WordPress is now very common as a content management platform. It provides an excellent way of customizing your website however you want by leveraging the thousands of plugins most of which are available for free. One type of plugins you won’t fail to use in customizing a website is the social media plugins, because they help you achieve an important goal of getting traffic to your website and business. This is the traffic you count on to sell more.
Social media plugins perform multiple functions, and BuddyPress is one of the plugins you can use to meet many ends when developing a website. First it allows you to create social communities inside of WordPress, for instance through groups and chat features. Then it comes with countless extensions and add-ons to add extra functionality for the website.
Nevertheless, the free version is limited unlike the paid version, which is one reason some people would want to explore BuddyPress alternatives. There are multiple other reasons – for instance, you may be looking for extra features and functionality. Plus you may be a little bit annoyed of the BuddyPress, which has a bad side anyway. For instance, in addition to the reported compatibility issues, users are unable to add photos, or upload media. Then it provides only basic way of editing and customizing your profile.
So the other plugins may offer one or more advantages or something you may not be getting on BuddyPress. There are other types of plugins that compete with this type of plugin, for instance those that allow users to create communities, groups, and forums on WordPress for their websites. These work more like the social plugins, and can help to generate more traffic for a website.
Here are 8 alternatives you may use for BuddyPress.
- UserPro
- PeepSo
- Nextend social plugin
- WP Symposium Pro
- Ultimate Member
- bbPress
- MemberPress
- Bitrix24
1. UserPro
UserPro allows WordPress users to create community sites and profiles in WordPress, for their own websites. It incorporates multiple features that allow you to customize the communities and the profiles. These include login and registration forms, integration and connection to social media, user badges, content restriction to any user, display of member lists, account verifications, and private/public feeds.
It allows WordPress users to build community with searchable directories, customize registration and login forms, customize user profiles the way you want, and many other things.
This paid plugin provides user friendly features that allow users to save time when customizing their profiles. It makes it easy to enable user registration and logins. It also provides possibility of using an email to login o the admin panel. Most owners prefer this because it enables easier generation of databases.
Pros
– It is low priced.
– Allows email login and fast generation of database.
Cons
– Not completely free like some competitor plugins.
2. PeepSo
This plugin is familiar for its ability to allow you to create social network in WordPress to generate extra traffic for your website. Like BuddyPress, it has free and paid versions. With extra features in the paid advanced version, you can increase traffic to your website in many ways.
It works like social media that allows you to add new friends, accept new requests, reject any of the requests, and even remove friends from lists. Unlike BuddyPress, it allows you to add in videos, photos, and other content types. You can also set privacy levels for users. This is while saving time. The plugin also has an enhanced private messaging platform.
Pros
– Ability to create but also tailor your social network the way you want.
– Admins can display ads.
– Easy to use even without developer skills.
Cons
– Works only with WordPress and not like Facebook or other social media that work with other content management solutions.
– Only some features are free. Advanced and best features are paid.
3. Nextend social plugin
This plugin allows your website visitors to register and login to the site easily and quickly. They do not have to spend a lot of time creating profiles on your website.
Nextend Social Login is known for its low charges and free of cost nature. First of all, the plugin enables you to login to a website via social profiles. You can do social media bookmarking without having to affect SEO of the website. It is also easy to register on the website.
Pros
– WooCommerce integration for shopping.
– Translation ready.
– Makes it unnecessary to remember logins.
Cons
– Not everyone is on social media or even mainstream social media.
– Most good features are paid.
4. WP Symposium Pro
This plugin works similar to PeepSo and BuddyPress. It lets you design a social media site pretty quickly and easily. It has features identical to BudyPress’, which means you won’t struggle to understand how it works if you already are familiar with BuddyPress. It also allows you to add functionality through add-ons.
It allows you to add forums to your site. Hence it has features such as user profiles, groups, private messaging between users, image adding, gallery management, and others. It also allows your users to integrate their profiles with other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube among others.
Pros
– Reasonable pricing.
– Contender in WordPress dating plugins.
Cons
– Not as feature-rich compared to other BuddyPress alternatives.
5. Ultimate Member
This provides a number of features including access rules for protecting your content even as you gain more members for your site through this plugin. You can allow or restrict access and edit member levels as wished. You can track user activity, charge different prices, and even upsell using coupons, etc.
Ultimate is one of the social media plugins for WordPress and an alternative for BuddyPress that is free. For this reason, it has gained a lot of attention among online users. It is free yet does not compromise on the results or quality of the website. Hence it is very preferable over the paid plugins.
Pros
– It is free BuddyPress alternative.
– Feature-rich plugin.
– Provides full control of content.
– Periodical update provided.
Cons
– Has some dissatisfied users who are not comfortable using it.
6. bbPress
bbPress is a competitor for BuddyPress given that it is used for community forums and many other things social on WordPress. It is already known that community forums help people to generate free traffic to their sites easily and quickly. Therefore, this plugin is common among both developers and other ordinary users.
Pros
– It is free, which is great compared to other subscription and paid alternatives.
– Been operational for 10 years hence tried and tested.
– Retains coding standards as WordPress.
– Provides hundreds of extensions for further customization.
Cons
– Must install additional extensions to enjoy features beyond the basic.
7. MemberPress
This plugin is for website owners who want to manage subscriptions, as well as memberships, and links. With it, you can create such memberships, monitor, and manage them with ease. Hence, the plugin can help you save a huge amount of time when developing and customizing your website.
It has built in course authoring, email marketing, community forums, and member portal, and is more suitable for SMEs, medium, and large sized firms who want to roll out membership and e-learning for customers.
Pros
– Ease-of-use in managing memberships.
– Dependable.
Cons
– Fewer metrics on reports. No features like income per user or per product. No pivotal charts and tables.
8. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is considered a good CRM WordPress plugin that allows users to manage their customer relationships effectively. It works like more of integration to WordPress than a plugin. Feature wise, it allows you to store customer contacts to your site and can manage and communicate with them as your users. It allows you to keep a track of every interaction with the users.
Although relatively new in the plugin market, this plugin is gaining a lot of attention for its better functionality and features compared to other plugins. It contains many features like time tracking, task management, and many others that allow you to customize your website without paying hefty.
This plugin allows a business to generate leads from the social connections on an ongoing basis.
Pros
– It is free with all its good features and for unlimited user management.
– You can create contact forms and place them anywhere on the website.
– Organize and categorize users however you like. Quantify with chats how you interact with users. Import contacts. Filter lists the way you want. Send out emails and manage contacts.
– Notify users however you like and manage notifications as liked.
– It allows connecting your email with website or WordPress.
– Can edit the interface aspects like colors to make it more comfortable.
Cons
– Although there is technical support staff available to respond to user queries, they take too much time to do so.
– Not extensively reviewed online.
8 BuddyPress Alternatives - Conclusion
In conclusion, if you are looking for a BuddyPress plugin alternative for WordPress site, the best would be Peepso. It allows you to integrate communities, groups, and profiles on your website for free for basic features. This feature-rich option can be used without any developer skills, and you are able to freely manage users the way you want. It allows you to generate traffic for your website easily from inside the WordPress CMS and upsell as you may want.
