Customizing the Member Cancellation Process

The Membership Cancel page includes a shortcode that allows members to immediately cancel their membership. This post covers some methods to customize the default behavior of member cancellations with Paid Memberships Pro.

Do Not Allow Members to Cancel

The default pmpro_cancel block or shortcode outputs a message and button that a member would click to cancel their account.

One of the commonly requested features is to remove this behavior and require members to contact you in order to cancel their membership.

To do this, navigate to Memberships > Page Settings and click “Edit” for the page assigned as the “Membership Cancel” page. Then, remove the pmpro_cancel block or shortcode and replace it with your desired content. You could simply put a message and a contact email address, such as:

Or, add a contact form using a plugin such as Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Caldera Forms, or the “Feedback” module of Jetpack.

Downgrade Membership Instead of Canceling

If you offer a “free” membership level, this post includes the recipe to change a member’s level when they cancel or expire. Here’s how this method works:

1. A member goes through the Membership Cancel page to cancel their membership.
2. The default cancellation process cancels their paid membership level.
3. Any attached subscription at the gateway is also cancelled.
4. Their membership level is changed to your default (downgrade) free level.

Delete the User Account

If you run a VERY tight ship and want to remove the WordPress user when they cancel their account, this post includes a recipe to delete the user when membership ends.

We don’t recommend doing this as it messes up a lot of data in Memberships > Orders. It’s also smart to maintain a list of canceled members for future marketing efforts.

Perhaps you would like to invite them back at a discount or offer a new membership that wasn’t previously available? If you do not want to delete the user, but prevent them from changing their membership level again, check out our Lock Membership Add On.

That said, there can be other reasons that you would need to delete the user account so we still want to demonstrate how this is done.

Cancel a Member Automatically After Failed Subscription Payment

This method doesn’t relate to a member canceling themselves, but rather when the gateway lets your site know that a member’s subscription payment failed.

We have a guide about how PMPro handles payment retries that you can explore to better understand what happens when a payment fails.

Be sure to check with your gateway settings, as some gateways (such as Stripe) allow you to set rules related to retries and failed payments on recurring subscriptions.

Have another creative member cancellation request?

This post has covered a few alternative / custom methods as related to member cancellations. If you have another idea on how you would like to manipulate cancellations, reach out to our support team on the methods described above.