WooCommerce is an e-commerce game-changer for those looking for a membership website builder tool, but what is the difference between WooCommerce Memberships and Subscriptions?
When researching WooCommerce, it might take a while to realize that they are products, not terms – WooCommerce Memberships and Subscriptions.
Let’s define how WooCommerce differentiates between the two products!
What Is The Difference Between WooCommerce Memberships And Subscriptions?
WooCommerce defines subscribers as individuals who receive a product or service, and a member is anyone who belongs to a community associated with your website. This definition extends to their products.
Usually, clients using Membership will provide access to exclusive content and benefits offered upfront for a specific amount of time. WooCommerce’s Memberships can also be sold with additional subscriptions to create tier-level products.
WooCommerce Subscriptions (or brand name of Woo Subscriptions) offer recurring access to products and services only if users pay their scheduled payment.
In the micro-environment of WooCommerce’s products, Woo Subscriptions offer more when it comes to showing free trials, upgrades/downgrades, and additional perks.
Additional features WooCommerces allows website owners to utilize with Memberships and Woo Subscriptions products include:
- Restricting product viewing and purchasing to members only
- Block or gate content to members only
- Offering better rates for shipping
- Allow members special discounts
- Importing and exporting specific files
- Access to members-only area and information
- And membership notes, which allows users to track information
One disadvantage of using WooCommerce’s Woo Subscriptions tool is that the associated membership is affected when it is paused, canceled, or expires, with no option to adjust separately.
That said, you can manage all your Woo Subscriptions and WooCommerce Memberships activities together in one place.
To achieve this, you must use a plugin like Smart Manager that will likely lay out your members and subscribers in an easy-to-review spreadsheet.
With a plugin like this, you can change Woo Subscriptions statuses individually or in bulk actions such as:
- Change the status of the subscription from active to expired and vice versa
- Cancel subscriptions for specific periods for bulk and individual subscribers
- Export all subscriptions to a CSV document
- Extend free-trials for selected users
- Reduce sign-up costs
- Extend payment due dates
- Add fixed shipping costs.
And with WooCommerce Memberships, you can also make individual and bulk changes such as:
- Changing membership plans
- Upgrading memberships
- Move members to new membership levels
- Use filters to get data and apply for benefits
- Offer perks
- Cancel memberships
- And sort out expired memberships
Now that we’ve gone into “What is the difference between WooCommerce Memberships and Subscriptions?” let’s focus on the member’s side of the product range.
What Is WooCommerce Membership?
According to WooCommerce, WooCommerce Membership is an extension of their product range that allows community website owners to restrict content so only certain members can access information on specific areas of your site.
Memberships are valid for an unlimited time and can be restrained to a set time. Also, it allows the website owner to schedule access to content for the members at a given time, or what is also known as content dripping.
Read next: Your Essential Weebly Membership Tutorial
