A membership is a paid plan your customers join to get perks on their orders: member prices, free shipping and access to products other customers can’t buy yet, or at all. It is billed as a subscription — the customer is charged when they join and again at every renewal until they cancel. Membership rewards staying rather than waiting for the next sale: the price benefit belongs to the member, not to whoever happens to arrive with a discount code. Everything lives under Membership in your dashboard:

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Settings

In Membership → Settings:
  • Offer membership to shoppers — the switch that makes membership available on your store.
  • Program name — the name customers see at checkout, in emails and in the customer portal.
  • Membership terms URL — linked next to the auto-renewal checkbox at checkout and in the welcome email.
  • Renewal reminders — how many days before a renewal members are emailed, set separately for yearly plans and for all other plans.
  • Failed payments — see Failed renewals and the grace period.

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Plans

Create a plan in Membership → Plans. A plan has:
  • Name and Description.
  • Billing — Bills every and Period (month or year). The price and billing frequency can’t be changed after the plan is created.
  • Membership product — the product customers buy to join. Create one with a Product title and Price, or choose an existing variant.
  • Member perks — see below.
  • Status — Draft or Active. Only active plans are offered to shoppers.
After the plan is saved, you can also set Member prices on individual variants and Access rules for member-only and early-access products. A customer can hold one membership per store at a time.

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Perks

Member prices and the member discount apply to one-time purchases. A subscription purchase gets Extra off subscriptions instead. Free shipping applies at checkout, not to subscription renewal shipments. Combine with discount codes is off by default. While it is off, a discount code can’t be used on an order that gets member pricing.

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Checkout behaviour

Member perks apply in two cases:
  1. Signed-in members. The customer is signed in with an active membership. Member pricing and free shipping are applied to the checkout automatically.
  2. Joining at checkout. The customer adds the membership to their checkout. Member pricing and free shipping apply to that same order, and the first membership charge is part of it. A membership can’t be added to an order that contains a subscription purchase.
A membership can also be bought on its own, with the plan’s product as the only item in the cart. Signing in. A shopper who isn’t signed in sees regular prices and a member? Sign in for member prices link, with your program name in front. Signing in uses a code sent to the email address entered at checkout. Perks are never applied from a typed email address alone, because anyone can type someone else’s email address. Payment methods. Joining a membership, member pricing, and member-only and early-access products work with card and PayPal checkout. Checkouts on other payment methods refuse an order that contains a membership or a member-only or early-access product. Enforced when the order is charged. Perks are checked by the checkout itself, not only shown on the storefront. A shopper who isn’t an active member can’t complete a purchase at a member price, get member free shipping, or buy a member-only product or an early-access product before its public date.

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Customer portal

Members find their membership under Membership in the customer portal. The membership card shows:
  • the program and plan, and the membership status,
  • the price and how often it renews, and the date it renews,
  • the perks included,
  • their savings — what they have saved with member prices, the member discount, free shipping and the extra subscription discount, calculated from their own orders. Nothing is estimated: savings are shown only once there are some. Savings on an order that is fully refunded are removed.

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Cancelling

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Cancel from the portal

Members cancel from their membership’s page in the customer portal: Cancel membership, then confirm. They don’t have to contact you, and there is no retention offer in the way. You can also cancel a membership from Membership → Members.

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Perks last to the end of the period

A cancelled membership is not charged again, and its perks continue until the end of the period the member already paid for. Until then, the member — or you — can resume it. On that date the membership ends and checkout returns to regular prices and shipping. An ended membership can’t be resumed; the customer joins again. Refunding the membership charge, a chargeback on it, or cancelling it as fraudulent ends the membership straight away.

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Failed renewals and the grace period

When a renewal payment fails, the membership enters a 7-day grace period:
  • Perks continue for the 7 days.
  • The renewal is retried on your subscription retry schedule — see Failed subscription payments — and the member is emailed to update their payment method. Updating it retries the payment straight away.
  • The member is emailed again before the grace period ends.
  • If the renewal is paid within the 7 days, the membership continues on its normal schedule.
  • If it is still unpaid after 7 days, the membership ends and perks stop.
Stop billing when the grace period ends (Membership → Settings, on by default) stops retrying the renewal when the membership ends, so a lapsed member is never charged later. With it off, retries continue and a late successful payment reactivates the membership.

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Membership tiers

Tiers give members extra perks on top of their plan. Create them in Membership → Tiers. A tier has:
  • Name, Rank and Applies to — every plan, or one plan.
  • What qualifies a member — a Minimum paid periods of the membership, or a Minimum spend ($) over a Window (days).
  • What it adds — an Extra discount (%), Free shipping, and Earlier access (hours) for early-access products.
A member gets the highest-ranked tier they qualify for. Tiers are rechecked at each renewal and every day, so a member moves up — or down — as they qualify.

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Emails

Members are emailed when they join, before a renewal is charged, when a renewal is paid, when a renewal payment fails, before perks end at the close of a grace period, and when their membership is cancelled, ends or is resumed. Your staff are notified when a member joins, when a renewal payment fails, and when a membership is cancelled or ends.

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Compliance notes

Memberships renew automatically, and many jurisdictions regulate automatic renewals. PlatformDTC builds in practices those rules commonly require:
  • Consent to auto-renewal with its own checkbox. At checkout the customer agrees to automatic renewal with a checkbox that is never pre-ticked. The renewal price and interval, and how to cancel, are shown next to it, with a link to your membership terms when you set one.
  • Renewal reminders. Members are emailed before a renewal is charged.
  • Online cancellation. Cancelling is available in the customer portal, without contacting you.
These features help you meet those requirements; they are not legal advice. Your plan’s terms, your pricing and what you tell customers are yours to review with your own counsel for the places you sell.