10 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins (Expert Pick for 2026)

Protecting your content is important if you run a membership site, sell online courses, or publish articles meant for a limited audience. Without proper controls, even paid or private content can be accessed or shared more easily than you might expect.

WordPress offers several content protection plugins that let you restrict access to pages, posts, videos, and downloads without hurting the user experience.

On our own sites, we use MemberPress to create online courses and protect lessons step by step. That approach works well for structured learning, but it’s not always the right solution for every type of website.

Some sites only need to protect premium articles, downloads, or member-only pages without setting up a full course or membership system. To cover those use cases, we tested a range of popular plugins designed for different content protection needs.

In this article, we’ll share our picks for the 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:

#	Plugins	Best For	Pricing
🥇	MemberPress	All in one solution	$179.50/yr + Free
🥈	OptinMonster	Creating exclusive content for subscribers	$19/month
🥉	Envira Gallery	Protecting images from theft	$39.50/yr + Free
4	Password Protect Pages	Password-protecting posts and pages	Free
5	MemberMouse	Unlocking content based on membership levels	$199.50/yr

Why Use a Content Protection Plugin?

A content protection plugin helps prevent your WordPress content from being copied, scraped, or accessed by people who shouldn’t have it. This is especially important if you publish premium content, sell digital products, or rely on original content to drive traffic and revenue.

Here are the most common reasons site owners use content protection plugins:

• Prevent content theft: Your blog posts, images, and videos can be copied and republished on other websites without permission. This can hurt your reputation, reduce traffic, and negatively impact your search engine optimization (SEO).
• Stop automated scraping: Some tools automatically copy your content as soon as it is published. Content protection plugins can help prevent blog scraping and limit unauthorized reuse.
• Control how content is accessed: Many plugins let you disable text selection, block copy and paste, and prevent right-clicking on images to make casual theft harder.
• Protect images and media: If you run a photography or creative website, you can use these tools to prevent image theft by disabling right-click, adding watermarks, or restricting downloads.
• Create members-only content: Content protection plugins also make it easy to lock posts, pages, or files so only registered users, subscribers, or paying members can access them.

Overall, choosing the right content protection plugin lets you safeguard your work while still providing a smooth and respectful experience for legitimate users.

How We Test And Review WordPress Content Protection Plugins

To find the best content protection plugins for different types of websites, we tested the most popular options on real WordPress sites.

During testing, we focused on the problems site owners usually face when trying to protect their content:

• Easy setup without breaking your site: Many site owners worry about locking themselves out or misconfiguring access rules. We focused on plugins that are simple to set up, work out of the box, and do not require editing theme files or adding custom code.
• Stopping casual copying and unauthorized access: A common frustration is seeing blog posts, lessons, or downloads copied and shared freely. We tested whether plugins could reliably restrict content to logged-in users, subscribers, or customers and make copying text, images, and files more difficult.
• Protecting premium content without slowing pages down: Some content protection plugins add noticeable delays or interfere with caching. We checked whether each plugin protects content while keeping page load times fast and the browsing experience smooth.
• Clear guidance when something goes wrong: When access rules fail, or users report problems, site owners need fast answers. We reviewed the quality of documentation, tutorials, and customer support to see how easy it is to troubleshoot common issues.
• Tools you can trust long term: Content protection is not something you want to replace every few months. We only included plugins we tested on live sites that had a solid update history, positive user feedback, and consistent support.

By focusing on these real-world pain points, we narrowed the list down to content protection plugins that are practical, reliable, and well-suited for everyday WordPress sites.

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 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.

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.

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.
• 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.
• It 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 is the best lead generation software that we use to promote our workshops, newsletter, and other content on our website. 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.

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.

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.
• It 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 reporting features, as well as smart display triggers such as exit intent technology, scroll depth targeting, page targeting, and more.
• You can set timers to create urgency for limited-time offers or exclusive content.

Cons of OptinMonster

• OptinMonster is paid software, but its connecting plugin is free.

Why we recommend OptinMonster: It is the ideal plugin for creating 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.

3. Envira Gallery (Anti Image Theft)

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.

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.

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 prevents their theft.
• The plugin lets you password-protect your galleries.
• 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 Gallery

• 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 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.

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

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

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

• 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.
• It uses Ajax (a technology that updates parts of a page) 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 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.

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.
• MemberMouse shows excerpts of protected content to users, encouraging them to subscribe to a membership.
• 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 only a limited number of gateways and offers fewer integrations than some of the other plugins on this list.
• 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 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 lets you enable or disable protection for administrators and select the pages you want to protect.

Pros of WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click

• 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 for later use.

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 is an 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.
• 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 cannot crawl and index password-protected content. This is good for privacy, but keep in mind that those specific pages will not rank in search results.
• 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 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.

While using the tool on a demo website, we realized it also supports 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-based access controls.
• Members can access protected content in their RSS feed readers.
• The plugin creates protected folders to store downloadable files for specific membership levels.
• WishList Member allows you to restrict access to PDFs, eBooks, videos, and other downloadable files.

Cons of WishList Member

• It offers a wide range of features that 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, WishList Member is a good choice thanks to its drip scheduling, page locks, restricted access in feed readers, and more.

9. AccessAlly (Members-Only Content)

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 like its Offerings Wizard, which helps you quickly set up protected content and membership levels.
• You can choose from content access options such as 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.
• 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. 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 is a free content protection plugin that disables right-clicking and text selection on your website.

During testing, we discovered that it displays an alert window with a custom warning to users who try 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

• 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, such as administrators or editors, from protection measures.
• 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.

Best WordPress Guides for Content Protection

• How to Show Excerpt of a Password-Protected Post in WordPress
• How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress
• The Ultimate WordPress Security Guide
• How to Password Protect Your WordPress Forms
• How to Password Protect Your WordPress without User Registration
• Best Plagiarism Checker Tools for Your Site (Compared)
• How to Restrict Content to Registered Users in WordPress
• How to Restrict User Login to One Device in WordPress

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