📝 Overview

Recurring memberships let you bill your customers automatically on a regular schedule, whether weekly, monthly, or yearly. They also give you the option of a commitment period and joining fees.

This guide walks you through each section of a recurring membership as you create it, from naming and visibility through to usage limits and the payment plan.

🎥 Watch the Tutorial

If you would rather follow along, the video here walks through creating a recurring membership.

🛠️ How To Create a Recurring Membership

To start creating a new recurring membership, go to Memberships ➜ Add a Membership ➜ Create a Recurring Plan, or open it directly here.

Creating a new recurring plan from the Memberships section

The form is split into four sections, each covered below.

Click the arrow to learn more about each section of a recurring membership

1️⃣ About

You will first be prompted to add a Name, Category, Description, and Status. The category lets you group memberships together for display purposes.

💡 If you would like to create a new category, you can name it without leaving this page.

Finally, set the Status, which controls whether this membership can be purchased.

The Status setting for a recurring membership

💡 If you set the membership to Not for sale, it cannot be purchased, and it will also not appear as an option on the business side when adding a membership to a customer's account.

If you want the membership to be purchasable but not visible in the memberships section, set it to For Sale and set its visibility to Hidden in the Customer Site section.

2️⃣ Customer Site

This section controls what applies when customers purchase the membership themselves.

🎯 Visibility

Choose whether the membership is visible in the Memberships section of your Customer Site, or hidden.

Hidden memberships can still be purchased through a direct link, which you can share with customers by email, for example.

💡 To find a membership's direct link, see Can I send my customers a direct link to a membership? here.

🛒 How Customers Purchase

Choose whether customers can buy the membership themselves, or whether they are shown a "contact us to purchase" option linking to your business contact details, so you can add it to their account yourself.

Click Your Contact Page to preview what customers will see.

💡 This is helpful for vetting customers or controlling who can buy a specific membership. To add a membership on a customer's behalf, see the guide here.

☝️ One Per Customer

Tick this option so that each customer can only ever buy this membership once. This applies permanently, so once a customer has purchased it, they cannot buy it again, even after it has been used up or has expired.

🧠 Example: A customer buys your Trial Membership, uses it, and it expires. Because it is set to One Per Customer, they will not be able to purchase the Trial Membership again.

⚠️ One Per Customer limits how many times a membership can be bought, but not who can buy it. On its own, any customer can purchase it once, including existing active customers. To restrict a membership to genuinely new customers, tick New Customers Only as well.

🆕 New Customers Only

Tick this option so that only customers with a "New" status can purchase this membership. Anyone who is not categorised as a new customer will be unable to buy it.

💡 For trial memberships and intro offers, tick both One Per Customer and New Customers Only. Together they ensure that only new customers can buy the membership, and that each of them can only buy it once.

💡 You can configure the criteria for new customers in your customer settings here, or see Setting your New Customer criteria here.

3️⃣ Usability

Next, decide what customers can do with the membership: whether they can book classes, appointments, or courses, and how many of each they can register for, either unlimited or with usage limits.

Usage limits can be applied per day, week, month, year, or billing cycle. The per billing cycle option is enabled by default for new businesses. If you are an existing business and would like to use it, contact the support team and they can enable it for you.

Selecting a per billing cycle usage limit

💡 If the membership gives customers access to On Demand content, you can link it to the right content from a Collection in the On Demand section.

✔️ Applicable To

Select which event types this membership gives access to: Events (classes and appointments), Courses, or both Events and Courses, which is less common.

📣 Event Types

Once you have chosen what the membership applies to, select the specific event types you want to give customers access to.

🔄 Frequency Restrictions

Frequency restrictions set how many events customers can register for, with the option to add further limits per event type.

No restrictions, allow unlimited registrations	Customers can register for as many events as they like
Restrict number of uses per day, week, month, etc	Set a specific number of events customers can register for per day, week, month, or year
Set limits per class type	Available when more than one class type is selected. Sets a limit per class type within the overall frequency restriction

🧠 Example: In the image above, two class types are selected with a limit of 10 registrations per week. With Set limits per class type ticked, one class allows up to 4 registrations and the other up to 7, both within the overall weekly limit of 10.

So the customer can register for 10 classes per week in total, with up to 4 of the first class type and up to 7 of the second.

⚠️ The frequency restrictions on a membership do not override any daily or weekly registration limits set in your customer settings here. If those settings allow 5 events per week, customers cannot exceed that, even on an unlimited membership.

💡 For more on how frequency restrictions work, see Recurring membership usage limits here.

4️⃣ Payment Plan

Finally, set the payment plan, including the price, any joining fees, how often it bills (for example once a month, or every 4 weeks), any minimum commitment period, cancellation settings, and when customers are billed on an ongoing basis.

💡 For a detailed walkthrough of each payment plan option, see Add a payment plan for a recurring membership here.

💵 Prorating Payments and Usage

When a customer joins part way through a billing period, their first payment and their class allowance are handled differently.

💳 First payments

If a membership charges on a fixed day of the month, such as the 1st, and a customer buys it on a different day, such as the 15th, their first payment is prorated. It covers only the remaining days of the current month, and from the following month they are charged the full amount on the 1st.

🗓️ Class usage

Usage is not prorated by default. To prorate it, structure your usage limits in weekly segments alongside your monthly limit.

🧠 Example: If a membership's only limit is 20 class credits per month, a customer who joins on the 15th still receives all 20 credits for the rest of that billing period.

If it instead allows 20 credits per month and 5 per week, the same customer can only use 5 credits per week for the rest of that period, which effectively prorates their usage.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Find answers to common questions or additional details that may not be covered in the main instructions.