Subscription Delays

How it Works

When editing a Membership Level or Discount Code, you will see a new “Delay” field. There are many ways you can use this delay field, including:

• A single integer representing the number of days to delay the start of the subscription. This is useful for variable-length trials such as a 7-day trial on a monthly plan.
• A specific date in the format YYYY-MM-DD to begin the subscription. This is useful for courses that have a specific enrollment period and group start date.
• A date that is automatically calculated based on their signup using the a combination of integers and placeholders for year (Y), month (M), and day (D). This is useful if you’d like all subscriptions to begin on the first day of the following year (Y2-01-01) or first day of the following month (Y1-M2-01).

Here are some example implementations for the “delay” field to better explain how it works:

• Set delay to “7” to give members 1 week between their signup and the start of their subscription.
• Set delay to “2018-10-01” to begin subscriptions for all members in the level on 1 October 2018.
• Set delay to “Y2-01-01” to have a “calendar year” membership that processes initial payment immediately at checkout (if applicable), then begin their annual subscription on the first of the next year.
• Set delay to “Y1-M2-01” to have a “monthly” membership that processes initial payment immediately at checkout (if applicable), then begin their monthly subscription on the first of the next month.

Video Demo

Installation and Setup

• You can install the add on via the Memberships > Add Ons admin page.
• Or, download the plugin file and upload the ‘pmpro-subscription-delays’ directory to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory of your site.
• Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
• Edit a membership level or discount code to configure your Subscription Delay settings.

Note about fixed-date renewals for large membership sites.

Membership sites with thousands of members may encounter issues if using this Add On to force renewals on a specific date. If you have over 1,000 members, please check with your host to see how they can accommodate an increase in CPU usage on the renewal date. Your gateway will be sending data for each individual member that has a recurring payment on that date.

In general, we do not recommend forcing renewals on a specific date unless you have to.