Migrating from another WP payment plugin

Hi,

Looking to migrate a large subscription site from another WP payment plugin system.

We’ve got about 3,000 paying members (split between monthly and yearly subscriptions), and I’m trying to understand what the implications of migrating are.

1. Is it possible to change to S2 without our existing subscribers having to do anything – ie for their existing PayPal recurring payment to just continue as it is now?

2. If this isn’t possible, can you tell me what exactly is the process – ie what do we as site admins have to do, and what will a subscriber need to do?

Thanks

Hi Anu,

If your current subscriptions are with a supported payment gateway (see Pre Sale FAQs » What payment gateways does s2Member® support? and your current membership software allows you to export all membership information, including Subscription IDs, then you can use the s2Member Pro Import feature to import all membership information (see Pre Sale FAQs » Can I import Users/Members from software I was using previously?).

As long as you’ve configured s2Member with your gateway (including the necessary IPN integration), and each imported user account contains their corresponding Paid Subscr. ID and Paid Subscr. Gateway, then all existing recurring subscriptions will continue as-is with no visible change from the user’s perspective. When s2Member receives a cancellation/refund IPN from the gateway, it will be handled seamlessly by s2Member.

Thanks for the reply – very useful.

We’re currently using PayPal with IPN – when a new subscription is started, the new user is redirected to PayPal’s site, and then redirected back to our site on completion.

I’m not certain what Paid Subscr. ID and Paid Subsc. Gateway are in the payment plugin I’m using. Can you give me an example of each so I can try and find it.

Thanks for the help

A Paid Subscr. ID can be either a PayPal Transaction ID, or a PayPal Subscription ID, or a PayPal Recurring Profile ID. If you process a transaction that’s associated with a Subscription or Recurring Profile ID at PayPal, give that to s2Member. Otherwise, if it’s a “Buy Now” transaction (i.e. there is no recurring billing), using the Transaction ID.

Example Transaction ID:
48M62559P1062124J

Example Subscription and/or Recurring Profile ID:
I-2559P1062124J

Thanks for the reply – that makes sense, and I can see where both of those values are in the IPN packet – so it would be easy enough to merge that into a subscriber record.

What’s the Paid Subsc. Gateway – is that in the IPN as well?

Very welcome.

Since s2Member supports multiple payment gateways, you’ll need to tell s2Member which payment gateway each customer is associated with. In your case, it sounds like you’d want to state “paypal” for each customer.

Jason, thanks again for the quick and relevant replies, I’d just like to say how refreshing this is (when compared to the previous plugin vendor).

Just a couple more questions (apologies for dragging this out).

– If I understand correctly, when a PayPal subscription renews (eg on a monthly basis) PayPal sends the IPN every month to the URL that was specified with the subscription started, which is plugin specific. How does S2 capture this IPN? Is it as simple as setting up a rewrite rule / redirect that PayPal follows?

– How does the import map member’s existing subscription package onto S2? We have some members on a monthly subscription, and others on a yearly subscription (which provides access to the content for a slightly discounted overall cost)

– Is there are trial version of Pro available I can use on our development site, or does the S2 Standard version provide the same functionality (except for importing and additional payment gateways)

Hello Anu.

You can use the free version of s2Member, since it integrates with PayPal Standard.

Importing the users doesn’t need to make a distinction between the payment plans, since that’s being handled by PayPal, not s2Member. PayPal will notify s2Member if payments had any problem so s2Member removes access to the protected content, based on the behaviour you configured for that situation.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Automatic EOT Behavior[/hilite]

s2Member Pro has an import tool that’ll make it simple to add them to your WordPress installation or, if you already have them there, to add their subscr. IDs and gateway (i.e. ‘paypal’) in bulk.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Import/Export -› User/Member Importation[/hilite]

I’ll leave the URL question for Jason.

I hope that helps. :)