16 WordPress Membership Themes to Spruce Up Your Community

Think of how many memberships you currently have. From gyms to Netflix, memberships are the modern way of paying for products and services. Heck, even Amazon lets customers sign up for recurring memberships to get products on a regular basis.

So, what if you’d like to make your own membership community? It’s essential to find the right WordPress membership theme for your situation.

That’s why we searched the web and put together this curated list of the best WordPress membership themes you can find.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

What to Look for in a WordPress Membership Theme

Let’s start by setting the scene here: you’re not necessarily looking for a WordPress theme that’s intentionally built for making a membership site. The reason for this is because you typically have to utilize a WordPress membership plugin in order to give your website the functionality it needs.

Therefore, we’ll cover themes that are actually made with some membership features. But overall, the goal is to find the themes that have awesome interfaces, provide beautiful user profiles, and integrate nicely with the plugins you’ll need to build and grow a membership website. If you come across a site with a WordPress membership theme that you like, find out what theme it uses with our theme detector tool.

As for what to look for in a WordPress membership theme, here are the essentials:

Speed

Your theme needs to be fast. There’s nothing that’ll turn your new members off than a slow loading website. People want to get on your site, interact with others, and avoid spending time just because of faulty technology. Not only that, but speedier websites are key for SEO.

For membership site managers this guide is a must-read: The Do’s and Don’ts for Hosting WordPress Membership Sites.

Security

Many membership sites have ecommerce tools and paid content. For instance, you may want to sell educational materials about gardening. It’s important to secure that content it isn’t pulled from your site and given away for free. In addition, you want to make sure that all customer payment information is kept safe.

Updates

Updates keep your security strong and add additional features. It’s not a good look if your community sees that the entire website got hacked or crashes because of a lack of updates.

Customer Support

Managing a community takes lots of time and effort. Even experienced developers need help along the way. That’s why we highly recommend premium themes with reputable customer support teams. You don’t want to be waiting around for a response when hundreds, or thousands, or millions of members are trying to access your site.

How Kinsta Can Help with Your Membership Sites

Kinsta provides managed hosting for membership sites. This way, it’s another area that you don’t have to worry about when running your membership site.

Not only does Kinsta provide an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee., but the servers are fast and secure, ensuring that all of your information and transactions are kept safe.

Finally, Kinsta offers automated backups and updates with all plans. This way, you don’t have to do any of the work, and you know that you’re not going to have severe problems in the future. If you’re considering moving to a new host with your membership site, you should take advantage of our ability to migrate membership sites without any problems.

16 Best WordPress Membership Themes

And now… it’s time for some themes!

1. Aardvark

Aardvark delivers the ultimate membership interface, combining the versatility of a blogging system with that of a clean membership and community configuration. You can include a shop, elearning page, and a full membership page without having to mess with any complicated coding or settings adjustments. Paid membership sites are possible, and the blog is great for delivering content that you may drip to members.

This is a magazine-style website, with tools to restrict certain content depending on the type of user logged into the site. You can also turn your site into a ratings and review hub, making it even more appealing for the customers who are members.

Pricing

$65 on ThemeForest, with the option to upgrade for extended customer support.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It’s a beautiful theme with dozens of pre-built demos for you to design with.
• The theme integrates with BuddyPress and many other membership plugins.
• The Paid Memberships Pro plugin comes along with the theme.
• Create an unlimited number of membership levels for your customers.
• Collect payments directly through the theme.
• The theme provides an amazing elearning interface as well, with options for quizzes and lessons.
• The page builder is great for constructing a membership website, all without the need to hire a developer.
• You can create an online store with the demos and the integration with WooCommerce.
• Some of the demos are made just for membership sites, like for dating or courses.

2. Ultra by Themify

Ultra is one of the most powerful themes from Themify. It provides an interface for rapidly designing your membership site on WordPress, with responsive elements, full control of your footer and header, and must-have coding and design items for beginners and developers.

Several premade skins come with the Ultra theme, so you can choose from different categories like restaurant, wedding, and fitness. For instance, you may want to develop a membership website for your gym. In that case, the Fitness skin would work well. There are also many builder addons for constructing your site with ease.

Overall, this is a high-quality theme with smart layout options that work rather well for online communities. In fact, you’ll most likely never use all of the features packed into Ultra, but it’s nice to know that you have them, just in case.

Pricing

Three plans are available for Ultra:

• Standard – $59.
• Master Club – $89.
• Lifetime Club – $249.

Each upgrade includes several extras like addons and plugins.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• The standard theme features are great for building your website, regardless of your experience level. These include a drag and drop builder, demo import, and a customization panel.
• The theme integrates perfectly with WooCommerce, making it simple when charging for memberships.
• Image filters are provided for a unique look.
• Animations and different colors are offered for adding some “pop” to your membership site and making people feel like the community is more fun.
• The included mega menu means that you can insert a large collection of links and pages in your menu.
• Different post layouts and 17 page styles come with Ultra
• Several bonus builder addons come with Ultra. Some of them include a counter, progress bar, and an audio module.
• Dozens of skins allow you to start a beautiful membership website with categories like spas, ecommerce, gaming, and more.

3. Divi

Divi is one of the most popular themes on the market, and for good reason. First of all, the Divi theme has a drag and drop builder that anyone can get used to. Not only that, but the subscription for Divi provides some of the best support you can ask for when buying a theme.

The websites built with Divi are fast, lightweight, and modern, which is exactly what you want if lots of members will be accessing your site. The Divi builder has seemingly endless design elements, such as counters, images, and more.

We also like the advanced code editing, WooCommerce integration, and user profile building for constructing the ideal infrastructure for your future members.

Pricing

Divi is sold as a membership itself. This means you receive all Elegant Themes plugins and themes, along with full support. Here are the plans:

• $89 per year – For yearly access.
• $249 – A one-time payment for lifetime access.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• The yearly and lifetime pricing makes for an affordable investment.
• Elegant Themes has incredible customer support for members.
• The memberships also provide access to plugins like Bloom and Monarch, along with hundreds of website design packs.
• Everything is built visually on Divi, with access to coding fields as well. This is great for all experience levels.
• All design items are responsive.
• Dozens of drag and drop modules come with Divi, including call to actions, sliders, and forms.
• Just about every customization tool you can think of is included, such as text shadows, animations, and background images.
• Marketing tools are provided for ecommerce, lead generation, split testing, and conversion insights.
• The email opt-in feature links to all popular email services like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign.

4. Astra

Astra is a wonderful option for making a WordPress membership site, seeing as how it features pre-built websites and customizations without any code. Astra is made to work with the best page builders and it has super-fast performance to ensure that members stick around to interact with each other.

Some of the customizations to take advantage of include colors, the blog area, and the header. The seamless integrations with WooCommerce and Elementor make sure that you’re able to design rapidly and sell memberships when needed.

With pre-built designs, quality support, and a large community to bounce ideas off of, the Astra theme does the trick for most membership sites.

Pricing

The theme is sold in three packages:

• Astra Pro – $49.
• Essential Bundle – $169.
• Growth Bundle – $249.

The Astra Pro package has the majority of the required features. Upgrades offer things like more starter sites and page builder addons.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It’s sold in affordable packages, with many other addons included to make it worthwhile.
• This theme integrates with versatile page builders like BeaverBuilder and Elementor.
• You can sell memberships directly through WooCommerce and integrate with membership plugins.
• The theme is known for being super fast.
• The pre-built demos serve as skins that come from a wide range of industries for gyms, therapists, and many more.
• It’s translation-ready to expand your community to other regions of the world.

5. OceanWP

The OceanWP WordPress theme has free and paid versions, with design items that work well for developers and hobbyists. It all starts with one of the many demos provided through OceanWP, with options for gyms, shoe stores, chocolate retailers, and more.

All of these demos can be installed within minutes, and you can even take advantage of several extensions that allow you to make your membership site as advanced or as simple as possible.

Some of the top reasons to consider OceanWP for your membership site is because it is fully responsive, fast, and ecommerce ready. We also like that it has translation tools for expanding your reach to other parts of the world.

As for the WooCommerce integration, this is one of our favorites for memberships, since you can customize everything from a floating cart bar to a native cart popup.

Pricing

OceanWP has three pricing plans:

• Personal – $59 for use on one website.
• Business – $79 for use on three websites.
• Agency – $129 for use on 25 websites.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• Building a membership site can get expensive, so the reasonable pricing for this theme is a great place to start.
• A collection of demos is provided for you to choose from categories like training, blogging, and travel.
• OceanWP integrates with WooCommerce for making a solid ecommerce website.
• The fast loading time ensures that your members don’t get frustrated waiting around for your pages to appear.
• The shopping cart and ecommerce functionality is highly customizable, making it easy to construct a unique membership selling experience.
• Several extensions are included with the theme, such as a full-screen extension, popup login, Instagram, and white label functionality.
• Just about every top page builder is useable with OceanWP. Some of these builders are BeaverBuilder, King Composer, and SiteOrigin.

6. PointFinder

PointFinder is only sold on ThemeForest. It’s actually designed to function out of the box as a directory and listing membership website. You can ask the user to pay per post or collect fees based on different levels of membership.

It works nicely with WooCommerce, with integrations for payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe. You also get support for language tools that expand your reach to other countries. The powerful and flexible theme is primarily for directories and review systems, but most of these types of websites focus on membership at some point.

Therefore, we recommend it to those companies and individuals looking to build a site like this.

Pricing

PointFinder sells on ThemeForest for $69. Extended support can be purchased.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• The PointFinder theme offers a membership and pay to post system that could potentially allow for you to create a membership program without the need for a third-party plugin.
• You can integrate with top payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal.
• You receive several free plugins such as Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, and Ultimate Addons.
• A membership system is built right into the theme, with great features like user membership status, multiple membership packages, and upgrades. Trial plans are also possible.
• The frontend upload system generates an environment where users can contribute to your content.
• The customizable field items are great for building profiles.
• The review system is there for large communities to review everything from restaurants to movie theaters.
• The theme offers WPML and localization for translations.
• You receive a social login system so that your members don’t have to create a new login profile for your website.

7. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a theme from ThemeIsle that delivers a one-page layout for a more minimalist membership website. The high-performance theme provides an good combination of speedy loading, slick design elements, and compatibility with other page builders.

All design is completed in the WordPress customizer, but you do have the option to connect your site with a page builder of your choice. In addition, the WooCommerce plugin works well with the Hestia Pro theme.

What’s more is that a collection of starter sites, or demos, are provided for categories like business, ecommerce, one-page, and minimal themes.

Pricing

Choose from the following pricing plans for Hestia Pro:

• Personal – $69 for one website.
• Business – $99 for three websites.
• Agency – $199 for unlimited websites.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It comes from the folks at ThemeIsle, a reputable development team with quality customer support and many online resources.
• You receive support for translations.
• The homepage, and just about every other part of your membership site, is fully customizable with the help of the WordPress customizer.
• Advanced blogging options are available for adjusting elements like layout width and gallery modules.
• Incorporate a slider and video header to introduce new members to your site.
• Feature a pricing table to tell users how much they can expect to pay for their membership.
• The theme has integrations with some of the most popular and useful page builders such as Elementor and BeaverBuilder.

8. Binder PRO

Binder PRO is a publishing theme with the potential for creating stunning articles and building a solid following through membership. The template introduces a sleek design for beginners and developers alike, presenting your articles in a grid-like format with a wide variety of other widgets for organizing your magazine the way you want.

Banners, comments, and social media buttons are all incorporated into the design, along with the latest post recommendations and author information.

As for features that help with membership sites, we like that you can choose from several demo formats, all of which primarily focus on making a beautiful blogging interface. Essentially, this theme is best for publishers who may eventually want to charge for membership.

Pricing

Three plans are offered for the Binder PRO theme:

• The Theme Package – $129.
• The Deluxe Package – $389.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• Dozens of page builder modules come with the Binder PRO theme, some of which include items for showing authors, blog posts, and call to actions.
• The frontend editor is helpful, and the Gutenberg support means that everyone can take advantage of the drag and drop builder.
• Multilingual features are included for connecting with users who speak other languages.
• The icon font integration ensures that you can add some visuals to your membership site.
• The theme is ready for mobile design.
• All third-party page builders work nicely with the Binder PRO theme.

9. Gwangi

Sold on ThemeForest, the Gwangi theme is meant for small and large membership sites. You can also create communities and social networks with the large feature collections and page builder support. Communities can range from Yelp-like directories to full social networks or dating sites.

Regardless of your aspirations, Gwangi provides member geolocation services and profile creation. Members can interact with each other and pay you subscription fees. You may also want to offer free features, with the intent to eventually sell people on paid features. Advertisements are also possible through Gwangi, and you can generate a complete e-learning community with shops, forums, and events.

Pricing

The main price for Gwangi is $59 on ThemeForest. Extra support is available for an extra charge.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• Integrate with powerful membership-based plugins such as BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce.
• You can translate your entire site so that people from all around the world can access your content.
• The theme is mobile-friendly for users to utilize your membership site on multiple devices.
• The layout options include options for social networks, dating sites, and directories.
• The AJAX global search rapidly finds community members, groups, and activities.
• Member swapping is available, similar to what you would find on Tinder.
• Create communities with forums and profiles.
• Make any type of membership site, including e-learning communities, shops, forums, events, and coaching websites.

10. CBKit

CBKit serves as a learning management system and a membership dashboard, offering up an easy to use interface for selling memberships to your own online school. The theme is a replacement for many LMS plugins, using integrations with WooCommerce and several payment processors.

This WordPress membership theme lets you customize everything from colors to the formatting of your courses. Running ads is a possibility, along with social network elements such as profiles, messaging, and public posting. We enjoy the drag and drop editor for those who don’t want to build a website with code.

You can also generate a completely unique design for your school and have your users enroll in classes for free or for a fee. Everything you would expect from a standard LMS is available in this membership theme, from course announcements to advanced quizzes. This means you don’t have to pay monthly fees for a third-party LMS.

Pricing

The theme only sells on ThemeForest, for $64.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It’s an affordable solution that would typically cost hundreds or thousands of dollars if you were to opt for a traditional LMS.
• The course-builder is ready to use right after your purchase the theme, with features for videos, course descriptions, payments, and more.
• Connect the theme to a bevy of payment processors, including Stripe and PayPal.
• Enjoy an unlimited number of members.
• Give out certificates for when users finish your classes.
• Course content is nicely organized for your members to go through the classes at their own pace.
• Several demos are included with the theme, most of which focus on some sort of learning system. Some are more for accredited schools, while others can be for individual tutors.
• Sell tickets to your member event, directly through the website.
• Write blog posts that can be blocked from non-members.
• Organize online webinars. These are essential for leading people to become members. It’s also nice that you don’t have to buy a third-party plugin for this functionality.

11. Buddy

Buddy is a multipurpose theme with tools for integrating and working nicely with the BuddyPress plugin. This means that you can create a social network with messaging, profile creation, and groups.

This is a lightweight theme that loads pages quickly and includes a beautiful responsive layout for members to interact with each other on mobile devices. The theme also integrates with bbPress, which is more for making forums, instead of social networks.

Regardless, this is a WordPress membership theme made for members-focused site-building. It’s a pricey solution, but most third-party plugins require recurring payments, while Buddy only needs a one-time payment.

Pricing

This is one of the more expensive themes on ThemeForest, but it’s mainly because it packs quite a few features into the purchase. The price is $199.

Why is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It has a complete social and forum interface, with a one-click installation so that you have a quality membership site right from the start.
• The theme is designed to work with bbPress and BuddyPress, both of which are the top free options for making social networks and forums.
• The translation-ready nature of the theme means that people from other countries can start taking your classes.
• It’s a lightweight theme that is sure to not upset the search engines and will provide higher conversions.
• You can make sites for magazines and portfolios, then integrate the membership functionality to collect money for your work.

12. Olympus

Olympus stands out as an excellent social networking theme with support for the BuddyPress WordPress plugin. You’re able to build your community with the help of the Youzer integration, which is a WordPress plugin for making membership sites and social communities.

Many demos are provided for you to play around with and you can generate a full Facebook-like experience with options like friendships, private messaging, and notifications. Groups and member directories are also possible, making the Olympus theme an essential solution for those interested in making a site with constant user interaction.

Pricing

At $59, the Olympus theme is a solid option As always, with the ThemeForest marketplace, additional customer support is available as an upgrade.

Why is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It combines nicely with Youzer and some other social networking plugins so that you can launch a membership program quickly. Some of the other plugins include bbPress and BuddyPress.
• The theme is WooCommerce compatible, meaning you can sell memberships.
• Olympus supports multiple languages.
• Link your theme to a page builder of your choice. One that is particularly helpful with this theme is WP Bakery.
• The blog features post emotions to expand upon the visualizations in your community.
• Badges are optional, making for a bit of gamification.
• The improved navigation shows members everything from profiles to account information.
• Eight post types are available. Some of them include slideshows, quotes, files, and videos.
• Some other awesome social features include comments, activity streams, groups, and forums.

13. Exhale

Not all of the best WordPress membership theme options are meant to provide long lists of features. In fact, many times it makes the most sense to minimize distractions and focus on the content and simple user experience. Exhale completes this task with a basic design and three blogging demos that stand out for cafes, agencies, and app sales.

So, if you’d like to manage a community around your app or you want to nurture a community of coffee lovers, the Exhale theme is an excellent place to start.

Pricing

Two reasonable pricing plans are offered for the Exhale theme:

• Exhale Pro – $49.99 per year for access to the Exhale theme and customer support.
• All-Access Bundle – $89.99 for access to the theme, addons, and customer support.

Why is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• Three demos are provided so that you never have to start your theme customization from scratch. These include an app sales page, cafe menu page, and an agency landing page.
• The demos all work well for featured content, with beautiful homepages and blog posts, all of which can be put behind a membership paywall.
• Several child themes are also provided, most of which focus on blogging.
• The theme is designed for a mobile interface, delivering an incredible interface for mobile devices and tablets.
• Adjusting objects like default colors and fonts is done with the click of a button.
• The Exhale theme is unmatched when it comes to speed and comfort.

14. Yumblog

Food blogs often have communities centered around sharing recipes, talking about new food shows, and locating the best restaurants in certain areas. Yumblog, as you may have assumed, is a food blogging theme with features for posting recipes, collecting email addresses, and formatting your blog posts without any coding knowledge.

It works wonders as a WordPress membership theme as well, seeing as how you can integrate with BuddyPress or bbPress for making more of a social or forum environment. It’s not the cheapest theme you’ll find online, but we know that the customer support is solid and the features improve on a regular basis.

Pricing

A purchase of one domain license costs $125.

Why is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• It’s a great starting point for food bloggers who also want a community.
• The design process is super easy with the help of the Beaver Builder drag-and-drop editor.
• The Cooked recipe plugin comes with the theme for free. It’s a plugin that generates a community with frontend submissions, recipe viewers, and more.
• The theme is responsive, modern, and useful for people who don’t know how to code.
• The customer support from UpThemes is top-notch.

15. REAL

REAL serves as a minimalist blogging theme that has the capabilities to extend into a membership platform. The features are kept to a minimum, and that’s exactly what some membership site owners are looking for.

We like this as a community theme because of its support for advertisements, WooCommerce, and membership plugins like bbPress and BuddyPress. Paid Memberships Pro also integrates well.

Pricing

The ThemeForest pricing is listed at $44. As always, extended customer support is available as an upgrade.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• This is a modern, fully responsive theme with support for a large collection of membership plugins.
• A page builder is available so that you don’t have to worry about coding.
• Unlimited colors and Google Fonts are provided for even more customization.
• The multi-language functionality lets you reach out to new potential members in other countries.
• The theme comes with several advertisement areas on all blog posts. This is often essential for making money with a membership site.
• The Paid Memberships Pro plugin integrates with the theme so that you can get paid for all of your community-building work.

16. LoveStory

A list of WordPress membership themes wouldn’t be complete without at least one dating option. LoveStory is the perfect fit if you plan on making a membership site for people seeking out love. It’s a beautiful design, with features for collecting membership fees, sending private messages, and allowing for Facebook logins. The virtual gifts are unique, and the built-in live-chat is sure to get your members talking.

What’s great about the LoveStory theme is that the profiles are clean and easy to control. Users have options for uploading photos, changing around their interests, and instantly connecting with people who have similar interests. It’s obviously not an easy space to get into, but there are plenty of niches that are still available for dating sites!

Pricing

The theme is listed at $49 on ThemeForest. Additional customer support can also be paid for.

Why Is This One of the Best WordPress Membership Theme Options?

• The LoveStory theme features a complete dating site right out of the box.
• Some of the profile features include a profile editor, membership settings, and favorite profiles.
• You receive support for chat messages, with live notifications, message caching, and filters.
• The WooCommerce integration makes collecting membership fees easy.
• Built-in widgets are included, such as profile searching and ad banners.
• The homepage slider is great for describing what your website is about.
• The theme comes with unlimited shortcodes and sliders.
• The virtual gifts are unique ways to keep your members engaged.

Which Best WordPress Membership Theme Is Right for You?

As mentioned before, pretty much any WordPress theme could be used for a membership site. All you have to do is install a membership plugin to make it work.

However, it’s not the best idea to grab a theme without researching. Therefore, we recommend taking the following steps:

1. Look through the above list of themes.
2. Select some of the themes that match your industry focus.
3. Decide whether you’d like membership tools built into the theme or if you don’t mind using a plugin.
4. Settle on a theme that gets as close to your desired design as possible.
5. Find a theme that works well with drag-and-drop page builders.

After all of that, you should be able to narrow down the list and find the perfect WordPress membership theme!

Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!