6 Best Patreon Alternatives to Monetize Your Audience in 2024

Patreon is a popular crowdfunding platform that helps content creators monetize their work. However, the platform charges processing and service fees, which can cut into earnings. Plus, some creators have raised concerns about censorship and content restrictions.

If you want more flexibility, independence, or a fee-free solution, exploring Patreon alternatives can be a smart idea. That’s why we decided to explore and test the most popular options, like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and MemberPress.

Over the years, we have worked with all of these WordPress platforms (plus many more). In our opinion, they are great Patreon alternatives. These tools offer better features for creating memberships or selling digital products.

They also give you more flexibility and customization options. Plus, they don’t charge service fees, which means you can keep more of your earnings.

In this article, we will share the best Patreon alternatives to monetize your audience.

Overview of the Best Patreon Alternatives

Are you in a hurry? Here’s a quick look at the best Patreon alternatives.

#	Platforms	Best For	Pricing
🥇	MemberPress	Setting up multiple membership tiers	$179.50/yr + Free
🥈	Easy Digital Downloads	Selling digital products to members	$89.55/yr + Free
🥉	WooCommerce	Selling merchandise	Free
4	WP Simple Pay	Adding a payment form	$44.55/yr + Free
5	Blubrry	Creating exclusive podcasts	$120/yr + Free
6	WP Charitable	Building a fundraising campaign	$69/yr + Free

Why Do You Need a Patreon Alternative?

Patreon provides a platform for vloggers, musicians, writers, journalists, podcasters, and other creators to generate a consistent income stream from their content, but it has several big shortcomings.

First, it’s hard to create your own brand since there are over 6 million monthly active users on Patreon. You’ll compete with other creators in your niche, and it can be challenging to make your content discoverable for new users. Not to mention, you get limited tools to promote your content.

Then, there is an issue of censorship. Patreon’s content restrictions can be strict for people in particular niches, as political content creators faced crackdowns in the past. As a result, their fan base dropped dramatically.

Lastly, Patreon fees can be a big turn-off for some content creators. For instance, it charges a flat 8% or 12% on top of the payment processing fee on your monthly income on Patreon, depending on the pricing tier you are subscribed to.

Creators just don’t need another tax on their earnings.

That’s why lots of people switch away to Patreon alternatives like WordPress: it’s more powerful and gives you full control.

Let’s look at why you should use WordPress as a Patreon alternative.

What Makes WordPress a Great Alternative to Patreon?

WordPress is a popular website builder powering more than 43% of all the websites on the internet, and it’s free to use. You might think that starting a website from scratch is a lot of work and takes too much time, but that’s not the case anymore.

You can create a WordPress website of any type in no time using a drag-and-drop website builder like SeedProd, which requires no coding at all.

What’s more, WordPress comes with over 60,000+ free plugins that you can use to maximize your earnings, grow your traffic, and get more followers. Plus, you can build an email subscriber base that can never be taken away from you.

Another benefit of using WordPress is that it offers more control over your content than Patreon. You’ll be protected from changes in terms of service and won’t have to worry about losing your fan base due to content restrictions.

With WordPress, you can even offer different payment options on your site and make money online without worrying about paying a portion of your earnings to Patreon.

Here’s what you’ll need to create your WordPress website:

1. A domain name. This will be the address of your online store (e.g., wpbeginner.com).
2. A WordPress hosting account. This is where your website files will be stored.
3. An SSL certificate. This allows you to securely accept payments online.

Normally, web hosting costs $7.99 per month, a domain name starts at $14.99 per year, and an SSL certificate costs around $69.99 per year.

This can be a big investment when you are just starting out.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer our readers a big 83% discount on web hosting, plus a free domain name and SSL certificate. 

Basically, you can get started for as low as $1.99 per month. 

Simply click on the Bluehost button below, and the discount will automatically be applied.

That said, let’s look at some WordPress tools and plugins that you can use as Patreon alternatives. However, before that, let’s go over our criteria for selecting these tools.

How We Test And Review Patreon Alternatives

To give our readers some great recommendations, we tested the most popular Patreon alternatives on real demo sites. When doing that, we particularly focused on the following criteria:

• Features: We examined the range of features each platform offers, such as subscription tiers, content delivery options, and community engagement tools.
• Ease of Use: We assessed the user interface and overall ease of setup and management. That included how intuitive the platform is for creators to use and how easily their audience can navigate and engage with it.
• Monetization Options: We looked at the flexibility of payment models, including subscription fees, one-time payments, and commission structures.
• Audience Engagement: We evaluated the tools available for creators to interact with their audience, such as exclusive content, live streaming capabilities, and community management features.
• Security: We ensured that the platform maintains high standards of security to protect creators’ content and payment information.
• User Feedback and Reputation: We considered actual user reviews to gain insights into the real-world experiences of creators using each platform, focusing on satisfaction and any common challenges encountered.

1. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best membership plugin for WordPress. It is the perfect Patreon alternative if you want to set up subscription tiers and allow your community to choose from multiple plans.

At WPBeginner, we have used MemberPress to create and share online courses with our readers, and the experience has been nothing short of excellent. To learn more, see our MemberPress review.

We particularly appreciate how beginner-friendly the platform is, making it easy to set up courses without needing advanced technical skills. It lets you create a membership website, offer exclusive content to different subscription tiers, and have complete control over who can access your premium content.

We think it’s a great alternative to Patreon because the plugin lets you set up multiple membership tiers. It also allows you to restrict access to premium content based on the user’s membership level.

You can even use the plugin to create a video membership website in WordPress.

Besides that, we love its powerful course builder.

You can create and sell online courses and use the content drip feature. That way, members see content after they have completed a certain course or been a member for a particular amount of time.

We also appreciate that MemberPress can easily integrate with popular payment providers like Stripe and PayPal, as well as all the best email marketing services.

In our opinion, all these features combined make MemberPress the best Patreon alternative on the market.

Pros of MemberPress:

• During testing, we found that the plugin lets you generate personalized discount codes to attract new subscribers.
• It comes with detailed analytics and reporting features to track membership performance, revenue trends, and user engagement.
• We really liked that MemberPress lets you integrate with community platforms like BuddyPress to build forums for your members.
• It gives you full control over your site’s look, unlike Patreon, where branding is limited by the platform.
• We particularly appreciate that MemberPress does not charge any platform fee.

Cons of MemberPress:

• The free version has limited features.

Why we recommend MemberPress: If you are looking for a tool that lets you set up subscription tiers like Patreon, then MemberPress is the best option. It is beginner-friendly, has a lot of features, and is super scalable, making it a great choice.

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for selling digital products. If you’re an artist, musician, writer, developer, or any content creator selling items like music, eBooks, PDFs, videos, or software licenses, then it is the ideal Patreon alternative for you.

Several of our partner brands have been using it to sell their plugins and software. They have consistently shared positive feedback, particularly praising how user-friendly the platform is and how well it scales for their needs. For more details, view our EDD review.

Using the plugin, you can manage and sell files with ease. It also has a built-in shopping cart system that makes it effortless for users to purchase your digital products.

Plus, you can set flexible pricing, including fixed, variable, or pay-what-you-want models, catering to diverse audiences and monetization strategies.

During testing, we discovered that EDD lets you offer subscription-based products with recurring billing to generate income. This will allow you to set up automated payments for products or services, such as access to premium content or membership plans.

You can even add a free trial for your content to encourage more visitors to become members.

What’s more, the plugin lets you track the download activity of your customers inside the WordPress dashboard and get reports to see how your downloads are performing.

Additionally, since it’s a WordPress plugin, EDD doesn’t charge any platform fees.

Pros of Easy Digital Downloads:

• Upon evaluation, we found that the plugin keeps detailed records of customers, including their purchase history, for better management and upselling opportunities.
• It securely delivers digital files to customers. You can also set a download limit.
• We love that EDD enables you to sell your products globally with support for multiple languages and currencies.
• You can integrate it with MemberPress to offer membership tiers alongside digital products.
• Our research revealed that it can connect with all the powerful payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.

Cons of Easy Digital Downloads:

• The plugin has a free plan, but some of the features are only available in the pro version.

Why we recommend Easy Digital Downloads: If you plan to sell exclusive digital products to your members, then setting up a store with Easy Digital Downloads is a fantastic solution. It gives you everything you need and is highly beginner-friendly.

3. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the best eCommerce plugin for selling physical products, and you can use it to create an online store in no time. In our experience, it is the best Patreon alternative for selling merchandise to your members and earning some extra cash.

In the past, we have helped our readers and clients build WooCommerce stores of every size, and we’ve had a great experience with the software. For more information, check out our full WooCommerce review.

Using WooCommerce, you can sell digital and physical products easily. We love its inventory management feature, which helps you keep track of the number of products you have available for purchase.

There are also tons of WooCommerce plugins and extensions to help you grow your website.

To fast-track the design process, you can also choose from plenty of themes for WooCommerce.

Alternatively, you can build a custom WordPress theme using a compatible drag-and-drop builder like SeedProd.

During our testing, we found WooCommerce to be super beginner-friendly and scalable, making it a great option if you have a growing business.

The plugin even offers extensive documentation and community forums to help you out.

Pros of WooCommerce:

• With WooCommerce, you can create coupons and discount offers to boost your merchandise sales.
• We love that the tool lets you add cross-selling and upselling items easily.
• It comes with a WooCommerce Subscriptions extension. You can use it to offer recurring billing for subscription-based products, providing a steady income stream similar to what Patreon offers.
• We really appreciate that WooCommerce lets you completely customize the branding and design of your store.
• WooCommerce is completely free.

Cons of WooCommerce:

• It doesn’t offer great customer support.
• WooCommerce offers a huge number of addons to improve your site’s functionality. However, it can also be overwhelming for beginners.

Why we recommend WooCommerce: If you plan to sell merchandise to your fans or members, then WooCommerce is the best eCommerce platform for you.

4. WP Simple Pay

If you want to monetize your website by adding a payment button, then WP Simple Pay is a great option. This allows you to accept one-time or recurring payments via Stripe without setting up a shopping cart.

For thorough testing, we created a payment form with WP Simple Pay and found it super easy to use. The beginner-friendly builder and premade templates made the process seamless, and it only took a few clicks to set up a payment option on our site. To learn more, see our WP Simple Pay review.

Adding a payment option to your site can be a great way to let your fans support you. WP Simple Pay accepts credit card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH payments, iDEAL, Klarna, AliPay, and so many more.

You can even set up different subscriptions for recurring payments, just like Patreon, but with much lower fees. This way, you can earn money without losing a significant portion to platform costs.

WP Simple Pay also has premade templates for collecting donations. You can set up discount coupon codes, allow users to subscribe or pay one-time, add free trials, and more.

To get started, just see our tutorial on how to accept Stripe payments in WordPress.

Pros of WP Simple Pay:

• Our investigation revealed that the plugin lets you customize your form colors to match your brand.
• It lets you track your payments, subscriptions, and customer data through built-in analytics.
• After a successful transaction, you can redirect customers to a custom thank-you page created with WP Simple Pay.
• WP Simple Pay lets you pass the payment processing fees to the customers.
• The plugin sends an email notification to customers upon a successful purchase.

Cons of WP Simple Pay:

• The free plan has limited features and templates.

Why we recommend WP Simple Pay: If you want to create a simple payment form so your fans can support you, then WP Simple Pay is your go to solution. Since it works with Stripe, you’ll be able to accept multiple payment methods.

5. Blubrry

Blubrry is an amazing WordPress podcast hosting service and the perfect Patreon alternative for podcasters who want more control over their content.

You can create a podcast website in no time with Blubrry. Plus, we love how easily you can distribute your podcast to popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and more.

During our research, we noticed that Blubrry even comes with a powerful podcast plugin called PowerPress that lets you manage your podcast files in WordPress.

Plus, the platform has a large community of podcasters, and you can easily find forums to learn from other experienced and successful podcasters.

Pros of Blubrry:

• The tool lets you offer premium content behind a paywall. You can allow listeners to access exclusive episodes or bonus content through a subscription model.
• We like Blubrry’s dynamic ad insertion feature that lets you monetize your podcast by inserting targeted ads into your episodes.
• During evaluation, we discovered that you can create personalized RSS feeds for different audiences or premium subscribers.
• You can also set up listener donations to generate income.

Cons of Blurbrry:

• The paid plan can be expensive for some users.
• We found Blubrry a bit challenging to use for beginners.

Why we recommend Blubrry: If you want to create exclusive podcast content to earn some cash, then Blubrry can be a great Patreon alternative.

6. WP Charitable

In our opinion, WP Charitable is the best WordPress donation and fundraising plugin. You can use it as a Patreon alternative to create a fundraising site like GoFundMe or Kickstarter.

During our evaluation, we discovered that the plugin offers numerous premade templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, making it incredibly easy to create fundraising campaigns in just minutes. For more information about our experience, see our WP Charitable review.

With this tool, you can create and manage multiple fundraising campaigns with ease. Each campaign can have its own goals, donation options, and target audience.

You can even select from multiple layout options and add campaign fields according to your liking. Then, you can choose a fixed donation amount, add a custom amount, or both.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to raise money with crowdfunding in WordPress.

Pros of WP Charitable:

• During our research, we found that WP Charitable lets you set up subscription-based giving, where supporters can contribute on a recurring basis (weekly, monthly, or annually).
• It has a built-in donor management system that allows you to track contributions, view donor histories, and send thank-you notes or receipts.
• We like that you set donation goals for your campaigns and display progress bars to show supporters how close you are to reaching your target.
• WP Charitable also lets you add pledges for supporters who want to commit to a certain donation amount over time, providing them with an ongoing, subscription-style way to support your work.

Cons of WP Charitable:

• Some of the features are not included in the free version.

Why we recommend WP Charitable: If you want to create a fundraising campaign for your fans or members to support you, then WP Charitable is the most powerful option on the market.

Which Is the Best Patreon Alternative?

After careful evaluation and research, we found that the top Patreon alternative is MemberPress.

It lets you restrict premium content, sell courses, and offers a comprehensive set of features. You can easily create a membership site and set up subscription tiers with just a few clicks, making it an ideal choice.

However, if you want to sell digital products to your members, then you can use Easy Digital Downloads.

Alternatively, if you plan to sell merchandise or other physical goods, then WooCommerce is the best option. It is free, beginner-friendly, and scalable.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to create a full-fledged membership site, then you can use WP Simple Pay. It will let you add a simple payment form which your fans can use to support you.

You can also create a crowdfunding website with WP Charitable. It is a powerful plugin that is ideal for donation and fundraising websites.

Frequently Asked Questions About Patreon Alternatives

Here are some frequently asked questions about Patreon alternatives:

How do membership-based platforms like MemberPress compare to Patreon?

Membership-based platforms like MemberPress offer a similar subscription model to Patreon, allowing creators to charge their audience for access to exclusive content.

However, with MemberPress, creators have more control over pricing, subscription tiers, and the overall user experience since the platform integrates directly into their own website. This eliminates platform fees that Patreon charges, allowing creators to keep more of their earnings.

Additionally, membership platforms often provide more customization options, enabling creators to tailor the design, content access, and rewards to better suit their community’s needs.

Can I use multiple Patreon alternatives together?

Yes, you can use multiple Patreon alternatives together to boost your income.

For example, you can combine your subscription-based website with Easy Digital Downloads to sell digital products or use a crowdfunding platform for specific projects.

This approach allows you to cater to different audience preferences, maximize revenue potential, and offer a variety of ways for your supporters to contribute.

How can ad-supported platforms help creators earn income?

Ad-supported platforms like Blubrry help creators earn income by allowing them to monetize their content through dynamic ad insertion.

For podcasters, Blubrry offers the ability to insert targeted ads into their episodes, generating revenue based on the number of downloads or listeners. As an ad-supported model, creators can offer their content for free while still earning money from advertisers, making it a passive income source.

This works especially well for creators with large audiences, as ad revenue increases with higher engagement and listenership.

Related Guides to Patreon Alternatives

We hope this article helped you choose a suitable Patreon alternative that fits your needs. You may also want to see our list of related guides that can help with your business:

• How to Create Peer-to-Peer Fundraising in WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Restrict Content on WordPress to Patreon Members
• Most Important Reasons to Use WordPress
• How to Offer an Ad-Free Version of Your WordPress Site to Subscribers
• Best Online Community Platforms (Pros and Cons)
• Best WordPress Themes for Crowdfunding

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