Create and Edit a Membership

This article describes how to sell "Memberships" on your website. A membership is a recurring subscription to one or more offerings of your choice. They can be used to register for classes, appointments, event series, and workshops. For example, you can create a "Monthly Membership" and sell it for $150 per month and it can be used for all your offerings or a select group of offerings. Keep reading to learn how to create and manage your memberships and how your clients or students purchase and use them to register.

Creating a Membership

There are two things you need to have set up before you can create a membership.

1. At least one Offering. If you haven't created an Offering yet you'll be asked to do that. For an overview of how to create Offerings and creating your schedule with OfferingTree please see this help guide.
2. Connecting a Stripe payment processor. To read about how to get started accepting payments via Stripe with OfferingTree check out this help article

Once you can accept payments and have at least one Offering, you can create a membership. To get started, visit the "Packages/Memberships" page under the "Payments" section and switch to the "Membership" area and press the "Create Membership" button.

Once you press the "Create Membership" button, a pop-up displays. Fill out the form to configure your membership.

Membership Credits: Set How Often a Membership Can Be Used

Memberships can be unlimited or you can set how many credits are available during the membership period. A credit can be used to register for classes, appointments, and store items. Currently, every class, appointment, and store item is worth 1 credit, but in the future, we plan to allow you to set how many credits something is worth. To set the membership period, pick how often you would like the membership to auto-renew.

Membership Usage: What a membership can be used for

Set the offerings that the membership applies to and is valid for. If you would like this membership to be valid for all your offerings, choose "All Offerings". If you would like the membership to be used only for your online store or member-only pages, choose No Offerings (see this help article for how to accept memberships for your online store items). If you would like the membership to be valid for all your offerings except for a few select offerings, choose All Offerings Except and select the offerings that the membership should not be valid for. If you would like to choose specific offerings to be valid with this membership, you can choose them by selecting Choose Offerings.  

If you only have a small number of events, event series or appointments that you don't want to accept memberships for as payment, you can uncheck the Accept valid memberships and packages checkbox in the Payment Settings of the event, series or appointment.

Membership Free Trial Period

You can optionally add a free trial period for your membership. Select the "Enable a free trial period" checkbox and then select the time duration for the trial. You can select any number of weeks, months, or years. The first membership payment will be automatically made after the free trial period. For example, if you set up a membership to renew every month and you had a 2-week free trial, your client would get two weeks to use their membership without being charged. After the two-week period, their credit card would be charged for the first month of their membership and for every month thereafter until the membership is canceled.

Membership Activation

Here are a few examples that may help understand how enabling this option to pause the membership works.

1. You set up a monthly membership that is paused until first use. Your client purchases the membership on June 1st with an initial payment. On June 2nd, they use the membership to register for a class on July 15th. They won't be charged again until August 15th - one month after their first usage. 
2. With Free Trial (less common) - You set up a monthly membership with a 2-week free trial and set it up to be paused until first use. Your client signs up for the membership on June 1st (they will not be charged because of the free trial). On June 2nd, they register for a class on July 15th with the membership. On July 15th, their membership is taken off of hold and their 2-week free trial starts. They will be charged for the first time in two weeks (free trial period) from the date they first used it (July 15th) which is July 29th.
3. Purchasing a store item - You set up a monthly membership that is paused until first use. Your client purchases the membership on June 1st with an initial payment. On July 15th, they use the membership to view a digital store item. They won't be charged again until August 15th - one month after their first usage. 

Set Limits on Who Can Purchase Your Membership

You can limit your membership to be purchased by only new customers who have not bought another package or membership from you before or limit the membership to one per customer account.

If you select No limitations, anyone can purchase, then there are no limitations on who can purchase your membership. 

If you select Only one per customer, then only one of these memberships can be purchased by this customer's account. Note that the system will already not allow a person to buy the same membership if the first one is still active, but this setting will prevent them from buying another membership of the same type if they had a previous membership but it was canceled. If the customer does try to buy another one and they had a previously canceled membership of the same type, they will receive an error message letting them know there is a "only one per customer" limit.

If you select Can only buy as their first package or membership, then they will only be able to purchase this membership if they have not bought any other memberships or packages from you. Note that if they pay for single event registrations (drop-ins), book appointments with you or purchase your store items they will still be able to buy this. It's only if they already purchased another package or membership.

Set Introductory Pricing For Your Membership

You can choose to provide discounted introductory prices for first-time buyers of your memberships. This option allows you to set the introductory price, as well as the number of billing cycles that the introductory price applies to. Once the membership has been renewed for the set number of billing cycles, the price will revert to the full price of the membership.

Discount codes and Memberships

You can create discount codes that can be used with memberships. On the discount creation page, choose the number of times the discount code can be used by a client. This will set the number of billing cycles the discount will be applied. For example, if set to 2 (as in the example below), the discount will be applied to the first two membership payments. If the membership has an introductory price, the membership will be applied to the introductory price. If "Unlimited" is chosen for the number of times a client can use the discount, the discount will be applied to all membership payments. You can choose which memberships a discount code can be used with.

Memberships Sales Page

Once you have at least one package or membership created, your public-facing site will have a new page called "Packages".  You can edit the title of this page and the order in which it appears on your public site by visiting the "Pages" page under "Edit Website". To learn more about editing pages and re-ordering them, watch this tutorial video. If you are embedding OfferingTree into another website, you can embed your memberships and packages as well. Embed Your Memberships Page on Another Site and Embed your Packages and Memberships on an Existing Site.

Editing a Membership

To edit a membership you already created, go to the "Packages/Memberships" page under "Payments and switch to the "Membership" tab. Press the "Edit" icon in the corresponding row of the package you want to edit. 

Once your press the "edit" icon, you should be taken to the "Edit Membership" page where you can edit your membership. The fields are the same as they were for the "Create a Membership" page.  Press the "Save" button at the bottom when you are finished editing your package.

If you edit the price of the membership or the recurring charge period, this will affect previously purchased memberships as well. For example, if you set up a monthly membership for $100 and then edit it and change the price to $120, anyone who had previously purchased the membership for $100 would start paying $120 every month in the future.

If you would prefer to not affect the price of previously purchased memberships, create a new membership with the new price and unpublish the old one. The old membership will no longer appear on your client-facing website, but anyone that had already purchased the membership will continue to have that membership until canceled.

Editing the free trial period will not affect previously purchased memberships.

Other helpful articles about memberships:

How to View Purchased Memberships

Refunding a Membership Payment or Canceling a Membership

Linking a membership to your store items

How Your Clients and Students Purchase and Use a Package

Check out this help article to see how students can buy and use a membership.

P.S. Join our Facebook group and connect with other OfferingTree users to share questions, offer ideas and insights, and support each other towards a more thriving wellness business.