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13 Free User Management Plugins for WordPress (2024)

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Are you looking for the best user management plugins for WordPress?

User management plugins let you register, edit, and manage users on your WordPress website more easily.

In this article, we’ll share our favorite user management plugins that you can use on your WordPress site.

13 Free User Management Plugins for WordPress Compared

Why Do You Need a User Management Plugin in WordPress?

WordPress user management plugins make it easy to manage and register new users on your WordPress website.

There is built-in functionality to manage user registrations, but it’s quite limited and doesn’t give you much control over your users.

With a user registration plugin, you can easily manage your users in bulk, customize user roles, create custom login and registration forms, and more.

If you’re running a multisite network, online course, multi-author blog, or membership site, then this gives you more flexibility and control over your users.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best user management plugins for WordPress.

1. Members

Members

Members is a free user management plugin used by over 200,000 sites that lets you easily create and manage user roles and permissions in WordPress.

You can easily set permissions and restrict content on your website without having to code or hire a developer.

The advanced role editor lets you create, delete, and customize roles and capabilities for any user through the easy-to-use interface. You can even assign multiple roles to different users.

Edit user role capabilities

It also integrates with other popular plugins, including MemberPress, to help you build a paid membership site.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide to WordPress user roles and permissions.

Pricing: The Members plugin is completely free to use.

Pros:

  • Free to use
  • You can create, edit, and assign roles to anyone.
  • The plugin allows you to restrict content based on user permissions.

Cons:

  • The UX design of the plugin could be more intuitive and user-frie3ndly.

Why We Recommend Using Members: We recommend the Members plugin because it is free to get started with. You can assign capabilities and roles, allowing you to provide a membership experience.

2. WPForms

WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress, used by over 4 million websites.

It’s very easy to use and lets you build contact forms and other forms with the drag-and-drop builder.

The free version of the plugin has simple contact form features like spam protection, basic form fields, email notifications, and simple user management.

If you want to create custom user registration forms, then you’ll need the pro version that comes with the User Registration Form addon.

You can use this addon to build custom user registration and login forms. This lets new users create an account on your WordPress website.

The registration forms are completely customizable. You can change form fields like the username, bio, assigned user roles, and much more.

WPForms registration form

For spam protection, you can manually approve new users or require them to confirm their profile by clicking a link in their email.

If you have an email list, then you can integrate WPForms with the most popular email marketing services to automatically add users to your email list.

Pricing: WPForms is free to get started. That said for user management, you’ll need the User Registration addon. This requires a Pro plan starting at $199.50, where you get other premium features such as a wide range of payment methods, advanced form templates, and much more.

Pros:

  • WPForms allows you to collect important details for user registration.
  • There are plenty of templates and customization options to ensure your form remains onbrand with your website.
  • The form builder is a drag-and-drop editor, so it’s extremely easy to use.

Cons:

  • Creating and collecting user registrations does require a paid plan.

Why We Recommend Using WPForms: Most user management plugins are great at creating memberships for users, but you’ll also need a form builder like WPForms to collect new registrant information. That’s where WPForms comes in. With WPForms, you can customize the user registration page, so that you ask for the key information needed for your specific use case.

3. MemberPress

MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin in the market.

It’s very easy to use and can help you quickly build a membership site or online course in WordPress.

After you activate and set up the plugin, you can turn on user registration in a couple of clicks. To embed new user registration forms into your website, you can use the custom shortcodes.

Beyond new user registration, you can easily view and manage your existing users and even edit their profiles.

Plus, it supports all kinds of integrations with the most popular WordPress plugins. For example, the WooCommerce integration will help you create a members-only online store, add WooCommerce registration forms, send new user emails, and more.

Pricing:

Pros:

Cons:

Why We Recommend Using MembersPress:

4. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is one of the most advanced WordPress form builders in the market, used by more than 300,000 businesses.

You can use the drag-and-drop builder to easily create advanced forms like quizzes, payment forms, job board listings, surveys, online calculators, and much more.

Both the Business and Elite plans allow you to add advanced user registration forms to your WordPress site. Your users can register and edit their profiles all from the front end of your website.

register users

There are all kinds of advanced options like user nickname fields, custom password reset pages, field auto-population with user data, and more.

You’ll also find advanced integrations to register WooCommerce users or automatically add users to your email newsletter, CRM, and more.

Pricing: Formidable forms Business plan starts at $159.60 per year, giving you access to create user registration pages.

Pros:

  • They are one of the most advanced form builder tools, giving you unique features like Auto-fill function, ChatGPT integration, etc.
  • The form comes with 200+ templates and lots of customization options.
  • You can integration Stripe and Paypal if you charge a membership fee for registration.

Cons:

  • Sometimes Formidable features can feel a little too advanced especially with their API connections.

Why We Recommend Using Formidable Forms: We like Formidable Forms because it’s another great user registration option to collect new registrants. Whether you need new users for your membership site, event or private community, it’s easy to create a form that gets the information you need from each person.

5. WP User Manager

WP User Manager

WP User Manager is a free user registration and profile builder plugin. It has features like custom user registration and customizable user profiles, login forms, password recovery, and more.

Plus, you can create custom front-end login forms, let users create custom avatars, display users in a directory, and much more. If you’re building a community-based website, then this plugin can help you easily manage all of your members.

One of my favorite parts of WP User Manager is the unique features built inside the backend. For example, users can edit their site avatar by uponding an image from the account page. That way, everyone in the group can easily identify each user.

On top of that the plugin features beautiful user directories. You can group those directories by certain categories. Let’s say, you have a point system to highlight the most active users. You can great a gamified system and find users based on their status within the group.

user directories

Pricing: WP User Manager is free to use.

Pros:

  • You can create user directories allowing everyone to find the porfiles they’re looking for.
  • Users can submit posts and other content on the front end.
  • They offer useful integrations like WooCommerce and Stripe Pro.

Cons:

  • They seem to be missing a tier-system like MemberPress. It doesn’t allow you to restrict access based on the membership tier the person bought.

Why We Recommend Using WP User Manager: We like WP User Manager because it’s another free WordPress plugin to capture new users and create a private community around. Users in the group can post content and create their own profiles.

6. LoginWP

LoginWP

LoginWP (formerly Peter’s Login Redirect) Lite is a free plugin that lets you automatically redirect users to your website after they log in. You can redirect users based on their username, user role, capabilities, and more.

This plugin makes it easy to redirect users to a custom welcome or thank you page after they successfully register on your website.

It’s very easy to use and only takes a couple of clicks to set up the redirects. For step-by-step instructions, see our guide on how to redirect users after a successful login.

When you upgrade to LoginWP Pro, you would get to create specific conditions. For example, you can redirect first-time users to a special page, which could be a sales funnel that upsells to bonus offers. You can easily manage the rules and redirects all in one place. You can even assign those conditions based on their specific role or specific user.

Redirect rules

Pricing: Login WP Lite is a free plugin to get started with. If you want pro integrations and pro redirect conditions, then the paid plan starts at $49 per year.

Pros:

  • The plugin lets you redirect users based on specific roles, specific users or other conditions.
  • With the premium plugin, you can integration with WooCommerce, WPForms, LearnDash, Gravity Forms, etc.
  • The program is easy to use with not coding needed.

Cons:

  • It doesn’t actually help you collect user registration or a membership site. The plugin only redirects them to a membership page after log in.

Why We Recommend Using LoginWP: Sometimes, you membership site might not be located right on WordPress. So in this case, you need to redirect users from your login page on WordPress to wherever you house your private community. That’s where LoginWP coems in.

7. User Switching

User Switching plugin

User Switching is a great free plugin that lets you quickly switch to different user accounts. Instead of having to log out and log in to different user profiles, you can do it in one click from your WordPress dashboard.

user switching

This can be useful for developers testing WordPress sites or customer service reps helping people with orders on WooCommerce, where you regularly need to log out and switch between different accounts.

Beyond that they have some additional perks to this plugin. For example, it’s compatible with plugins with BuddyPress, WooCommerce, bbPress on Multisite. Beyond that, it’s also works with most two-factor authentication solutions.

Pricing: User Switching is free to use.

Pros:

  • The plugin is great for group admins, customer support roles or developers who need to log in and out of different user profiles.
  • It works with most two-factor authentication tools.
  • It’s easy to use.

Cons:

  • While it’s great for switching users, it doesn’t collect new user information or provide a provide content portal for private users to gather.

Why We Recommend Using User Switching: We like User Switching as a useful plugin to add to managing your private community. If you house an exclusive content portal within your WordPress site, your admin or support positions might want to use user switching to easily log into different accounts to complete certain tasks like troubleshooting.

8. Comment Moderation Role

Comment Moderation Role

Comment Moderation Role is a simple and free plugin that lets you easily create a comment moderation user role in WordPress.

This lets you keep your WordPress website secure while creating a role that only allows for comment moderation. Every other part of the WordPress dashboard will be hidden. For more details, see our guide on how to allow blog users to moderate comments in WordPress.

User comment moderator dashboard

Whoever is assigned to the comment moderator role is given the ability to eidt, approve or decline any post. This is perfect for blogs who want to combat comment spam which could hurt the other reader’s user experience.

The Comment Moderation Role was built by our WPBeginner team and it’s allowed us to keep our blog comments under control.

Pricing: Comment Moderation role is completely free to use.

Pros:

  • The plugin lets you assign anyone to the Comment Moderation role.
  • It keeps your website secure since it only gives them access to moderating comments.
  • The plugin is free.

Cons:

  • it doesn’t offer much advanced features.

Why We Recommend Using Comment Moderation Role: If you have a membership site on WordPress, the Comment Moderation role can also help. Sometimes, users can write hateful or spammy comments that don’t add value to a group. This plugin helps you manage all comments to ensure a better user experience.

9. Simple History

Simple History

Simple History is a free WordPress plugin that lets you monitor the activity of your WordPress users. It shows you actions your users have taken on your site, which helps you spot any WordPress security or error issues faster.

The plugin works as a audit log, or version history, so that you can spot the most important events that have happened on your WordPress site. You can choose whether you want your user activity log to display, and you can show the user history for the last 30 or 60 days.

Simple History activity

Some of the important activities you will see are changes to you posts and pages, attached added or deleted, comments changed, edits to taxonomies, user logins, etc. For more details, see our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress with security audit logs.

Alternative: WP Activity Log provides detailed user tracking and real-time reports.

Pricing: The plugin is free to use.

Pros:

  • Simple History helps you easily track progress or spot errors on your site.
  • You can filter by a specific date.
  • The history log comes with a simple arrow button, so you can easily scroll through all the chances starting from the most recent update.

Cons:

  • It only has one use case and doesn’t do anything else for user management.

Why We Recommend Using Simple History: If you’re managing a large team of users, chances are you want to stay on top of all the people on your site. In that case, this plugin allows you to see the progress they’ve made. Or if something causes an error to the site, you can quickly retrace a user’s steps.

10. SeedProd

SeedProd

SeedProd is the best drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress and is used by over 1 million websites. It lets you create completely custom pages in WordPress without writing a line of code.

The plugin has a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder, a page template collection, and pre-design sections to make the page-building process quick and easy.

This is a great plugin to help you beautiful looking membership landing pages to collect leads and add them to your user list. Plus, it has a WPForms integration, so you can build a registration form with WPForms and customize it with SeedProd.

SeedProd registration form

The free version of SeedProd can be used to customize your user registration page. However, the premium version of the plugin comes with over 100 professionally designed templates, additional content blocks, integrations, subscriber management features, and more.

Pricing: SeedProd is free to get started. But you’ll if you want access to more advanced templates, consider the Pro version, which starts at $239 per year.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop editor is easy to use
  • Plenty of integrations so you can collect leads and it’ll appear in your CRM or other places.
  • Lots of templates and page blocks to choose from

Cons:

  • It’s a page builder, so it doesn’t have features on managing users.

Why We Recommend Using SeedProd: SeedProd is a great platform to build landing pages or custom user pages. When users sign up, you can easily save their info into a email marketing service or CRM to help manage users.

11. Bulk Delete

Bulk Delete

Bulk Delete is a useful free plugin that lets you bulk delete users on your site that have a specific role or other criteria. For example, you can delete users that haven’t logged in for a specific amount of time.

Instead of selecting users manually, this plugin lets you bulk delete users or pages in a couple of clicks.

Bulk Delete pages

What’s cool about Bulk Delete is that you can filter have complete control over the filters you want to use to delete users. For example, you can delete posts by category, tag, taxonomy, comment count count, URL, etc.

On top of that, you can delete posts based on a time period or even schedule deletion of posts automatically.

Pricing: Bulk Delete is free to use but if you want advanced features you need the Pro addon which costs $15.

Pros:

  • Bulk Delete is very useful for deleting comments from inactive users.
  • The plugin is free to use.
  • There’s a lot of filters you can delete by, giving you a lot of control and flexibility.

Cons:

  • The pro version doesn’t provide much additional features.

Why We Recommend Using Bulk Delete: We like Bulk Delete to help you manage the content portal in your private userbase or community. It’s great for admins or customer support roles who need to help keep the forums and group posts clean and less-cluttered.

12. Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles

Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles

Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles is a simple plugin that does exactly what the name suggests and lets you hide your WordPress admin bar for specific user roles.

Hiding the admin bar can help to improve the user experience for some users. For example, you might want to hide the admin bar on the front-end of your website for subscribers or for users who aren’t able to edit posts or pages. It’s great for guest users who are on your site, but not logged in.

hide admin bar

In addition, you can hide admin bar based on the specific user roles. And the plugin comes with a blacklist feature so that the admin bar won’t show up based on user capabilities as well.

For more details, see our guide on how to disable the WordPress admin bar for all users except administrators.

Pricing: The plugin is free to use.

Pros:

  • The Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles does exactly what it promises allowing you to hide based on specific user roles.
  • It’s easy to use.
  • The plugin is free.

Cons:

  • The plugin has no other use case.

Why We Recommend Using Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles: This plugin comes handy when you have a lot of guest users. Perhaps, you offer a free trial allowing people to view your WordPress dashboard or private community without creating an account.

13. Import and Export Users and Customers

Import and export users and customers

Import and Export Users and Customers is a free plugin that helps you easily export and import WordPress users. This can be very useful if you’re merging multiple sites and want to add all your users to the new site automatically.

It can also be helpful if you want to import your existing customer or user information to your CRM or email list. It’s very easy to use and can help you import or export user data in a couple of clicks.

importing users

Whether it’s customer data, your email list or user registrations from another site, you can import just list of users to your WordPress dashboard.

It even integrations with other plugins like CooCommerce, Paid Membership Pro and BuddyPress, so you can migrate users from those platforms to your site.

For more details, see our guide on how to easily import and export your WordPress users.

Pricing: It is free to use.

Pros:

  • The plugin allows you to import any file and automatically bulk create users.
  • It integrates with some third-party plugins.
  • You can export users using some filters to exclude information you don’t need.

Cons:

  • It must be in a CSV format.

Why We Recommend Using Import and Export Users and Customers: This is the perfect plugin from migrating your userbase from another platform onto WordPress. It saves you time from manually creating user profiles.

We hope this article helped you find the best free user management plugins for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting and our expert picks of the best business phone services for small businesses.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

16 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
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  2. Nathan Simpson says

    I’m looking for a plugin that will list all pages and posts in admin bar so i can stop going back and forth from frontend to backend of site to find and edit pages.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      You should be able to go into your wp-admin and under the pages and posts sections you should see your posts and pages listed without needing to go to the frontend of your site.

      Admin

  3. Susan Shipe says

    Looking for a follow plug-in. I want any reader, not just wordpress users, to be able to get an email every time I post new content.

  4. Nihal Singh says

    I was looking for a plugin which will allow me to have enhanced search functionality on WordPress. Could you please let know if there is any plugin that would help in the searching the posts based on custom fields in the post. The search functionality should be able to provide a list of value based on the custom field values in the posts

  5. Betty Miller says

    I’m looking for a plug in for users that tracks if the author has been paid for that article or not.

  6. Arnold Burian says

    Anyone know how to activate a bunch of users? I moved over a site from a different platform, and now I need to active all the user accounts. I tried a plugin called Unconfirmed, but it apparently doesn’t work anymore and hasn’t been updated in a while (I only see one user in the plugin list, but I have several thousand).

    Thank you!

  7. Sam says

    Please i am looking for a plugin that will enable users have the option to approve or deny content shared by another user of which the admin will be notified whether it was approved or denied.
    Also same plugin should have flexible user registration feilds

  8. audrey says

    hi
    been searching but not seeing clear answers…

    Can you restrict user to edit selected land pages. I need to give access to event calendar and one other page to update as needed

  9. Mohammed Rafiq says

    I was looking for a plug in which will allow me have enhanced search functionality on the wordpress. Could you please let know if there is any plugin that would help in the searching the posts based on custom fields in the post. The search functionality should be able to provide list of value based on the custom field values in the posts

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