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10 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins (Expert Pick for 2025)

Protecting your valuable content is essential, whether you run a membership site, an online course, or a blog with exclusive articles.

Fortunately, WordPress offers a variety of content protection plugins designed to safeguard your digital assets effectively.

We use MemberPress for both creating online courses and protecting content. We require readers to watch the first video in our course before they can unlock the next one.

However, we understand this might not be the type of content protection you’re looking for. That’s why we have also tested other popular plugins that offer protection while ensuring a smooth user experience.

In this article, we will share our list of the best WordPress content protection plugins.

Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins

Overview of the Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins

If you are in a hurry, then take a quick look at our top picks for the best WordPress content protection plugins:

#PluginsBest ForPricing
🥇MemberPressAll in one solution$179.50/yr + Free
🥈OptinMonsterCreating exclusive content for subscribers$19/month
🥉Envira GalleryProtecting images from theft$39.50/yr + Free
4Password Protect PagesPassword protecting posts and pagesFree
5MemberMouseUnlocking content based on membership levels$199.50/yr

Why Do You Need a Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

As a website owner, you may come across someone who is stealing your content, including blog posts, images, or videos, and using them on their own website. This can damage your reputation, hurt your search engine optimization (SEO), and reduce website traffic.

Content protection plugins come with a variety of features that help you protect your WordPress site’s content from misuse or theft.

These plugins can disable text selection and copying, add no right-click for images, password-protect your site, prevent blog scraping, and help you build members-only content exclusive to your paying users and subscribers.

For example, if you have a photography website, then you might use a content protection plugin to prevent image theft by disabling right-click, adding watermarks, or making your content exclusive. This allows you to protect your intellectual property while maintaining a great user experience.

How We Test And Review WordPress Content Protection Plugins

To find the best content protection plugins for all kinds of use cases, we tested the popular ones on real websites. When doing that, we particularly focused on the following criteria:

Ease of use: For this showcase, we have listed tools that are beginner-friendly and do not require any coding knowledge to work.

Features: An ideal content protection plugin should have features like password protection, no right-click ability, and premium content creation.

Security & Performance: We tested how well the plugin prevents unauthorized access, blocks content scraping, and ensures site speed isn’t affected.

Support: We reviewed the quality of customer support, response times, and the availability of documentation or tutorials for troubleshooting.

Reliability: We have only recommended tools that we have tested ourselves on real websites. We also took a look at customer reviews and support quality for each plugin.

Why Trust WPBeginner?

At WPBeginner, we’re a team of experts with experience in WordPress, SEO, eCommerce, online marketing, and more.

We have been using MemberPress to protect our online course content. With it, users need to sign in and watch the first video to unlock the next one, which works great for us.

However, before we found this solution, we tested several content protection plugins to see how well they safeguarded content. This gave us a lot of insight into what works. We hope one of these tools will be a good fit for your site too.

Our goal is to recommend plugins that protect your content without compromising the user experience. For details, see our editorial process.

Having said that, let’s take a look at our list of the best WordPress content protection plugins that can prevent content theft.

1. MemberPress (Members-Only Content)

MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin on the market, especially if you are looking to create exclusive, members-only content. It’s perfect for protecting everything from membership sites to online courses.

It is super easy to set up and gives you complete control over restricting any content on your website, including posts, pages, categories, or tags, to specific users and paying members.

At WPBeginner, we’ve used MemberPress to create free courses for our readers. We use its content-locking feature, so readers have to sign in for free before they can access our training courses. To learn more, see our MemberPress review.

It allows you to create a comprehensive membership website and doesn’t have any limitations for membership levels, making it the best membership plugin for WordPress.

Set membership rules

Additionally, MemberPress can protect your media files from unauthorized downloads, extend protection to custom post types, restrict widget visibility, protect individual URLs, and more.

It even lets you restrict content to registered users only and create a paywall in WordPress.

Setting a post excerpt limit

You can even create completely private pages that only logged-in users can view. This is useful for members-only forums, resources, or exclusive training materials.

Overall, it is the ultimate powerhouse for protecting your content from unauthorized access.

Pros of MemberPress

  • We love its content-dripping feature that lets you show restricted content to members after a certain time. It can come in handy if you are selling online courses.
  • Upon investigation, we realized that the plugin allows you to set a content expiration date that forces users to renew their subscription to access the content.
  • MemberPress redirects users who try to access restricted content.
  • We discovered that the plugin lets you determine the amount of content visible to each membership level.
  • It can integrate with powerful tools, including Constant Contact, Uncanny Automator, Amazon Web Services, and more.

Cons of MemberPress

  • MemberPress has a free plan, but it does not include most of the features you will need to restrict content.

Why we recommend MemberPress: Overall, MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin. It gives you complete freedom over content access control, lets you create exclusive content for members only, enables you to add a paywall, and more.

2. OptinMonster (Email List Subscriber Content)

OptinMonster website

OptinMonster is the best lead generation that we have used several times to promote our pro services or newsletter. It also comes with a content-locking feature.

This setting prevents users from viewing your page or blog post content by showing a content-locking inline campaign. Users will then only be able to unlock your content once they subscribe to your newsletter, which, in turn, helps you build an email list.

To learn more, see our OptinMonster review.

Content locking OptinMonster

The tool also allows you to configure when and where the popup will appear using the display rules provided by the plugin. For instance, you can set the popup to appear once the user scrolls down to the third paragraph of each post.

This way, users will already be invested in the content when the popup appears and will be more likely to join your email list to unlock the content.

Select how inline campaign will appear with automatic mode

For more detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to add content locking in WordPress.

Pros of OptinMonster

  • OptinMonster allows you to create banners, sliders, gamified popups, and more.
  • We like that OptinMonster lets you choose if you want to lock entire pages, specific sections of a page, or certain elements (like buttons or images.
  • It comes with a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates for different campaigns.
  • It has built-in analytics and reports features and smart display triggers like exit intent technology, scroll depth targeting, page targeting, and more.
  • During testing, we found that you can set timers to create urgency for limited-time offers or exclusive content.

Cons of OptinMonster

Why we recommend OptinMonster: It is the ideal plugin if you want to create exclusive content for your subscribers. It allows you to make a popup to prevent users from viewing your content, which they can only unlock upon joining your email list.

Envira Gallery website

Envira Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin on the market that can easily protect your images from theft.

We’ve thoroughly tested it on our demo website and found it to be both beginner-friendly and highly scalable. To learn more, see our Envira Gallery review.

The plugin comes with a protection addon that disables right-clicking for images and shows an alert popup to users when they try to copy or save your images.

Enabling image protection for your image galleries

Other than that, it has a watermarking addon that lets you watermark your images to protect them from copyright infringement.

Envira Gallery also lets you add CAPTCHA to your protected galleries to prevent automated bots from accessing or scraping your images.

This means that before a user can view or download images from your gallery, they will have to complete a CAPTCHA challenge.

Check enable watermarking option

Pros of Envira Gallery

  • Envira has a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates to help you build visually appealing galleries.
  • We love its lightbox feature that better displays your images and prevent their theft.
  • The plugin lets you password-protect your galleries.
  • During evaluation, we found that you can restrict gallery access based on users’ IP addresses.
  • Some of its additional features include adding videos to the gallery, importing images as zip files, creating slideshows, using the zoom feature, and more.
  • The plugin lets you set specific access rules for different user roles, ensuring only authorized users can manage or view certain galleries.

Cons of Envira Galleey

  • Envira Gallery has a free plan, but you will need the pro version of the plugin to unlock the image protection addons.
  • The plugin cannot protect any written content on your website.

Why we recommend Envira Gallery: If you are a photographer or building a visual portfolio, then you can use Envira to protect your images from theft, misuse, and unauthorized distribution.

4. PPWP (Password Protect Pages)

PPWP – Password Protect Pages

PPWP is one of the best free password protection WordPress plugins that allows you to lock your content by creating unique passwords for each page and post.

The plugin allows you to set different passwords for various user roles. This means that a subscriber’s password may get them access to certain pages while keeping them locked out of the rest.

During testing, we found that you can assign unlimited passwords to individual pages and posts. This allows different users to access the same content with unique credentials.

Password protect the entire site

With PPWP, you can also set a master password that gives you access to all the content with a single pass key. We recommend using this feature to create a master password for the side admin.

Other than that, the plugin can also add passwords to protect specific categories, partial sections of your posts, or your entire WordPress website.

Master password feature

It can also set distinct passwords for various user roles (e.g., subscribers, editors), making it the ultimate choice for password protection.

Pros of PPWP

  • We love that PPWP prevents password abuse and spam using Google reCAPTCHA v2 or v3.
  • The plugin allows you to show/hide premium content at a specific time.
  • We found that it utilizes Ajax to display protected content without requiring a page refresh, This improves user experience and reduces server load.
  • The plugin integrates with popular page builders like Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder.

Cons of PPWP

  • Adding passwords to each page or post can hurt the user experience.
  • The plugin relies on the strength of the passwords that you choose for content protection.

Why we recommend PPWP: It is a free and easy-to-use plugin that password-protects your posts and pages.

5. MemberMouse (Members-Only Content)

MemberMouse

MemberMouse is another powerful membership plugin that allows you to protect your content by granting access to it based on different membership levels.

It lets you protect posts, pages, categories, taxonomies, and even individual sections within your content using smart tags.

During our research, we found that MemberMouse allows you to assign different permissions to team members, such as customer support or content managers. This is useful if you have a large business site. For details, see our MemberMouse review.

It even has drip content scheduling. This means that you can gradually grant access to your content to different members over time.

Pros of MemberMouse

  • Other than protection, you can also use smart tags to create dynamic and personalized content.
  • We love that MemberMouse shows excerpts of protected content to users, encouraging them to subscribe to a membership.
  • Upon investigation, we found that the tool lets you offer exclusive coupons based on membership level.
  • It lets you create a dedicated space on your website that is only accessible to members.
  • The plugin has custom login and password reset pages and limits login attempts to prevent unauthorized access.

Cons of MemberMouse

  • MemberMouse can integrate with a limited number of gateways and does not offer as many integrations as some of the other plugins on this list.
  • We find it annoying that it does not have a free plan.

Why we recommend MemberMouse: If you want to create a membership site that unlocks different content based on membership levels, then MemberMouse is a great choice.

6. WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click (Blog Content Protection)

WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click

WP Content Protection & No Right Click is a popular and free WordPress plugin that can help protect your blog content.

With this tool, you can disable text selection and copying, add no right-click for images, and prevent users from saving your images on their computers.

Plus, we like that you can display a custom message when someone attempts to right-click or save an image. It is great for reinforcing content protection while adding a personal touch.

Other than that, WP Content Protection & No Right Click allows you to enable/disable protection for administrators and lets you select the pages where you want to protect content.

Pros of WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click

  • Our evaluation revealed that the plugin disables shortcut keys on your website like Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+X (cut), and Ctrl+V (paste).
  • It displays custom messages to users when they try to copy or save your content, reminding them of copyright protection.
  • WP Content Protection adds a lightbox feature to images to prevent users from downloading them.
  • It is free and has an easy-to-use control panel.

Cons of WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click

  • The plugin does not let you create exclusive content for members only.
  • It disables right-click and text selection, which can frustrate some users who want to highlight text for better readability or save instructions to use later.

Why we recommend WP Content Protection & No Right Click: We recommend this plugin if you have a simple WordPress blog and are looking for a free solution to protect your blog posts and images from theft.

7. Passster (Password Protect Pages)

Passster

Passster is all in one password-protection plugin that protects your website’s pages, posts, and custom post types.

It restricts access to content by adding password protection and creates password-protected sections within pages using shortcodes and blocks. The plugin can also be used to lock your entire website.

When testing the plugin, we discovered that it automatically applies password protection to child pages if you set protection on the parent page.

Passster comes with a user-friendly interface and completely customizable password fields. Plus, the tool is AJAX-powered and has cookie-based authentication for a better user experience.

Pros of Passster

  • It lets you set multiple passwords for different areas of your website.
  • We appreciate that the plugin is completely free.
  • Passster creates a list of passwords that can be used to unlock content and sets passwords to expire after a certain number of uses, time intervals, or dates.
  • The plugin generates unique links that unlock protected content for specific users and even lets you monitor how often a password is used to log in.

Cons of Passster

  • Search engines might not be able to crawl and index password-protected content, negatively affecting your SEO rankings.
  • Some users have complained that Passster offers limited control over user role permissions and heavily depends on password management.

Why we recommend Passster: It is a great free plugin if you want to password-protect your content. The plugin even comes with a WooCommerce integration that restricts access to specific products, categories, or your whole store.

8. Wishlist Member (Members-Only Content)

WishList Member

WishList Member is another popular content protection WordPress plugin that lets you create members-only content.

It allows you to lock pages, posts, taxonomies, and individual sections within content using shortcodes. Users can then unlock this content once they purchase different membership levels.

When we were using the tool on a demo website, we realized that it also allows partial content protection. You can use shortcodes to protect only certain sections within a page or post. For details, see our WishList Member review.

Plus, the plugin displays custom messages to your site’s non-members, encouraging them to join to unlock more content.

Pros of WishList Member

  • WishList Member offers drip scheduling, content excerpts for non-members, and time limits for content access.
  • We were impressed that members can access protected content in their RSS feed readers.
  • The plugin creates protected folders to store downloadable files for specific membership levels.
  • Our investigation revealed that WishList Member allows you to restrict access to PDFs, eBooks, videos, and other downloadable files.

Cons of WishList Member

  • It offers a huge amount of features, which can be overwhelming for beginners.
  • It does not have a free plan.

Why we recommend WishList Member: If you want to set up more complex members-only content, then WishList Member is a good choice because of its drip scheduling, page locks, restricted access in feed readers, and more.

9. AccessAlly (Members-Only Content)

AccessAlly

AccessAlly is a powerful WordPress content protection plugin that you can use to create and sell memberships, online courses, and online coaching.

It allows you to easily restrict access to specific pages on your site using tag-based permissions. Only users with the appropriate membership level can view the page. Granting or revoking access to content is as simple as adding or removing the tag.

Plus, we love that it redirects unauthorized users to a custom page or upsell offers.

In addition to pages, you can use AccessAlly to upload and password-protect different file types, such as MP3s and PDFs.

Pros of AccessAlly

  • We appreciate its Offerings Wizard, which helps you quickly set up protected content and membership levels.
  • You can choose from content access options like specific date and time, completion-based unlocking, cohort style, all access, and more.
  • You can control user access to your content directly inside popular email marketing CRMs like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Drip.
  • Upon evaluation, we found that it lets you restrict video access to paying members or specific courses.

Cons of AccessAlly

  • It doesn’t have many customization features to change the look of your membership website.
  • It doesn’t have a free plan.

Why we recommend AccessAlly: If you want to offer online courses or group coaching, AccessAlly is the perfect solution for you. You can protect your content and release it at specific intervals so that all users can progress through the program together.

10. WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design (Protect Blog Posts and Images)

WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design

WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design is a free content protection plugin that disables right-clicking and text selection on your website.

During testing, we discovered that it adds an alert window with a custom warning for users who are trying to copy or save your content. You can easily customize this message to match your website’s theme and design.

Additionally, WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design can protect specific pages or posts and disable keyboard shortcut keys.

Pros of WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design

  • We love that it prevents drag-and-drop image copying on your site.
  • The plugin extends protection to the print preview page (CTRL+P), preventing users from printing your content directly.
  • It can exclude logged-in users like administrators or editors from protection measures.
  • Our research revealed the plugin is lightweight and doesn’t impact site speed.

Cons of WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design

  • The plugin cannot prevent users from capturing content using screenshots.
  • Disabling right-click, text selection, and keyboard shortcuts can negatively impact the user experience.

Why we recommend WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design: If you have just started a small business and are on a shoestring budget, then you can use this plugin to provide plenty of protection for your content, including blog posts and images.

Which Is the Best Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

In our expert opinion, MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin on the market. It gives you complete freedom to restrict any content on your website to members only, prevent unauthorized downloads of your media files, restrict widget visibility, protect individual URLs, and much more.

However, if you are a photographer and just want to protect the images on your site, you can opt for Envira Gallery instead. It password-protects your images, adds watermarks, offers a lightbox feature, and prevents anyone from saving them.

Alternatively, if you want to generate leads by unlocking content for users who subscribe to your email list, you can use OptinMonster. It lets you build a content-locking campaign in which users can only view your content upon signing up for your newsletter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some questions frequently asked by our readers about content protection WordPress plugins.

How do I lock content in WordPress for free?

You can easily lock content in WordPress by using the Passster plugin.

It is completely free and allows you to add password protection to any page or post on your WordPress site. You can even protect specific areas of your pages that can be unlocked with a password.

Which is the best security plugin for WordPress?

In our expert opinion, Sucuri is the best WordPress security plugin that protects your site from DDOS attacks, adds a firewall, comes with malware scanning, and a Content Delivery Network to improve site performance.

For more information, see our complete Sucuri review.

What are the potential downsides of using a content protection plugin?

Using a content protection plugin can have some downsides. For example, these plugins can hurt the user experience by creating too many restrictions.

Similarly, passwords, logins, or paywalls can add extra steps for users to navigate, potentially leading to abandonment. Other than that, some plugins can even hurt your SEO rankings.

That being said, content plugins are still essential if you want to protect content scraping on your site.

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Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. See how WPBeginner is funded, why it matters, and how you can support us. Here's our editorial process.

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

7 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Kzain

    I never thought of using this WP Content Protection & No Right Click after reading this I think I should install it now. thanks for this article

    • WPBeginner Support

      Glad we could share a helpful tool :)

      Admin

  2. Jiří Vaněk

    I’d like to ask about protecting against text theft. I understand that some assistance can be provided by disabling the right-click function for copying content. However, if the thief is clever, they can steal text by viewing the page source code. Is there any plugin that could, for example, encrypt the source code so that a potential thief wouldn’t obtain the content in written form by viewing the page source code?

    • WPBeginner Support

      There is no plugin we would currently recommend that would go to that extent as that would also likely cause issues with search engines indexing your content.

      Admin

      • Jiří Vaněk

        Yes, I didn’t think that the search engine could have a problem with it if the source code was encrypted. Thank you for the advice

  3. Anuoluwapo Olabode Oludare

    When it comes to content protection and membership sites, memberpress is the best in the game but I think Paid membership pro should also be in this list, it’s free, easy to setup and the premium version adds more versatility to it.

    I’ve used memberpress in some projects and it’s never let me down.

    • WPBeginner Support

      Thank you for sharing what has worked for you :)

      Admin

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