This plan carries out three requests: make the member portal available only to paid subscribers, require payment before any account is created, and end automatic renewal so every membership is a one-time payment for a fixed term. Membership prices and term lengths do not change — only who can get in, and how payment works.
What this plan delivers
A technical review of the current portal found gaps that make these changes timely:
| Today | After this change | |
|---|---|---|
| Joining | Create a free account; paying is optional and easy to skip | Choose a plan, pay, and the account is created the moment payment succeeds |
| Member areas | Open to any logged-in account, paid or not | Require an active paid membership |
| Resource Library | Public; files downloadable without login | Members only; files stored privately and delivered only to logged-in members |
| Renewal | Card on file charged automatically | Reminder emails at 30, 14, and 3 days; member renews with a one-time payment |
| Expiration | Effectively managed by Stripe's billing cycle | At expiration, access closes to everything except the member's own billing, receipts, and renewal pages. Paying restores access immediately. |
| Prices & terms | Unchanged — same plans, same prices, same 1/2/3-year terms | |
These pages bring in revenue and new members, so they remain public: the online shop, event listings and event registration, the trainer directory, group training requests, donations, and vendor applications. Trainers keep their trainer portal while their Registered Trainer membership is active; store vendors are unaffected.
Nobody loses time they have already paid for, and nobody is charged again without asking. Every current auto-renewing membership is switched to “finish the paid term, then stop” — it runs to its normal end date, and instead of an automatic charge, the member receives reminder emails and renews with a one-time payment when ready.
Certificates continue to track membership: they stay valid through the paid term and are marked expired only when the membership actually lapses.
Add the members-only gate across the portal, move the Resource Library behind it, and move resource files into private storage so direct links stop working. Free accounts created through event signups end.
The portal itself begins tracking every membership's end date and enforcing it daily — the safety net that makes non-renewing memberships possible.
New purchases and renewals become single payments for a full term. Receipts and invoice history continue exactly as before.
The join flow becomes: choose a plan, enter details, pay — and only then is the account created. An abandoned or declined payment leaves nothing behind.
With Board sign-off, switch existing memberships to finish-then-stop, turn on the renewal reminder emails, and update all member-facing wording, emails, and the support chatbot.
Prepared by portal development for NADA Board review. Technical implementation details, testing checklists, and the full engineering plan are documented separately and available on request.