4.9/5 (based on 1280+ reviews)

Active Installations

300,000+

Update Frequency

Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Members is a roles and capabilities based WordPress membership plugin. It gives your users the ultimate member experience by providing powerful tools to add roles and capabilities and assign them to your users.

Members allows you to set permissions to restrict content on your site by providing a simple user interface for WordPress' powerful roles and capabilities system, which has traditionally only been available to developers who know how to code this by hand.

With features like role editing, multiple user roles, explicit capability denial, and content permissions, you can easily manage who has access to your site's content. The plugin supports shortcodes and widgets for enhanced functionality.

Members integrates seamlessly with MemberPress for creating paid memberships and includes all add-ons free of charge, enhancing its capabilities further. It also supports WooCommerce integration, allowing for precise control over user roles in your e-commerce setup.

Comparing to Alternatives

Members competes in a crowded field of role and permission management plugins. It stands out for its simplicity and reliability, though some rivals offer deeper granularity for niche use cases like WooCommerce category restrictions.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Intuitive interface that suits users of all technical levels
Reliable core functionality for role and capability management
Strong reputation built on nearly 1,300 mostly positive reviews
Custom registration form builder adds practical flexibility
Actively maintained with a long track record

Weaknesses

Lacks granular content restriction options like hiding WooCommerce categories by role
Development pace has slowed, with recent updates focused on minor fixes rather than new features

User Sentiment Analysis

With a 4.9/5 average from 1,275 ratings, sentiment is overwhelmingly positive—93.6% are 5-star reviews and only 2.4% fall into the 1-2 star range. The tone across recent reviews is consistently appreciative of the plugin's simplicity and dependability.

Positive highlights

"Best for managing user permissions. Period. It just work!" — chanjuping
"We have used Members and MemberPress for quite awhile on multiple sites. They are easy to use and fulfill all of our needs" — John
"Awesome and easy to use plugin with a lot of functionalities!" — ovcharoff
"I particularly love the ability to generate your own registration form." — gatonero
"Works great for user management on the website for 30+ users" — escort007

Common complaints

Feature set feels limited for more advanced needs, such as hiding WooCommerce categories or menu items by user role
Advanced permission scenarios often require an additional plugin to fill the gaps
Update frequency and depth of new features have declined over time

Weaknesses

Two medium-severity vulnerabilities have been recorded, including an unauthenticated information disclosure issue fixed as recently as mid-2026
Users needing fine-grained content restriction may hit walls with both free and paid tiers

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Site owners with straightforward role and permission needs—managing who can access the dashboard, edit content, or view menu items—will find Members simple, dependable, and easy to set up without a learning curve.

Not ideal for

Those needing deep, granular content restriction (like hiding specific WooCommerce categories per role) or highly customized permission logic may find the plugin's scope too limited. Site owners should also ensure they're running the latest version given the plugin's history of medium-severity vulnerabilities.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers solid core functionality: creating and editing roles, managing capabilities, content restriction basics, and a custom registration form builder—enough for most standard membership and permission setups.

Pro version (179.50 - 499.50 USD / year)

Premium add-ons typically extend capabilities with more advanced content restriction options, additional integrations, and priority support, though the core experience remains centered on the free plugin for many users.

Final Verdict

Members earns its strong reputation through simplicity and consistency, reflected in a 4.9-star average across over 1,275 reviews. Most users praise its ease of use for everyday role and permission management, though a small but vocal minority points to real limitations around granular content restriction and slowing feature development.

Given its documented security history—two medium-severity vulnerabilities patched within the past two years—users should prioritize keeping the plugin updated. For basic to moderate role management needs, Members remains a solid, low-friction choice; those requiring deeper WooCommerce or menu-level restrictions should evaluate alternatives like PublishPress Permissions or Groups before committing.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin plugin.

Memberships

User Roles

Capabilities

Screenshots

FAQ

We weren’t satisfied with the current user, role, and permissions plugins available. Yes, some of them are good, but nothing fit what we had in mind perfectly. Some offered few features. Some worked completely outside of the WordPress APIs. Others lacked the GPL license.

So, we just built something we actually enjoyed using.