The Difference Between WooCommerce’s Memberships and Subscriptions
Running an ecommerce membership site comes with many small details to get right. One of the biggest details we see often is whether to refer to your customers as members or subscribers. Which term should you use, and why?
Memberships typically give a person their own account page and allow them to interact as a user on the website. Memberships can create engagement and build community.
When thinking of a subscriber, think of a revenue agreement. It’s more of a transactional, financial concept than a membership. A subscriber will choose how to pay, and how often to pay, for access to your website or your website’s services.
Clear messaging is crucial, so let’s dive into the difference and explain why we think WooCommerce has made their member/subscriber distinction.
The WooCommerce Member vs. Subscriber Model
When researching membership plugin options, you’ve likely noticed that WooCommerce seems to have its own rules in place when referring to members and subscribers. If you want to set up a subscription service using WooCommerce, do you need to use their membership service, too? How are they combined?
Generally, WooCommerce defines a subscriber as someone who receives a service or product, while a member is simply anyone who belongs to the community aspect of your site.
WooCommerce Memberships are either sold as separate products in your WooCommerce store or tied automatically to a product or service you offer. For example, if a customer purchases a WordPress security plugin using your WooCommerce store, it could come with a membership that provides access to support and gated tutorials.
Here are a few additional features of the WooCommerce membership model:
- Restrict product viewing and purchasing to members only
- Gate or drip content to members only
- Offer better shipping options to members
- Provide member discounts on products
- Import or Export a members list into a CSV or Excel file
- Members have a Member Area to locate important information.
- “Membership Notes” allow you to track information about one’s membership for future use
So, what’s a WooCommerce Subscription?
While you could sell a WooCommerce membership on its own, it’s very tightly integrated with WooCommerce Subscriptions. Adding on a subscription lets you sell recurring memberships. If you want to charge for monthly access to membership, you need to tie a WooCommerce subscription to your offering.
When you add a subscription to a membership, you turn on the ability to sell recurring memberships (monthly or yearly), provide free trials, delay content until after trials, downgrade/upgrade memberships, prorate memberships, and allow members to pause their own subscriptions.
However, one downside is that if the subscription is paused, canceled, or expired, the membership will always follow suit. Members aren’t able to make any changes to the status of a membership, either. Members can only edit a subscription plan, not a membership.
Best of both worlds with Restrict Content Pro
While WooCommerce offers flexibility in its approach, it also seems confusing to keep these two terms separate. We’re fans of calling everyone who can access your site a member. There’s a feeling of community invoked in membership and in using the phrase membership fee rather than subscription or subscription fee.
Restrict Content Pro offers all of the above perks of WooCommerce’s memberships and subscriptions. Our plugin allows you to offer both free and paid memberships or memberships that use a one-time-fee model, instead of WooCommerce’s recurring subscription model.
Plus, free trials, tiers, member portals, gated content, and drip content all come with the full Pro version of the plugin. At $99, the price point can’t be beaten.
The best part about determining the benefits of membership is that it is up to you. With Restrict Content Pro, you can customize membership features specific to your audience. Experience Restrict Content Pro in our demo, and explore the 34 add-on features that come with adding this premium membership plugin to your site.