MemberPress Cart Overview

The MemberPress cart allows customers to purchase multiple products in a single checkout. It adds a shop page, a cart page, and a cart checkout to your site.

This document explains what the cart is, how to enable it, and which product types it sells. It also describes the pages, blocks, orders, and emails the cart adds.

Note: Sites that installed MemberPress before the cart release keep working unchanged after updating. The steps for switching an existing site to the cart are covered in a separate document. If you are unsure whether the cart fits your site, check whether you should switch to the MemberPress cart first.

How the MemberPress Cart Works

The cart works like a standard online store. Customers browse the shop page, add products to the cart, and pay once at checkout.

Each completed purchase creates one order. The order records all purchased items, the amounts, and the payment details in one place.

The cart is optional. New MemberPress installations start with the cart turned on. Sites that update from an earlier version keep the cart turned off until you enable it. Until then, products sell through their standalone registration pages. Standalone registration pages remain fully supported whether the cart is on or off.

Note: The cart is currently a beta feature, labeled “Beta” in the settings. It is stable and ready to use, and MemberPress is still refining it based on feedback.

Enabling the Cart

MemberPress displays a dismissible notice in the WordPress admin pointing to the cart settings. You can enable the cart at any time by following these steps:

1. Navigate to Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings, and open the Cart tab.
2. Click the Enable Cart checkbox. A confirmation popup opens, explaining what the cart turns on.

3. Review the popup, and click the confirmation button to continue. The checkbox becomes checked, and the Checkout Settings section appears below it.

4. Review the checkout settings, and adjust them as needed.
5. Click Update Options at the bottom of the page.

The cart is not active until you click Update Options. After saving, the shop, cart, and checkout pages start working as your store. The Orders menu item appears under Dashboard > MemberPress on the next page reload.

Disabling the Cart

You can turn the cart off again while no cart orders exist. Uncheck Enable Cart, and click Update Options. Your membership products then sell through their standalone registration pages again.

Your checkout settings are saved when you disable the cart. They are restored if you enable the cart later. The Orders menu item is hidden while the cart is disabled.

Note: Digital products sell through the cart only. Customers cannot purchase them while the cart is disabled.

Once a customer completes the first cart purchase, the cart becomes permanent. The Enable Cart option locks with the “Cannot be disabled — cart orders already exist.” message.

Important: The lock is permanent. Test the cart on a staging site before enabling it in production.

Products and Product Types

With the cart, MemberPress sells products. A membership is one type of product, so both terms remain in use.

Navigate to Dashboard > MemberPress > Products to manage all your products. On this screen, the “Type” column shows the product type of each product.

MemberPress offers two product types:

• Membership – grants access to protected content, and supports recurring or one-time billing;
• Digital – a one-time purchase, designed for downloadable or non-recurring items. By default, Who can purchase this Product shows Everyone, so any customer can buy a digital product. To limit who can buy it, change Who can purchase this Product on the product’s Permissions tab.

You select the type when creating a product. The process of creating memberships remains the same as before.

The Cart & Shop Settings

Each product has a Cart & Shop section in the product editor. This section controls how the product acts in the store. The available settings depend on the product type:

• Shop Page Visibility – controls whether the product appears on the shop page, for all product types. The options are Visible and Hidden, and Visible is the default. A password-protected product still appears on the shop page, with “Protected:” before its title. Customers can add it to the cart without the password. Private products don’t appear on the shop page, and customers can’t open their product page;
• Standalone registration page – sells a membership through its own registration page instead of the cart. The option is located under the Registration Page setting on membership products;
• Max Quantity Per Cart – limits how many units of a digital product one cart can contain. A cart holds only one unit of each membership.

The standalone registration page is a per-product option on membership products, and a permanent MemberPress feature. When checked, customers buy that product through its registration URL, outside the cart flow.

On the cart page, each item shows its pricing terms, such as the billing period or access length. The Product Pricing Terms option on the product’s Advanced tab controls this text. Default shows the terms MemberPress generates, Custom shows your own text, and Hidden removes the terms. When a coupon changes the price, the checkout order summary shows the coupon terms instead. With Hidden, it shows no terms.

Pages the Cart Adds

MemberPress creates three reserved pages automatically when you enable the cart. These pages work as your store while the cart is enabled.

You can review them at Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings, under the Pages tab:

• MemberPress Shop Page – lists your products for browsing;
• MemberPress Cart Page – shows the items a customer added;
• MemberPress Cart Checkout Page – collects the customer and payment details.

Each page uses the ReadyLaunch™ template by default. The ReadyLaunch header also displays a cart icon on your site. When multiple currencies are enabled, the header adds a currency switcher.

The shop lists the newest products first. Customers can change the order with the Sort By menu. It offers Price: Low To High, Price: High To Low, and Featured. The shop has no option to sort products by name.

On the shop page, each product card shows the image, type, title, price, and an Add To Cart button. The card does not show the product description. The image and the title link to the product page.

Cart Blocks

The cart also registers four blocks for the WordPress editor. You can place them on any page:

• Cart – displays the cart contents;
• Shop – displays the product listing;
• Cart Icon – displays the cart icon with the item count;
• Currency Switcher – displays the currency selection control.

The Cart Checkout

By default, the cart checkout renders as a single-page form. You can instead enable the multi-step checkout wizard on the Cart tab at Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings.

The wizard guides customers through payment in steps. The built-in steps are Basic, Billing, and Payment. You can also add custom steps between them. On the checkout page, the Basic step appears as “Your details”.

The Basic step creates the customer’s account. The customer then continues to the payment step logged in. The wizard skips the steps a customer does not need. For example, the Basic step is skipped for customers who are already logged in.

Two payment gateways support the cart checkout:

• Stripe – processes card payments directly on the checkout page;
• Offline Payment – records the order for manual payment collection.

Each gateway has its own “Enable for cart” option in the MemberPress payment settings. PayPal, Authorize.net, and Square process payments only on a product’s standalone registration page.

Orders and Emails

Every cart purchase creates an order. You can manage orders at Dashboard > MemberPress > Orders.

The “Cart Orders” screen lists each order with its items, totals, and status. From an order, you can issue refunds, resend the receipt, cancel the order, and add order notes. Customers can review their own orders on the Orders page of their account.

To check an order, open it at Dashboard > MemberPress > Orders, and review its status. For Stripe orders, the Stripe References box links to the payment in Stripe through View in Stripe.

The cart adds six email notices. MemberPress sends them automatically for order events:

• Cart Order Receipt – sent to the customer, with a matching admin notification;
• Cart Order Refund – sent to the customer, with a matching admin notification;
• Cart Order Cancellation – sent to the customer, with a matching admin notification.

You can edit these notices at Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings, under the Emails tab.

What the Cart Does Not Change

Existing MemberPress features continue to work the same way. The cart changes how customers buy, not what they buy.

The following areas remain unchanged:

• content protection through MemberPress rules;
• recurring billing, subscriptions, and transactions for membership products;
• member accounts, groups, and coupons;
• standalone registration pages, which stay supported with the cart on or off.

Groups accept membership-type products only. The group edit screen lists them under the “Membership Products” field.

A cart can hold only one membership from each group. If a customer tries to add a second one from the same group, the cart blocks it. The customer must first remove the other membership from the cart.