Email Notifications, Pay by Check?

Greetings,
I’ll be doing backflips of joy if S2Members can do what I need it to. I’ve installed the free version and read all the basic set up documentation.

But there are several things that I need to know. I’d be happy to pay for the Pro version if it can do what I need.

1. TWO PAYMENT “GATEWAYS” – In addition to PayPal Standard, I need to be able to accept Checks as payment. I do understand that some might find this silly. But this is a requirement of the client and it’s not worth arguing any more.

2. FOUR MEMBERSHIP “Levels” – I say “Levels” because there is NO difference in any level except for the price and the name. Absolutely nothing on the site is protected from any levels. This site is for a trade group. It is not a site that monetizes content. The difference in Membership levels is only a difference in the Members professional level. For instance, Level 1 is Practicing Lawyers ($50). While Level 4 is Students and Judges (Free).

3. TWO REMINDER EMAILS – Need an email to go out 30 days prior to Membership EOT reminding the Member about expiration. THEN, if the Member has not renewed, we need another email to go out at Expiration. NOTE: We do NOT want any Automatic recurring Payments. The client does not want Members to have their PayPal accounts automatically charged at renewal. It MUST be initiated by the Member.

4. SPECIAL EOT FOR EXISTING MEMBERS – This is not a new organization. So, we have Current members of the Organization whose memberships go through Jan 1, 2013. So, they’d need special accommodation somehow to make sure they get the reminder email and expiry email.

5. AUTO LOGGED IN UPON PURCHASE – We want to collect some info immediately upon registration. So, we don’t want to send users to their email then back to the site. Which means we want the user to be redirected to their Profile page as soon as transaction is complete.

I think that’s it. If anyone out there in Forumland has any helpful wisdom regarding the items above, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Hello John,

Not sure I can provide a correct answer for all of the questions, but I will do what I can. :)

1. TWO PAYMENT “GATEWAYS” – In addition to PayPal Standard, I need to be able to accept Checks as payment. I do understand that some might find this silly. But this is a requirement of the client and it’s not worth arguing any more.

s2Member supports PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout and ClickBank as payment gateways.

2. FOUR MEMBERSHIP “Levels” – I say “Levels” because there is NO difference in any level except for the price and the name. Absolutely nothing on the site is protected from any levels. This site is for a trade group. It is not a site that monetizes content. The difference in Membership levels is only a difference in the Members professional level. For instance, Level 1 is Practicing Lawyers ($50). While Level 4 is Students and Judges (Free).

If you want members to get incremental access (level 2 gets everything that level 1 and level 0 gets) then levels would work for you, if you want different content for each “level”, then you would use ccaps, for which you can find more info in this video: Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)

3. TWO REMINDER EMAILS – Need an email to go out 30 days prior to Membership EOT reminding the Member about expiration. THEN, if the Member has not renewed, we need another email to go out at Expiration. NOTE: We do NOT want any Automatic recurring Payments. The client does not want Members to have their PayPal accounts automatically charged at renewal. It MUST be initiated by the Member.

This isn’t currently possible with s2Member, you could hire a service like MailChimp and set it up so that it sends the email reminder after a certain amount of time (if the membership doesn’t have variable membership times).

4. SPECIAL EOT FOR EXISTING MEMBERS – This is not a new organization. So, we have Current members of the Organization whose memberships go through Jan 1, 2013. So, they’d need special accommodation somehow to make sure they get the reminder email and expiry email.

I’m afraid for this you would have to make a script which goes through the existing users and checks if they were created before a certain day, if yes then change their EOT. Any competent freelancer could do this for you, you can check at websites like jobs.wordpress.net for this.

5. AUTO LOGGED IN UPON PURCHASE – We want to collect some info immediately upon registration. So, we don’t want to send users to their email then back to the site. Which means we want the user to be redirected to their Profile page as soon as transaction is complete.

I believe there was a hack for this already… I did a quick search but wasn’t able to find it, although I’m pretty sure there already is a hack for this.

Hope this helps. :)

Thanks. I appreciate the answers. But s2Members lost me at #1. Pay By Check is a requirement.

:(

Well you can always hire a freelancer to do this for you, in case you don’t find another membership software that meets your needs. Once again, you can try jobs.wordpress.net if you like. ;)

Thanks. I appreciate the answers. But s2Members lost me at #1. Pay By Check is a requirement.

Well, it’s not exactly Pay By Check, but the user can use his checking account to fund his PayPal account.

Thanks for the suggestion Cristián.

But that’s not sufficient for my client. Appreciate the effort, though.

No problem. :)

I was also looking for similar solution … what if the payment received is not online but offline mode or what if we need to give few people free membership or at discounted rate.

Is it not possible to create a user/member from backend and assign particular membership level ?

Hello Manish,

Is it not possible to create a user/member from backend and assign particular membership level ?

Yes this is possible, without s2Member even, check under Dashboard -› Users -› Add New, just make sure you choose the user role you want the user to have. And under the s2Member section of the new user page fill whatever you need to fill.

Hope this helps. :)