LearnPress – Paid Membership Pro Integration: A Complete Guide to Building Paid Online Courses

LearnPress – Paid Membership Pro Integration

If you’re running an online course platform and want to monetize your content, Paid Memberships Pro (PMP) is one of the best membership plugins available for WordPress. Pairing it with LearnPress, a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) plugin, allows you to create a seamless platform where users can access your courses based on membership levels and subscriptions.

In this article, we’ll walk you through how to integrate LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro (PMP) to create a streamlined system for managing and selling your online courses while maintaining membership-only access.

What is LearnPress?

LearnPress is a popular WordPress plugin for creating and selling online courses. It provides an intuitive and flexible platform to build courses, quizzes, and lessons. LearnPress integrates well with a wide range of third-party tools and plugins, making it one of the most customizable LMS solutions for WordPress.

With LearnPress, you can:

• Create and sell online courses.
• Offer quizzes, assignments, and grade tracking.
• Provide students with certifications upon course completion.
• Enable instructor and student interactions with comments and forums.
• Set up flexible pricing structures, including free or paid courses.

What is Paid Memberships Pro (PMP)?

Paid Memberships Pro (PMP) is a premium WordPress plugin designed to provide advanced membership management features. With PMP, you can restrict content access, create membership plans, and manage subscriptions. It’s particularly useful for businesses offering content behind a paywall, such as exclusive articles, videos, or online courses.

Paid Memberships Pro allows you to:

• Create multiple membership levels (e.g., basic, premium, VIP).
• Restrict access to specific content based on membership levels.
• Offer recurring subscription options (monthly, yearly).
• Integrate with various payment gateways.
• Provide a seamless experience for your members by managing everything from one central dashboard.

Why Integrate LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro?

When you integrate LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro, you gain more control over who can access your courses and for how long. This is particularly beneficial if you want to:

• Restrict certain courses to specific membership levels.
• Offer membership-based course access (e.g., “VIP members get access to all courses”).
• Automate the process of enrolling users in specific courses based on their membership.
• Offer tiered pricing, where higher membership levels get exclusive courses or features.
• Create a recurring revenue stream from your courses by charging members a subscription fee.

How to Integrate LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro

Integrating LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro involves a few simple steps. Follow this guide to seamlessly set up the integration on your WordPress site.

Step 1: Install and Activate the Necessary Plugins

1. Install LearnPress
   If you haven’t already, install and activate the LearnPress plugin from the WordPress plugin repository. Simply go to the “Plugins” section in your WordPress dashboard, search for “LearnPress,” and click “Install” and “Activate.”
2. Install Paid Memberships Pro (PMP)
   To install PMP, go to the “Plugins” section of your WordPress dashboard and click “Add New.” Search for “Paid Memberships Pro,” and click “Install” and then “Activate.”
3. Install LearnPress Paid Memberships Pro Integration Add-on
   To integrate LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro, you need the LearnPress Paid Memberships Pro Integration add-on, which is available as a paid add-on on the LearnPress website or through the plugin’s support channels.

   Once you’ve purchased the add-on, install and activate it just like any other plugin.

Step 2: Configure LearnPress and Paid Memberships Pro

1. Configure Paid Memberships Pro
   Go to Memberships > Settings in your WordPress dashboard to configure PMP. Here you can set up:
   • Membership Levels: Define different membership tiers (e.g., Free, Basic, Premium, VIP) and their corresponding features.
   • Payment Gateways: Set up the payment gateways you want to use (PayPal, Stripe, etc.) for recurring billing.
   • Email Templates: Customize your emails to notify users about their subscription status, cancellations, and renewals.
2. Configure LearnPress Settings
   Next, go to LearnPress > Settings in your dashboard to configure the LearnPress plugin. Set up your general course settings, including pricing options (free, paid, etc.), enrollment process, and course structure.

Step 3: Link Membership Levels to LearnPress Courses

1. Create Courses in LearnPress
   Go to LearnPress > Courses to create your courses. You can add details such as course name, description, price, lessons, and quizzes.
2. Assign Membership Levels to Courses
   After you’ve created your courses, navigate to LearnPress > Settings > Integrations and select the Paid Memberships Pro tab.

   Here you can assign specific membership levels to certain courses. For example:

   • Assign a “Free” course to the Free Membership level.
   • Assign exclusive or advanced courses to Premium or VIP Membership levels.

   This way, only users who are subscribed to the relevant membership level will have access to the corresponding courses.

Step 4: Set Up Automatic Enrollment

One of the major benefits of integrating PMP with LearnPress is the ability to automatically enroll users into courses based on their membership level.

1. Automatic Enrollment Settings
   Navigate to the PMP settings page and configure the integration to automatically enroll users in certain courses when they sign up for specific membership levels. For example:
   • When a user signs up for a “Premium Membership,” they should automatically be enrolled in the “Advanced SEO Techniques” course.
2. Custom Enrollment Rules
   You can also set up custom rules that trigger when a user’s membership changes, such as upgrading from a Free to a Premium membership. The integration will automatically enroll them in any new courses tied to their upgraded membership.

Step 5: Restrict Content Access

You can now use Paid Memberships Pro to restrict access to course content based on membership level. Simply set the permissions for each course, lesson, or quiz in LearnPress to match the appropriate membership level in PMP.

For example:

• Basic members might only have access to basic-level courses.
• Premium members get access to more advanced, in-depth courses.
• VIP members might receive exclusive courses or private lessons.

Step 6: Test Your Setup

Before launching your paid courses, test the entire system:

• Register with different membership levels.
• Check whether the correct courses are assigned.
• Ensure the payment gateways are working as expected.
• Test the automatic enrollment process.

By performing these tests, you can make sure everything is working smoothly and that your members have access to the courses they’ve paid for.

Conclusion

Integrating LearnPress with Paid Memberships Pro creates an efficient, automated system for selling and managing your online courses. With this integration, you can offer tiered memberships that provide exclusive access to courses, ensuring your users receive a personalized and seamless learning experience.

Whether you’re creating a free course for your basic members or an in-depth training program for premium subscribers, the combination of LearnPress and Paid Memberships Pro will give you the tools to effectively manage memberships and create a sustainable revenue model from your courses.