S2 Button code suddenly not working with PayPal

#41

Yeah I’ve often said s2member needs to stop and switch to a yearly fee. Otherwise no one can live from developing it.
Essentially no matter what very important plugin you use - use a plugin that has a revenue stream.

8 years ago, and a couple of years ago again I looked for other plugins because s2member has no invoicing whatsoever and that is big problem.

Actually if I would start a site right now - I would use quaderno for anything checkout related - and then a second plugin for content protection. S2member could well be this second plugin.
Actually customizing quaderno checkout to create s2membership levels shouldn’t bee too hard.
Sendowl could be used as a gateway to s2member as well. I’m not sure how robust is their VAT solution however. Likely again only good enough for selling to US or selling from/to EU if below 100.000€ worldwide turnover.
s2member is great at protecting content - the rest of the plugin sadly is pretty (out)dated. The best would be to swtich to another plugin for payments/invoicing/checkout and keep s2 for protecting content. Even though large downloads are problematic with s2, most other membership plugins are even worse at it - and those that were good had other glaring problems.
Another huge problem is that you cannot migrage Stripe accounts because s2member without any apparent reason (also unkown why to the developer) still looks up some hidded database field with Stripe (not with paypal!) in order to do anything when a subscription arrives/is cancelled.

Many so called membership plugins actually only have procucts / items no content protection overall based on levels. Others have no timeframe, and so on. it’s really annoying.

Does memberpress have resume support on large downloads (10GB or so). Can you migrate to it easily with lots of protected content (subsites and say a couple thousand of links pointing to protected material). Can you import running subscriptions and it can demote the users once stopped? Sadly importing users is one thing - importing their subscriptions with IPNs arriving in s2member format another.

Oh and Memberpress also has no valid VAT/invoice solution. it integrates with quaderno.io or taxjar out of the box - so chose the one that’s cheaper for you.
The only way to pretty much get EU / US compliant invoicing with VAT for cheap is woocommerce. Else in US you can go for Taxjar, in EU no way around quaderno.io (especially with woldwide turnover over 100.000€).

(and yeah - getting checkout/vat/invoices/taxes right is way more difficult that what s2member offers - it may sound easy but it’s really complicated. Companies as Taxjar (now owned by Stripe), Avalara, Quaderno, Taxamo) all have well over 10 employes. Right now the only way to run s2member without breaking any laws worldwide is coupling it with quaderno.io (costing way more than s2member) - therefore the optimal solution would be if s2member drops all the checkout and offers an implmentation with quaderno checkout intstead. But the cost for quaderno would drive most users away that see s2member as a cheap plugin for a hobby run site.

#42

I actually received an email from MemberPress a few days ago announcing that they just have added a Quaderno add-on to MemberPress.

And here’s their page on migrating users from another membership plugin.

#43

You better start a new thread about migrating to memberpress including how the import works - but I do not see how you can get subscriptions that arrive / are cancelled working:

It would need to clip into the api like quaderno does for managing this (actually since some time - paypal now also supports direct integrations like stripe, so you can integrate quaderno directly into paypal instead of into your website - I haven’t tried out how this works - it works splendidly for Stripe) - so if the membership plugin you use uploads all the data correctly classified to the payment provider (like IP, address, telephone number, credit card country - whatever availalble/needed) then quaderno can process it without interaction by your website. Right now s2member only works for companies with less than 100.000€ worldwide annual turnover on paypal, as it does not verify user given location and IP address to be in the same country (that’s why I have my own paypal button as linked above that asks for country and preselects it from IP - if different it asks for phone number - so you always have 3 pieces of proof even if user is out of his indicated country (if paypal address is verified that works too - but will not work all the time). With stripe this does not matter as you have credit card country on top - which gives you credit card country, IP address, user indicated address)

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#44

I only offer fixed-term non-recurring subscriptions on my site so I can probably avoid much of the headache associated with migrating recurring subscriptions. Plus I only have a few hundred members, and I earn less than 100,000 from memberships. Most of my earnings are from ad revenue and affiliate sales. Memberships are just an additional revenue source for me. So I’m probably making all of this more of an issue than it needs to be.

Honestly, I just want a membership plugin that works and I don’t have to worry that it will stop working if PayPal changes something. MemberPress seems like a good solution, but I don’t know everything about it yet. I keep hoping s2Member will continue working. So far it still works for what I need, but that could change tomorrow.

Does anyone else even use s2Member anymore? This forum is as dead as my local bookstore.

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#45

Yes so far one time payments still work - but it could change anytime. I think quite a few people still use s2 - but most of them on very low turnover websites. Maybe even quite a few use it for simple content protection without any checkout system - or checkout via other plugin.

For many membership websites it’s best to not use any ads or afiliate stuff - turns away paying customers. So my website is ONLY run by membership fees - and most of that comes via subscriptions.

So unable to change stripe accounts (s2member BUG) and now paypal not able to setup subscriptions is a major blow.

#46

I once tried migrating to Memberpress - it didn’t work for me back then: Keep s2member for Content Protection - but sell/manage Memberships via Memberpress

#47

Well, you gotta do somethin’. :slight_smile:

What about WooCommerce? One of my competitors uses it and it seems to work well for him. He sells memberships to his site that give members access to exclusive content.

One of the things I would like to do with my site is offer complete training courses, and MemberPress looks like it offers lots of support for it.

#48

It all depends on your requirements. My main gripe with Memberpress was that they don’t have any EOT concept similar to s2member. Changing a running business is always much harder than going from scratch.

Without subscriptions incoming the thing is super easy. With subscriptions (paypal more than stripe) it*s tough to switch.

The way paykickstart integrates could work - but it’s pricing is way too much for my purposes. And any membership plugin so far I tried had problems adding time. Meaning not buy 2 years and start from scratch, but add time to your existing time.
Thrivecart if it would work, would still be a good solution. Reading up on my problems with memberpress and seeing that nearly none of my complaints has changed, is not working for my sales model. If you sell products instead or infinite access to one thing it’s perfect. Also for subscription. But they haven’t really got a good concept of paying for multiple months or years and then giving an option to buy additional time (at different prices to new users)

#49

I found an alternative in wordpress.org I was impressed actually - does everything we use S2 for, even has member import from a csv file. AND:

Both one time and recurring/subscription payments are supported for PayPal and Stripe.You can accept one time membership payment via Braintree payment gateway.

Option to make membership payment buttons using the new PayPal Checkout API.

There is also option to use PayPal smart buttons for membership payment.

We are going to install it and test it. It’s called Simple Membership

I’ll let you know how it goes. And how easy/hard conversion may be (looks straightforward)

Sid

#50

This MemberPress page mentions adding an “expires-at” column in the CSV file. I don’t know if that would solve the issue with s2’s EOT.

#51

BTW: the info we got from someone at memberpress was they too used IPN & SOAP. But they will probably change over faster than anyone - definitely faster than s2

WE want all the content on our sites protected - especially the “pages” that are part of the software platform and the 30 odd Apps we integrated into wordpress (no plugins, all client side execution).

SO FAR Simple Membership is working and not causing issues with our software setup or other platforms. Testing Paypal is next.

sid

#52

So everyone using MemberPress suddenly can’t sell subscriptions through PayPal? That doesn’t seem right.

#53

simple membership has no concept whatsoever of EOT. It is buy for life or access by subscription. Nothing else. Also it only supports paypal (or other processors via woocommerce).

#54

I don’t know about that - our CTO suspects something in the s2 code is triggering the problem, not just the IPN & SOAP itself alone.

And it slaos supports stripe - the only 2 we use. WE only do monthly subscriptions

Sid

#55

no it doesn’t - it’s a different concept how they handle it. No way for extenstions. So you cannot add time. And no different pricing except via coupons for existing demoted users. It’s the problem off nearly all those modern systems - it’s all easy and shiny but super restricted.

#56

That would be my guess, that s2 is causing the issue. Otherwise Google would be full of complaints from PayPal users. Seems like anytime I search for an issue with PayPal, s2Member comes up.

#57

So for someone in my situation where I only sell one-time non-recurring memberships, would I run into problems with MemberPress?

#58

One time for life is fine. One time for XX time forget Memberpress - or bug their customer support to integrate that as a concept.

#59

No I don’t sell lifetime memberships. I sell either 30 Day or 1 Year memberships. Surely there must be a way to import that into MemberPress.

#60

Yes, ALL our sites, till now, used s2 member. So we apparently have it everywhere. PayPal DID deprecate code and DOES still have an issue THEY acknowledge on the “can only pay for subscriptions with credit card” thing.

Restricted or not, we have to have a membership that does protect content, uses PayPal correctly and stripe and doesn’t cost a fortune (about $10,000 to use memberpress on 100+ sites!)

Sid