Create Paid Membership Website with PayPal

AuthPro supports PayPal one-time and subscriptions payments integration using Instant Payment Notification (IPN) messages. You can use it to create your paid membership website and accept one-time or regular recurring payments from your members. AuthPro automatically add new members after successful payment, remove canceled / expired members, automatically create username and password for new members or send them to registration form, temporarily suspend member access while their recurring payment fails.

If you do not have PayPal account you can signup here.

How it works:

  • Customer visits your website and decides to subscribe to your member's area
  • Customer clicks on "subscribe" button which redirects to PayPal payment page
  • Customer pays you the subscription fee
  • PayPal processes payment and, if successful, sends notification to AuthPro
  • AuthPro validates notification and create login/password for a customer in your account, or prepare registration form where member will be redirected after payment
  • PayPal completes the payment and sends a customer to successful payment return URL (or registration form)

Setting up PayPal IPN for membership payments on your website

1. Enable IPN in your PayPal account

Login to your PayPal account, go to the Profile, "My selling tools" page, select "Instant payment notifications" and click "update" link (in "Getting paid and managing my risk" section). Click on "Choose IPN Settings" button to setup new IPN preferences. You can use this link to find this page in new Paypal account interface. Check "Receive IPN messages (Enabled)" button to enable IPN for your account and put this URL as "Notification URL":

https://www.authpro.com/cgi-bin/pcs/paypal_ipn.cgi

Click here for example.

2. Enable and configure PayPal IPN support in your AuthPro account

Login to your AuthPro account manager, go to 'Integrations' -> 'Payments' page and click on 'Activate' or 'Configure' button for "PayPal IPN" payment option. Set your PayPal email addresses and other options, then click "Update" to save the changes.

3. Generate "Subscribe" buttons

For your convenience we have created PayPal subscription buttons generator which you can use to generate HTML codes to add payment buttons or links to your website (with all fields required for AuthPro to process PayPal IPN successfully).

To generate a new button you should go to "PayPal IPN settings" as described the in previous step and click on "Create new button" link to invoke PayPal buttons generation tool. When you generate your HTML codes, simply copy and paste them to your website. You can always edit the created button and get a new code using the "update/get code" link.

IMPORTANT: If you have made any changes to button options in your authpro account, make sure you have generated and updated the links/buttons code on your website, otherwise paypal IPN may fail validation.

4. Disable free registration to your AuthPro account (optional)

You can completely disable free registration: go to 'Forms' > 'Regisration' page in AuthPro account manager and uncheck "Allow new member registration" box in your registration settings.

You may want to remove a free registration link from a login page or change it to something else, you can do it on 'Forms' > 'Login' configuration page.

If you want to allow free registration, you can limit access for free members by setting up expiration for new members on 'Members' > 'Defaults' page.

Automated members management

There are two methods of adding members to your AuthPro account, you can set it individually for each button you create (using "Member Creation" option in button generation tool).

  • Automatic - username and password will be generated by AuthPro automatically and emailed to new member. Your members do not need to fill registration form and can login instantly after payment.
  • Registration form - your customers will be sent to registration form after payment where they can create username and password to access your members area. By default customers will be sent to AuthPro hosted registration form, but you can setup custom registration form on your website.

If you want to upgrade or update existing members billing, you can check "Upgrade / renew existing members" option on PayPal configuration page and add PayPal buttons to your members area or suspended members page.


Please contact us if you have any questions.

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All supported membership payment gateways