Membership: Plans

Membership Plans define how members are charged — the amount, frequency, and duration of recurring payments — as well as the benefits they receive. Once you have plans set up, you expose them to potential members through a Membership Sign Up Page.

When a member signs up, BetterUnite creates a subscription that links that member to the plan and manages all billing automatically from that point forward.

Navigating to Plans

• Navigate to Contacts > Membership Management to open the Membership Center.
• In the left sidebar, click Plans.
• The Plans page lists all your plans with their name, billing amount, frequency, renewal settings, and creation date. Use the Active Plans and Inactive Plans tabs to filter the list.

Create a New Plan

• Click New Plan to open the plan creation form.

Name and Description

• Name: The internal name for this plan. This is how it appears in the admin interface and in reports.
• Description: An optional internal description. This is not shown to members on sign-up pages — you set public-facing descriptions when you add the plan as an offer on a sign-up page.

Billing Cycle

• Set how often to charge members using the Charge Every field and the unit selector (Month, Week, or Year). For example:
  • Every 1 Month = monthly billing
  • Every 1 Year = annual billing
  • Every 2 Months = bi-monthly billing

Charge Amount

• Fixed amount: Enter a set amount that will be charged each billing cycle.
• Member-defined amount: Toggle on Amount to be set by member to let the member enter their own payment amount at sign-up. This is useful for open-ended membership tiers or suggested-giving plans.

Renewal

• Auto-renew until cancelled: The subscription continues billing indefinitely until the member or an admin cancels it. This is the default setting and works best for ongoing memberships.
• Fixed number of billing cycles: The subscription runs for a set number of cycles and then stops automatically. For example, a 12-cycle monthly plan runs for one year and completes without requiring manual cancellation.

Click Save when the core plan fields are configured. You can return to edit the plan and expand Advanced Options at any time.

Advanced Options

Advanced Options let you decouple the subscription period from the billing cycle — useful for organizations with defined membership years (such as July 1 – June 30) that still want to accept sign-ups throughout the year. You can also enable Household Memberships from this section.

Subscription Period

• Follow billing cycle (default): The membership period starts the moment someone subscribes and billing begins immediately. Most plans use this setting.
• Custom subscription period: Set a fixed Start Date and End Date for the membership year (for example, January 1 – December 31). Members who sign up before the period begins are enrolled but their membership is valid for the upcoming term.
  • You can control whether billing happens immediately at sign-up or when the subscription period begins. For example, a member signing up in November for a January 1st membership can be billed in November or held until January 1st.

Household Memberships

Household Memberships allow a single subscription to cover multiple members of a household under one plan and one payment. This feature is enabled at the plan level.

• Toggle on Allow Household Members to enable household membership for this plan.
• Optionally set a Maximum number of household members to cap how many can be added per subscription (for example, a limit of 4).
• Once enabled, members subscribed to this plan will see a Household Members section in their Supporter Portal where they can add adult or child household members.

For full details on how household members access the portal and how the admin view works, see Household Memberships.

Plan Benefits

Benefits are perks or entitlements associated with a plan. When a member signs up for a plan, any benefits attached to that plan are automatically added to their member record.

Benefits are managed in two places: at the plan level (to set the default benefit for all new subscribers) and at the individual member level (to track fulfillment or make one-off adjustments).

Adding Benefits to a Plan

• From the Plans list, click the More icon next to a plan and select Edit Plan Benefits. Alternatively, navigate to Plan Benefits in the left sidebar to manage benefits across all plans.
• Click Add Benefit to create a new benefit.

• Each benefit has:

• Title: The name of the benefit (for example, “Newsletter Subscription” or “10% Discount at Gift Shop”).
• Description: An optional description that can appear to members in the Supporter Portal.
• Portal visibility: Control whether this benefit is visible to members in their Supporter Portal. Benefits can be shown to members to acknowledge what they’ve received, or kept internal for admin tracking only.

Tracking Benefit Fulfillment

• Each benefit on a member record has a Status (Active, Completed, etc.) that admins can update to track whether the benefit has been delivered.
• Admins can also add or edit individual member benefits from the Member Page within the Membership Center, for cases where a benefit needs to be customized for a specific member.

Updating Benefits Across All Plans

If you add or modify a benefit on a plan, you can choose to apply the change to existing subscribers as well as new ones, or apply it to future subscribers only. This is useful when you introduce a new organization-wide perk and want all current members to receive it without editing each record individually. (New in June 2026)

Managing Plans

From the Plans list, click the More icon next to any plan to access management options:

• Edit: Update the plan’s name, description, billing settings, advanced options, or benefits. Please note: editing a plan only affects new subscriptions. Members already subscribed to the plan remain on their original terms. For example, if you raise the price from $20 to $30/month, existing subscribers continue to be charged $20 until they re-subscribe or you manually update their subscriptions.
• Mark as Inactive: Prevents new members from signing up for this plan. Existing subscriptions are unaffected and continue billing normally. You can reactivate the plan at any time.
• Edit Plan Benefits: Opens the benefits management view for that plan.
• Delete: Permanently removes the plan from your account. Like inactivating, this does not cancel existing subscriptions — members already subscribed continue on the plan terms they originally agreed to. Deleted plans cannot be recovered, so consider marking as inactive instead if you may want to reuse the plan later.

New in June 2026

• Household Memberships: Plans can now allow household members. Enable under Advanced Options > Allow Household Members on any plan. Primary members can add adult and child household members from their Supporter Portal; adult household members get their own portal access. See Household Memberships for details.
• Update benefits across all plans: When adding or editing a plan benefit, you can now choose to apply the change to all current subscribers, not just future sign-ups.
• Member-controlled auto-renew at checkout: Members can now choose to enable or disable auto-renew when signing up, and specify how many billing cycles they want to be billed. Admins can control whether this option is presented based on the plan configuration.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I have multiple active plans at the same time?
Yes. You can create as many plans as you need. Each plan can have different billing amounts, frequencies, and benefits. Plans can be exposed selectively on different sign-up pages.

Will changing a plan's price affect current subscribers?
No. Edits to a plan only apply to new sign-ups. Existing subscribers remain on their original terms until their subscription is manually updated or they re-subscribe.

What’s the difference between a plan with a fixed billing cycle count and one that auto-renews?
A fixed-cycle plan (for example, 12 monthly cycles) stops billing automatically after the set number of payments and the subscription completes. An auto-renewing plan continues billing until the member or an admin cancels it. Use fixed cycles for defined-term memberships; use auto-renew for ongoing memberships with no end date.

Can I set a membership year that doesn’t follow the calendar year?
Yes. Use the custom subscription period in Advanced Options to define any start and end dates for the membership year — for example, July 1 through June 30 for a fiscal-year membership.

Can I charge a one-time initiation fee in addition to the recurring amount?
Yes. A setup fee or one-time payment can be added when configuring an offer on a Sign Up Page. This fee is charged at sign-up only and does not recur. See Membership – Sign Up Pages for details.

Can a member be on more than one plan at once?
Yes, a member can have multiple active subscriptions. Each subscription is independent with its own billing and status. Admins can see all of a member’s subscriptions from the Member Page.

Do benefits automatically transfer when a member changes plans?
Benefits are tied to the subscription at the time of sign-up. When a member changes plans, benefits from the new plan are added to their record. Benefits from the old plan remain on their record unless manually removed by an admin.

What happens to household members if the primary subscription ends?
If the primary member’s subscription is cancelled, expired, or completed, household members linked to that subscription lose their membership status. See Household Memberships for more detail.

Need Additional Help?

We’re here to assist you in any way we can. Don’t hesitate to reach out to support@betterunite.com

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