A unique combination of power and flexibility at a great value

I have compared the features of most of the main membership plugins on the market, I have tested those that could be tested, and I have chosen s2member because it has some unique advantages:
– I have some very specific requirements for my website, like the need to integrate with Amazon S3 to play protected videos or download protected files, to drip content, to include pay per post and teasers, to integrate seamlessly with a forum like bbpress, and to integrate with a list provider like Aweber or Mailchimp or to handle affiliates (through an optional add-on). Most of the other plugins can do some of this, but s2member was the only one that supported all the major features I needed, efficiently and gracefully.
– It has the best documentation I’ve seen for a membership plugin. Apart from the excellent help/documentation within the plugin itself which makes it super easy to get started, it offers a knowledge base, dozens of videos, FAQs, forums, and even documented source code for developers (even for the pro, paid for version!). It’s simply the most extensive documentation I’ve seen and it makes it really easy to hit the ground running.
– It’s the only major membership plugin which makes its source code available and fully documented. This means endless extensibility and complete peace of mind. If your business relies on it, you will never be left high and dry if things go wrong with the developers (not that we wish them anything bad, but you never know!).
– It’s the only major membership plugin which offers a free version of the plugin which not only allows you to fully test if the plugin is right for you and meets your needs, but is probably enough for a majority of simple uses. Instead of a full money back warranty, you get a free, unlimited trial with a complete feature set. I love that philosophy and I applaud it.
– It’s the only major membership plugin which offers a paid version with lifetime updates/upgrades (for a single one-off payment). Most of the others (if not all) ask for an annual renewal fee for updates/support, sometimes very substantial and rarely advertised upfront.
– Even better, that one-off payment is only a fraction of what most of the others ask for the first year, even if you get the developers license.
– Because of its open source roots, it is supported by a wide community of users and developers.
– It offers a lot of standard features (even in the free version), but also many ways to extend them and customise them.

Now is it perfect? No, but neither is any plugin.

There are a few areas which could be improved, like for example supporting Stripe as a payment method (hopefully it’s on its way), or supporting Amazon SES to streamline the registration process and handle directly some simple email broadcasts.

But overall, the combination of power, flexibility and value offered by s2member (free and pro version) is simply unique. Yes it can still grow and extend its feature set, but if it does what you need (and the great thing about s2member is that you can test that without having to pay for it), then you can’t go wrong with it.

It’s solidly build, very well designed, its interface feels familiar yet is very powerful.

Finally I love the generosity of the developers who have decided to make such a gem available for free. Quite a stark contrast with some plugins which are either suddenly not supported anymore (what do you do if that happens and you have built your business around such a plugin?) or hold you in hostage with yearly fees once your website is built around their product and you are more or less a captive user.

All this made me want to pay for the Pro version to support them, even if I didn’t really need the pro features right now and could happily just use the very powerful free version until my website grows and requires the upgrade. It’s that good!