Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin

93 Quality Score

Active Installs

25/30

With 300,000 active installs, Members sits in the upper tier of role-editor plugins, though it is dwarfed by Loginizer's million-install reach and User Role Editor's 700,000 installs.

Update Freshness

25/25

The plugin was updated within days of this assessment and shows a perfect maintenance score, indicating an actively maintained codebase.

User Rating

15/15

A 98 out of 100 from 1,263 reviewers is exceptional and suggests very few real-world users have meaningful complaints.

Support Health

14/15

22 support threads with 21 resolved gives a 95.5 percent resolution rate, which is strong even though the small thread volume partly reflects an active user community that self-serves.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Compatibility is full marks, with testing against WordPress 7.0.1 and a PHP 7.4 floor that covers the vast majority of hosting environments.

Scores higher than 99% of indexed plugins

About

The best WordPress membership and user role editor plugin. User Roles & Capabilities editor helps you restrict content in just a few clicks.

Active Installs 300k+

Rating ★★★★½ 4.9/5

Last Updated 2026-08-25 5:07am GMT

Requires WordPress 6.0+

Tested Up To 7.1

Requires PHP 7.4+

Security History

2 known vulnerabilities, all patched

2 Medium

Most recent: July 10, 2026

View details ▸

What It Does

Members is a user role and capabilities editor that lets administrators create custom roles, tweak what each role can do, and restrict content access based on those roles. It adds a polished editor interface on top of WordPress's native roles and capabilities system, plus shortcodes and blocks for gating content from logged-in or logged-out visitors. It does not handle payments or subscription billing on its own.

Who It's For

This plugin is a strong fit for site owners, agencies, and developers who need fine-grained control over who can do what in WordPress without writing custom code. It works well for membership-style sites, multi-author publications, client projects with custom staff roles, and any site where the default Subscriber, Contributor, Author, Editor, and Administrator roles are not enough. Sites that do not yet use custom roles will still find value in its content restriction shortcodes.

Who Should Skip It

If you only need to change a handful of default role settings, the built-in WordPress role editor or a lighter plugin may be all you require. Anyone looking for a full paid membership platform with Stripe, PayPal, subscriptions, and tiered pricing should pair Members with a separate payments plugin or pick a dedicated solution like Paid Member Subscriptions instead.

The Bottom Line

Members earns a 93.55 overall score with top marks in maintenance and compatibility, and a near-perfect user rating, making it one of the best free role and capabilities editors available. It is not a paid membership system, so buyers who need subscriptions and payment processing should look at the alternatives. For anyone serious about WordPress permissions, it is an easy recommendation.

Related Plugins

Loginizer 89/100

Pick Loginizer when your primary concern is brute-force login protection and hardening the wp-login screen rather than role editing.

User Role Editor 87/100

Pick User Role Editor when you want a similar capabilities editor with a longer track record and a slightly larger install base than Members.

Paid Membership Subscriptions 86/100

Pick Paid Member Subscriptions when you need built-in recurring billing and paywalled tiers rather than just role-based content gating.

PublishPress Capabilities 84/100

Pick PublishPress Capabilities when you need deeper admin menu, widget, and post-type permission control alongside role editing.

Simple Membership 83/100

Pick Simple Membership when you want a more opinionated membership workflow out of the box with less manual role configuration.