Membership Plugin – Restrict Content

A client sought that feature the most from the Free version, seen available here in the comparison chart:
Basic Membership Emails (last feature both Free and Pro supposedly offer)
(Paid membership activation, free membership activation, canceled membership email, expired membership email, renewal reminder email, new user notification email.)

Client is terribly disappointed now that their memberships are starting to reach the one year mark and zero “expired” alerts have been issued to their members, as their memberships expire with zero options for “renewal” at their disposal. All because RC falsely claims that the Free version provides all of those reminders. Seems like the classic bait-and-switch?

Final take: would have gone with another plugin for the client if it had been clear that RC (Free) does not provide Basic Membership Emails in the first place. A request for clarity on the matter in the support forum has gone dark 10 days later, and a hail-mary request for assistance from the RC website (Pro) support form has also received zero responses. Apparently neither Free nor Pro wishes to make this right. Time to seek a proper solution for the client… feels awful charging them for my time, as I “got them into this” mess in the first place.

I will start by saying that Restrict Content Pro still works. It has received occasional updates and a new block. So, for the time being, it doesn’t seem abandoned. But my feeling is that the plugin isn’t really being supported. On StellarWP’s own website, they don’t list the plugin in their main product list, and the one listing redirects to their other membership plugin.

Like others, my experience with customer support has been mixed and not very helpful. The documentation is out of date and broken (a lot of linked articles that should provide more details are broken). I discovered this when trying to find documentation of subscription settings. I couldn’t find anything on why they have a global recurring payment setting you can turn on but still have membership-level recurring payment settings that you can set but don’t do anything.

If you have the plugin and it’s working, then I think it’s fine to keep, but I would look elsewhere if starting a new project.

I reached out to Restrict Content Pro who replied within 12 hours with the fix.

I have had the opposite experience to another reviewer (Taco Fleur) despite having the exact same issue. The initial signup payment was successful and the subscriber could access the site until renewal which they would be charged but lost access.

This was due to a webhook not being added during the setup process of Restrict Content Pro and Stripe. It was in the setup instructions but I did not see it during initial development. Adding this webhook was very straightforward after using the detailed instructions supplied.
These can also be found in the Knowledgebase > Payment Gateways > Stripe

The only takeaway from this is there could be more of a highlight on this webhook being necessary to trigger the renewal in the setup instructions in Knowledgebase > Payment Settings, which is almost a footnote at the end of the text.

I have this plugin installed on three websites and as far as my experience has been, its great!

1. If you do not want to have problems, I advise you not to get this plugin. As functionalities ok, but as UI is pathetic and horrible.
2. I requested a refund the day after I bought the Pro plan, as they wrote in their privacy policy. I gave a bunch of messages and emails to support, which supposedly is “Premium” for those with the Pro plan. They didn’t answer me at all.
3. I live in Switzerland, and here GDPR is very strict, and most likely I will take action to the specialized authorities in Switzerland to recover the money, even if it is not a very large amount. If not even in court.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by usebastian12.

I bought the plugin directly from restrict content pro’s website but it directs me to go to ithemes to get a activation code but I don’t even have an ithemes account. No response from support after over a week, I submitted another ticket to ask for a refund but I guess I will just have to dispute with my credit card since they won’t respond. Bummer because the plugin looked very promising, they just wont let me actually buy it!