Why sell memberships here

A membership is a fee people pay again and again: monthly, yearly, or once a season. Their card is charged automatically each time, so you don't send reminders or keep a spreadsheet of who has paid.

Members can also get their own prices on events, and events only members can sign up for. Without memberships you'd collect these fees by hand and check them at the door.

Because the money is taken automatically, memberships need a connected Stripe account. Once it's connected, press Enable memberships on the Memberships page. That also gives your members a page where they can update their card or cancel.

Plans and prices

Create a membership for each kind of thing you sell, say "Adult" and "Junior". Inside each, under Pricing, add one or more price options: monthly, yearly, weekly, with whatever amount suits you.

Then decide who can join:

• List publicly: it appears on your membership page and anyone can sign up.
• Make invite-only: it isn't listed, and people join only through an invite you send.

A membership you no longer sell can be archived. Existing members keep paying until they or you cancel; nobody new can join.

Getting members in

Three ways to bring people in:

• They sign up themselves on your membership page, if the membership is listed.
• You invite them by email from Invite members. You can choose their price option, give them a free period until a date (handy when they've already paid you for this month), and add a personal note. For a whole list, use bulk invite.
• You add them by hand with Add member manually, for people who pay you some other way. They're never charged; they simply count as members.

What being a member gets them

While their status is Active, members get their member price on events and can sign up for members-only events. If a payment fails, they become Past due: they're still on your list, but lose those benefits until they pay. They see a notice with a button to pay straight away.

Teams split members into groups, each with a coach. A coach who signs in sees only their own teams.

Shared access lets a member invite someone to look after their membership with them, typically a parent. The person who pays stays in charge of the card.

One Stripe setting to change

Memberships are charged on your own Stripe account, so what happens after a failed payment is set in Stripe, not here. Stripe's default is to cancel the membership after about two weeks of failed retries, and a cancelled one can't be brought back.

In your Stripe Dashboard, go to Billing › Revenue recovery and set it to leave the subscription past due. The member then stays on your list, and can catch up by paying what they owe.

While you're there, leave Stripe's own customer emails switched off. We already send members their payment and renewal emails in their language, and they'd otherwise get two of each.