Menu By User Roles

58 Quality Score

Active Installs

14/30

With only 1,000 active installs, adoption is modest and the plugin is not widely battle-tested across diverse WordPress environments.

Update Freshness

17/25

The plugin was updated on 2 October 2025 and is tested against WordPress 6.8.5, signalling that the author is actively maintaining it for current releases.

User Rating

9/15

A perfect 100/100 score from 3 ratings is encouraging but statistically thin, so the rating signal carries limited weight.

Support Health

8/15

Zero support threads means there is no public track record of how the author responds to user issues or bug reports.

WP Compatibility

11/15

It requires WordPress 5.0 and PHP 7.0, both quite old, so it will run on most legacy sites but offers no guarantee of testing with the newest PHP versions.

Scores higher than 7% of indexed plugins

About

Menu By User Roles allows you to control the visibility of menu items based on user roles.

Active Installs 1k+

Rating ★★★★★ 5/5

Last Updated 2025-10-02 3:41pm GMT

Requires WordPress 5.0+

Tested Up To 6.8.10

Requires PHP 7.0+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

Menu By User Roles lets you show or hide individual WordPress navigation menu items based on the logged-in viewer's role. From the Appearance menu screen, each menu item gains a panel where you select which roles can see it, with options for logged-out visitors and a fallback for unmatched users. It is a narrow, single-purpose tool focused only on menu visibility, not broader content or capability restrictions.

Who It's For

This plugin fits small sites that need to swap menu links for members versus guests, such as clubs, course providers, internal team pages, or simple membership setups. It is well suited to administrators who want a quick, low-config way to personalize the nav bar without touching code or installing a full access-control suite.

Who Should Skip It

If you need to restrict pages, posts, custom post types, widgets, or blocks by role, this plugin is the wrong tool and you should use a broader access-control plugin instead. Sites needing user-role editing, capability management, or content gating will get more value from PublishPress Capabilities or Advanced Access Manager.

The Bottom Line

Menu By User Roles does one thing and does it lightly, scoring 61.39/100 with a perfect but tiny rating sample and no public support history. It is a sensible pick for simple sites that just want role-based menu swaps without bloat, but anyone needing broader access control should graduate to PublishPress Capabilities or Advanced Access Manager. Consider it a niche utility rather than a foundational plugin.

Related Plugins

PublishPress Capabilities 84/100

Pick this when you need full user-role editing, capability control, and admin menu restrictions in one package, with a far larger install base and proven support.

Content Control 83/100

Pick this when you want to restrict not just menus but also pages, posts, and blocks with conditional logic, which this plugin does not offer.

Advanced Access Manager 82/100

Pick this when you need granular access governance across menus, content, URLs, and REST endpoints for a complex multi-role site.

Groups 80/100

Pick this when your site relies on custom user groups beyond default WordPress roles and you want group-based menu and content control.

Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles 78/100

Pick this when your only goal is tidying the admin bar for certain roles, not controlling the front-end navigation menu.