Membership Plugin

WordPress Membership Plugin

How to Offer Your Customers a Free Membership

A free membership refers to any membership level that allows users to join without making a payment. Once you’ve created a membership level in the plugin, you can choose to offer free access to it—making it a no-cost membership option for your users.

This guide outlines the different methods available for setting up free memberships on your site. Whether you want to offer a single free membership level or multiple free levels, the plugin provides flexible options to suit your needs.

You’ll learn:

  • How to configure a free membership level.
  • How to allow users to register for free.
  • How to offer multiple free membership levels.
  • How to manually assign a user to a free membership level from the admin dashboard.
  • How to provide free membership access using an invitation code.

Read through the full documentation below to choose the setup that best fits your requirements.

Table of Contents

What is a Free Membership?

A free membership level is where the user gets access to that membership lever for free. Anyone can signup to it for free without having to pay anything.

If you don’t know what a membership level is or how to create one, read this documentation page to learn about it.

Creating a Free Membership Level

Before you offer a free membership option to your customers, you will need to create a free membership level first.

  1. Under the Membership plugin’s menu, click on Membership Levels.
  2. Once in the ‘Membership Levels’ menu click on the Add Level tab.
  3. Give the membership level a name. For a free membership you may like to title the level: Free Membership or Free Level.
  4. Choose “Subscriber” as the WordPress Role for a free level.
  5. Choose the “No Expiry” option for the Access Duration field. For a free membership, generally there will be no expiry.
  6. Click the “Add New Membership Level” button.
  7. Once you click this button you should see all your membership levels. Take note of the ID of your newly created free membership level.
creating-free-membership-level

Locating the ID of Your Free Membership Level

You will need the level ID to configure free access option so let me show you where you get the level ID.

The membership level interface lists all your levels and their IDs. In this example, the level I created has an ID of 13.

membership-level-id-SWPM

Method 1) Offering Free Membership Through the Default Registration Page

When you download and install this plugin, it will automatically create a Join Us and a Registration page (please do not delete these pages). You can use this registration page to offer a ‘Free Membership’ to your customers. This method works well to offer one free membership level to your customers.

  1. Create a free membership level.
  2. Click on the ‘Settings’ menu under the ‘WP Membership’ plugin.
  3. In the ‘General Settings’ tab, you will see a field where you can enter in your ‘Free Membership Level ID’.
  4. Enter in the ID of your free membership (your level’s ID can be found under ‘Membership Levels’).
  5. Save the changes you have made to the settings menu.
  6. Now when a customer comes to your website and clicks on the ‘Registration’ page, they will be able to sign up to a free membership to your website (use the information below to add the ‘Registration’ page to your website’s menu).

Entering Your Free Level ID in the Settings Menu

entering-in-free-level-id-SWMP

Free Registration Form Example

The screenshots below illustrate how a free membership level registration form appears.

You can now send visitors to this page and they can signup for the free membership level.

Method 2) Offering Free Membership Through a Custom Registration Page

You can offer a ‘Free Membership’ to your customers by creating a WordPress page and putting a registration form on that page. This is useful if you want to offer multiple free membership levels.

Step 1) Grab this free addon.

Step 2) To create a registration page for a membership level, create a post or page and give it a title such as Free Level Registration Page.

Step 3) Enter the following shortcode and edit in the Membership Level ID of your chosen free membership. You will need to replace the number “12” with your actual membership level ID.

[swpm_registration_form level=12]

Step 4) Publish your page. You can now send visitors to this page and they can signup directly (for free) to the level you specify in the shortcode.

offering-multiple-free-membership-level-SWPM

For multiple free membership levels, create a separate registration page for each level. Then, on your Join Us page, add links that direct users to the corresponding registration pages.

Sending Visitors to Your Free Registration Page

You can add links to the free registration page on your Join Us (Landing) page or you can create an entirely new page just for your free membership. The way you promote your free membership is entirely up to you.

This free registration page can also be added to your site’s menu or sidebar so visitors can easily access and sign up to your free membership.

Manually Adding Members via Admin Dashboard

As a site administrator, you can manually add members to any membership level at no cost, granting them free access to that membership.

Providing Free Membership Using an Invitation Code or Password

You can also offer a special free membership protected by a password or invitation code. Follow this tutorial to learn how to set it up.

Offering Multiple Free Membership Levels

Using the Simple Membership Plugin you can offer multiple free memberships the site. To offer multiple free memberships on your site, read this documentation.