---
title: Managing E-commerce memberships
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/13/managing-users/membership-management.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products/managing-product-representations/managing-standard-products.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products/managing-product-representations/managing-e-products.md
  - https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products/managing-product-representations/managing-bundles.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

The **Membership** product representation is designed to offer your [customers](https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/customers.md) paid memberships. You can use this representation to allow the customers access to paid premium content and other restricted website sections, or to allow them to perform actions that are not available for ordinary website users.

You can define memberships in the **Membership** application. Membership is defined as a set of [roles](https://docs.kentico.com/13/managing-users/role-management.md). Users who have the membership share the same privileges as if they were direct members of all these roles.

## Defining membership products

If you are [adding](https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products/adding-new-products.md) a new [product](https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/products.md) or editing an existing one (on the **General** tab), you need to select _Membership_ as the value of the product's **Representing** property. After doing so, the system displays the **Membership** section, allowing you to enter properties specific for the Membership product representation.

| **Membership**      |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Membership group    | Membership defined in the _Membership_ application. Your customers get this membership if they purchase the product.                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Membership validity | Indicates how long the membership is valid after the purchase. You can set the validity either for a limited period (_Days_, _Weeks_, _Months_, _Years_, _Until_ a given date) or for an unlimited period. To set membership validity for an unlimited period of time, select _Until_ and leave the text box below empty. |

![Defining membership product properties](https://docs.kentico.com/docsassets/13/managing-e-commerce-memberships/defining_membership_product_properties.png "Defining membership product properties")

## Granting memberships

From the customers' point of view, the system allows to purchase memberships the same way as products of other representations.

> **Note:** Memberships are granted to the customers only if the respective orders are marked as paid.

You can configure the system to automatically mark orders as paid when the orders are moved to a selected [order status](https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/orders/order-statuses.md), i.e. the status has the **Mark order as paid** property enabled.

You can also mark selected orders as paid manually by enabling the **Order is paid** property for these orders. See [Orders](https://docs.kentico.com/13/e-commerce-features/managing-on-line-stores/orders.md#marking-orders-as-paid) for more details.

Marking orders for membership as paid, both automatically and manually, results in (depending on whether new memberships or renewals are ordered):

- renewing existing memberships\
  – OR –
- assigning new memberships

In either case, the system informs the customers by sending notification emails based on the _E-commerce - Order payment notification to customer_ email template.

> **Info:** If orders for membership with validity in time units already marked as paid are unmarked, the validity is reduced by these unpaid units.
>
> If orders for membership with unlimited validity or validity until a specified date already marked as paid are unmarked, the memberships are removed completely.

## Notifying about membership expiration

You can set up the system to automatically send the customers notification emails when their memberships are close to expiration. To do so, configure the **Send membership reminder (days)** setting in **Settings -> Security & Membership**. See [Membership management](https://docs.kentico.com/13/managing-users/membership-management.md) for more details.

## Renewing memberships

To have expired memberships renewed, the customers can ask a store administrator to perform the renewal.