About Password Protected
Password Protected is a WordPress plugin, maintained by WPExperts, that puts a password in front of a site or parts of it. You can lock the whole site with one master password, or protect individual pages, posts, WooCommerce products, categories and blocks of content. It has more than 300,000 active installations on WordPress.org.
What can you protect?
The simplest use is locking the entire site behind a master password. That is handy for a site under construction, a client preview or a private event site.
You can also protect specific pages and posts, WooCommerce products and product categories, and partial content inside a page using a shortcode. That last one lets you show a teaser to everyone and keep the rest for people with the password. The WordPress admin area can be protected as well.
Common ways people use it
Agencies lock a new site while it is being built so the client can review it before launch. Event organisers keep schedules and guest details on a private page. Stores lock a product category so only trade customers with the password see wholesale items. Writers and course creators hide part of an article or lesson behind a password for subscribers.
In each case the need is the same: keep a few things out of public view without building user accounts for everyone.
Letting the right people through
Not everyone has to type the password. You can whitelist IP addresses, such as your office, and whitelist user roles, so logged-in editors are never stopped. Bypass links give someone passwordless access through a special URL, and you can set more than one password, which helps when different groups need access and you want to revoke one without affecting the others.
Security extras
The lock screen supports Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile to keep bots out. Login attempts can be limited, and activity is logged so you can see who got in. The lock screen itself can be customised to match the site, and there is a Gravity Forms integration.
Some of these features sit in the paid Password Protected Pro version, so check the free and Pro comparison on passwordprotectedwp.com before relying on a particular one.
Ratings and requirements
As of October 2026, the plugin has a 4.4 out of 5 rating from 141 reviews on WordPress.org, and the current version is 2.8.4. It needs WordPress 4.9.6 or later and PHP 5.6 or later.
What a password gate does not do
A shared password controls who can see a page. It does not give each visitor their own account, track what individuals do, or take payments. Anyone who has the password can pass it on.
That makes it right for previews, private pages and simple gated content, and wrong for anything where you need to know exactly which person accessed what.
Who should choose something else?
Membership sites that sell access, with individual accounts and recurring billing, need a membership plugin instead.
Teams protecting a staging site are often better served by password protection at the hosting level, which also keeps search engines and bots off the server entirely.
And sites handling sensitive personal or business data should use proper user accounts with roles, not a shared password. For quick, simple locking of a WordPress site or a few pages, Password Protected does the job with little setup.
Reviews
No reviews yet
Nobody has reviewed Password Protected here yet.