A lot of course creators start on Thinkific because it is fast to set up. Then the bills climb, the customisation options run out, and the platform starts limiting the exact thing that made the course special in the first place. That is exactly where Kru Pol, a Muay Thai and Muay Boran coach, found himself when he reached out about a Thinkific to WordPress membership site migration for his growing online coaching school. This case study walks through the real project, from the first message to the finished build, and is written for coaches, consultants, and course creators who are outgrowing their all-in-one course platform and want to know what a proper WordPress rebuild actually involves.

The Client & The Problem

Kru Pol runs a Muay Thai and Muay Boran coaching program and hosts his single course on Thinkific. His goals were simple on the surface: get his existing site redesigned, keep the one course he had running, and give himself room to grow. Underneath that, though, were two real problems.

The first was cost. Thinkific's monthly fees were adding up before the course had even started generating consistent revenue, and as a startup coaching business, every dollar mattered.

The second problem was structural, and it mattered more. Kru Pol wanted his course content organised by category, for example Footwork, Offense, and Defense, each shown as a clickable tab with a list of videos underneath. Click a tab and the videos below should swap instantly, no page reload. Thinkific simply would not allow multiple videos to be listed on a single page this way. He sent screenshots of a reference build he liked, labelled internally as "Khan 1", along with a link to mittmaster.com as a style reference for the clean, professional look he wanted.

There was also a content-protection concern baked into the brief from day one. Kru Pol was clear that he did not want people subscribing, downloading his coaching library, and cancelling immediately afterward.

What He Told Me Directly

In his own words, describing the risk with an open subscription model: "The drip content is important, I don't want people to subscribe, steal my content to create their own and cancel subscription right after."

That single line shaped a large part of the technical approach, and it is a concern that comes up constantly for anyone running paid video-based training. For readers dealing with the same issue, a proper WordPress membership website setup can solve this at the plugin level rather than relying on trust alone.

What I Proposed

Before quoting anything, I reviewed his existing site and the Mittmaster reference. Worth noting for context: Mittmaster itself runs on a customised Thinkific instance, so the look he admired was achievable, but moving to WordPress was still the right call for his two actual goals, cutting the recurring cost and gaining full control over how course content was displayed.

The proposal came together in stages as requirements got clearer, which is fairly normal on a project like this. The core recommendation was:

• WordPress as the foundation, built on a free, lightweight theme rather than a paid premium theme, keeping ongoing costs down.
• A membership plugin to gate content behind payment, with subscription and one-time purchase options.
• A custom-built tabbed video library matching the "Khan 1" layout he wanted, filtering by category without page reloads.
• Vimeo for video hosting, domain-locked so videos could not be embedded or pulled from elsewhere.
• Drip content scheduling, so the full library unlocked gradually instead of all at once.

The plugin choice mattered more than it might sound. My first recommendation was Paid Memberships Pro because its core is free and well supported. But once drip content came into the conversation, the picture changed. Drip content on Paid Memberships Pro sits behind a paid "Series" add-on that runs close to $400 a year, which did not fit a startup budget. After comparing options, I switched the recommendation to ARMember, a plugin with subscriptions, one-time purchases, and drip content all included in a single license around $69 a year. That single change kept his recurring plugin costs roughly six times lower without giving up any of the functionality he needed. If you are weighing plugin costs for your own site, this is exactly the kind of comparison a good WordPress plugin consulting conversation should cover before any code gets written.

The first version of the offer, covering the full functional build with subscription, one-time purchase, drip protection, and the tabbed library, was priced at $650. Kru Pol came back honestly and said it was over budget, with $300 in mind and a hopeful ask of $400. Rather than walking away or quietly cutting corners, we found a middle ground at $550, delivered in 16 days, keeping every core feature, membership, payments, drip protection, and the tabbed layout, intact.

The Build Process

Starting Fresh on a New Domain

Partway through planning, Kru Pol decided to launch on a new domain rather than rebuild his existing site, since there was little content worth migrating. We moved the project to muaythaischool.org, using hosting he already had in place. He was understandably cautious about handing over full hosting access since the account was shared with family businesses, so we worked with domain-level access and requested additional permissions only when a specific task required it. That kind of flexibility is often necessary on real client projects, and it is one reason a solid WordPress website development process needs to adapt to each client's comfort level with access and credentials.

Designing the Tabbed Video Library

The centrepiece of the build was the category-tab video system. Each video was tagged to a category (Footwork, Offense, Defense, and so on), and the front-end tabs filtered the list instantly without reloading the page, matching the "Khan 1" reference exactly. This structure was also built to be reusable, so adding "Khan 2" or additional course levels later would not require rebuilding the layout from scratch.

Installing and Configuring ARMember

Getting ARMember running was not entirely smooth. The license key initially would not activate through the standard install flow, so Kru Pol had to download the plugin package directly from his account and send it over manually before activation worked. This kind of hiccup is common with premium plugins, and it is part of why ongoing WordPress maintenance and support matters even after a site goes live, licensing and plugin issues do not stop appearing just because launch day has passed.

Vimeo Integration and Stripe Payments

Videos were hosted on Vimeo and connected using the Vimeo Video Post Pro plugin, which pulled videos into WordPress by category filter rather than requiring manual embed codes for every lesson. Stripe was set up for payments, and this stage took real troubleshooting. Webhook endpoints, event selections, and repeated key regeneration were needed before payments connected reliably. Payment integrations often look simple in a proposal and turn out to be the most fiddly part of the build in practice, which is exactly what happened here.

Handling a Scope Change

After the core site was live, Kru Pol asked about a bigger structural change, splitting access into partial subscriptions, full-access membership, and per-course one-time purchases, each unlocking only its own content. This was a meaningful step up from a single shared content library, and I was upfront that it was not a small tweak but a genuine structural rebuild requiring separate access mapping and testing for every course. Rather than quietly expanding scope inside the original $550 order, I quoted it separately at $1,100, letting Kru Pol launch what he had already paid for immediately and add the multi-tier structure later when budget allowed. He responded well to that honesty:

"Understood, It's important to set up right from the beginning… I'm already over my budget. I'm glad you spend some time to understand details so we get this fix/setting the right way from beginning."

The Result

The delivered site included a fully branded WordPress membership site on muaythaischool.org, ARMember handling both monthly subscription and one-time purchase access, the custom tabbed video library, Vimeo integration with domain-locked playback, drip content scheduling, and a working Stripe payment flow. A "coming soon" page was also set up for public visitors while the backend was completed, so the site could go live to search engines and social sharing without exposing an unfinished admin experience.

After reviewing the design draft, Kru Pol wrote simply: "Yes, this look great." On an earlier revision he was equally direct: "Hello, I love the look."

Following a round of revisions, the checkout flow was streamlined so subscribers reached the card entry screen after one click instead of selecting the same plan twice, and the pricing was simplified down to a single monthly subscription per Kru Pol's updated preference. Three Loom walkthrough videos were also delivered, covering how to add a coach as a free test subscriber, how to add and duplicate skill tabs for new video categories, and how to embed new Vimeo lessons going forward, so Kru Pol could manage day-to-day content himself without needing a developer for every new video.

The order was marked complete on July 14, 2026, roughly three and a half weeks after the initial custom offer was accepted, with the multi-tier expansion left as a planned future phase rather than a rushed addition.

Key Takeaway

Three things from this project are worth remembering if you are planning your own move off an all-in-one course platform. First, plugin selection should follow your actual feature list, not the other way around. Paid Memberships Pro is a fine plugin, but its drip content add-on would have cost this client six times more per year than ARMember for the same result. Second, be honest about scope changes as they happen. When Kru Pol asked for a multi-tier access system mid-build, treating it as a separate, clearly priced phase protected both the budget he had already committed and the quality of what he had already paid for. Third, ownership matters after launch. Handing over short walkthrough videos meant Kru Pol could add his own course content without waiting on outside help for every new lesson.

If you are weighing a similar move away from Thinkific, Teachable, or Kajabi and want a membership site built around the way you actually teach rather than the limits of a hosted platform, a clear WordPress LMS and membership site build is usually far more affordable than people expect, and it pays for itself in the platform fees you stop paying every month. Take a look at the full range of WordPress development services available, or reach out directly to talk through your specific course structure before committing to anything.