Create Membership Plans

What is a plan?  

In SilkStart, plans are used to facilitate each type of membership your organization offers.

Each member's plan makes them an active member for a specific period of time, with a start date and end date, and entitles them to specific benefits that you offer them.

Getting started

1. Log into your SilkStart admin panel, and go to Settings > Plans
2. Click on 'Add an Individual Plan' or 'Add an Organization Plan'. Whats the difference?
3. Enter the basic information - each plan requires a name, a billing type, and a fee. All other fields are optional.

Which Billing Type should I choose?

Billing Types define when your members' accounts will expire. What is an expiry date?

• If you want members to renew every month, choose Monthly.
• Expiry dates can be one month to the day from when the member signed up, or they can be the first or last day of the next month.
• If you want members to renew every year, choose Annual
• Expiry dates can be one year to the day from when the member signed up, or they can be the first or last day of the month that they signed up.
• If you want members to all expire on the same day of the year, choose Calendar
• The Renewal Date is the day that all members with this plan will expire.
• You can choose to prorate this plan, if you want members signing up later in the year to pay a lower fee.
• If you want members to renew at four intervals in a calendar year, choose Quarterly.
• If you want members to purchase a permanent membership, choose Lifetime.

What other options do I have when creating a membership plan?

1. Tick the box next to 'Hide from Sign Up Page' to hide this plan from new members. Note: Members who have already signed up for this plan will still be able to see it when they renew their memberships.
2. Create a short summary of the plan. This will appear on the Sign Up page, before members have selected their plan.
3. Provide a more in-depth description of the plan. This may include a list of member benefits associated with this type, or restrictions for use of this plan.
4. Choose whether you want members to renew manually each time, or if they should be able to set up automatic renewals. You can also make automatic renewal mandatory.
5. Set a custom confirmation message. This message will be included in the automatic confirmation message that the member receives on completing their signup - it won't be seen by anyone who has not purchased this plan.
6. Set up automatic reminder emails for members whose accounts are expiring. This message can be sent as often as you want before the member's account expires.

How do I delete a membership plan?

It's easy for admins to delete a membership plan. Below are some things to know about what happens when memberships are deleted from SilkStart.

It's not recommended you delete a plan that has users actively recurring on the membership. Subscriptions will likely remain active and will continue to be billed through the payment processor.

• Permissions: You won't be able to set permissions for anyone who has the plan since there will be no user type available for that plan.
• Expiry reminders: Expiry reminders will likely not send as they are attached to the plan.
• Filters: Users will still display as having the deleted plan if they had it prior to the deletion, but admins cannot filter the member grid using this plan.
• Members: Those on manual renewal will just continue to expire naturally and need to pick a different plan if they reach the join page to renew later on.

If you are ready to delete a membership plan:

1. Log into your SilkStart admin panel, and navigate to Settings > Plans
2. Select the plan that you wish to delete.
3. Click 'Delete' in the top right hand corner
4. If the plan has members with auto-recurring payments you will be presented with a warning message that will instruct you to cancel the auto-recurring payments first before deleting the plan. If the plan does not have auto-recurring payments, deleting the plan will put the members who held that plan into a 'cancelled' membership state. 

For more information on changing your plan prices, see this article.

Next: Set your Permissions