How to migrate lifetime founding members to a closed free plan in Memberstack 2.0 while preserving their payment history? Answered
I have ~10 members who signed up for a “founding membership”, meaning a one-time payment membership that effectively lasts forever. In the 2.0 migration, my understanding is that I need to create a new free plan and import them on that plan. So, my thinking is this - can someone please confirm this is the right process?
- Create a new free plan for this group
- After importing members, switch them to this free plan
- Archive the free plan (it is no longer open to new members)
Second, I’m guessing this will show on their account that their membership is free. However, they have paid. Will they still be able to access billing history and invoices from former payments?
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8 comments
Hi Abbey,
I'm not so sure about some of your questions. I've just passed this to our Dev team. I'll get back to you as soon as I hear back.
Here's the feedback I got:
In 2.0, you can import the old paid plan and then archive it which would show the member they have the paid plan.
https://docs.memberstack.com/hc/en-us/articles/7403136380571-Importing-Stripe-Products
I hope this helps
I think there is some confusion here. Abbey Burtis you are correct that you’ll want to import them on a free plan (or add them to a free plan after import).
I need to confirm this, but I people they will still have access to their billing history and invoices… We’ll need to check with Tyler when he’s back on Monday.
Chukwudi I’m worried the import will fail or Stripe will try to charge them again if they are imported with a paid plan…
Do you expect these members to make any payments in the future?
The only payments I could anticipate are if they want to purchase/register a future product.
I have this same situation (lifetime access members I have converted to free memberships). I’ve just tried logging in as one of those customers, and viewed their details in the Stripe portal. I don’t see their past purchases or invoices. I don’t even see anything mentioning their membership type. It just has their credit card info, and that’s it. (So it’s different to what you’d see in 1.0 using the account modal — which would tell people they’re on a free membership.)
Thank you, Al Mazlin ! 👏 Yes, “lifetime access” members is the term I was looking for. That seems odd to me that that information doesn’t display. I don’t foresee it being a problem (unless of course for some reason they can’t purchase other products?) but I think it would be good to have available.
I agree. It also makes me realise that it’s not possible for these members to “cancel” their free accounts (should they want to), since I’ve been relying on Stripe, and the option isn’t available for free memberships (obviously). Need to work that into my UI somehow. 🤔
Oh yeah, good point!
Duncan Hamra following up - is the right approach to create a free plan for these lifetime members that paid once (and shouldn’t be charged again for this specific membership) or to import them as paid and archive, given what Chukwudi shared?
Hey Abbey 👋 Thanks Aletta weighing in here. I appreciate the perspective from someone who’s actively running a business in this situation.
Abbey Burtis I can confirm that the recommended approach is to create a free plan for those lifetime members. This will avoid double charging them during the import 👍 And the Stripe UI actually looks the exact same for your lifetime member who were not imported. For whatever reason, the Stripe Portal does not display one-time purchases or plans.
Btw - Sorry for the slow reply! I got behind on Slack (Thanks for following up 🙏)
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