Posted by nattyweb on Mon, Sep 05, 2022 - 9:47am

I'm looking into providing a monthly membership subscription system with online recurring payments. I built one a couple of years back in Drupal 8, using Braintree Cashier and Braintreepayments.com and I'm looking at porting this functionality to Backdropcms.

[I looked at https://forum.backdropcms.org/forum/ecommerce-simple-recurring-membership but that seems to be rather outdated now.]

I'd originally selected Braintree as it was the only way I could successfully authenticate a recurring monthly payment, and the customer insisted that PayPal should be an option. My first attempts were using Commerce and Recurring Payments, but I couldn't get it to work with any of the payment systems I tried (per-transaction fees, like Stripe and PayPal). The customer has a modest income stream and a fixed monthly charge gateway wasn't what they wanted.

I'm wondering if there has been any successful builds of an online membership subscription that I could explore. The system needs to:

  • take an online payment, using either PayPal or card;
  • successful payment changes the user role from 'registered' to 'subscriber';
  • the payment should recur every month thereafter, until the user cancels;
  • on cancellation, the user role changes back to 'registered' and receives an email to say goodbye.

I'm happy using Rules to build the flow, but the payment system must be able to provide notification back to the website when payment is successful, or the user cancels the subscription.

Any suggestions most welcome!

Most helpful answers

It might be overkill for what

It might be overkill for what you are trying to do, but CiviCRM integrates with Backdrop and it has an entire membership system with various bells and whistles. Part of the integration allows you to automatically (e.g. on cron runs or on login) sync contacts that have active memberships with a specific role on the Backdrop side.

I'm also looking for a

I'm also looking for a membership subscription functionality...

Just having a look at the membership entity - https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/membership_entity - I'll be having a play with this over the next few days.

There's also Ubercart Recurring - which hasn't got a full release yet - https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/uc_recurring

Also thought about porting Drupal MoneySuite - https://www.drupal.org/project/moneysuite -  but this looks quite old as well.
 

Comments

Mon, Sep 05, 2022 - 9:59am by DrAlbany

I'm also looking for a membership subscription functionality...

Just having a look at the membership entity - https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/membership_entity - I'll be having a play with this over the next few days.

There's also Ubercart Recurring - which hasn't got a full release yet - https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/uc_recurring

Also thought about porting Drupal MoneySuite - https://www.drupal.org/project/moneysuite -  but this looks quite old as well.
 

Tue, Sep 06, 2022 - 8:30am by nattyweb

Thank you @DrAlbany - some good suggestions there and I wasn't aware of these modules. Will investigate further, but I'd be interested in what you learn from membership_entity.

Mon, Jan 09, 2023 - 6:03am by nattyweb

Did you make any progress with your assessment of membership subscription functionality? I'm thinking about this again and just catching up with any new thinking.

Cheers, Martin

Mon, Feb 24, 2025 - 2:12pm by arando

I'm reviving this old topic and wondering if there is any more updates? 

I like the look for Moneysuite, and investigating a local CC processor but my fallback is always stripe.

Has anyone built a site with this?

Fri, Feb 28, 2025 - 12:49am by nattyweb

@arando I too use Stripe as the most useful of the payment methods in Ubercart. I never did find a solution to the monthly recurring payment need. That customer moved elsewhere as I wasn't able to help.

I am using Ubercart, Stripe and Rules with another site where the payments are annual, but not recurring. The membership lasts for a year (April to March) and the customers are simply reminded to renew their membership by manually-sent bulk emails, on which trigger they simply pay for another year. Within that community it works just fine.

Tue, Sep 06, 2022 - 7:29am by laryn

It might be overkill for what you are trying to do, but CiviCRM integrates with Backdrop and it has an entire membership system with various bells and whistles. Part of the integration allows you to automatically (e.g. on cron runs or on login) sync contacts that have active memberships with a specific role on the Backdrop side.

Tue, Sep 06, 2022 - 8:29am by nattyweb

Thanks @laryn - I've looked at CiviCRM many times over recent years but each time conclude that it's too complex for my relatively simple needs. Might take another look though, since integration with Backdrop is good.

willowf's picture

Tue, Mar 04, 2025 - 6:26pm by willowf

Hi,

I use CiviCRM to manage my site's contacts. I handle multiple roles and plan to integrate memberships or additional paid services.

What CiviCRM has helped me with:
✅ Amazon SES integration, which I couldn’t achieve with other modules.
✅ Sending emails by roles through its CRM and groups—very useful.
✅ Routing all BackdropCMS emails through CiviCRM.
✅ Creating a newsletter (although I migrated it to another platform—not due to functionality but because CiviCRM’s public-facing pages aren’t visually appealing for subscriber acquisition).
✅ Great potential for contact management and advanced segmentation.

Issues I’ve encountered:
⚠️ While not a major issue, sometimes it feels like I’m running two systems at once. I’m unsure if this will be a long-term strain on the server, but I’ll eventually need a similar tool, so I’m keeping it for now.
⚠️ There are CiviCRM features I don’t use, but since everything is integrated, I prefer not to uninstall it.
⚠️ The system itself isn’t very intuitive, which is also true for some modules. I think it lacks documentation and visual references, like screenshots. (I’d love to help with this).

Overall, maybe CiviCRM is overkill, but what site doesn’t need segmentation and effective communication?