How Do You Create a Custom MemberPress Registration Form With Gravity Forms?

MemberPress ships with a registration and checkout form that works — right up until you want something different. The default flow is a fixed two-page process with almost no styling control, no conditional fields, and no way to add a file upload or a custom field without touching PHP. So a fair question follows: how do you create a custom MemberPress registration form that looks like your brand and collects what you need, without rebuilding MemberPress itself?

The answer is to stop editing MemberPress’s form and replace it with one you fully control. Gravity Press makes that swap possible: you design a normal Gravity Forms form, and the plugin maps the submission into a real MemberPress signup — user account, membership level, payment, and subscription. Here is the whole build, from form fields to a tested live checkout.

Why Replace the Default MemberPress Registration Form?

MemberPress is excellent at what happens after someone pays: protecting content, managing subscriptions, handling cancellations, and reporting revenue. Its registration form is the weakest part of the stack — a two-step signup with limited field types and styling that rarely matches a custom theme.

Replacing that form with Gravity Forms buys you several things at once:

• Drag-and-drop fields — file uploads, address blocks, GDPR checkboxes, multi-page steps, and HTML blocks for your own copy.
• Conditional logic — show a company name only when someone picks a business plan, or ask for a VAT number only in certain regions.
• Single-page checkout — customers pick a level and pay on one screen instead of two.
• Real design control — your theme’s typography, your buttons, your layout, no CSS fights.
• Less friction — fewer steps usually means more completed signups.

What You Need Before You Start

Four things must be in place first, and skipping any is the most common cause of a broken setup:

1. Gravity Forms installed and licensed.
2. MemberPress active, with your membership levels already created (MemberPress → Memberships → Add New). Note the price and recurring period of each level.
3. Payment settings configured in MemberPress first — go to MemberPress → Settings → Payment and make sure your Stripe webhooks or PayPal IPN URL are connected. Gravity Press writes to MemberPress, and MemberPress is what actually processes the recurring charge.
4. Gravity Press installed, plus the Gravity Forms User Registration add-on if you want the WordPress account created from the same submission.

Stripe supports recurring subscriptions. With Authorize.net, recurring transactions land in MemberPress as one-time payments, so members cannot self-cancel from their account page.

Step 1 — Build the Form Fields in Gravity Forms

Create a new form (Forms → Add New) with the fields your signup needs. A dependable baseline:

• Name — Name field (first + last, so both map into the WordPress user profile).
• Username and Email — required, so the user account can be created immediately.
• Password — optional if you plan to use auto-login on checkout; otherwise let Gravity Forms generate one.
• Product — the field that will hold your membership levels (details in Step 2).

Two settings matter more than they look: mark Username and Email as required — a member record cannot be created without them — and leave Show Values on for the Product field so prices display next to each level.

Step 2 — Map Your MemberPress Levels to the Form

This is the step that turns a plain Gravity Forms form into a real MemberPress custom registration form instead of another contact form. Open the Product field, change its type from Single Product to Drop Down or Radio Buttons, then use Bulk Add / Predefined Choices and select the MemberPress levels you want to sell. Gravity Press injects your levels and their IDs into that picker, so the choices stay in sync with MemberPress — no copying IDs by hand.

Set the price for each choice. For recurring memberships, mark the choice as a subscription with the correct interval (monthly, yearly) so the payment feed creates a recurring charge instead of a single payment.

One Product field gives you self-service checkout across every level; a hidden field pre-selects a single plan for campaign pages.

Step 3 — Configure the Gravity Press Feed

With fields in place, go to Form Settings → Gravity Press and add a new feed. The feed is where you tell the plugin which form values correspond to which MemberPress data:

• Field mapping — First Name, Last Name, Username, and Email from your form fields.
• Membership level — the field that carries the chosen level (your Product field, or a hidden field for pre-selected plans).
• Membership name — how the member will be identified in MemberPress.

Because the level comes from a form field, you do not need a separate feed for every plan — one feed handles every level, and the submission decides which one is created.

Step 4 — Add User Registration, Payment, and Auto-Login

Three more pieces complete the flow, and they run in the same submission:

1. User Registration feed — creates the WordPress account and maps fields such as address into the user profile, so nobody has to register twice.
2. Payment feed — add a Stripe (recommended) or PayPal feed so the transaction is captured. When payment succeeds, Gravity Press creates a native MemberPress transaction and, for recurring plans, a real subscription; failed payments and cancellations then flow through MemberPress automatically.
3. Auto-login upon checkout — a Gravity Press Pro feature that logs the new member in and redirects them to any page you choose, protected or public. Point it at a welcome page and customers skip the “check your email for a password” dead end entirely.

If you sell to businesses, enable Pro account page support so members can view billing details and cancel or change plans themselves.

Before launching, run a sandbox transaction, confirm the member appears in MemberPress → Members with the right level attached, and check the account page and cancellation flow.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Skipping MemberPress payment setup. If webhooks are not connected first, subscriptions look correct in your entries but never activate.
• Forgetting the User Registration feed. The transaction goes through, but no one can log in.
• Using Authorize.net for recurring plans. Recurring payments are stored as one-time payments, so self-service cancel, upgrade, and downgrade will not work.
• Adding fields for the sake of it. Every extra required field is a reason to abandon checkout. Collect what MemberPress needs, plus what you will actually use.

The Short Answer

You create a custom MemberPress registration form by building it in Gravity Forms instead of editing MemberPress: design the fields, load your membership levels into a Product field, map that field in a Gravity Press feed, then add user registration and payment feeds and let MemberPress handle billing and content protection. You get a single-page, on-brand checkout with conditional logic, and MemberPress still owns subscriptions, reporting, and access control. Gravity Press starts at $89/year for a single site — see the Gravity Press product page for the Basic, Pro, and Developer comparison, and our guide to using Gravity Forms for MemberPress registration and checkout for the wider picture.