How to Connect MemberPress to ActiveCampaign

MemberPress connects to ActiveCampaign natively through a built-in add-on, available on the Growth license tier and above. No third-party plugin is required for basic list and tag syncing. The native add-on covers new member signup, but it leaves cancellations, expirations, and failed payments entirely unhandled, which is where most membership CRM setups quietly break.

This guide covers the full MemberPress ActiveCampaign integration: which add-on to install, the exact setup steps, what data syncs and what does not, and how to build the cancellation and expiration logic that the official documentation does not address. We also cover where Krom Automation fits when the native add-on runs out of road.

If you are connecting a LearnDash site to ActiveCampaign instead, the LearnDash ActiveCampaign integration guide covers that flow separately.

Browse the full Krom Automation feature list to see how it extends the native MemberPress integration beyond what the add-on handles.

Which MemberPress Plan Do You Need?

The ActiveCampaign add-on is locked to the Growth license tier and above. The Basic plan does not include it. If you are on Basic, your options are a plan upgrade, a third-party automation plugin, or a no-code bridge tool like Zapier or Make.

MemberPress offers two separate ActiveCampaign add-ons, and choosing the wrong one causes real problems downstream:

• ActiveCampaign Lists add-on: Adds members to a specific ActiveCampaign list when they subscribe to a membership level. Simple, works with standard email campaigns.
• ActiveCampaign Tags add-on: Applies tags in ActiveCampaign based on membership level. More flexible for segmentation and automation triggers inside ActiveCampaign.

For most sites running ActiveCampaign, the Tags add-on is the better choice. Tags are easier to use as automation entry points inside ActiveCampaign, and they let you apply multiple tags per member without moving people between lists. The Lists add-on works if your existing ActiveCampaign setup is structured around lists, but migrating away from lists later is painful work.

Choosing the Lists add-on when your ActiveCampaign account is tag-driven is not a configuration problem. It is a structural mismatch that compounds every time you add a new membership level.

What Gets Synced: Field-by-Field Breakdown

The native MemberPress add-on syncs a limited field set. Understanding exactly what lands where prevents surprises when you go to build ActiveCampaign automations and find the data you expected is missing.

MemberPress Field	Where It Lands in ActiveCampaign	Add-on Required
First name	Contact first name field	Lists or Tags
Last name	Contact last name field	Lists or Tags
Email address	Contact email (primary identifier)	Lists or Tags
Membership level name	List assignment or tag applied	Lists or Tags respectively
Subscription status	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook
Expiry date	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook
Transaction amount	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook
Payment method	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook
Registration date	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook
Custom profile fields	Not synced natively	Requires Krom Automation or webhook

The native add-on handles contact creation and list or tag assignment at the point of signup. Everything else, including what happens when a subscription lapses, requires additional tooling.

Step-by-Step Setup: Native Add-On

These steps apply to both the Lists and Tags add-ons. The menu paths are identical. The only difference is which add-on you install and which field you configure per membership level.

Step 1: Install the Add-On

1. Log in to your WordPress admin.
2. Go to MemberPress > Add-ons.
3. Search for “ActiveCampaign” in the search field.
4. Click Install Add-On next to either the Lists or Tags version.
5. The add-on activates automatically. No separate activation step is needed.

Step 2: Enter Your ActiveCampaign API Credentials

1. Go to MemberPress > Settings.
2. Click the Marketing tab.
3. Select ActiveCampaign from the “Select a service” dropdown.
4. Enter your ActiveCampaign API URL. This is your account URL, formatted as https://youraccountname.api-us1.com. Find it in ActiveCampaign under Settings > Developer > API Access > URL.
5. Enter your ActiveCampaign API Key from the same Developer page.
6. Click Connect. A green checkmark confirms a successful connection.

If the Marketing tab is not visible, the add-on did not activate correctly. Return to MemberPress > Add-ons and confirm the status shows “Active” rather than “Install Add-On”.

Step 3: Assign Lists or Tags per Membership Level

1. Go to MemberPress > Memberships.
2. Edit the membership level you want to configure.
3. Scroll to the ActiveCampaign section in the edit screen. This section appears only after the add-on is active and the API credentials are saved.
4. For the Lists add-on: select the ActiveCampaign list from the “List” dropdown. One list per membership level.
5. For the Tags add-on: type the tag name into the “Tag” field. You can enter multiple tags separated by commas.
6. Click Update to save the membership.
7. Repeat for every membership level.

New members who purchase that level will now appear in ActiveCampaign as a contact and receive the list assignment or tag on checkout completion.

What Does NOT Sync: The Gaps That Break Real Workflows

This is the section the official documentation skips. The native add-on fires on one event: successful membership signup. It does not respond to anything that happens after that moment.

Here is what the add-on does not handle:

• Subscription cancelled: A member cancels their recurring subscription. The tag or list assignment in ActiveCampaign is not removed. ActiveCampaign continues sending that person member-level content.
• Membership expired: A non-recurring membership reaches its end date. No event fires to ActiveCampaign. The contact remains tagged as an active member indefinitely.
• Payment failed: A recurring payment is declined. No notification goes to ActiveCampaign, so no dunning sequence can be triggered.
• Membership upgraded or downgraded: A member moves between tiers. The old tag or list is not removed when a new one is applied, leaving contacts double-tagged.
• Manual admin expiry: An admin expires a membership from the WordPress backend. No sync fires.
• Custom profile fields: Registration date, expiry date, transaction amount, and any custom WordPress user meta fields do not sync to ActiveCampaign custom fields.

A contact tagged as an active member six months after they cancelled is not a minor data inconsistency. It is a compliance risk and a deliverability problem rolled into one.

These gaps matter most on sites with recurring subscriptions. If your membership model is primarily one-time purchases with no renewal, the native add-on may be sufficient. If you have recurring billing, you need to handle the post-signup lifecycle yourself.

Handling Cancellations, Expirations, and Failed Payments with Krom Automation

Krom Automation is a visual workflow automation plugin for WordPress that connects MemberPress events to ActiveCampaign actions on a drag-and-drop canvas. The MemberPress integration documentation covers the full list of available triggers and actions.

The four CRM events every membership site needs to handle are signup, transaction completed, subscription cancelled, and membership expired. Here is how each maps to a Krom Automation workflow:

MemberPress Event	Krom Automation Trigger	Recommended ActiveCampaign Action	Why It Matters
New member signup	MemberPress: Member Signup	Add contact to list; apply tag “member-active”	Entry point for onboarding sequence
Transaction completed	MemberPress: Transaction Completed	Update contact field with transaction amount and date	Enables revenue-based segmentation
Subscription cancelled	MemberPress: Subscription Cancelled	Remove tag “member-active”; apply tag “member-cancelled”; enter win-back automation	Stops member content going to non-members
Membership expired	MemberPress: Membership Expired	Remove tag “member-active”; apply tag “member-expired”; trigger renewal reminder	Prevents expired contacts receiving member-only campaigns

Each of these is a separate workflow in Krom Automation. The ActiveCampaign integration documentation shows the exact action fields for adding contacts, applying tags, removing tags, and updating custom fields from within a workflow.

For sites also running WooCommerce Subscriptions alongside MemberPress, the WooCommerce Subscriptions integration documentation covers the equivalent trigger set for subscription lifecycle events.

Building the Cancellation Workflow

In Krom Automation, go to Krom Automation > Workflows > Add New. On the canvas, add the MemberPress: Subscription Cancelled trigger.

Connect it to an HTTP Request action pointed at the ActiveCampaign API, or use the native ActiveCampaign action nodes to remove a tag and apply a replacement. The conditional branching documentation covers how to split the workflow by membership level, so Gold members and Basic members enter different win-back sequences.

Use merge tags to pull the member’s email address, first name, and membership level name into the action fields dynamically. No hardcoding is required.

Building the Expiration Workflow

Add the MemberPress: Membership Expired trigger and connect it to the same tag-removal and tag-application pattern. If you want to fire a re-engagement email 3 days after expiry, add a delay node between the trigger and the email action. Krom Automation runs delays via Action Scheduler, so nothing blocks during page loads and the delay fires accurately regardless of whether anyone visits the site in the interim.

The new user onboarding automation guide includes a worked example of a multi-step delay sequence that translates directly to a post-expiry re-engagement flow.

Troubleshooting: Three Real Failure Modes

Failure 1: The Marketing Tab Does Not Show ActiveCampaign

This happens when the add-on is listed as installed but not active, or when it was installed before the API credentials were saved. Go to MemberPress > Add-ons and confirm the status reads “Active”. If it reads “Install Add-On”, click to install again.

After confirming active status, go to MemberPress > Settings > Marketing, re-select ActiveCampaign from the dropdown, re-enter your API URL and key, and save. The credentials must be saved before the per-level configuration fields appear.

Failure 2: New Members Are Not Appearing in ActiveCampaign

Three causes account for the majority of cases:

• The API URL is formatted incorrectly. It must include https:// and end without a trailing slash. The correct format is https://youraccountname.api-us1.com.
• The list or tag was not saved on the specific membership level being purchased. Go to MemberPress > Memberships, edit the relevant level, and confirm the ActiveCampaign section shows a list or tag value.
• The contact already exists in ActiveCampaign and the list requires double opt-in confirmation. If double opt-in is enabled on the ActiveCampaign list, contacts appear in ActiveCampaign but show as unconfirmed until they click the confirmation email. Turn off double opt-in for that list, or expect a confirmation delay.

Failure 3: Tags Are Stacking After a Membership Upgrade

When a member upgrades from a Basic to a Gold membership, the Gold tag is applied but the Basic tag is not removed. This is a known limitation of the native Tags add-on. The result is a contact tagged as both Basic and Gold, which breaks any segmentation logic in ActiveCampaign that treats these as mutually exclusive.

The fix requires a workflow that fires on MemberPress: Subscription Expired or a membership change event, removes the previous tag, and applies the new one. This is not possible inside the native add-on.

Handle it in Krom Automation with a conditional branch that checks the old membership level and removes the corresponding tag before applying the new one. The workflow settings documentation covers how to use the run-once-per-entity setting to prevent duplicate executions if the trigger fires more than once during the upgrade process.

What to Expect at Scale

The native add-on processes sync calls synchronously at checkout. On a shared hosting environment with 50 or more simultaneous checkouts, this adds latency to the checkout completion step. It is rarely a visible problem on sites with fewer than 200 concurrent members purchasing at once, but it is worth knowing if you run a large cohort launch.

Krom Automation processes all actions via Action Scheduler in the background, so the checkout completes immediately and the ActiveCampaign sync fires within the next cron cycle, typically within 60 seconds on a site with regular traffic. The how Krom Automation works documentation explains the background processing model in full.

For sites running multiple membership levels across 5 or more client sites, Krom Automation’s workflow import and export feature matters. A workflow built once exports as JSON and imports into any other site in under 2 minutes. The native add-on requires manual per-site, per-level configuration every time.

Background processing is not a luxury feature. On a membership site, a checkout that hangs waiting for an API call is a checkout that sometimes fails.

Krom Automation Pricing

Krom Automation is free to download and install, with 16 triggers, 21 actions, and a fully functional visual workflow builder at no cost. The MemberPress triggers and the ActiveCampaign actions are Pro features. Pro plans start at $119 per year for a single site, $199 per year for 5 sites, and $369 per year for unlimited sites.

Lifetime licences are available at $299, $499, and $799 respectively. Every Pro plan includes every feature, and the difference between plans is site count only.

For an agency managing 10 client membership sites, the Standard plan at $199 per year works out to under $20 per site per year for full lifecycle automation including cancellations, expirations, and custom field sync. A developer building that logic manually would bill 4 to 6 hours per site. The maths are straightforward.

Download the free version from the WordPress.org plugin directory to explore the workflow builder before committing to Pro.

Also from wpRigel

Pollify is a Gutenberg-native poll, survey, and quiz plugin. Every poll is a real block inside the editor, which means no shortcodes to paste and no separate interface to configure. It is the straightforward way to collect member opinions or run a quiz inside a membership site post.

Commandify is a command palette for the WordPress admin. Press Cmd or Ctrl plus K to search everything, jump to any screen, and run admin actions without clicking through menus. It is particularly useful on membership sites where admins spend significant time looking up individual member records, because Commandify can find a user by name or email in under 2 seconds from anywhere in the admin.

Our Verdict

The native MemberPress ActiveCampaign add-on is worth installing if you are on the Growth plan and your workflow ends at signup. It takes under 10 minutes to configure, it works reliably for new member contact creation, and it requires no additional plugins. That covers roughly 40 percent of what a functioning membership CRM actually needs.

If your site has recurring subscriptions, if members upgrade or downgrade between levels, or if you need anything to happen in ActiveCampaign when a membership lapses, the native add-on is not enough and you will discover that gap at the worst possible moment. Add Krom Automation alongside it, build the four lifecycle workflows described above, and your MemberPress ActiveCampaign integration will handle the full member journey rather than just the first transaction.

Sites on the MemberPress Basic plan that cannot access the native add-on should go straight to Krom Automation. It handles the same signup sync plus the full lifecycle without requiring a MemberPress plan upgrade.

See full Krom Automation pricing and plan details to find the right option for your site count.

Frequently Asked Questions

If a member cancels, will their ActiveCampaign tag be removed automatically?

Not with the native MemberPress add-on. It fires only on signup and does not respond to cancellations, expirations, or payment failures. To remove or swap tags on cancellation, you need a workflow in Krom Automation or a similar automation plugin that listens for the subscription cancelled event and sends the corresponding update to ActiveCampaign.

Can I sync different ActiveCampaign tags to different MemberPress membership levels?

Yes. The Tags add-on lets you configure a separate tag per membership level inside the membership edit screen.

Each level stores its own tag value, so a Gold member and a Basic member receive different tags in ActiveCampaign on signup. The limitation is that the add-on does not remove old tags when a member switches levels, which requires a separate workflow to clean up.

What happens if a member’s payment fails mid-subscription?

The native add-on does nothing. The member retains their tag or list assignment in ActiveCampaign while losing access on the MemberPress side, which means they may continue receiving member-level email campaigns despite having lapsed. Handling this properly requires a failed payment trigger connected to an ActiveCampaign update, which is available through Krom Automation’s MemberPress integration.

Can I use Zapier or Make instead of the native add-on or Krom Automation?

Yes, and it works for basic signup sync. Zapier and Make can watch for new MemberPress transactions and create or update contacts in ActiveCampaign.

The trade-off is per-task billing: at 500 member signups per month, a Zapier Starter plan may cover it, but 5,000 monthly events across multiple membership sites pushes into higher tiers quickly. Krom Automation has no per-execution charge at any plan level.

Does the MemberPress ActiveCampaign integration work with free memberships?

Yes. The add-on fires on membership signup regardless of whether the membership is paid or free.

A free membership signup creates the contact in ActiveCampaign and applies the configured list or tag exactly as a paid signup does. The transaction completed trigger in Krom Automation fires only on paid transactions, so build your free-membership onboarding workflow from the signup trigger rather than the transaction trigger.