Namaste! LMS can be used with any membership plugin. Courses, modules, and lessons are just custom post types so any plugin which allows protecting custom post types will do the work. Here we have created a quick and easy guide about selling membership access Namaste! LMS content by using the plugin Paid Membership Subscriptions. It’s a free and very easy to use plugin.
But first:
Why Use a Membership Plugin?
You don’t need to. Namaste! LMS already allows you to charge for courses even in it’s free core. With the Pro version you can add things like delayed access, discount codes, and so on. You can also sell access to courses through WooCommerce using our free WooCommerce bridge. So you do not need to use a membership plugin to make money with paid course.
There are two cases when going the membership route makes sense:
- You are already using membership subscription plans on your site. It may (or may not) make sense to include the LMS content in some of your membership plans.
- You want to charge your users at recurring basis rather than per-course. This is not too common in the LMS world but is an absolutely valid approach.
Because of the many existing membership plugins we decided not to build such a redundant functionality in Namaste! LMS. So you can just use some of the existing plugins with the LMS.
Using The Free Plugin Paid Membership Subscriptions
This plugin is really easy and good and deserves more popularity. The reason we are choosing it for this guide is that their free version is perfectly compatible with Namaste! LMS and you can use it as is. It’s always a good idea to have a look at what they offer as a Pro version however.
So, here’s how to use it with Namaste! LMS step by step:
- Install and activate the plugin (you don’t say!)
- Create one or more subscription plans:
Go to edit a course, lesson, or module and restrict the access to it for users subscribed for your membership plan:
That’s it. You can of course have multiple plans attached to multiple courses, and so on. You can explore the documentation of the memberhsip plugin on the official WordPress repository page to learn about all the configurations. But it will work well even with these default settings.
