Let customers buy your membership as a gift. When you enable gifting on a billing option, that option becomes available as a prepaid gift: the buyer pays once, the recipient claims it by email, and access runs for the length of that billing option’s term. There’s no recurring subscription on a gifted membership.

Gift memberships are available on paid plans (Starter and up).

When you’d use this

• You want to offer memberships as a giftable product, especially around gifting seasons.
• You want a prepaid, fixed-length version of a plan that ends cleanly instead of renewing.

How to use it

1. Open the billing option you want to make giftable

Gifting is set on each billing option (cadence), not on the plan as a whole — so you decide exactly which terms can be gifted. Go to Membership plans, open the plan, and edit the billing option you want to enable.

2. Turn on “Allow gift purchases”

In the billing option’s settings, turn on Allow gift purchases. When it’s on, that option becomes giftable: buyers are charged once, and the recipient gets a claim link by email. Access starts when the recipient claims it and runs for one cycle of that billing option.

The gifted duration matches the billing option’s own term. For example, enabling gifting on a 12-month option gifts 12 months of access; enabling it on a monthly option gifts one month. To offer a longer gift, enable gifting on a longer-term billing option.

3. Save and add the plan to a product

Save the plan. Zendra automatically prepares the gift version of the option behind the scenes — including a separate gift selling-plan group in Shopify — so the As a gift choice can appear in the membership widget on products that offer this plan.

What the buyer and recipient experience

The buyer chooses As a gift in the membership widget, enters the recipient’s email (plus an optional recipient name and “From” name), and checks out. The recipient gets a claim email, signs in to their customer account to claim it, and their access begins. For the full buyer-and-recipient walkthrough, see Gift a membership.

The claim link is valid for 90 days by default.

Gift email notifications

Gifting adds three transactional emails to your Email notifications, on top of the standard membership emails. Like the others, you can edit each one’s subject, preview text, and Liquid body, and control its send timing.

• Gift claim invite — sent to the recipient as soon as the gift is purchased, with the link to claim. Default subject: “You’ve been gifted a membership!”
• Gift prepaid ending soon — sent to the recipient before a prepaid gift’s term ends, prompting them to continue on their own. This email is skipped automatically for short gifts (a month or less), since the term would end before a reminder makes sense.
• Gift prepaid expired — sent to the recipient when a prepaid gift’s term ends, with the option to continue.

Common issues

• The “As a gift” option doesn’t appear on the storefront. Make sure gifting is enabled on a billing option of a plan that’s actually offered on the product.
• I cancelled or refunded a gift order — does the recipient keep access? No. When you cancel or refund the order that paid for a gift, Zendra removes the access it funded, so gift access stays in sync with payment. See Membership lifecycle.
• A gifted term renewed or charged again. It won’t — gift memberships are prepaid for a single term with no recurring billing. If a recipient wants to keep access, they make a new, separate purchase.
• I want a different gift length. The gift length is the billing option’s term. Enable gifting on (or add) a billing option with the term you want to gift.

Keep learning

• Gift a membership — the buyer and recipient experience.
• Email notifications — customize the gift emails and all other membership emails.
• Purchasing a membership — how customers join for themselves.