Online Signup
Use this page to let people join a plan from your website and pay online.
Quick steps
- On Membership Plans, make sure every plan you want to sell is Active.
- Open your public signup page: your store's web address followed by
/memberships. Every active plan has a card with a Sign Up button. - Try it yourself: click Sign Up, fill in the Join page and click Continue to payment. Until payments are connected, the button reads Preview Signup and nothing is charged.
- To show your plans on your own website, paste the widget code into your page — see Putting It on Your Own Website.
- New members appear under Memberships → All Members, and your store gets a New member signup email.
Common questions
Do I need a storefront for this? No. Every store with memberships gets the page, with or without a storefront.
What does the new member pay today? On a free trial, nothing until the trial ends. On a card plan with no trial, the first period (plus any joining fee) today. A bank payment starts on the plan's own schedule. A punch card is paid in full.
Somebody joined twice. Signups are matched on email address. Two different addresses make two customers — merge them on the customer record.
How do members cancel or manage their membership? The Sign in to manage or cancel your membership link under the plans opens the member portal.
More detail: what the public page shows
Every store with memberships gets a public signup page, whether or not it runs a full storefront. Its address is your store's web address followed by /memberships.
People pick a plan, answer your questions, enter payment details, and arrive in the admin as a member — no typing at your end.
What the Public Page Shows
The page is headed Memberships — "Choose a plan and start today." Every Active plan gets a card in Display Order, coloured with the plan's colour, showing:
- The price and how often it is charged.
- The plan description, if it has one.
- The plan's benefits — sessions included for a punch card, classes per week or month, guest passes, the member shop discount, and a free trial where the plan has one.
- A Sign Up button.
Underneath: Already a member? with the link Sign in to manage or cancel your membership, which opens the member portal.
If your store runs a storefront, a Memberships link is added to the storefront's navigation and footer as soon as you have at least one active plan.
Regional pricing
If you tag any plan with a state or province, the page asks the visitor to Select your state or province first, then shows that region's plans plus any untagged ones. Stores that do not tag plans never see the picker. See Membership Plans.
More detail: the join step
The Join Step
Sign Up opens Join, which restates the chosen plan (and its free trial, where there is one) and then asks:
| Section | What is asked |
|---|---|
| About you | First name (required), Last name, Email (required — "Your receipt and your membership login go here"), Phone. |
| Start my free trial on | Only on a trial plan, and only where your processor can defer the first charge. Any date from today up to 30 days ahead, so somebody signing up a week before their first class does not spend the trial at home. |
| How would you like to pay? | Direct from my bank account (pre-authorized debit) or Credit or debit card. Only shown where your store can take bank payments; the bank option is preselected. Not shown for a punch card, which is a one-off purchase and is always paid by card. |
| A few questions | Whatever you set up on the signup form. |
At the bottom: Continue to payment, and the reassurance Nothing is charged on this page.
Everything answered here is saved to the customer's record before the payment screen, so an abandoned signup still leaves you a real lead with real answers.
More detail: payment and confirmation
Payment and Confirmation
Payment details are entered on the processor's own secure form.
- A plan with a free trial saves the payment method without charging it. The first payment is taken when the trial ends.
- A bank payment always saves the mandate rather than charging on the spot; the first payment is taken on the plan's own schedule.
- A card plan with no trial saves the card on the payment screen and then takes a single payment today, covering the first period and any joining fee. Nothing is charged twice.
- A punch card is bought outright on the payment screen, at the member's own price — the plan's price after any member discounts you have set up. The amount actually charged is what gets recorded on their membership.
Where a member discount applies, the plan's normal price is shown struck through, the member's price beside it, and a line underneath reads Your member discount is applied. Where no discount applies, it simply shows the plan's normal price and what the pack contains.
The confirmation page reads Welcome to [store]! and You're now signed up for [plan], and every member who signs up reaches it.
What it says next depends on how they joined:
- On a trial, exactly when the free trial starts and when the first payment will be taken — rather than being told their membership is active today.
- On a card plan with no trial, that their first payment is taken today, with any joining fee included, and the date of the next one.
- If that first payment was declined, it says so plainly instead, and the membership shows as Past Due on your members list. Worth watching for: the member has finished signing up and may believe they are paid.
Three emails follow: the member gets a welcome email and an invitation to activate their member portal login, and your store address gets a New member signup notification.
More detail: putting it on your own website
Putting It on Your Own Website
Add the widget to any page on your own site.
Inline — the plans appear in the page:
<script src="https://YOUR-STORE-ADDRESS/memberships/embed.js" async></script>
<div data-bpos-memberships></div>
If you leave out the <div>, the plans appear immediately after the script.
As a button that opens a pop-up:
<script src="https://YOUR-STORE-ADDRESS/memberships/embed.js"
data-mode="popup"
data-button-text="Join Now"
data-button-color="#7c3aed"
async></script>
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
data-mode="popup" | Shows a button instead of the plans. Clicking it opens the signup in a pop-up; Escape or a click outside closes it. |
data-button-text | The button's wording. Defaults to View Memberships. |
data-button-color | The button's colour. Defaults to blue. |
The embedded signup resizes itself to fit its content, and the whole signup — questions, payment, confirmation — happens inside it. The one exception is the member portal sign-in link, which opens in a new tab, because it is a signed-in area that should not be typed into inside somebody else's page.
More detail: demo mode
Demo Mode
Until a payment processor is connected, the page runs as a demo so you can show the flow to somebody — or walk it yourself — without taking money.
- A banner reads Demo Mode — no payment gateway is connected yet, so you can preview the full signup flow but nothing will be charged.
- The buttons read Preview Signup instead of Sign Up. It opens a short Demo Preview form (a name, and an optional email) rather than the full join step, finished with Complete Demo Signup.
- Completing one creates a real membership marked Demo, with the note [DEMO] Preview signup — no payment collected, and sends the same welcome and New member signup emails.
Demo memberships are excluded from the dashboard figures and from every report, but they are visible in the members list with a yellow Demo badge. Clear them with Clean Up Demo Data at the bottom of the members list. That also removes the customers the preview signup created, whatever name was typed. A customer who was already on your list before, still has another membership, or has bought something is kept. Once payments are connected, demo mode switches itself off.
More detail: troubleshooting
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Solution |
|---|---|
| The page says Memberships are not available | Memberships are not switched on for the store. See Memberships Overview. |
| No membership plans available at the moment | No plan is ticked Active. |
| A plan is missing from the page | It is inactive, or your store tags plans by region and that plan belongs to a different one. |
| Online payments are not yet configured. | No payment processor is connected for online payments yet. |
| This plan is not available for online signup yet. | The plan could not be set up at the payment processor. Check its price and billing settings. |
| The signup didn't finish and the customer was charged | The message Signup failed. Your payment was processed — please contact us means exactly that. Find the customer and enrol them by hand, then check with your processor before charging anything again. |
| Somebody joined twice | Signups are matched on email address, so the same address lands on the same customer. Two different addresses make two customers — merge them on the customer record. |
| The widget shows nothing on my site | Check the address in the script tag is your own store's, and that the script tag is not blocked by your site's security settings. |
| The Preview Signup button is still showing | Demo mode only switches off once a payment processor is connected for online payments. |
More detail: best practices
Best Practices
- Walk through your own signup before you advertise it. Demo mode exists so you can, without spending anything.
- Keep the questions short — every extra field on the join step costs signups. See Signup Questions.
- Offer the bank option for long-term members. A mandate does not expire or decline when somebody replaces their card.
- Link straight to the page from your marketing site rather than rebuilding plan cards by hand — prices then only live in one place.
What's Next?
- Membership Plans — what appears on the public cards.
- Signup Questions — what the join step asks.
- Members — where online signups land in the admin.
- Auto-Billing — how recurring payments are set up for counter signups.