We use Gravity Forms with S2 for onboarding. (outlined here)
We’ve discovered that the the S2 reminder notifications only “fire” for paid subscribers. Often we use a 100% off coupon, so there is no payment and then those members do not get notifications. A common use of this when we receive payment by check and then provide a coupon code to avoid payment.
Can I add something to the user records? Any other fixes?
Thanks.
Hi Mitch.
What you can add to their user profile in WordPress, is the EOT (end of term) time that’d correspond to that user’s access. That would then trigger all the reminders you’ve configured.
I hope that helps! 
These users HAVE an EOT, but no subscription ID or service provider (there is a Stripe connection but apparently no payment = no payment provider). These are not recurring subscriptions by the way, which is why it is pretty important that they get renewal reminders.
Hope things are going well for you with taking over the Web Sharks plugins.
Hi Pat! Thanks for the good wishes! I hope you’re doing very well, too.
These users HAVE an EOT
So you’re saying that the user’s profile has an EOT time set, s2Member has the Auto-EOT Behavior enabled and setup, and the reminder emails configured, but no reminders are being sent?
If that’s so, I’d troubleshoot emails a bit, to make sure that’s not where the issue is. https://s2member.com/kb-article/troubleshooting-email-delivery-problems/
but no subscription ID or service provider (there is a Stripe connection but apparently no payment = no payment provider)
Are those that do have the payment gateway and subscr ID in their profiles, getting the reminders, while those with just the EOT time not?
In that case you could test adding the Stripe and the subscr ID, even it if was a one-off payment, and see if the reminder works in your test now.
Let me know how those tests go, or any clarifications and extra info.
Thanks!
All of the email testing has been done. Users who paid for their subscriptions, have a Subscription ID and service provider in their profile, are receiving reminders.
The users who are not receiving reminders used a 100% off coupon when they registered. Thus there was no payment and no transaction with Stripe. I’ve concluded that this is the intended behavior, but disagree that this SHOULD be the intended behavior. If someone registers for a paid membership, whether or not they used a coupon, they are a “Paid” member and should be treated as such. This particular site is a non-profit educational organization and as such we give lots of 100% off coupons for our events/memberships. We’d also like to retain many of these members with a paid membership at the end of their free year, so we need the reminder emails.
Another question related to this, if you don’t mind. The reminder emails are not going through SendGrid (our transactional email service). Do you know if they are hard-coded to use wp-mail or phpmail?
So you’re saying that with an EOT time set, no reminders are sent if there isn’t a payment gateway and subscr ID set in the user’s profile? I’ll need to check the code to see if that’s what it’s supposed to be like. I’d guess that just the EOT time is enough for a reminder, but I guess that Jason’s thinking could have been that if there was no payment, then there is no payment reminder needed…
My hack for it, if that’s the case, would be to just populate the payment gateway and subscr ID with a dummy value for everyone, using the importer to update them in bulk. It won’t care for new 100% off transactions, though, you’d need to keep doing this manually until the behavior changes. That, or make it almost free, charge just 1 cent, and that’ll make all new ones have the required values for the reminders to be sent.
Do the WordPress and signup emails go through your email service? My guess would be that Jason used the same thing for the reminders as he did for the signup emails, which if I’m not mistaken, is WP’s. https://s2member.com/kb-article/troubleshooting-email-delivery-problems/
Point of Info
100% off is an easy way to accomodate payment by check. Further, sometimes organizations will pay for multiple registrations, but we still need the new members to sign up individually - again the 100% off coupon is easiest.
Questions
Can we put any string into ‘Paid Subscr. ID’ and ‘Paid Subscr. Gateway’?
Also, I’ve noticed that sometimes ‘Paid Subscr. ID’ is empty even though ‘Paid Subscr. Gateway’ is set to ‘Stripe’. In these cases, will it mess things up if I put a random string into ‘Paid Subscr. ID’?
Thanks.
Got it. Makes sense.
It should be just fine. The only thing s2Member does with that ID, is look for it when a notification comes in from the payment gateway. Since it’s made up, no notifications will come with it, and s2Member will never look it up. For that same reason it should be fine to use the same string with several users. I don’t even think it needs a special format, probably any string will work, e.g. “couponuser”.
Let me know how it goes!
Yes, they do, but we are using Gravity Forms for new user signups. NOW I remember when we removed the hack that modified the s2Member new user email formatting – it was when we started using Gravity Forms! (Not specifically related to this issue but came up in our investigation.)
Thanks so much. So glad to see that s2Member is in loving hands once again.
Glad I could help! Happy to be here! Thanks for your support! 