WordPress Themes for Community Groups and Clubs: Dues, Events and a Member List

Most clubs and societies run on a spreadsheet and one patient treasurer. Renewals arrive by bank transfer with the wrong reference. The walk dates sit in a Facebook post that half the members never see, and the newsletter goes out from somebody's personal email with forty addresses pasted into the CC line.

A website is worth the effort if it takes that work off the committee. We looked at two themes made for community groups on 7 October 2026, plus five plugins that handle what a theme can't, which is collecting dues, keeping a member list, taking event sign-ups and sending a newsletter. If your members mostly want to chat in groups and forums, that's a different build, and our post on BuddyPress themes, out on 10 October, covers it.

At a glance

UnityPress

UnityPress from Dannci is one of very few paid themes sold as a community club theme rather than a charity theme with the words changed. The demo is an outdoor club with hiking, cycling, swimming and indoor sports groups, a members counter and a club news section. The header holds Events, Forums and a Donate Now button. Events run on the free Events Manager plugin, which the theme styles, and the 1.4 update added styling for its booking form. The forum is bbPress and the donation page uses GiveWP.

There is nothing for members as such. When a buyer asked how to keep some files for logged-in members only, the author said that was outside the theme and suggested the WP-Members plugin. Dues and a member list still need one of the plugins below.

The demo homepage also has a paragraph of lorem ipsum left under More about Club, and earlier buyers reported 503 errors importing the demo content. UnityPress costs $59 and has 311 sales on ThemeForest, with two ratings so far. It was last updated on 18 May 2026.

HOAT

HOAT is a free block theme from Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, and it was made for homeowners' associations. Of the free themes we opened, it is the one that best understands a group run by a committee. The homepage has a Quick links grid with Pay Dues, Report an Issue, Upcoming Events, Rules & Bylaws, Community Gardens and a Recycling Program. Another pattern offers Report Maintenance, Report Violation and Contact Board, and there is an FAQ pattern written for residents.

None of it works until you connect it to something. The Pay Dues box is a heading and a link. A separate payments pattern shows annual dues of $600 with Pay Now, Auto-pay and Payment History buttons, and all three point nowhere until you add a membership plugin. That pattern's heading also reads "Anual Des", so fix the typo before launch.

A sports club or book group will rename most of the sections, but the structure carries over well. HOAT has 600+ active installs and no reviews on WordPress.org. Version 1.0.1 came out on 19 April 2026, though its readme still says it was tested up to WordPress 6.7.

Paid Memberships Pro

Dues are the job most club sites handle badly, and Paid Memberships Pro does them properly in its free version. You create levels such as Adult, Junior and Family, give each a yearly or monthly price, and members pay by card through Stripe or PayPal. Renewals are charged automatically. Members can update their card or cancel from their own account page, so the treasurer stops chasing standing orders. You can also keep pages for paying members only. The public demo, a dog owners' club called Must Love Dogs, shows three levels at free, $25 a month and $100 a month.

It has left the official plugin directory. WordPress.org closed its listing on 17 October 2024 at the developer's request, so you download it from Paid Memberships Pro and updates come from them. It is still released often, and version 3.8.8 came out on 6 October 2026.

The member directory with profile pages is a premium add-on. Paid plans start at $49 a month or $499 a year, which is a lot for a club that only wants a list of names.

Ultimate Member

For groups where people mainly want to find each other, such as an alumni society or a trade association, Ultimate Member gives you a searchable member directory without paying anything. Members register through your form and fill in the profile fields you choose. They then appear in a directory you can limit to logged-in members, and menus can change depending on who is signed in. One reviewer moved a 1,000+ member organisation from an old BuddyPress set-up to Ultimate Member in 2025 and said the change went smoothly. They singled out the Stripe integration.

Stripe is a paid extension, though. It comes in the Pro plan at $348 a year for two sites, so dues cost more here than with Paid Memberships Pro.

The bigger question for a site holding members' phone numbers and addresses is the security record. WPScan lists 61 vulnerabilities over the plugin's life, five of them disclosed between late August and early October 2026. One let visitors who weren't logged in see sensitive profile fields through the member directory, and it was fixed in version 2.14.0. If you use it, turn on automatic updates. Several 2026 reviews also complain about slow or missing replies on the free support forum. Ultimate Member has 200,000+ active installs and a 4.4 rating from 1,446 reviews on WordPress.org, and was last updated on 29 September 2026.

MembershipWorks

MembershipWorks works differently from the plugins above. It is a hosted membership system built for associations, chambers of commerce and clubs, and its WordPress plugin drops the forms, event calendar and member directory onto your pages with shortcodes. Dues, renewal and past-due reminders, event tickets, a directory with a map, donations and volunteer sign-up forms all run from one account. The demo directory searches members by location, category and committee. It can also send payments to Xero or QuickBooks, which helps if the treasurer already keeps the accounts there.

Because it is a service, you pay by the size of your list. It is free for up to 50 accounts, then $35 a month for 300, $59 for 600 and $95 for 1,200. MembershipWorks takes no cut of payments, but your member records live on its servers rather than in WordPress.

A reviewer on WordPress.org wrote that their club of just under 300 members had used it for six years. An older one-star review complained that the documentation only became visible after installing, so you couldn't check what it did first. The plugin has 2,000+ active installs and a 4.4 rating from 37 reviews, and was updated on 27 August 2026.

Events Manager

For the fixtures list or the programme of talks, Events Manager is the free plugin we would start with, and UnityPress is already styled for it. The free version has a calendar, repeating events with blackout dates, venues with maps, and add-to-calendar buttons for Google, Outlook and Apple. It also takes bookings. A member or guest reserves a place, you approve it, and the attendee list exports to a spreadsheet. Members can send in their own events for you to approve too.

Charging for a place is a Pro feature, and so are waiting lists, coupons and custom booking forms. Pro starts at $129 a year, and even recording offline payments, the cash-on-the-door kind, is on the Pro list.

Updates caused trouble this year. Version 7.3 broke several sites in May 2026, and the developer put out 7.3.1 straight away to fix it. It's worth trying updates on a copy of the site first. Events Manager has 60,000+ active installs and a 4.2 rating from 550 reviews, and was last updated on 2 October 2026.

MailPoet

MailPoet keeps the newsletter inside WordPress, next to the news it reports. You build each email in a drag-and-drop editor and keep subscriber lists in the dashboard. It can also send a digest of new posts on a schedule, so the match report you post on Sunday turns into Monday's email without anyone copying it across. Signup forms can sit under posts, in a pop-up or on any page.

The free version covers up to 1,000 subscribers, with MailPoet branding in each email. You can send through your web host or a service like Amazon SES, but MailPoet itself warns that sending from ordinary hosting can hit speed limits and land in spam. Its own sending service is free for a small list only.

The current version needs WordPress 7.0 and PHP 7.4, so an older club site has to be brought up to date first. MailPoet has 500,000+ active installs and a 4.4 rating from 1,432 reviews, and was last updated on 6 October 2026.

Final thoughts

A small club with fewer than 50 members and no one keen on running plugins should look at MembershipWorks first. Dues, events and a directory work from day one, on the free plan, with any theme you like. HOAT is a good free match because its homepage already has slots for dues, events and rules.

A club that wants to keep everything on its own WordPress site can do it for very little. Paid Memberships Pro collects the dues, Events Manager runs the calendar and sign-ups, and MailPoet sends the newsletter, all on their free versions. That leaves the member directory, which costs money in Paid Memberships Pro. Put UnityPress on top if you want a site that looks like a club from the first page, and budget $129 a year for Events Manager Pro if you charge for events.

Choose Ultimate Member when the directory is the main reason people join, as with alumni groups and professional networks. Keep it updated without fail.

We make WordPress themes too, and we're building a Nonprofit theme that isn't on sale yet. It's in development and expected in late 2026. Its page lists donations, monthly giving, event tickets and volunteer shifts, and it names clubs raising money for new kit as one of the groups it's for. It won't replace a membership plugin for dues or a member directory, so a club would still pair it with the tools above.

FAQ

Sources

• HOAT on WordPress.org: installs, version, update date, requirements and theme files. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• Paid Memberships Pro on WordPress.org: closure notice and date. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• Ultimate Member on WordPress.org: features, installs, rating and update date. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• WPScan vulnerability record for Ultimate Member: vulnerability count and 2026 fixes. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• WordPress.org review of Ultimate Member: "Migrated huge member site, A+ experience" and a one-star review from October 2026 about support. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• MembershipWorks on WordPress.org: features, free tier, installs, rating and update date. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• WordPress.org review of MembershipWorks: "Happy Customer Since 2018" and "Inflexible system with lots of limitations". Checked on 7 October 2026.
• Events Manager on WordPress.org: free and Pro features, installs, rating and update date. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• WordPress.org review of Events Manager: "Excellent, but v7.3 crashed the site", with the developer's reply. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• MailPoet on WordPress.org: free plan limits, requirements, installs, rating and update date. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• PremiumPress Nonprofit Theme: planned features and release status. Checked on 7 October 2026.
• YouTube: How to setup a membership directory in WordPress, Phillip Hobbs. Checked on 7 October 2026.