Plan Groups is a ProfilePress feature that lets users select a membership plan from a list of plans to purchase at checkout. It also prevents members from inadvertently subscribing to more than one plan at a time, since they can subscribe to only one plan in a Plan Group.
Plan Groups also allow members to switch (upgrade & downgrade) between plans in the same group.
Creating Plan Groups
In your WordPress dashboard, go to ProfilePress > Membership Plans >> Groups and click the Add New button to create a new group.
Enter a name for the group and select the membership plans you would like to include in it.
You can also choose how the membership plans will be displayed on the group checkout page. Available options are Radio buttons and Select Dropdown field types.
Finally, save your changes.
Group Checkout
When you create a group, a corresponding checkout URL is also created so your users, members, or customers can select a membership plan to purchase from the list of plans during checkout.
You can send the checkout URL via email or text to your prospective customers or add it to the pricing page of your membership or e-commerce website.
Below is a preview of the Group checkout page.
Below is a preview of the membership plan selection displayed as a select dropdown field.
To make a specific plan selected by default in a group checkout, add the query parameter &default=22 where 22 is the plan ID to make selected by default. Below is a complete URL example.
https://yourwebsite.com/checkout/?group=55&default=22Show the Group’s Plans on a Pricing Page
To show a group’s plans side by side on a pricing page, landing page or sidebar, use the [profilepress-plans] shortcode. Each plan gets a card with its price, billing, and description, and a button to its checkout.
You’ll find the group’s shortcode, ready to copy, on its edit screen. Edit the group and click Copy Shortcode in the Pricing Section Shortcode box, below Checkout URL. It looks like this, where 2 is the group ID:
[profilepress-plans group="2"]
You can add layout="list", columns="3" or heading="yes" to it. Signed-in members see their current plan marked, and the other plans in the group offer Switch to {Plan}. See How to Show Membership Plans on Any Page for all the options.
The box only appears once the group is saved, since a new group has no ID yet.
Plan Groups on the Checkout Page
When someone opens your checkout page without choosing a plan, ProfilePress shows your plans to choose from, and each plan group gets one card with its plans as options. See Pages Settings.
Switching Plans (Upgrades & Downgrades)
When a user upgrades to a plan that costs more than their current plan, the fee they pay is prorated. That is, they only pay the price difference.
ProfilePress provides two proration methods: time-based and cost-based calculations.
The cost-based calculation is where the value of an upgrade is calculated based on the cost difference between the current and new membership plans. While the time-based calculation is true proration, in which the amount of time remaining on the current subscription plan is calculated to adjust the cost of the new subscription.
To configure the proration method to use on your membership or e-commerce website, go to ProfilePress >> Settings >> Payments >> Checkout Settings.
How Users Can Switch Plans
Your users can upgrade and downgrade between plans from the My Account page.
On the My Account page, they will need to click the Subscriptions menu item.
Next, they need to click on the “View Subscription” button on the subscription they want to switch from or upgrade/downgrade from.
On the subscription page, they would see the “Change plan” button, which they need to click on that would redirect them to the checkout page where they can select a plan to upgrade to.
And below is the checkout page where they can select the plan to switch to.
After they go through the checkout, their subscription to the previous membership plan would be canceled, and they would become active on the new membership plan.
If you have any questions, let us know.