This guide is for course providers creating membership plans and managing learners’ subscriptions in the Admin dashboard. A membership defines an offer, its price and course benefits. A subscription is one learner’s record of joining that membership, including its dates, payment status and renewal settings.
A membership does not book a place or enrol a learner onto a course. After joining, the learner must return to the course and complete its booking or enrolment. Learners managing their own payments or subscriptions should use Manage a Membership You Bought.
Install Cademy Memberships
Use a System Admin account for Apps and the main Memberships area. A Course Owner who can edit a course can manage its membership benefits within that course, but cannot open the main Memberships area unless they also have System Admin access.
Open Apps in the Admin dashboard. Connect Stripe first if it is not installed; see Connect and Manage Stripe for Customer Payments. Membership payments use the connected Stripe account.
Select Cademy Memberships, then Install.
After installation, open Memberships. The two tabs are Membership Plans and Subscriptions.
Your Cademy account plan is separate from the memberships you sell. See Understand Cademy Plans, Limits and Fees for account-plan guidance; confirm the charges for your account before setting prices.
Create a membership plan
Open Memberships → Membership Plans and select New Membership.
Enter a Name and Description explaining the included courses and benefits.
Enter the Price and check Currency. For the currencies a membership can use, see Choose Currencies for Courses, Memberships and Gift Cards. Do not save with Select... showing.
Choose Auto-renew: Never, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly. Never is a one-off membership; a paid recurring membership charges at the chosen interval.
Add the course benefits described below. Review Advanced Settings, particularly dates and Published, before saving. Published starts on for a new plan; switch it off before the first Save Membership if you do not want a public listing.
Select Save Membership. Reopen the plan from Membership Plans and check its saved price, currency, recurrence and benefits.
For a free membership, enter a Price of 0 and choose Never. Set an End date if access should end on a particular date. If you need a zero-price membership with automatic renewal, ask Support to confirm the intended duration before offering it; do not assume the displayed recurrence extends free access automatically.
Add course benefits
In the membership editor, select Add Benefit. The choices appear in this order:
Members Only Access: adds a membership requirement to the selected courses. It does not itself make the courses free.
Free Access: makes one eligible price option free for each Free Access benefit in a checkout. If the option is priced per place, that covers one place; if it is a group price covering several places, it covers one group option. It does not make every selected option free. A shared benefit is counted once across a basket containing several eligible courses.
Discounted Access: enter the percentage discount for the selected courses. If several active memberships offer a percentage discount for the same course, the highest percentage applies; the percentages are not added together.
Choose the benefit, then use Search courses to select each course it covers.
For Discounted Access, enter the required percentage. Add further benefits if the membership needs different benefits for different courses.
Select Save Membership, reopen the plan and check the selected courses and amounts.
If a course must be strictly restricted to current members, ask Cademy Support to confirm the access rules for your booking flow before relying on Members Only Access. Do not treat that setting as a guarantee that expired or inactive subscriptions are rejected in every checkout.
Free Access and Discounted Access do not themselves restrict non-members from booking. Free and discounted benefits depend on the learner’s subscription being active and within its start and expiry dates. Ask the learner to sign in with the email address used to join and check the final course total before payment.
Add or remove a course from the course editor
Use this route when you are editing one course and want to connect it to a benefit that already exists. You need Course Owner access to edit the course; a Facilitator role alone does not provide this access.
Open Courses, select the course and choose Edit Course.
Open Settings → Memberships. This section is shown when the account has at least one membership.
Find the intended membership and benefit. The benefit labels include Free course access, Members only access and Discounted entry.
Select Add or Remove beside that benefit. Each action saves the membership change immediately; it does not wait for the course editor’s Save button.
Reopen the course’s Settings → Memberships and confirm the result. A course included in a benefit shows Remove; a course not included shows Add.
Manage Memberships opens the main area for System Admins. If you need a new benefit and cannot open that area, ask a System Admin to create it.
Choose the advanced settings
Open the membership from Memberships → Membership Plans and select Advanced Settings. Review these options before Save Membership:
Start date: an optional future start for new subscriptions. A future paid recurring membership asks the learner to set up payment details before charging begins. Confirm the subscription dates after setup. For a paid Never membership, a future Start date does not defer checkout payment, even if the summary says Pay on that date. Ask Support before offering a future-start one-off membership when payment timing matters.
End date: an optional end for the membership. Check the resulting subscription’s expiry separately, especially when using a scheduled start or recurring payments. Manual subscriptions have their own dates, described below.
Published: controls whether the plan appears on the Memberships tab of your Cademy website. Turning it off does not cancel subscriptions or block purchases through the direct membership link.
Membership signup form: chooses the form learners complete when joining. The default form asks for first name, last name and email address.
Confirmation email template: chooses the learner’s confirmation template. The default option is Cademy Default Confirmation Email. Other messages, such as future payment setup and cancellation, use separate system emails.
Free trial period: appears for recurring memberships without a fixed Start date. Enter the trial length in days. A paid membership still requires payment details. Before sharing, check the configured trial length. After a learner joins, check that subscription’s trial end and payment schedule.
Membership Owners: lets you select users or groups. Ask Support to confirm the actual notification recipients before relying on this selection; selecting owners alone does not establish who receives membership emails.
After saving, reopen the plan and inspect the saved settings. Do not promise a payment schedule solely from the plan’s description: check the actual subscription and Stripe record when dates or payment amounts differ.
Publish and share a membership
Open the saved plan in Memberships → Membership Plans.
For a public listing, open Advanced Settings, turn Published on and select Save Membership.
Select Share in the plan editor to open its direct membership checkout. Check the name, price, currency, recurrence, dates and trial information before copying the link.
To share the page listing your published memberships, return to Membership Plans and use that page’s Share link. The membership cards show Join, or Start Free Trial when a trial is configured.
Unpublishing removes the public listing only. If you need to stop all new signups, contact Support before relying on an unpublished plan.
Edit an existing membership
Open Memberships → Membership Plans and select the plan.
Change the intended fields, then select Save Membership.
Reopen the plan to check the saved values. For a particular learner, open Memberships → Subscriptions and select their row to check that subscription separately.
Changing the plan’s price, currency or Auto-renew does not rewrite those values on existing subscriptions. However, existing subscribers use the membership’s current course benefits for later bookings. Removing a course or changing a discount can therefore affect current members’ future bookings. Review the terms you have offered before changing benefits.
A learner can also move their own recurring subscription to another of your recurring memberships from their account. See Manage a Membership You Bought.
View learner subscriptions
Open Memberships → Subscriptions.
Find the learner using the displayed name, email and membership. Check START DATE, RENEWAL / EXPIRY DATE and STATUS.
Select the row away from the learner’s name to open Subscription Details; the name itself links to the contact.
Check Membership, Cost, Auto-renews, Start date, and Renews on or Expiration date. A trial also shows Trial end date. Review Transactions separately from the access status.
Active: the record is marked active and has not passed its expiry date. Check Start date too; this badge alone does not prove that a future subscription has started or that a payment succeeded.
Active until [date]: renewal has been stopped but the record remains active before its expiry date.
Expired: the expiry date has passed.
Inactive: the record is not active.
Initiated: initial payment or setup is incomplete. Such records are excluded from the normal Subscriptions list.
The learner’s own account shows slightly different statuses: it has Starts on [date] and no Expired status. See Manage a Membership You Bought.
Add a learner manually
A manual subscription grants membership access without collecting money. Its Cost is 0 and Auto-renews is Never, even if the selected membership normally has a recurring price. Use it only when you intend to grant access without an automatic charge.
Open Memberships → Subscriptions and select New Subscription.
Use Search for a contact... to select the intended learner with an email address. If the learner does not yet exist, use Create new contact... in that selector and enter their details.
Use Select a membership to choose the plan.
Set the intended Start date and End date. Although the fields are marked optional, enter an explicit End date for time-limited access, particularly with a future start.
Decide whether to enable Send confirmation email. It is off initially.
Select Create Subscription. In the resulting Subscription Details, verify the learner, membership, Cost, Auto-renews, Start date and Expiration date.
With no Start date, the manual subscription starts when it is created. With no End date, a recurring plan uses one recurrence interval counted from creation, not from a chosen future Start date; a Never plan has no practical end date. The membership plan’s own dates are not copied into this manual form.
If Cademy reports an existing membership clash, check the learner’s current subscriptions before trying again. Do not create a second contact to bypass the warning. If the saved dates are wrong or an existing subscription needs changing, contact Support with its details.
Stop renewal or end access immediately
Choose the required outcome before confirming. These actions cannot be undone through this screen. After renewal has been stopped, a later Deactivate request is rejected as already cancelled; contact Support if you need a further change. Cancelling does not itself issue a refund or cancel course places already booked.
Confirming either cancellation action triggers cancellation emails for the learner and configured provider recipients. The original manual subscription’s Send confirmation email choice does not suppress these messages. If delivery or recipients matter, confirm them with Support before acting.
Open Memberships → Subscriptions, select the learner’s row and check Subscription Details. Don't Renew... and Deactivate... are shown on every subscription, whatever its status.
To stop future renewal of a recurring subscription while retaining the current period, select Don't Renew.... Read the displayed end date and confirm Don't Renew.
To mark an uncancelled subscription inactive immediately, choose Deactivate... instead and confirm Deactivate. Use this action to end a subscription that does not renew: Don't Renew... leaves such a subscription active until its expiry date.
Reopen Subscription Details and check the status and dates. For a paid recurring subscription, also verify that Stripe shows the intended cancellation before confirming the outcome to the learner.
If Stripe already reports a subscription as cancelled, Cademy can mark it inactive immediately even when Don't Renew was selected. Do not promise continued access when the records disagree. Membership cancellation also does not establish that every members-only course restriction has been enforced; ask Support about any unexpected access.
Check transactions, fees and failed payments
Open the learner’s Subscription Details and look under Transactions. Recorded rows show a date and payment status; an amount appears when one is recorded and non-zero. The small details button beside a row opens the breakdown recorded for that payment. It can list Total Paid, Platform Fees, Marketplace Fees, Cademy VAT and Net Payout; a line is shown only when it has an amount.
This view is not a complete payment statement: a one-off membership payment can be absent from Transactions, and displayed fee or Net Payout figures need checking against the payment provider’s records. An empty list does not prove that no payment was made.
For a reported failed or missing payment, check the matching payment or subscription in the connected Stripe account and compare it with Cademy’s dates and status. Do not rely on receiving a failure email as the only check. If the records disagree, contact Support before asking the learner to pay again.
There is no refund action in Subscription Details. A payment for a membership is not linked to an invoice, so Refund… is not offered for it; to refund a membership payment, contact Cademy Support with the membership, the learner and the Stripe payment reference. See Cancel an Order or Refund a Payment. Stopping renewal, ending access and refunding money are separate decisions.
Find a membership on a contact
Open Contacts and select the learner. Their contact page can display green membership badges and a Subscribed activity entry. A badge alone does not confirm that access dates are current. Open the subscription from its activity entry, or use Memberships → Subscriptions, and check the start date, expiry and status.
If a membership or subscription is missing
No Apps or main Memberships area: ask a System Admin to check that Stripe and Cademy Memberships are installed.
No public membership card: open the plan and check Published. An unpublished plan’s direct link still allows signups.
No course benefit: check the selected course under the plan’s Benefits, the learner’s email, and the subscription’s start date, expiry and status. Ask the learner to check the final checkout total before payment.
No learner in Subscriptions: confirm the email used to join and whether initial payment or card setup completed. Check payment records before asking them to restart checkout.
Unexpected access, dates, recipients or payment totals: contact Cademy Support with the membership name, affected learner, relevant course or subscription, and the result you expected. Include the payment reference when the issue concerns a payment.
Frequently asked questions
Can one membership include several courses?
Yes. Select each individual course under the relevant benefit. A membership can have several benefits. Check the Free Access limit before promising that a basket containing several courses or places will be entirely free.
Can I add a whole course collection to a membership?
No. Membership benefits select individual courses.
Can I include all courses except a few?
No. Select each included course. There is no all-courses-with-exclusions option.
Can I offer a membership without recurring payments?
Yes. Choose Never under Auto-renew. A price above zero creates a one-off purchase; a price of zero creates a free membership.
Can I offer a free trial?
Yes, for a recurring membership without a fixed Start date. Set Free trial period in Advanced Settings. For a paid membership, learners still need to complete payment setup.
Does adding a learner manually charge them?
No. New Subscription creates a zero-cost, non-renewing subscription. Set and verify its dates; it does not collect the selected plan’s normal price.
Will a new price change current subscribers?
No. Editing the plan does not rewrite existing subscription prices. Course-benefit changes are different: they can affect current members’ later bookings.
Does unpublishing cancel subscriptions or stop direct-link sales?
No. It removes the public listing. Existing subscriptions remain, and the direct membership link still allows signup.
What is the difference between Don't Renew and Deactivate?
Don't Renew stops renewal while retaining the remaining period when the subscription is still active in Stripe. Deactivate marks an uncancelled Cademy subscription inactive immediately. Choose carefully: after cancellation, the screen does not allow a second cancellation action.
Why is an initial subscription missing from the list?
Incomplete initial payment or card setup records are excluded from the normal list. Confirm the email and payment status before asking the learner to try again.
Where does a learner manage their own subscription?
Use Manage a Membership You Bought for the learner’s account route. Ask Support if a displayed action or payment result differs from the guide.