How to sell subscriptions and memberships on WordPress with Stripe

1 Choose your membership model

“Membership site” can mean very different businesses. Pick one before you configure anything, because it decides your plans, your content structure and your pricing.

A membership plugin that only locks pages is not the same as a learning platform. If your members need a classroom, progress tracking and lesson order, you want an LMS that also handles recurring payments. The guide to choosing an LMS plugin explains how to judge that.

2 Set prices and billing intervals

• Offer monthly and yearly. A yearly plan priced below twelve months gives members a reason to commit and improves your cash flow.
• Keep the number of plans small. Two or three clear plans convert better than a long list.
• Decide on a trial or a discount. In Far LMS the Basic plan includes discount codes, and short links with their own free trial.
• Know your fees. Stripe charges processing fees per transaction, and recurring billing may have its own conditions; check stripe.com/pricing for your country.

Mind the taxes. Recurring sales mean recurring VAT obligations. Rules for digital services sold to EU consumers depend on the customer’s country; the EU’s official page on the One-Stop Shop explains how to declare it in one place. Ask an accountant before you launch, and show prices clearly with or without VAT.

3 Install the plugin and connect Stripe

If you have not installed a course plugin yet, follow the first steps in how to sell online courses on WordPress: download far-lms.zip, upload it in Plugins → Add Plugin, activate it and paste your Stripe keys in Far LMS → Settings. Subscriptions need one extra detail: the webhook.

A subscription lives for months, and Stripe, not your website, is the one that charges the card each cycle. The webhook is how Stripe tells your site what happened. In Developers → Webhooks, add the URL shown in Far LMS → Settings and select these events:

• checkout.session.completed: the first payment went through.
• customer.subscription.created, customer.subscription.updated and customer.subscription.deleted: the subscription started, changed or ended.
• invoice.paid and invoice.payment_failed: a renewal succeeded or failed.

Paste the endpoint’s signing secret (whsec_…) in the plugin settings. Without a correct webhook, renewals and cancellations will not reach your site and access will drift out of sync with payments.

4 Create your plans

1. Make sure you have the Basic plan or above, since the free version sells one-time purchases only.
2. Go to Far LMS → Plans and create each monthly or yearly plan, choosing which courses it unlocks.
3. Add discount codes for launches or partners, and gift vouchers if you want members to give access to someone else.
4. Link each plan from your sales page. Students can change plans later, and the plugin applies fair proration.

5 Control access as payments succeed or fail

The value of an LMS-based membership is that access follows the payment. When the webhook reports a successful payment, the member gets or keeps access to the course. When a subscription ends, access ends with it. Plan your rules in three places:

• Failed payments. Cards expire and banks decline renewals. Decide how long you are willing to wait, and in Pro use abandoned-payment reminders to win back unfinished payments.
• Content release. With drip content (Basic and above) you can release lessons over time, which gives members a reason to stay month after month.
• Migrating members. If you already run a membership on another plugin, Far LMS can import students from other membership plugins in every plan, so they keep their access.

6 Test the full cycle before going live

1. Stay in Stripe’s test mode with the test keys and a test webhook.
2. Subscribe with the test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future date and any CVC. Check that the account, welcome email and access appear.
3. Simulate the rest of the lifecycle. Stripe’s documentation explains how to test renewals, failed payments and cancellations, including test clocks, at docs.stripe.com/billing/testing.
4. Swap in your live keys and create the webhook again in live mode: Stripe keeps test and live webhooks separate.

7 Keep members longer

Churn decides whether a membership grows. The cheapest fix is to help people finish and enjoy what they bought. These tools exist in Far LMS, with the plan where each starts:

Also read the criteria for choosing an LMS plugin if you are still comparing tools, or see how Far LMS compares in the alternatives overview and Far LMS vs MemberPress.