MemberPress

Blair Williams launched MemberPress in 2012 as a premium WordPress plugin for creating membership sites, subscription content, and online courses. Before MemberPress, building a gated content site on WordPress required stitching together multiple incompatible plugins. MemberPress handled everything: member registration, content restriction by subscription level, payment processing (Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net), course delivery, and drip content. Blair built it as a paid product from day one ($179/year for a single site), targeting bloggers, coaches, and course creators who wanted to monetize their WordPress site. The plugin grew through affiliate marketing, WordPress ecosystem word-of-mouth, and partnerships with hosting providers. It became the default membership solution recommended by top WordPress educators and influencers. MemberPress generates an estimated $100k+/month in license revenue from a user base of tens of thousands of membership sites. Blair kept the company bootstrapped and profitable for over a decade, growing it into the clear market leader for WordPress membership, ahead of multiple VC-backed competitors.