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A Paid Memberships Pro alternative that runs the site for you.
Paid Memberships Pro is a free, open-source WordPress plugin with paid licenses for add-ons and support. You host and maintain the site. PaywallProject builds, hosts, and runs your WordPress news site, with the paywall built in and no revenue share.
Prices are taken from Paid Memberships Pro’s public pricing page and may change. Payment processing fees (such as Stripe’s) apply on both platforms. “Not listed” means the feature isn’t shown on that company’s pricing page. Last updated November 2026.
Which one fits?
Choose Paid Memberships Pro if:
- You want open-source software that you host and control yourself.
- You have a developer to set up add-ons and keep the site maintained.
- You would rather pay a yearly license than a monthly plan. Standard is $499 a year for one site.
Choose PaywallProject if:
- You want a paywall, newsletter, and hosting from $299 a month, with no revenue share.
- You would rather hand off the tech entirely and have us run the site.
- You want public notices, obituaries, or an e-edition built in.
Questions publishers ask
Which costs less, Paid Memberships Pro or PaywallProject?
Paid Memberships Pro costs less up front. The core plugin is free. Standard is $499 a year for one site, and you pay for hosting and upkeep on top. Max is $999 a year and adds managed hosting on a dedicated server. PaywallProject’s Community plan is $299 a month with no revenue share, and it includes hosting and a team that runs your site. Payment processing fees, such as Stripe’s, apply on both.
Does Paid Memberships Pro work for a news site?
Yes, it can. It locks posts, pages, and categories by membership level, and add-ons cover things like limiting how many posts a visitor can read for free. It’s built for every kind of membership site, from courses to communities, so you put the news features together yourself. PaywallProject is built for local news. AdsGlue, FlipPress, NoticePress, and ObitPress are included from Community up. LocalCalendar, ReadAloud, and FastPass come with Daily and Regional.
Who owns my subscriber data?
You do, on both. Paid Memberships Pro stores its data in your own WordPress database. With PaywallProject, payments go straight to your own Stripe account, your subscribers live in your WordPress site, and you can export them at any time.
Can I move from Paid Memberships Pro to PaywallProject?
Yes. Our team handles the move for you. We bring your members over and create their subscriptions in Stripe going forward, so renewals keep running. At the same time, we cancel the old subscriptions that Paid Memberships Pro runs, so nobody is charged twice. Members who pay through PayPal or another gateway instead of Stripe will add a card when we move them. Paid Memberships Pro runs on WordPress, so your stories stay in WordPress too.
Moving your publication?
We handle the move: stories, subscribers and Stripe. Talk to a real person first.