Plugins de afiliación de WordPress frente a plataformas de afiliación alojadas: ¿Cuál elegir?

Hosted platforms or WordPress? There are pros and tradeoffs on both sides. Here’s how to figure out which one actually makes sense for your business.

If you’re looking to start a membership site, you’ve probably noticed there are two very different paths: hosted platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, or Patreon, and WordPress membership plugins like MemberPress.

Both can get you to “membership site that accepts payments.” But the similarities pretty much end there.

A lot of creators start on a hosted platform, hit a wall, and then migrate to WordPress. The pattern is so consistent it’s worth understanding por qué before you commit to either path.

In this post, I’ll break down the real differences between these approaches: what you actually own, what you can customize, what it costs over time, and when each option makes sense.

No agenda here beyond helping you make the right call for your business.

(Okay, small agenda: I work at MemberPress, so you know where my bias lies. But I’ll be honest about the tradeoffs.)

The Fundamental Difference: Renting vs. Owning

Before we get into features and pricing, let’s talk about the philosophical difference. This is the thing that matters most and gets discussed least.

Hosted platforms: You’re renting space on someone else’s property. You create content, build an audience, and process payments through their system. If they change their pricing, policies, or features, you adapt or leave. If they shut down, you scramble.

WordPress with a membership plugin: You own the property. Your site lives on hosting you control, running software you own. Your member data, content, and payment relationships are yours. You can switch hosts, change plugins, or modify anything without asking permission.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern. I’ve watched creators lose access to their own businesses when platforms changed terms, raised prices dramatically, or simply went under.

When your business lives on someone else’s platform, you’re one policy change away from a crisis.

That said, ownership comes with responsibility. You’re in charge of updates, security, and keeping things running. For some people, that tradeoff isn’t worth it.

Let’s dig into the specifics.

Hosted Membership Platforms: The Pros and Cons

Hosted platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Podia, and Patreon handle everything for you. You sign up, build your content in their interface, and they take care of the technical stuff.

The Advantages

Fast setup: You can have a membership site live in an afternoon. No hosting to configure, no plugins to install, no technical decisions to make.

All-in-one simplicity: Everything lives in one dashboard: content, members, payments, emails (sometimes), and analytics. No integrations to manage.

No technical maintenance: Updates, security, backups, server management: all handled for you. You focus on content; they handle infrastructure.

Built-in templates: Most platforms offer templates that look decent out of the box. You pick one, add your content, done.

The Disadvantages

Monthly fees that scale with success: This is the big one. Most hosted platforms charge based on your revenue or member count. The more successful you get, the more you pay. Kajabi starts at $149/month and goes to $399+. Teachable’s Pro plan is $119/month with transaction fees on lower tiers. These costs compound.

Transaction fees on top of monthly fees: Many platforms take a percentage of every sale, especially on lower pricing tiers. That’s on top of payment processor fees. Death by a thousand cuts.

Limited customization: You get what they give you. Want to change how your checkout flow works? Add a specific feature? Integrate with a tool they don’t support? You’re stuck with workarounds or out of luck.

Platform lock-in: Your content lives in their proprietary format. Your member data lives in their database. Migrating away means exporting what you can (often incomplete) and rebuilding from scratch.

You don’t own your SEO: Content on hosted platforms often lives on their subdomain or doesn’t integrate well with a broader content strategy. Building organic traffic is harder when you don’t control the full picture.

Feature limitations: Want forums? Advanced course features? Specific payment options? Directory functionality? You’re limited to what that platform decided to build.

WordPress Membership Plugins: The Pros and Cons

WordPress membership plugins like MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, or Paid Memberships Pro add membership functionality to a self-hosted WordPress site.

The Advantages

You own everything: Your content, member data, payment relationships, and email list live on infrastructure you control. No platform can change terms and disrupt your business.

Low annual cost: Most WordPress membership plugins are much cheaper annually, plus, transaction fees are low-to-non-existent.

MemberPress, for example, only charges transaction fees on their lowest plan – Launch, designed for businesses that are just getting off the ground.

Once you switch it up to a more feature-rich plan, there are no transaction fees whatsoever. Cue limitless expansion and a super-low price.

Unlimited customization: WordPress is open source with thousands of themes and plugins. Want a specific design? A particular integration? Custom functionality? The ecosystem probably has it, or you can build it.

Full SEO control: Your membership content lives on your domain, integrates with your blog, and benefits from your overall site authority. Content marketing and membership work together.

Choice of payment processors: Conectar Stripe, PayPal, Autorizar.net, or other gateways. You negotiate your own rates and own those merchant relationships.

Integrations with everything: WordPress integrates with virtually every marketing por correo electrónico platform, CRM, analytics tool, and third-party service. MemberPress specifically has integrations with ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Zapiery dozens more.

Grow without penalty: Add 100 members or 100,000 members; your plugin cost stays the same. Your success doesn’t trigger higher fees.

The Disadvantages

More setup required: You need hosting, a domain, WordPress installation, theme selection, and plugin configuration. It’s not hard, but it’s more than signing up for a hosted platform.

You’re responsible for maintenance: Updates, backups, security, and troubleshooting are on you (or your host, depending on your setup). Managed WordPress hosts como SiteGround o Nube de Rapyd handle most of this, but it’s still your responsibility to choose and pay for that.

Learning curve: WordPress has more flexibility, which means more decisions. For total beginners, this can feel overwhelming at first.

Potential for plugin conflicts: If you’re running lots of plugins, conflicts can occasionally happen. Sticking with well-supported, regularly updated plugins (like MemberPress) minimizes this.

Cost Comparison: The Math Over Time

Let’s get specific about money. I’ll compare a hosted platform (Kajabi, middle tier) against WordPress with MemberPress over three years.

Kajabi Growth Plan

• Monthly cost: $199/month
• Annual cost: $2,388/year
• 3-year cost: $7,164
• Transaction fees: None (but you’re paying $199/month regardless of revenue)

WordPress + MemberPress

• Hosting (quality managed WordPress): ~$25-50/month → $300-600/year
• MemberPress Growth license: $699/year ($349.50 first year)
• Domain: ~$15/year
• Annual cost: $1,014-1,314
• 3-year cost: $2,693-3,593

The difference: $3571-4471 saved over three years.

And here’s what really matters: when you succeed on a hosted platform, your costs often go up. When you succeed on WordPress, your costs stay basically the same. That gap widens dramatically as your business grows.

If you hit $10,000/month in membership revenue:

• Kajabi: Still paying $199-399/month to them (plus payment processing)
• WordPress: Still paying your ~$50/month hosting + annual plugin fee

The math gets more dramatic every year you’re in business.

Feature Comparison: What Can You Actually Do?

Here’s a practical look at what each approach offers:

The WordPress ecosystem gives you options for virtually anything you want to do. Hosted platforms give you what they decided to build.

When Hosted Platforms Make Sense

I’ll be honest: there are situations where a hosted platform is the right call.

You need to launch this week and have zero technical comfort. If the alternative is spending months learning WordPress when you should be validating your membership idea, just launch somewhere. You can always migrate later.

You’re testing an idea before committing. Some platforms have low-cost entry tiers. Using one to validate demand before investing in a proper setup can make sense.

Your needs are extremely simple and will stay that way. If you’re doing a basic Patreon-style “support my work” membership with minimal content, a hosted platform might be sufficient.

You genuinely never want to think about technical stuff. Some people are willing to pay significantly more for complete hands-off simplicity. That’s a valid choice; just make it with clear eyes about the cost.

When WordPress Is the Better Choice

For most serious membership businesses, WordPress with a plugin like MemberPress is the better long-term choice. Specifically:

You’re building a real business, not a side project. If memberships are going to be meaningful income, own your infrastructure.

You want to integrate content marketing with membership. Having your blog, lead magnets, and membership all on one WordPress site is incredibly powerful for growth.

You care about profit margins. Keeping 95%+ of your revenue (minus payment processing) instead of paying escalating platform fees makes a real difference.

You want flexibility to evolve. Membership businesses change. You’ll want to add features, adjust structures, and try new things. WordPress gives you room to grow.

You have even basic technical comfort. If you can follow tutorials and aren’t scared of a dashboard, you can run a WordPress membership site. It’s not as hard as it might seem.

You plan to be in business for years. The cost savings compound. The ownership matters more. The flexibility becomes essential.

And if you’re still apprehensive about the set up, with the money you’ll save over your first couple of years you can commission a custom Done For You site with the exact set up you need.

The Migration Question

Here’s something I wish more people considered upfront: migrating away from a hosted platform is painful.

When you leave Kajabi or Teachable:

• Your content is in their format; you’ll need to recreate or convert it
• Your member data may export partially, but integrations and history often don’t
• Your payment relationships might not transfer; you may need members to re-subscribe
• Your URLs change; any SEO value or bookmarks break
• You lose time rebuilding instead of growing

When you’re on WordPress:

• Your content is in standard WordPress format
• You can switch hosting providers easily
• You can change themes without losing content
• If you switch membership plugins (though I obviously hope you won’t!), migration tools often exist
• Your domain and SEO value travel with you

Starting on WordPress gives you more options today and tomorrow.

Reflexiones finales

The hosted platform pitch is appealing: sign up, build quickly, don’t worry about technical stuff. And for the first few months, that simplicity feels like a win.

But membership businesses are long-term plays. You’re building recurring relationships, accumulating content, and growing something valuable over years. The decisions you make at the start compound.

Owning your platform means owning your business. It means keeping more of what you earn. It means having the flexibility to build exactly what your members need. It means never worrying that a platform’s business decisions will become your problem.

Is there more setup involved? Yes. Is there a learning curve? A small one. Is it worth it? For any serious membership business, I think it absolutely is.

MemberPress is how we make this easy. It’s the most complete WordPress membership plugin available: memberships, courses, communities, coaching, content protection, and more, all in one system on a site you own.

Thousands of creators have built thriving businesses on it, and I genuinely believe it’s the best foundation for a membership that lasts.

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Have you tried both approaches? Thinking about making the switch? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments.

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Victoria Lloyd

Victoria tiene el don de convertir los pequeños comienzos en grandes éxitos, habiendo elevado su marca de joyería desde el vibrante bullicio de los mercadillos londinenses hasta lugares tan prestigiosos como la Real Academia de las Artes y la tienda insignia de Topshop en Oxford Circus. Su experiencia no se limita a los productos físicos. Victoria ha demostrado su capacidad para impulsar la participación online de diversas marcas. Desde dinámicas empresas emergentes hasta nombres tan conocidos como Nokia y Jack Daniels, Victoria ha aplicado su potente combinación de magia verbal, perspicacia estratégica y perspicacia digital para impulsar el compromiso de la marca y el SEO. En MemberPress, Victoria aprovecha su amplia experiencia para simplificar y desmitificar el mundo de la afiliación online y el crecimiento empresarial. Está aquí para guiar a los lectores con su visión única, ayudándoles a construir con confianza y creatividad sus comunidades online y sitios de afiliación.

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