The goal of this guide is to help you see a high-level overview of the steps needed to move to Memberium from another membership platform.
If you’re looking for a plugin-specific guide on how to switch from a certain plugin, here’s the full list of all the guides currently available:
- AccessAlly to Memberium
- iMember360 to Memberium
- MemberPress to Memberium
- Wishlist Member to Memberium
- CustomerHub to Memberium
If the membership plugin that you’re currently using isn’t listed here, this guide on this page will help show the basic steps on how to migrate over to Memberium.
1) Get users into Infusionsoft.
The first thing we need to do is get all of your contacts into Infusionsoft. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest is to just export all the email addresses from your membership platform/plugin. In many cases, this data is stored in WordPress; however, we have seen some plugins that store the data in the plugin itself and they provide options to export the emails and membership levels to a CSV file. Contact the plugin author to see the best way to export data. Once exported, you can import the contacts into Infusionsoft following this guide: https://help.infusionsoft.com/help/import-your-contacts
Depending on the plugin you’re moving from, you may not be able to immediately transfer the passwords to Infusionsoft. For example, if the plugin you’re using is storing the emails and other info in WordPress then the passwords are stored hashed in WordPress so they can’t be transferred, but we can use Memberium’s “PASSWORD PLACEHOLDER” feature to let users keep their passwords and when they log in the first time after the migration their WordPress password will be sent to Infusionsoft. For more details on how that works, please see this link: https://memberium.com/how-to-use-password_placeholder/
2) Transfer subscriptions/billing to Infusionsoft
To take advantage of Memberium and Infusionsoft’s eCommerce features you’ll need to get your existing subscriptions transferred to Infusionsoft. We can’t help much on this step since Memberium itself doesn’t process payments (Infusionsoft does), but if there is a way to export the subscriptions from your current membership plugin, Infusionsoft should be able to help you import them into their platform. Please coordinate with them.
Worst case scenario – you’ll have to have everyone resubscribe and there are several ways to do this through intelligent email copy/wording. Essentially, you’d market it as a full site revamp. Before concluding this is the route you have to take, please contact our support team and we may be able to provide other options.
3) Protect Your Content With Memberium
Go through the site and protect all the content using Memberium. Instructions on how to protect content can be found in our recommended starter videos. You’ll want to coordinate this with step 1 so that your users don’t lose access to content. What I mean is in step #1 when you’re transferring users, make sure you’re tagging them with their access tags that we will use to protect the content. When done correctly, from their end, this will be a seamless transition.
In almost all cases, we recommend creating a staging site/a clone of your current site. On that cloned site, you can deactivate the old plugin and install Memberium. You can then begin protecting your content and refer back to the original site to see what settings are in place. Once everything is set up, you can push the cloned site as the live site. The technical details on creating a staging/cloned site vary from host to host. Most webhosts will assist you in setting that up.
Again, this guide only serves as a high-level overview of the migration/upgrade process. Each membership plugin is different in how it stores data, how to export users, billing details, etc. We are always working on creating new step-by-step guides specific to popular membership plugins. If you need any assistance in understanding the steps to migrating from a specific platform, contact our support team.