Anyone consider moving to Restrict Content Pro?

For folks contemplating moving away from s2member due to its uncertain future, there’s been mention of MemberPress, OptimizePress, but little discussion of Restrict Content Pro: https://restrictcontentpro.com/

I’ve been going over their documentation, which seems solid. Their changelog shows they’re keeping the software updated. The company behind it seems stable.

Why is this not a good choice?

It’s fundamentally different from s2member. Also I must say I am always confused about the differences between Easy Digital Downloads and Restrict Content Pro.
I think you basically need both of them for most use cases similar to s2. Pippin definitely writes well thought out and supported plugins - but their use-case is pretty strictly defined. It’s not very flexible in comparison.

I looked at it too - and must admit I did not buy it for playing around, as for my case it did not look like I could convert to it. Initially EDD/Restrict Content Pro has been on my bucket list - I texted around with Pippin when it just came out - and was intrigued if now those points missing back in 2011-2013 got resolved. It’s a yes for most of them - but I do not think I can move my business model that way now anymore.

It all depends on you modell. If you only sell lifetime accounts - then many plugins will do. If you only sell subscription - also many many plugins will do and you can convert to them. If you sell both - it will be harder. The worst if if you sell access for XX months/years - that’s a concept most membership plugins DO NOT Support.
Also look at carts and similar to find out how well a membership system is developed or accepted. E.g. look at ThriveCart, Samcart, Paykickstart.
Look if the plugin has integrations to Aweber, Infusionsoft, Activecampaign, Zapier and what payment gateways are supported. Especially look at Stripe Sources (because basic Stripe support does not cut it these days). Even though you may not need it - it will give you an indication of how modern a plugin is. To me it looks like RCP had it’s best days already - and I don’t like the fact that many core features are actually packed in plugins. Often plugins conflict as integrations are only kept up to date vs core.

And yes - Optimizemember’s best days are definitely over too - however there is no other plugin to which you can move so easily - PLUS now that OptimizePress 3.0 is more or less out - they should gain traction too again - and it’s well likely they will boost/rewrite Optimizemember in the next 12-18 months.

Also the first thing I would check out is if there is a specialised plugin for your use-case. E.g. if you do a language course - then do use something specialised for it. S2member, Memberpress and Optimizemember are very broad general type of membership plugins - others specialize much more which is a good thing if it fits your demands.

I have RCP lifetime, it’s a good system but I still think MemberPress is just more complete with better login system too. Some sloppy things in RCP like the addons are manual installs one by one, I’ll admit MemberPress spoiled me with built in addon system integrated.

Hi all,

I’ve been reading all those posts about s2Member’s future. And, frankly, I don’t no where to turn to if s2Member indeed stops development and support.
My current setup is Wordpress 4.9x with the latest s2Member Pro plugin and it works and behaves exactly as I want it to.
I use s2M only for selling custom pages that can be accessed for a 1-year period.
In doing this I heavily (heavily!) rely on s2M’s Custom Capabilities for which I wrote a custom routine to make these pages available for admins as well as contributors. So every CC enabled page is accesible for a manager (has multiple rights to add, edit and delete pages with his CC’s) and a user (who has only access and restricted edit rights to that same page).
This routine is, as far as I know, only doable with S2M. I even contacted Paid Memberships Pro (which is one of the other most configurable memebership plugins for WP) and looked at Woocommerce and even Shopify, if there software could be configured the way I wanted, and there answer was just No!
So, my use-case is very heavily reliant and build around on s2M.
I have the latest release of S2M stored on my NAS, as well as WP 4.9. For my specific website, I will (as far as I can see) never upgrade to WP5 and keep the version of s2M to the latest.

Will I ever switch? I seriously do not know. Not at this moment. I’ll do anything to keep my site up and running with the current version of s2M.

p.s.: For all of us here … s2M is a wonderfull and (maybe) the greatest customisable membership plugin you will ever find for Wordpress. Not that easy to use and configure, but as soon as you know who to get it done it’s you’re best memberships-friend you’ll ever need and love. Trust me.

2 Likes

I agree 100%, it is the best. I hadn’t been to the forums in awhile and was shocked to learn about the plugins possible death. I do not want to switch to any other membership plugin. The countless hours to re-do everything I have developed custom on my site horrifies me. I did however upgrade to 5.0 and everything seems to be fine, or at least I haven’t found anything ugly yet…

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@Woohoo
you could switch to OptimizePress - it will handle everything you need to - once s2member stops working. They promise to support it and I will soon test it and see if they are willing to fix those countless bugs that are in s2member.

I enabled it for production on my smaller website - and gather logs right now so I can properly undermine the bugs (I’m sure they are not fixed there either). Let’s see if OPM is willing to did in and handle the bugs. Right now their support is answering quickly within the scope of their terms (so no PHP custom development - not introducing needed other features) - but they do promise in their support agreement to fix bugs - so let’s test em…

Thanks @openmtbmap and @ryanb for the feedback regarding RCP. I’m still undecided. Here’s my thought process and options thusfar:

s2member Pro

  • It still works with WordPress 5.0. Stick it out for a bit longer? Do I dare?
  • This forum’s domain expires in January 2019. Will it be renewed or lapse?
  • Will s2member’s licensing server go offline? Will it take down licensed websites with it? Does it even perform license checks? Who knows.
  • Will a new version ever be released? How long to wait before it’s too dangerous?

OptimizeMember via OptimizePress

  • Changelog is only visible to members. Why so mysterious? How active is the development? Anyone know?
  • Pricing is $197 one-time fee. Saves me money, but wouldn’t a yearly fee of some sort be a more viable long term business model? I don’t want this to become a s2member sequel.

MemberPress

  • Has a two-step checkout process: login credentials on page one, billing details on page two. Disappointing.
  • Their own website implements a conversion rate optimized, one-page checkout process, but that was custom designed for their own business and is not available in their plugin for sale. Why not?
  • Excellent knowledgebase
  • Public changelog shows very active development
  • Roughly $250 per year

Restrict Content Pro

  • Has a unified, one-page checkout process, unlike MemberPress and even s2member.
  • Very good knowledgebase
  • Public changelog shows active development
  • Roughly $250 per year
  • I don’t like that member restrictions require an internal two-step process: register users, then assign them a role/restrictions using a separate user profile. s2member and MemberPress is simpler by integrating this into the main profile.
  • Susceptible to orphan/pending registrations: user begins the checkout process, chooses PayPal, but doesn’t follow through. This leaves an orphaned, pending registered user in your database. Not good. If they return a minute, day, week later, they’ll have to login to check out? Potentially confusing to the end user and can leave junk in the database.

Gravity Forms

  • $259 per year
  • Requires the user registration and your preferred payment method plugin/add-on, which is no big deal.
  • For me, this is an interesting out-the-box option that could work. Unfortunately, I need PayPal Express Checkout support, but this only has PayPal Standard and Payments Pro. Otherwise, I might have gone with this.
  • Concerning: their own product’s checkout page uses a third-party checkout service. Not confident to use your own product for a user’s checkout experience? Probably nothing, but I noticed it.

Conclusion

  • OptimizeMember is too mysterious.
  • If MemberPress had a one-step checkout process, I’d buy that today, without hesitation.
  • If Restrict Content Pro didn’t have a two-layered registration system to manage, I’d probably be inclined to buy that.
  • If Gravity Forms supported PayPal Express Checkout, that may be a viable option.
  • For the next month, I’ll probably stay in a holding pattern, but eventually there’s gonna have to be a shift.
  • If push comes to shove, Restrict Content Pro is probably what I’ll begrudgingly move to.
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Optimizemember has an ongoing fee (50% of first year if I remember correctly) if you want to get updates. They did not do a lot at all on Optimizemember though - however they are just launching a new version of OptimizePress. They do acknowledge all the problems weak points of OPM/s2member (very different to s2member developers who stubbornly defended problems).

Optimizemember integrates pretty well now with ThriveCart (well since I sent a lot of emails back and forward - before it had no EOT so that was pretty rubbish).

Memberpress integrates very well with ThriveCart - so that gives you the best checkout available anyhow right now.
The problem starts when you look at if you can adapt your site to any of these plugins - for me that was not possible. But I really needed a new checkout - so that’s why I went for OPM:
However Memberpress is definitely the best membership plugin out there right now - If you can live with the features/limitations. Take s2member - many things do not work 100%, many things need complicated PHP coding, email system is very rough and not good, and so on. Take Memberpress - everything they offer is well tested and worked out. UI on front and backend very good (yes the checkout not so good - but it seems they expect people to go ThriveCart if they want perfect checkout). Emails working just perfect. Payment Overviews, good customer account page and so on. Clearly way more time was spent in testing and optimizing this in real life - with devs who had time and showed no ignorance in getting things running perfectly before adding new features. Take s2member - more features (using PHP) than any other plugin, but devs never listened to users and never sorted out things. S2member was great in 2011, but since then it was mainly bugfixing or very quick additions. Take the codebase which is horrible - why memberpress has pretty clean code.
Still I cannot adapt my site to MemberPress anymore - so it’s of no use to me. If you want to give it a try - they were very uncomplicated in returning my money after trying it out for 2 weeks and noticing I really could not adapt my site to it. would I start a membership site right now - and none of the very specialized tools (like those e-learning platforms for courses) would fit the bill, it would certainly be MemberPress.

Also look at reviews around the net - MemberPress right now consistently scores better than other membership plugins. The real competition if you set up a site newly is more from more specialised tools, and platforms like Kajabi.

@openmtbmap Would you be comfortable posting their changelog here? It doesn’t have to be the whole thing, but at least the last few entries.

Also see here: https://www.optimizepress.com/blog/
they will very soon publish the new OptimizePress (so 5 years after OP2 I think - that was the version that first included Optimizemember aka s2member). I guess that’s why 2018 saw nearly no activities on changelog. But OPM vs s2member changelog is virtually identical. They for sure tracked s2member via github or had some sort of agreement.

the differences between OPM and s2member are very very little. Worthy fix - they made it possible to send out register links without URL shortener (much better because those shorteners are often seen as spam). They added some sort of basic content dripping. Worthy misses - the CSS/JS optimization - plus it breaks pro-forms if you use autoptimize (they must have missed some s2member change here) - and not [s2_EOT] shortcode - however you can achieve much more via PHP (same goes for s2member though). I think they have 99 instead of 10 levels - but I don’t need that. Well and the biggest difference is ThriveCart support - but I don’t know if they ever did something for it - or if it was ThriveCart (excellent support and also very good coders!)
Well and of course support even though limited in scope vs no support at all with s2member. Support reacts pretty quick - but they are no coders. So basically they know ■■■■ about the advanced PHP possibilities of S2/OPM , they only know the basic stuff.

OptimizeMember 1.2.9 (8th March 2018)
Fixes

Added full Google reCaptcha v2 support - as v1 will be deprecated soon
Fixed PayPal cancel button - to redirect to proper PayPal page
Translating Have a Coupon Code string
Fixed PayPal encryption in anchors and urls

OptimizePress 2.5.13 (8th March, 2018)
Fixes

Fixed Media library edit image screen
Fixed overlay optimizer exit intent
Removed Hide YouTube logo from video player options (no longer supported by YouTube)
OptimizeLeads exclude pages

OptimizePress 2.5.12.4 (15th January, 2018)
Fixes

Moved admin.js to the footer so we can dequeue it in OPPlus Pack if necessary
Fixed problems with Page Revisions on Edit Page screen
ActiveCampaign already subscribed bug fix
Fixed fullscreen bug for flowplayer on mobile devices

OptimizePress 2.5.12.3 (20th December, 2017)
Fixes

Updated and improved fix for Chrome 63, to ensure Add Element in regular Posts and Pages works well

OptimizePress 2.5.12.1 (30th November 2017)
Fixes

Added new GoToWebinar flow
Fix for the ActiveCampaign extra fields bug
Fixed a bug that caused Youtube video set to autoplay to start playing before OverlayOptimizer is opened

OptimizePress 2.5.12 (16th November 2017)
Fixes

Fixed WP 4.9 issue
Disable fixed row on mobile option
Membership settings blank templates bug fix
Better error message display for OptimizeLeads WYSIWYG button
Enabling typography link/hover colour
Do notrender dashboard stats chart if there is no optin boxes data
Fixed fatal error in older PHP

OptimizePress 2.5.11 (4th October 2017)
New Features

OptimizeLeads button added to WYSIWYG WordPress editor
Fixes

E-goi fix when using register() in optimizeMember Open registration option
Mailchimp resubscribe unsubscribed user throught optin form.
OptimizeLeads WYSIWYG editor button responsive design
Fix for php error: Can not use function return value in write context
Fixed a problem with Add Media button on WYSIWYG text elements in Firefox (the button was not working in some cases)
Do not define OptimizeLeads constants if they are already defined
Fixed post page when editing optin box textarea Form HTML (Custom Form) was empty.
Fixed conflicts between Optin Stats and WooCommerce plugin
Change active campaign api call contact_add to contact_sync when subscribing or registering user
Strip script tag from html string for Custom HTML element inside Live Editor.
Fixed a memory leak related to TinyMCE that caused browser to become unresponsive and crash after a longer usage
Fixed a notice that was happening on search pages
Removing Optimizepress Content Preview Page from WordPress search (op live search when you press enter)
Fix for tinymce is not defined JS error, when user disable the visual editor.
Custom optin form edit fix (illegal string offset content)

OptimizePress PlusPack 1.1.7 (4th October 2017)
Fixes

Fixed Evergreen countdown timer cookie problems.
Fixed a problem with video background in Safari (autoplay for videos with sound is no longer allowed in new version of the browser)
Fixed Social sharing style3 to style7 to render Twitter icon properly
Syncing Optin Box in Plus Pack with OptimizePress

OptimizeMember 1.2.8.1 (18th July 2017)
Fixes:

Fix translation strings in login form element
PayPal IPN Compatibility: This release includes an updated PayPal IPN handler that is capable of reading number-suffixed IPN variables that are now being sent by PayPal’s IPN system in some cases, for some customers. We strongly encourage all site owners to upgrade to this release as soon as possible, particularly if they’re using PayPal to process transactions.

OptimizeMember 1.2.8 (19th June 2017)
Fixes:

PHP 7.1 compatibility
Fix for Stripe form in Facebook in-app browser

Thanks for the great chart! :slight_smile:

Don’t panic. The s2M plugin will be alive and will be developed. It needs some time to run the support again.

hi krumch
any possible timeline for the s2member plus woocommerce integration?
i need it for abandon cart emailing sequence…
thxxx