WishList Member

Where I'm coming from

I ran a course on WishList Member, and I'll say up front: it was the more robust of the two WordPress membership plugins I used. Content protection by level was solid, it never surprised me, and once a multi-course setup was live it was the kind of thing you didn't touch because it worked. That's also why I understand what Caseproof bought in 2023. A plugin like this doesn't get switched off. It gets renewed.

WishList Member has been around since 2008, which in this category makes it a founding member. In May 2023 its parent company, WishList Products, was acquired by Caseproof, the company behind MemberPress. Co-founder Tracy Childers wrote the goodbye letter and stepped away; the team stayed. Since then the pricing page has been rebuilt on the same template as MemberPress and MemberMouse, down to the sentence in the fine print.

We checked wishlistmember.com and its knowledge base on November 2, 2026.

Pricing: same page, same sentence

The fine print: "Special introductory pricing, all annual renewals are at full price." Identical to MemberMouse and MemberPress. Budget on $299, $499, $699.

No transaction fees, no monthly fees, no trial, 14-day money-back guarantee. Unlimited members on every plan, which is better than MemberMouse's caps.

Payments

Stripe, PayPal and eWay checkout on Basic. WooCommerce as a payment integration on Pro, which opens WooCommerce's gateway list. Keap and Recurly on the Elite plan only. Our field says "built in, multiple processors."

Community: a forum you protect

WishList Member has no feed, groups, DMs or directory of its own, and the knowledge base is refreshingly plain about how community works here: "WishList Member can be used with most available WordPress forum options" because forums use the WordPress user database and so does WishList. You put a bbPress forum on a page, protect the page by level, and only that level sees the forum. Their example is a "Platinum Members Forum." That's the community model: protection, not a product.

No digest, no events (Zoom webinar integration on Pro is a sales tool, not a member calendar), no app.

Courses and gamification: CourseCure

CourseCure is WishList's LMS layer, and it's split across plans. Courses with modules, lessons and progress are on Basic. Quizzes, with triggers that fire on results, are unlimited on Pro. The Gamification add-ons, Points and Badges, are on Plus: points for commenting, logging in, joining a level, passing a quiz, and so on, redeemable for rewards you define; badges for first comment, completing a lesson, passing a quiz. The knowledge base's own example is "award points or badges to members when a quiz is passed," and members "could redeem points for a variety of different rewards."

That's a real points-and-badges system with unlocks, which puts WishList ahead of MemberMouse and MemberPress on gamification inside the Caseproof family. Our field says "points or badges" because there's no leaderboard or levels ladder in the docs; the "Points and Badges Integrations" article suggests it extends further than that, and we'd want to see it before rating it higher.

Email: broadcasts, built in

This is the surprise. WishList Member has an Email Broadcasts feature under Administration: send to one level, several levels, or a saved member search, with CAN-SPAM sender details required and unsubscribe handling built in. The knowledge base points you to the email provider integrations for scheduling and anything fancier, so it's broadcasts, not sequences. Our field says "broadcasts only," and it's the only plugin in the Caseproof family that can email its members at all without a third-party tool.

Native ESP integrations: Kit and Mailchimp plus three on Basic, ActiveCampaign and Drip on Pro.

Getting members in and out

In: Members > Import, with a sample CSV. Username, first name, last name and email are required; you set a default password or let it generate one, pick which levels the imports land in, and go. Documented, self-serve, on every plan.

Out: Members > Export, by level or everyone, with an "Export Full Data" option that includes everything WordPress and other plugins have stored on the member, and an option to include encrypted passwords so members can log straight into a new WishList site. Include inactive members or not. UTF-8 without BOM or the re-import fails; the knowledge base even tells you how to fix Excel's encoding. This is the most portable member export in the family and one of the best on the site.

Courses in: rebuild in CourseCure. No importer.

Where it fits

WishList Member is for someone who wants a dependable paywall with courses, points and badges, and a broadcast button, on WordPress, without MemberPress's prices or MemberMouse's funnel machinery. It's being kept rather than built, and the pricing page tells you so. If that's fine with you, it's a solid, unflashy choice, and your members can leave with you if you ever need them to.

Known limitation

No native community: forums come from bbPress or any WordPress forum plugin, protected by level. Introductory prices ($149.50 / $249.50 / $349.50) double at renewal ($299 / $499 / $699). Points and badges need Plus; unlimited quizzes, Team Accounts, WooCommerce and Zapier need Pro; Keap and Recurly need the unpriced Elite plan. Broadcasts only, no sequences. No digest, events or app.

Sources we checked

• Pricing (November 2, 2026): https://wishlistmember.com/pricing/
• CourseCure and Gamification add-ons overview: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/coursecure-general-overview/
• Email Broadcasts: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/email-broadcasts/
• Import Members: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/import-members/
• Export Members: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/export-members/
• Setting protection and access for a forum: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/forums/
• Team Accounts: https://wishlistmember.com/docs/team-accounts/
• Ownership: "WishList is Joining the Caseproof Family of Products," letter from Tracy Childers, May 2, 2023: https://wishlistmember.com/?p=15987 ; WP Tavern, May 4, 2023: https://wptavern.com/caseproof-acquires-wishlist-member