Updates for S2Member? These are my issues

#1

I really hope that there are updates very soon to deal with my issues. Otherwise I’ll have to switch membership plugins because it’s become way too much work to do manually. They are:

  1. When a member cancels the membership from either Stripe or Paypal, sometimes there’s an EOT that is listed. And even then more often than not, the EOT is passed but the member STILL has access to the membership, i.e. remains at level 1 rather than downgraded to subscriber. So every week I have to manually go through Stripe events and Paypal to audit the new members created and cancelled.

  2. When someone joins via Paypal, they click on the purchase button on the site, then are led to Paypal. Once they enter the info they should receive an email to create an account. Half the time they don’t receive the email and they end up contacting me and I have to create their account manually. Would there be a way to make the process to sign up just like it is with Stripe?

  3. The Lost Password feature doesn’t work. Someone will enter the info to retrieve/change the password, but they never receive the email to update.

I hope you can help me with this. Also I if there were consistent updates and reliable customer support, then I would gladly pay some sort of ongoing fee.

Thanks.

#2

Regarding the email issues you’re experiencing, are you sending the emails using your web host’s mail server? If so, the emails are most likely being seen as spam by the recipient’s mail server.

I had similar issues with members not receiving emails, and it was because I was using my web host’s mail server. I switched to Amazon SES over a year ago and have not had a single issue since.

#3

I switched to S2Member PRO because of these exact same issues. The emails got lost and so on. Personally it saved me so much work when the client could simply register prior to paying.

It’s not so much an S2member problem as an ‘emails going into spam’ problem.

#4

Hi Rina.

Follow the suggestions in this article to troubleshoot that, please: https://s2member.com/kb-article/troubleshooting-email-delivery-problems/

I’d also enable s2’s logging, in case there’s any problem with those transactions. WP Admin > s2Member > Log Files

Would there be a way to make the process to sign up just like it is with Stripe?

You can use the PayPal pro-forms. WP Admin > s2Member Pro > PayPal Pro-Forms

When a member cancels the membership from either Stripe or Paypal, sometimes there’s an EOT that is listed. And even then more often than not, the EOT is passed but the member STILL has access to the membership, i.e. remains at level 1 rather than downgraded to subscriber. So every week I have to manually go through Stripe events and Paypal to audit the new members created and cancelled.

This is another one why you’d want to enable logging, so we get more info about those transactions.

Do you have that happen with Stripe transactions as well, or only PayPal? There’s a known issue with PayPal, where they recently changed their subscription IDs and it’s causing trouble for s2 with the notifications from PayPal. We’re working on that at the moment. See: Members no longer demoted after PayPal subscription suspended

#5
  1. The Lost Password feature doesn’t work. Someone will enter the info to retrieve/change the password, but they never receive the email to update.

This is not an s2Member feature.

It may be related to your other email delivery problem. Try the email troubleshooting tips I linked to above. :slight_smile:

#6

I hope you can help me with this. Also I if there were consistent updates and reliable customer support, then I would gladly pay some sort of ongoing fee.

I don’t know if you saw my announcement at the beginning of the year. Happy New Year! (Big Announcement!)

I’ve been working on support since then, helping everyone. And some work has been done on the code to fix some issues, and new releases will start being made again soon.

I have had the recurring fee requested quite a lot, and I’m thinking about the way to do it that’ll be very fair to everyone.

Thanks for your feedback! :slight_smile:

#7

I’ve been experiencing #1 with refunds I initiate on Stripe’s website.

I have almost the exact same API/Notification written for Payments and Refunds and they both used to always work, but now the refund notifications only seem to work rarely. Payments ALWAYS still work.

I used this to build them both years ago.

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#8

A recurring fee is really the only way to go, for both the business and the customers. A business has no incentive if there’s no money coming in, and customers have no grounds for complaint if the product or service was free (or a one-time payment years ago, in this case).
I’m certainly not impressed that the original s2Member developers abandoned it and left thousands of websites to dangle in the wind. A recurring fee is the best way to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

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#9

1- There is no option in my S2Member area for PayPal Pro. Only PayPal.
2- I see in the instructions in S2member that I should NOT enable the logging if the site is live because it can information can be compromised. So, do you still recommend me enabling logging?
3- The faulty and unpredictable EOT happens with BOTH Stripe and PayPal.

Thank you for any other help.

#10

Logging is fine for troubleshooting, that’s why the feature is there. The warning is so site owners don’t forget about it and leave it logging forever afterwards. Just disable logging and delete the logs from the server after you’re done troubleshooting. :slight_smile:

The faulty and unpredictable EOT happens with BOTH Stripe and PayPal.

Okay. It’ll be good to have the log entries for notifications from Stripe and PayPal where the EOT problem you’re having is reproduced.

#11

About #3.

It’s been said, but that’s a WP feature and nothing about s2.

To help get email into inboxes, there’s lots of tech stuff to set up in DNS records, etc.

It’s way complicated, but if you don’t do it most folks won’t get your email.

The easiest way is to start with an email sending provider that has a WP plugin and follow ALL their instructions about DNS, SPF, and DKIM.

Mailgun is nice, but there are other options.

Basically, you trust them to make you not look like a spammer, but there are other alternatives.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smtp/ lets you use more providers, but it’s even more techy.

And there are even more difficult solutions (that are worth it in the long run).

Sending emails is hard no matter which membership plugin you use.

I use Amazon SES. like @Cralamarre above.

TDLR: don’t send emails yourself because you’ll look like a spammer. You have to pay someone else to do it (unless you send fewer than 10k emails/month or so). So that means you gotta pay your web host, your email sender, etc. etc. etc. etc.

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