How Do You Create a Custom Paid Memberships Pro Registration Form With Gravity Forms?

The default Paid Memberships Pro registration page works — right up until you need it to look or behave differently. It collects a fixed set of fields, renders the way PMPro renders it, and anything beyond that means writing PHP filters against the Register Helper functions.

The answer is to build the signup in Gravity Forms instead and let Gravity Forms for Paid Memberships Pro (Gravity PMP) handle the enrollment: any Gravity Forms field you like, payment taken through the Stripe or Authorize.net add-ons, and the member added to the right Paid Memberships Pro level when the entry is submitted.

Why the Default Paid Memberships Pro Registration Form Isn’t Enough

PMPro’s checkout page is deliberately minimal — username, email, password, a level selector, and whatever billing fields your gateway needs. It is fast to set up and was never meant to be a form builder. That is a problem when your membership site needs any of this:

• Conditional logic, so a company field only appears on a business plan.
• Multi-page forms for longer applications.
• File uploads, calculations, or other advanced field types.
• A native connection to your email list, CRM, or Slack at signup.

Each of those is a checkbox in Gravity Forms and a PHP snippet in PMPro — which is the entire reason Gravity PMP exists. PMPro keeps the levels, billing records, expiration dates, and members-only content; you simply stop using the registration page it ships with.

What You Need Before You Start

Three things: Gravity Forms, Paid Memberships Pro, and Gravity PMP itself. Gravity PMP does nothing alone — it is only the bridge between the other two.

Be realistic about the Gravity Forms tier. Enrolling existing WordPress users into a PMPro level works with a lower licence, but almost every membership site needs to create the user at signup and charge for it — which requires the User Registration add-on plus the official Stripe or Authorize.net add-on, both Elite-tier features.

Before touching the form, create your levels in Memberships → Settings → Membership Levels. Level names become the values you map to later, so decide them first.

Step 1: Build the Signup Form in Gravity Forms

Create a new Gravity Forms form with the fields a membership checkout genuinely needs:

• Name and Email, with email set as the field type and marked required.
• Password and Password Confirmation — or skip both and let WordPress email a set-password link, which converts better.
• A membership level field: a Dropdown or Radio Buttons field containing one choice per PMPro level.
• Consent: an HTML block with your terms plus a required checkbox.

Now use what the PMPro default cannot do. Add conditional logic so a Professional-level signup reveals extra fields, and split the form over two pages if it runs long. For a campaign targeting one specific plan, prefill the level so the visitor sees a single call to action:

                

                        

                            
Download Free
                        

                        
Email*

                            
                        
Name

                            
                            
                                                    
                                                    First
                                                
                            
                            
                            
                        
        
  
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
        
                        
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For a single-level membership — a course cohort, a club, a subscription community — you need not ask the visitor anything at all. Add a Hidden field, give it a default value of the level you want, and every entry arrives already knowing where it belongs.

Step 2: Map Form Fields to a Paid Memberships Pro Level

Open the form’s settings and find the Paid Memberships Pro panel that Gravity PMP adds. This is where you say which field means what:

• Which field supplies the username (usually email-based).
• Which field supplies the email address.
• Which field supplies the password, if you collect one.
• Which field supplies the membership level — your dropdown, or the hidden field carrying a predefined value.

When the entry is submitted, Gravity PMP creates the WordPress user, assigns the Paid Memberships Pro level from that mapping, and starts the membership. The member never sees the PMPro register page, but the PMPro member record and level exist exactly as normal.

One mistake worth avoiding: your form’s level choices must match the PMPro level names exactly. A typo or renamed level means the entry submits and the member lands in the wrong place, or nowhere. Test with a free level first and confirm the result under Memberships → Members.

Step 3: Process One-Time and Recurring Membership Payments

Gravity PMP works with Gravity Forms’ payment add-ons, so you configure a feed the same way as any Gravity Forms checkout: a Stripe or Authorize.net feed with a one-time amount for a lifetime purchase, or a subscription amount for a recurring membership.

Each successful payment also creates an identical order inside Paid Memberships Pro. Billing history, order records, and refunds all stay in PMPro where your membership reporting already lives — the transaction is not stranded in a Gravity Forms entry list.

• PayPal support is limited. Only limited support exists for the PayPal Standard and PayPal Checkout add-ons; Stripe is the recommended gateway.
• Gateway-level free trials are not supported. The free-trial option in the Stripe and PayPal add-ons for recurring subscriptions does not carry through, so model a trial as its own PMPro level — a discounted first period that upgrades into the paid plan.

For members who abandon checkout, add the Partial Entries add-on with a notification on partial entry. Failed and incomplete payments then become an email sequence instead of a lost signup.

Step 4: Collect Extra Member Data and Automate Onboarding

Because the signup form is a Gravity Forms form, every Gravity Forms add-on applies to your membership checkout — the real advantage over the default PMPro page. You can subscribe new members to Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Emma, or similar without a double opt-in interrupting a paid signup; push extra profile data such as company, phone, or a certification upload into the WordPress profile with the User Registration add-on; and send a Slack notification for a new Gold member while only digesting free signups.

None of this changes anything inside Paid Memberships Pro, which keeps doing the membership work while Gravity Forms handles the signup.

Before launch, run the flow with a live gateway in test mode and check four things in order: the entry appears in Gravity Forms, the WordPress user exists with the right role, the member shows the correct PMPro level under Memberships → Members, and the order appears in that member’s PMPro billing history. Then repeat with a failed card to prove the abandoned-checkout notification fires. For the wider picture, see the creative uses of Gravity Forms with Paid Memberships Pro.

The Short Answer

You create a custom Paid Memberships Pro registration form by building the signup in Gravity Forms, mapping its fields — the membership level included — through the Gravity PMP settings panel, and attaching a Stripe or Authorize.net payment feed. Gravity PMP creates the user, assigns the PMPro level, and mirrors the order into Paid Memberships Pro on every successful payment. Paid Memberships Pro stays your membership engine; Gravity Forms becomes your checkout. See the plugin’s features and licensing on the Gravity Forms for Paid Memberships Pro product page.