Custom Development
Bespoke solutions built for your business: websites, automation and custom plugins, delivered to spec.
- Senior developers, never juniors
- Fixed quote and timeline
- Tested before handover
Custom WordPress Subscription and Membership Plugin Development
Custom subscription and membership plugins built for your specific business model: recurring billing, member portals, content gating, and automated member management, all in WordPress.
Send enquiryAustralian team
Based here, working your hours, not a timezone away
144+
projects delivered
Over 10+ years building and maintaining sites for Australian businesses
One developer, start to finish
The same person every time: no re-explaining your site
Straight answers, on your terms
We only take work we can finish. Ask us anything first: no obligation
300+
Plugin Builds From (AUD)
4wk
Typical Delivery
100%
Code You Own
0
Per-Member Licence Fees
What is WordPress subscription plugin development?
WordPress subscription plugin development is building a plugin that charges members on a schedule, decides what each member can see, and handles everything that happens between payments: renewals, upgrades, failed cards and cancellations. CloudyWP is a Melbourne team that does membership plugin development for businesses across Australia, usually on top of Stripe, with the code handed over to you when the build is done.
Services Built for Melbourne Businesses
Delivered by our Melbourne team with a clear process, fixed timelines, and measurable results.
What our clients say
4.6 from 9 reviews
Why Melbourne Businesses Choose Us
Local expertise, transparent process, measurable results.
Truly Custom
Not a reskinned MemberPress or WooCommerce Subscriptions. A plugin built specifically for your business model: doing exactly what you need, nothing you do not.
No Monthly Licence
Off-the-shelf plugins charge a licence fee every year. A custom plugin has a one-time build cost and no ongoing licence fees to us.
You Own the Code
The full plugin source code is yours. No vendor lock-in, no risk of a plugin being abandoned or incompatible with WordPress updates.
Melbourne-Based
Local WordPress development team who understands Australian payment requirements, GST handling, and local business regulations.
Performance Optimised
Custom plugins are leaner than general solutions. No unnecessary features adding database overhead or slowing your WordPress site.
Full Documentation
Complete technical documentation and admin guide delivered with every plugin, so your team can manage it without calling us every week.
Do you need a custom WordPress membership plugin at all?
Often you don't. If your model is a few plans, a monthly or annual price and some members-only pages, an established plugin will do the job for less. A custom build earns its cost when your rules stop fitting the shape those plugins were designed around.
An off-the-shelf plugin is usually enough when
MemberPress is built around content memberships and access rules. WooCommerce Subscriptions adds recurring products to a WooCommerce store. Paid Memberships Pro offers a free core with paid add-ons for extra gateways and features. All three are mature and well supported.
- You sell a handful of fixed plans with simple monthly or yearly billing
- Access is "member or not member", or a few tiers of pages and posts
- You already run WooCommerce and want subscriptions inside the same store
- You're happy to work the way the plugin works and renew its licence each year
A custom build makes sense when
The signal is usually a stack of add-ons, snippets and manual workarounds that someone on your team has to babysit every billing cycle. At that point a plugin written around your actual rules is simpler to run than a general one bent into shape.
- Pricing depends on seats, usage, locations or a mix of one-off and recurring charges
- Members belong to organisations, teams or parent accounts with shared access
- Billing has to sync with your own app, CRM, LMS or accounting system
- Trials, pauses, proration or credits follow rules no existing plugin supports
What does WordPress subscription plugin development include?
A subscription plugin is four systems that have to agree with each other: billing, access, the renewal lifecycle and the admin tools your team uses every day. Here's what each one covers in a typical build.
Recurring payments on WordPress, through Stripe
We use Stripe Billing as the source of truth for prices, subscriptions and invoices, and keep WordPress in step with it through signed webhooks. That way a charge, refund or cancellation made in the Stripe dashboard still updates the member's access on your site.
- Monthly, annual and custom intervals, with trials and coupons
- GST shown correctly on prices and tax invoices
- Upgrades and downgrades with proration you can explain to a customer
Access control that matches your plans
Access rules decide who sees which pages, downloads, courses or app features. We store them in one place so a new plan or tier is a setting, not a code change, and we check access on the server so hidden content isn't sitting in the page source.
- Per-plan, per-tier or per-organisation access
- Drip release of content after a set number of days
- Clean handling of what a lapsed member can still see
Renewals, failed payments and dunning
Most cancellations aren't decisions; they're expired or declined cards. Dunning is the process of retrying the charge and asking the member to update their card before access is cut off. We set the retry schedule, the reminder emails and the grace period to suit your business.
- Automatic retries and card-update links
- A grace period before access is paused
- Renewal reminders before annual plans charge
Member accounts and admin tools
Members need to change plan, update a card, download invoices and cancel without emailing you. Your team needs to look someone up, issue a credit or extend access in a couple of clicks, and see what changed and when.
- Self-service account area, or the Stripe customer portal
- Admin screens for members, plans and payments
- An activity log for every billing and access change
How much does membership plugin development cost?
Membership plugin development with us starts from $300 for a single focused feature, such as a custom access rule or a Stripe webhook fix on an existing plugin. A complete membership platform with billing, access control, dunning and admin tools sits towards $15,000, and most projects land somewhere between the two.
What moves the price
The number of plans and how they're priced, whether members belong to teams or organisations, how many outside systems need to stay in sync, and whether existing members and live subscriptions have to be migrated without changing anyone's next billing date. We scope all of that first and give you a fixed quote, not an hourly estimate.
Before you commission a build
If you only need clean Stripe plans, invoices and member access, look at CloudyWP Billing, our own WordPress billing plugin, which is in final testing. For a wider site build around your membership, our WordPress developers in Melbourne can take on the whole project, with the plugin as one part of it. After launch, a monthly care plan keeps the site and its billing plugins updated and backed up.
100%
Code you own outright
Fixed
Quote agreed before we build
0
Vendor lock-in risk
Stop Paying Annual Licences for a Plugin That Does Not Do Exactly What You Need.
Off-the-shelf subscription plugins cost hundreds per year and never quite fit your business model. A custom plugin costs more upfront, and saves money and frustration every year after.
Ready to Build the Exact Subscription Plugin Your Business Needs?
Free requirements session: we review your subscription model, identify what off-the-shelf plugins cannot handle, and scope a custom build that solves it properly.
Subscription Plugin Development Questions
Off-the-shelf plugins are excellent until your billing or access logic does not fit their model: tiered access, usage-based billing, unusual trial rules, or deep integration with your own systems. A custom plugin does exactly what your business needs, with no per-member licence fees and no working around someone else's assumptions. For straightforward recurring billing, we will tell you honestly if an off-the-shelf plugin is the better choice.
Custom subscription and membership plugin work starts from $300 for a focused piece of functionality and runs to $15,000+ for a full membership platform: billing complexity, the number of membership tiers, and how deeply it integrates with payment gateways all affect the figure. Every project is a fixed quote after a scoping conversation: no open-ended hourly billing.
We commonly integrate Stripe and PayPal for recurring billing, including handling of failed payments, retries, proration, and the full subscription lifecycle. If your business uses a different gateway, we can scope an integration for it.
Yes: we migrate existing members, active subscriptions, and billing history onto a custom plugin, with the goal of zero disruption to current subscribers and their next billing date. Migration is scoped carefully because subscriber and payment data needs to move accurately.
Yes: you own 100% of the code. It is your plugin: no per-member fees, no licence renewals, and you are free to host, modify, and maintain it however you choose. We can provide ongoing maintenance if you want it, but you are never locked in.
Yes. Stripe Billing can hold the plans, subscriptions and invoices, and the plugin keeps WordPress in step through signed webhooks. WooCommerce is only needed if you also run a store and want subscriptions inside it.
The plugin follows a dunning schedule you choose: automatic retries, emails with a card-update link, and a grace period before access is paused. Once the card is updated, access comes back without anyone on your team stepping in.
Yes. Members can change plan, update their card, download tax invoices and cancel from their account area or the Stripe customer portal, so routine billing requests do not land in your inbox.