Memberships: yearly tiers, pausing, and knowing why members stop

Some people would rather pay once and not think about it. Now each tier can have a yearly price as well as a monthly one. Set it in Memberships; many creators offer about two months free for paying yearly.

On your page, people choose monthly or yearly when they join, and see what they save. Yearly members are marked in your members list, and their receipts say the membership renews each year.

Each tier can now have a free trial of 7, 14 or 30 days. Choose it when you edit the tier in Memberships. On your page the tier says, for example, “7-day free trial”.

New members still enter their card, so the first payment can happen when the trial ends. Nothing is charged during the trial. About 3 days before the first charge we email the member the date and the amount, and how to cancel. They can cancel any time before then and pay nothing.

A trial is for a person’s first membership with you, and only once: someone who has already had a trial or joined can still join, but at the full price from day one. Discount codes can’t be combined with a trial. Free trials are for card memberships; PayPal doesn’t cover memberships yet.

A new price is for new members only. Everyone who has already joined keeps the price they signed up at, so nobody is ever charged more without agreeing to it. The tier editor now says so, with how many members that covers.

Life gets busy, and money gets tight. Now a member or monthly supporter can pause for one, two or three months from the link in their receipt, instead of stopping.

• Nothing is charged while it’s paused.
• It starts again by itself on the date shown, at the same price.
• They can start again early, or stop, from the same link.
• You see who’s paused, and until when, in Memberships and Supporters.

Losing a member stings, and it’s worse when you don’t know why. Was it the price? Life getting busy? Now you can find out.

When a member or monthly supporter stops, the stop page asks, gently and only once, whether they’d tell you why: money is tight, taking a break, supporting in another way, not using it as much, or something else. It’s one tap, and they can skip it.

• Next to their name in Memberships and in your Supporters list.
• A short summary under Why members stopped, covering the last 90 days.

Read the guide: Memberships and members-only posts