Discounts train customers to wait. Run a sale often enough and your best customers learn that the full price is for people who were not paying attention. Membership is the other way to reward loyalty: the customer pays to belong, and the better price belongs to them, not to whoever arrives with this week’s code.
PlatformDTC now sells paid memberships. A membership is billed as a subscription, and its perks are enforced at checkout: member pricing, free shipping, and products only members can buy.
What a member gets
- Member pricing. A member discount off one-time orders, or a fixed member price you set on specific variants.
- Free shipping at checkout, on every order or on orders over an amount you set.
- An extra discount on subscriptions, on top of your Subscribe & Save discount, at checkout and at every renewal while the membership is active.
- Member-only products that only members can buy.
- Early access to products members can buy before everyone else.
You choose the plan’s price, how often it renews and which of these perks it includes. Because it is a subscription, a membership renews on the same billing engine as the rest of your subscriptions, charged to the card or PayPal account the member joined with.
Member-only or early access
The two access perks do different jobs. A member-only product is part of what the membership is: a bundle, a size or a flavour that exists for members, and a reason to join that has nothing to do with price. Early access is about timing. A launch or a restock opens to members on one date and to everyone else on a later one, so members get first pick without anyone else being shut out for good.
Choosing what goes in a plan
A membership has to be worth more to the customer than it costs, and cost you less than it earns. The perks are the levers. Member pricing rewards customers who buy often. Free shipping takes a cost off every order, which matters most on small repeat orders. The extra subscription discount rewards the customers already buying on a schedule. Access perks give a reason to join that a discount code cannot copy. Start from what your best repeat customers already buy, and price the plan against what those perks are actually worth on their orders.
Because a membership is billed as a subscription, it renews and cancels on the same billing engine as your product subscriptions, for the same customers. You do not need a second app, a second customer list or a second billing system to run both.
Enforced at checkout, not just on the product page
A member price that only exists on the storefront is a price anyone can find a way around. So the perks are checked where the money is taken. A shopper who is not an active member cannot complete a purchase at a member price, get member free shipping, or buy a member-only product or an early-access product before it opens to everyone.
Member perks apply at checkout in two cases:
- The shopper is signed in as an active member. Member pricing and free shipping are applied automatically.
- The shopper joins in that checkout. Adding the membership to the checkout applies member pricing and free shipping to the same order.
A shopper who is not signed in sees regular prices and a link to sign in for member prices, with a code sent to the email address they entered. We deliberately do not apply perks from an email address typed into checkout alone, because anyone can type someone else’s email address. Membership checkouts run on card or PayPal.
Savings members can see
The customer portal shows each member a membership card: their plan and status, when the membership renews and for how much, their perks, and what they have saved. That savings figure is calculated from the member’s own orders. It is not an estimate or an average, and it appears only once there are real savings to show.
Tiers for your best members
Not every member is the same. Membership tiers add perks on top of the plan, such as an extra discount, free shipping or earlier access, for members who reach a number of paid membership periods or a level of spend over a window you choose. Tiers are rechecked at every renewal and every day, so members move up as they qualify.
Easy to leave, on purpose
A membership people cannot cancel does not build loyalty. It builds chargebacks and complaints. So members cancel from the customer portal: cancel, confirm, done. They do not have to email you, call, or get past a retention offer.
- Perks last to the end of the period. A cancelled membership is not charged again, and the member keeps their perks until the end of the period they already paid for. Until then, they can resume it.
- 7-day grace on a failed renewal. If a renewal payment fails, perks continue for 7 days while the payment is retried and the member is asked to update their payment method. If the renewal is paid in that time, nothing changes. If it is still unpaid after 7 days, the membership ends.
Built for automatic-renewal rules
Memberships renew automatically, and automatic renewals are regulated in many places. The practices those rules commonly ask for are built in:
- Its own consent. The customer agrees to automatic renewal with its own checkbox, never pre-ticked, with the renewal price, interval and how to cancel beside it.
- Reminders. Members are emailed before a renewal is charged.
- Online cancellation. Cancelling is done in the customer portal, without contacting you.
These help you meet those requirements. They are not legal advice, and your plan terms are yours to review for the places you sell.
Where to find it
Membership has its own section in your PlatformDTC dashboard, with plans, members, tiers and settings. The full guide, including checkout behaviour, the grace period and tiers, is in the docs.