Create a member subscription starting in the future // Give membership as a gift

Community Help
#1

I’ve had some requests from users to buy a membership as a gift (for someone else), but for the subscription to start at a predefined date in the future.

Has anyone had any success with MS doing this?

Current thinking would be:

  • Create customer in Stripe dashboard
  • Add subscription starting on (let’s say) May 1st
  • Send customer invoice link to pay it

But I guess there isn’t a 2-way synch between Stripe and MS, so this wouldn’t create a member in MS, right @belltyler @DuncanHamra?

What would be the workflow that would require the least effort from the user?

Would you need to create a (basic) user in MS first, then somehow change their membership? When I tried this the basic plan users weren’t also created in Stripe.

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#2

Hey Alastair, thanks for breaking this down so clearly.

I know we don’t have a built in solution, and I’m unable to think of anything clever on the fly.

My first thought was Zapier → timer → create member zap but that only works with free members.

I’m going to add this as a feature request. To clarify, who would set the start date? You or the purchaser?

:triangular_flag_on_post::triangular_flag_on_post: [Feedback sent to roadmap] :triangular_flag_on_post::triangular_flag_on_post:

#3

In an ideal world:

  • User can ‘buy’ a subscription, then it is ‘activated’. Its duration is for as long as required, e.g. if they buy a year’s subscription today, and it’s activated on May 1st, it’s valid until April 30th 2021.
  • We can define the start date

As a workaround, I could ask the user to purchase a membership as if they were a normal paying user, but then would there be any way to ‘extend’ the membership in Memberstack?

Or alternatively I just create the customer in Stripe, create a subscription that will start at a predefined date in the future, then create a ‘free’ user in Memberstack (that has access to the same stuff as ‘paid’ users).

Are there any alternatives that the team think might work?

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#4

Thanks for explaining. I’ve added everything to the roadmap.

As for the workaround:

  1. Extensions are not possible now.
  2. A free user with a separate Stripe customer could work. The issue is they won’t be synced or communicate in any way. This would be the same as if they paid in cash and you created a free member so they could have access.
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#5

Thanks Duncan.

When you say extensions are possible now, what do you mean? Is this in Memberstack? I can’t see how to do this anywhere in the admin. I know it’s possible with Stripe, but will this send back the subscription end date to Memberstack?

Re: free user, I guess I would have to just ask the user to pay as a normal user, then create a ‘free’ user for the person they gifted the membership for, then delete the membership of the user who paid.

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#6

My bad! Meant to say NOT possible. Updated ↑

Re: free user. That could work :+1:

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#7

@Alastair_Budge & @DuncanHamra have you looked at using a 3rd party solution like https://www.giftupapp.com/ or anything else to solve this problem? Would be curious to know how you’re currently addressing this and what recommended workarounds are @Josh-Lopez

#8

Hey Tim :wave:

This is still on the roadmap. We are currently working on making other improvements and have released some other new features lately.

#9

Any timeline/ time range on when the feature will be available?

#10

We know this is frustrating but we do not have any timelines currently.

#11

Thanks Josh. Have you got any documentation you can share on creating a custom checkout?

#12

Not yet, right now the checkout uses our modal only but do have plans to release a new api that may let you customize a lot.

#13

Any timeline for that checkout API?

#14

Not currently @mdmadmin. We stay away from timelines because we are a small team. The good news is we have hired another developer so features can be released quicker. If you go into our slack then to #developers you will be able to see what we are working on for the api.

#15

OK think I’ve figured out how to do this:

  1. Create list of coupons in memberstack
  2. Setup GiftUp and upload list of coupons created in memberstack to GiftUp
  3. Pre-Created list of memberstack coupons distributed by gift up when gift cards are purchased (giftup easily plugs into website with own checkout flow)
  4. Gift recipient enters memberstack coupon (that they received from GftUp) at checkout (recipient will still need to enter cc details)
  5. Use Zapier to determine when a coupon is used Stripe and send me an email/ sms
  6. Delete the coupon just used from memberstack so it can’t be used again…
    Not perfect and still need to execute on this but this is the current plan :crossed_fingers:
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