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Top 16 Content Protection Plugins for WordPress Websites
Content is what keeps the web alive. Day by day, hundreds of thousands of content pieces make their way into the web. In recent years, protecting the content of websites has become much more popular not only because it helps to weed out low-quality users but also because it helps to join together people who truly share the same ideas about a particular subject. The highly reputable media publisher Inc. has also taken the approach of protecting its content from visitors who haven’t signed into the service, making its online community slightly more exclusive. In many ways, it protects itself against plagiarism and spammers, too.
WordPress offers several types of content protection. We have membership-type plugins that help to build a bridge between registered user content and content for those who haven’t registered. We also have simple protection plugins that allow you to restrict content for visitors unless they complete an action. An example is liking your Facebook page or sharing your site on social media and such. Some plugins even offer the ability to lock content for a certain amount of time.
Let’s take a closer look at the collection of various content protection plugins below.
MemberPress
WooCommerce Memberships
Moreover, a very extensive “drip” module lets you schedule access to your premium content for certain members. Such a module provides creative opportunities in terms of product releases and product add-ons. You can even set up the plugin to offer premium (exclusive) products to members only. This then allows you to create some sort of a special club out of your online business.
More info / DownloadWP Courseware
With WP Courseware, you can easily transform your existing WordPress website into a full-blown online course platform with the ability to protect your course content. This plugin lets you create pages for online courses, quizzes, surveys, member pages, and much more. Appealing modules include features that allow you to generate a course completion certificate automatically for students who have finished their courses. It’s a truly flexible courseware platform that will change the way you teach your members forever.
More info / DownloadUltimate Learning Pro
As the name suggests, Ultimate Learning Pro is a content protection plugin for educational WordPress websites. It is a fantastic learning management system (LMS) that will get you going in close to no time. In short, it is an all-in-one solution for building an online learning program where students can join and educate themselves about different topics. Instructors and teachers can join, too, and share information with the knowledge-hungry users.
There are tons of features that Ultimate Learning Pro sports and will put your web platform right on top. From different payment services and course reviews to wishlists, pushover notifications, custom currencies and lesson drip content. Ultimate Learning Pro works seamlessly with other eCommerce and membership platforms, like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and Stripe to name a few. For a small fee, you can now create your own online learning system and take your project to new heights.
More info / DownloadFinal User
Final User is a simple to use tool that offers your site users to create front-end profiles. It is also a cool content protection WordPress plugin that guarantees your content is only accessible to registered users. The extension is also in tune with different payment gateways, like Paypal, Stripe and WooCommerce. For your users, you can set different types of memberships, like free account, one-time payment, recurring payment, free trial and even variations. Final User is versatile and adaptive to fit your business needs precisely.
Clean and practical dashboard, stunning profile page, pricing table and powerful admin settings are some of the features that Final User treats you to. Set coupons, user roles and even collect new users’ emails with MailChimp integration, the options are there, ready and set for you to take to your advantage.
More info / DownloadBS Input
With BS Input, you can protect your website’s content easily and effectively. It is a content protection WordPress plugin that allows your users to enter your members’ area by registering a new account and logging in using their preferred social account or email address. BS Input creates a neat pop-up form that you can fully customize and fine-tune to the level it matches your branding to a T. To use BS Input plugin, you do not need to have and experience in web development – no coding required.
BS Input sports two social button styles, six animations, a built-in translation system and works with any WordPress theme. It is also compatible with WooCommerce, BuddyPress and Font Awesome. If you would like to seamlessly integrate login and registration form pop-ups to your business page, eCommerce platform or blog, do it like a champ with BS Input.
More info / DownloadInstitute Management Pro
Institute Management Pro is – hence the name – a WordPress plugin for managing online courses, students, fees, registrations, staff and all the rest that comes to mind. As far as online courses go, you can add new, set their duration and fees. Moreover, on the inquiry level, Institute Management Pro allows you to receive inquiries from front-end submissions or add them directly from your admin panel. Of course, you can easily register new students, add admins and assign different tasks.
In the admin dashboard, you can see all the courses, progress, the number of active sessions, students and more. Institute Management Pro also comes with Institute Noticebar widget which you can add to your website and share with everyone important information about the program and other whatnot. What’s more, send notifications, search and filter records, offer different payment options and export stats. Feel free to try out the demo first and see the real power of Institute Management Pro.
More info / Downloads2Member
s2Member stands out with an incredibly extensive list of capabilities and features that you won’t find anywhere else. Whether you’re looking to protect individual posts and pages or even specific URLs of your site, s2Member can take care of it all for you with a few simple clicks. On top of that, you can protect certain parts of your content within a post or a page. s2Member is not just for protecting your content either. The whole platform offers a truly remarkable membership-site solution. Easy payment gateway integration and unlimited subscription levels mean that you are in control of how your community grows and which direction it takes.
More info / DownloadUltimateMember
PaidMembershipsPro
On this list, so far, PaidMembershipsPro is the most lightweight and perhaps the easiest to use membership/content protection platform. With PaidMembershipsPro, you can easily add extra features to your WordPress site by enabling several membership levels. You can be in full control of how each membership level sees your content and in what way. It comes with a built-in community forum feature as well. Notably, too, everything has been optimized for the best search engine performance.
More info / DownloadUnGrabber
If you would like to protect your website’s content, you can do it with UnGrabber easily. This content protection WordPress plugin is packed with all sorts of goodies, preventing others from stealing your works of art. This plugin will not protect just your texts, but your visual content, too. No more copying for thieves. Also, UnGrabber does not cause any inconvenience to the overall site performance and indexing. No one will even notice it is there, for as long as they do not try and use the right click.
Some more features of UnGrabber are Gutenberg compatibility, SEO-friendliness, suitability for RTL languages, support for all popular web browsers and WooCommerce-readiness. To top it all up, you also get six months worth of support at no additional charge. If you have tons of delicate stuff on your website, protect it now with UnGrabber.
More info / DownloadAppender
Appender is another cool content protection WordPress plugin with a unique feature. Everyone who tries to copy your content, Appender will add your copyrights to it. How cool does that sound? Of course, you can fully customize the text to whatever you prefer. Some of the customization options are editing site name, tagline, address, URL, date and time. You can do pretty much whatever you want with Appender.
You can also set whether you would like the plugin to display the copyrights before or after the copied text. The interface of the plugin is straightforward to use, perfect both for beginners and professionals. What’s more, Appender is entirely compatible with all the popular WordPress themes, page builders, Gutenberg and RTL languages. To make copying your content not feel as pleasant as they thought it would be, use Appender and let them think twice before doing it.
More info / DownloadWooCommerce Private Store
As the name suggests, if you would like to create a private store, use WooCommerce Private Store plugin. You can now fully password-protect your online shop, making it accessible only to those that you want. Of course, you can only privatize particular sections of your eCommerce website, no need to make it invisible in its entirety.
With WooCommerce Private Store, you can protect posts, products, categories, pages and even set customized parameters. Instead of letting everyone see what you try to push, you can take things to an entirely new degree with WooCommerce Private Store. Protect the content that not everyone should see, but only those who have your permission to do it. With this content protection WordPress plugin, you will have a breeze setting things up and privatize different sections of your web store.
More info / DownloadRestrict Content Pro
Simple Membership
Here we are moving into a territory of free content protection plugins that provide easy to use methods for keeping your content private when necessary. The Simple Membership plugin is a lightweight membership plugin that will work with your favorite WordPress themes out of the box, and provide you with cool features like media content protection, an ability to tease your visitors with content snippets to help them become full-on site members, to have all comments left on content protected posts to be protected as well, and a full-fledged membership platform that will let you have full access over the member levels of your site and how they interact with content.
More info / DownloadPassword Protected
In some situations, we don’t need to have a membership platform. All we really need is a way to make sure that our content stays private. Meaning, only a select few can gain access to it. With such a thought in mind, the best solution to use would be the Password Protected plugin. It is a simple WordPress plugin that will let you set up a site-wide password that will be required any time any of the sites pages are being accessed. Certainly a very raw content protection solution!
More info / Download
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Hi, great post. Can I ask one question? If things are hidden can the content be seen via the code. Let me explain, I’m a designer and I want a portfolio site however some work is sensitive. So if I have a private area I can give prospective clients a login, can anyone else see what’s hidden in code view? Hope you can help. Thanks
Dave,
Without password no one will be able to see content even when inspecting source code.
Hello, I’m not sure what kind of content protection I need and was hoping for some insight? I’m building a surface textile design site and need content protection for the exclusive rights part of my website, where members would need to be vetted to view my designs. I am using other Woo Commerce products on my site but Simple Membership is a lot cheaper. What would you recommend?
Jane,
My favorite plugin is Restrict Content Pro but it all comes down to your personal preferences and requirements.
Hi!
I’m creating a new video course in WP. It’ll consist of maybe 12 video classes. I want to allow access to public for learning about the course and seeing the video thumbnails. But, when clicked, will lead them to the ability to purchase an Access Key. Upon purchase, they’ll get a key and be able to come back in and watch the protected content.
What’s the best plugin for this idea?
LA
Hi LA,
Did you ever find a solution for you Video distribution? I am in a similar situation.
Edward
Hello. thanks for the article. anyway if you don’t mind please check our plugin too, it does protect the entire site with a password.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/nucuta-password-protect/
Prevent Direct Access is another great plugin to protect all your WordPress files. You can get the free version on WordPress: https://wordpress.org/plugins/prevent-direct-access/
Hi Aigars, Thanks for this very detailed and highly useful post. colorlib always provides descriptive and in-depth knowledge driven posts. that’s why I always landed here whenever there is a doubt over theme and plugin selection. But what is truly exciting is the response of colorlib team they show whenver visitors asks for the desired help. That’s why i use colorlib themes and Aigars it’s heartening to see you here answering the queries. If you don’t mind could you tell me please how can we disable the offline loading of a web page in browser if someone saves it for the purpose of copying content. I have seen that many bloggers implement this strategy and whenever a user tries to open the web page in browser, in offline mode, after saving it, the page does not load at all. I searched everywhere for hours as how it can be implemented but didn’t find any clue. could you please show some light over this method of protecting the content. Would be highly grateful to you….