How is everyone selling and controlling paid memberships to FC?
I was under the impression that FluentCart was the natural integration to sell monthly recurring memberships to FluentCommunity, but it turns out that isn't the case as FluentCart doesn't offer the option to actually create an account (username/password) during the sales flow. So how is everyone doing this today? How are you onboarding new paid members?
FluentCart automatically creates user accounts for customers during checkout.
Then, you set up the fluent community integration. If the user keeps and active plan, it will manage that. If it cancels, access is revoked.
The only think other users are commenting is that there is no straightforward way to ask for username and pass during checkout (you can either dev docs implementation).
So the missing part is something more, “easy” to do it.
That being said, I do not think many users while ask for username and password creation during checkout. I think more users will be willing to keep the fields simple, so as to ask for less info, and boost conversions.
Also, after payment, you can have the user auto logged in. Or redirected to a course. Or dashboard.
So the experience is quite smooth.
Still a lot to improve imho, but really nice for communities and membership management.
Fluent Members should be up to arrive soon, so I am sure we could expect better capabilities for that “membership content” part :)
Jorge de los Reyes I'm even more confused now than I was before. If it just "automatically creates user accounts" but doesn't ask for a username or password, how would that user ever log into the community?
Edit to add: auto logged in after purchase yes. But 3 weeks after purchase, after they've cleared browser cache multiple times, switched browsers, moved from work computer to home computer, moved to mobile, etc. how would they ever log in without a username and password?
With automatic account creation enabled, FluentCart creates the WordPress account after payment. The customer can use the email address entered at checkout to log in, so they don’t need to choose a separate username.
In practice, they will be already logged in the first time.
They set (modify) their password afterwards, rather than during checkout. WordPress’s new-user notification can email them a link to set it, provided that notification is being sent. They can also use “Forgot password?” with their checkout email address to set a password for the account that already exists.
That’s why many users are being prompted to use fluent auth: this is because it allows you to customize those native Wordpress emails of set your password etc.
So the flow I’m describing is: purchase > account created > user is already logged in > set password from your profile or email (just the first time). Not “an account appears and the customer somehow has to guess their credentials.”
For a proper onboarding experience, I’d make sure they receive a clear password-setup email and a link to the community, rather than leave them to figure it out.
You can customize auth for that.
Jorge de los Reyes Perfect, thank you for the explanation. It's a very cumbersome and legacy onboarding flow (password should be created at sign up, that's how almost every modern platform does it today), but it is what it is. I think I'll be using something other than FluentCart for the onboarding. I appreciate the quick response.
Erik Boles I recently set up a membership process for a FluentCRM Community course product using Flowmattic (Should work with any of the other automators)
What it does is replaces the welcome email with a custom one that includes a password.
Flowmattic creates a random password for the user, emails it to them along with a smartlink that logs them into their course.
I disabled the Wordpress welcome email. So it goes like this:
Buy course > Get 1 email that says "Welcome to XYZ course. Save this login info email."
Gives them a smartlink to login now (goes straight into course without a password) and a password for later if they want it.
People say this is crazy, never send a password in an email, and maybe it is. Though Im not sure what the damage can be. You could send the reset instead if you don't want to send the password.
Anyway...this is the only processs that gives me any complete peace with course signups.
Nobody ever seems to have a problem anymore and they get 1 email with everything they need after a purchase.
Nicolai I get why it feels harmless (someone getting into your email probably isn’t the most likely scenario)
At least before the AI times and MCPs and so (many are pretty happy now using connectors 😅).
But international data protection security regulation is about reducing unnecessary risk, not waiting until someone actually gets hacked.
If we can use an expiring magic/reset link (this is, if its an available option), there’s simply no reason to leave a reusable password sitting indefinitely in an inbox, backups, forwarded emails or logs.
And regulators have actually sanctioned this many times.
Just 3 public examples available for anyone online…
“Librería desnivel” €5,000 for essentially this exact setup (a welcome email containing the username and password in plain text) and;
“Excom” €10,000 for emailing customer credentials in plain text;
“Kindles.de” was also fined €20,000 after a breach revealed that passwords were being kept in plain text.
So, the other problem is reputational too: these regulatory decisions become public and searchable, so sometimes the €5–20k fine is actually the least painful part. 😅
Professionally I’ve seen many cases like this. Being the worst, a case in which an online school shared the pass in plain text to a client who was pretty aware of this being a security issue. And it was the client the one that reported this to the authorities, causing many troubles also within other students.
Hope the context helps 😅
Jorge de los Reyes I didn't really see the harm. I think all they can really do with the password is take the course for free. I guess people could find learn their full names in the account, I don't think there is any other info in there but that is something.
But I wont argue...You've convinced me. I will just send them the auto-log in link and a password reset address.
The reason I did it is that 2 out of 5 people in the class were contacting me to ask how they can get a password.
I guess I have to figure out why they are doing so and fix that.
On a side note...I almost never get emails asking about password problems on my ecommerce platform. Maybe because I cover it clearly in the FAQ and help pages. Not sure. But with 200,000 users I only get about four support emails a year about password issues.
For some reason it's 40% of the course people! One difference is that most of the course people are seniors and the ecommerce users are young. I need to figure out why they don't all use the magic login link and that might end the problem.
I use paid membership pro, it's free and work with fluent community
Adetayo I currently use SureCart and SureMembers because I'm migrating from BuddyBoss to FluentCommunity. It's a really solid product and very feature rich. I was hoping to move to FluentCart just to keep everything within the WPMN ecosystem but it looks like that won't happen given the current state of FluentCart and the work that still needs to be done. I'll take a look at Paid Membership Pro just to ensure I'm making the right choice.
Erik Boles I use SureCart, Sure Members (for membership content that lives on my site outside my FCom), Ottokit to apply and remove the FCRM tags, Fluent CRM (free) tagging (for easy access controls to my FCom), and Fluent Community.
No need to buy more things; you can use this workflow since you own all of the above.
Kaneisha G. I thought you looked familiar - you responded in the group on facebook as well. Yes, you are spot on, I am sticking with SureCart/Suremembers for everything (not using FluentCart at all). SureCart/Suremembers creates the user in wordpress and that is all that is needed. Once they're in wordpress they can log in to FluentCommunity and I have FCRM running an automatic sync between wordpress users and it, so there isn't a need for FluentCart.
Erik Boles your post here has made me aware of the issue with switching to Fluent Cart. I planned on it, but looks like my current setup works more seamlessly.
I hope the Fluent Cart team fixes the user creation flow so that I can streamline to just the Fluent ecosystem.
Kaneisha G. I asked you in the f'book group "why not just use FluentCart?" Today I learned why you're not using and why I won't be either. I was planning on jumping back over to the original f'book post and letting you know what I learned here today and then boom, you showed up here. 😃
Worth saying upfront: FluentCart and FluentCommunity work great together for most setups, that combo is the right default for the vast majority of people selling community access. My situation was an edge case, not evidence the pairing has a gap.
I actually started with FluentCart. What pushed me off it was B2B selling in Europe, VAT ID validation and reverse charge just weren't handled properly for my case, and that's not something you can route around once tax compliance is involved. Around the same time I'd fallen in love with building frontends in Astro and wanted my storefronts to live there instead of in a WordPress theme. Paddle as merchant of record solved the EU B2B tax problem properly, but that meant checkout now lived entirely outside WordPress, so account creation tied to a storefront plugin was never going to work for me anyway. I also run a separate paid newsletter on a different domain that needed to share the same login, which pointed the same direction.
To make it work, I run a small standalone auth service (BetterAuth on Cloudflare Workers) as the one identity system across those properties, independent of any storefront or payment processor. For FluentCommunity, I wrote a small bridge plugin that recognizes an existing login session and creates/links the WordPress user behind the scenes, so members don't have to sign in twice.
If you're running FluentCart and FluentCommunity together on one site the normal way, I wouldn't go anywhere near this, it's real extra plumbing for a problem you probably don't have. But if you've got EU B2B in the mix, or you're already off FluentCart's checkout for another reason, decoupling identity from checkout is the pattern that solved it for me. Happy to go into more detail if it's relevant to your setup.
André Daus I appreciate this thoughtful response. I would, of course, argue it's not the right solution for anyone. Not setting username and password during the sales flow is high friction, cumbersome, and loaded with potential support requests and unhappy users. There's a reason almost every other platform on earth—circle, mighty, BuddyBoss, kajabi, teachable, skool, podia, higher logic, bettermode, disciple, gmail, facebook, twitter, tiktok, linkedinin, substack—has you create username/password during the sales flow (I honestly cannot think of one that doesn't). It's such an easy thing to integrate from day zero I am kinda baffled it doesn't exist in FluentCart.
Your use case is definitely unique, but that's usually the case with the EU (especially with user privacy laws). Right now I'm using SureCart and SureMembers, which does this perfectly so I'll stick there for now. Hopefully FluentCart gets updated in the future.
I added 2 passwords fields to the checkout of Fluentcart on a site. It was not to difficult to setup. A small custom plugin. Also made an auto login option after checkout.
Pretty simple fix for the "how do people know what their login info is?" -- Install a magic login plugin that sends them a password when they enter their email. They'll never have to remember a password or be confused if an account is created. They just go back to the site, presented with one email field then get a login link.
Bob So now every time I want to log in I have to put in my email address, then go to my email, find that email, click that link, and enter the platform. High friction. Everyone in my world is running a password manager - give them a field for username and password and they're a fingerprint away from logging in.
Erik Boles You act like you've never done that before. It's becoming more and more common. It's not as complicated as you think. I run a store and I can't tell you how many countless people have trouble logging in, are too stupid to figure out how to reset their passwords, or use a password manager that inputs an outdated password, versus simply putting their email in, clicking a link and being logged in in two seconds.
Bob I have done it, my local utilities site forces that, I cannot tell you how much i dislike it. Don't get me wrong, I can see a use case for much older or very technically challenged people, but with a more technically savvy or younger audience it's an annoyance, not a feature.
Erik Boles To each their own.
We use Suredash, Suremembers, Surecart but want to switch.
however iam a bit confused.
-What happens on FluentCommunity if a monthly subscription doesn't renew successfully through SureCart? Can't log in?
Itachi Sensei, what is not working with that current setup that makes you want to change?
Mark Whitby It works, but it doesn't feel polished; I find suredaah very weak compared to FC in every aspect. Plus, with FluentCart, invoicing and integration are easy to set up in my country, but not with SureCart. But suremembers xontent restriction, drip is better than fluent
Itachi Sensei when someone does not renew the subscription it will be canceled.
Surecart has no direct fluent community integration.
So you will have to create an automation (eg.: in FCRM) with the trigger of subscription cancelled, and then, revoke access. 😄
Itachi Sensei So, sounds like FC + Fluent Cart + Suremembers.... until Fluent Members arrives (not holding my breath)
We use Sure Cart + Suremembers + FC + Fluent CRM successfully.
We HAVE to use Surecart because we use Affiliate WP and Fluent Affiliate is way behind on reliability and features; it might be years till they catch up to Affiliate WP's lead...
Jorge de los Reyes This worked perfectly for us with no dramas. And the content control for the rest of the site is handled by suremembers.
We use MemberPress, but are waiting for FluentMembers so we can switch.
Yvonne E Same. We are patiently waiting. We don't need anything fancy. So, the free version of FluentMembers would be a nice starting point, at least.
In the meantime, Sure Members free version perfectly suits our needs.