A WordPress paywall and membership plugin that stays SEO-safe
Restrict posts, pages or parts of them to buyers or active subscribers, without leaking the paid text to feeds, the REST API or search snippets.
Ways to restrict content
- Restrict a whole post or page to one or more products, and require any or all of them
- Restrict part of a post with the
shortcode - Show content only to visitors who have not bought, with
- Show a custom message to visitors without access
- Keep a teaser: a manual excerpt you write stays visible
Memberships with subscriptions
A membership in WopCart is a subscription product combined with content restriction.
- Monthly, yearly or custom billing intervals, with free trials
- When a subscription lapses, access to restricted content and downloads ends at the same time
- A grace period after a failed payment
- A one-off purchase of the same product grants permanent access
What stays hidden
Restriction runs before the content is rendered, wherever WordPress renders it. Gated blocks and shortcodes do not run for visitors without access.
- Post content on the front end
- REST API responses, including the excerpt field
- Automatic and search excerpts
- RSS feeds
- Meta, Open Graph and Twitter descriptions generated by Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO
Structured data for paywalled content
Google asks sites with paywalls to mark restricted content so it is not mistaken for cloaking. WopCart adds isAccessibleForFree to the post’s schema and, where possible, a hasPart entry with the CSS selector of the restricted section.
- With Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO active, the markup is added to that plugin’s graph, so the page has one connected graph
- Without an SEO plugin, WopCart outputs the markup itself
- Descriptions are protected for every viewer, so a cached page does not expose paid text
- Checkout, confirmation and account pages are set to noindex and excluded from sitemaps
Paywall questions
Will search engines still index my restricted posts?
Search engines see the same page as any visitor without access, together with markup that identifies it as paywalled content. Whether and how a page is indexed is decided by the search engine.
Do I need an SEO plugin?
No. WopCart outputs its structured data on its own. If you use Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO, it integrates with that plugin instead.
Can I sell access to a single article?
Yes. Create a product for it and restrict the post to that product.
Put your first post behind a paywall
Install the plugin, choose a plan and publish your first product with the getting started guide.