MemberPress groups allow you to create a hierarchy of memberships where a primary membership grants access to a set of secondary memberships. For example, a “Platinum” membership might include access to “Course A” and “Course B” memberships as benefits. When configured correctly, members who purchase the parent membership should automatically have access to all child membership content without needing to purchase them separately.
This problem can be particularly frustrating for site owners who have structured their membership levels hierarchically. When inheritance fails, members who have purchased the parent membership cannot access content that should be included, leading to support tickets and unhappy customers. The issue may affect all groups or only specific ones, and it may appear after updating MemberPress or changing membership settings.
The most common cause of this problem is that the child memberships are not properly selected as benefits of the parent membership. Another cause is that the rule protecting the content is looking for the child membership specifically, not checking for inherited access. Caching issues can also prevent inheritance rules from being evaluated correctly.
Why MemberPress group inheritance fails
MemberPress groups work by adding child memberships as “benefits” of the parent membership. When a user purchases the parent membership, MemberPress also gives them the child memberships behind the scenes. The user effectively has both memberships active simultaneously, even though they only paid for the parent. This should grant them access to all content protected by the child memberships.
If inheritance is not working, the first thing to check is whether the child memberships have been correctly added as benefits to the parent membership. In the parent membership settings, there is a “Benefits” section where you can select which memberships are included. If a child membership is not listed there, users will not receive it when they purchase the parent.
Another common cause is that the rules protecting content are set to require a specific membership, but they are not set to check for inherited memberships. By default, rules check for direct membership assignments as well as inherited memberships, but this can be overridden by custom code or by other plugins. Additionally, if the user had the child membership before purchasing the parent (for example, from a previous subscription), the inheritance may not apply correctly.
How to check if a user has inherited a child membership
Go to MemberPress → Members and find the user who should have inherited access. Click on their username to view their member profile. Look at the “Active Memberships” section. If the child membership appears there, the user has been granted it through inheritance. If it does not appear, the inheritance is not working correctly, and you should check the parent membership’s benefits settings.
Step by step guide to fixing MemberPress group inheritance problems
Follow these steps in order to restore proper group inheritance in MemberPress. Start with the simplest solutions before moving to more advanced troubleshooting steps.
- Edit the parent membership and check that all child memberships are listed in the Benefits section
- Add any missing child memberships to the Benefits list and save the parent membership
- For existing users who have already purchased the parent membership, manually add the child memberships using the MemberPress admin interface
- Clear all caches including plugin cache, CDN cache, and browser cache completely
- Check that the rules protecting child membership content are set to check for inherited memberships
- Temporarily disable all other plugins to test for conflicts with inheritance
- Switch to a default WordPress theme to test if the theme interferes with inheritance
- Update MemberPress to the latest version available from the official website
- Test inheritance by creating a new test user and purchasing the parent membership
- Contact MemberPress support with specific details about which groups are not inheriting correctly
How to manually add inherited memberships to existing users
For users who purchased the parent membership before the child memberships were added to the benefits, you can manually add the child memberships. Go to MemberPress → Members, find the user, and click “Edit” under their membership. Add the child membership to their active memberships list, being careful not to change the expiration date. Set the status to “Active” and save. The user will then have access to the child membership content.
MemberPress group inheritance troubleshooting reference table
Here is a reference table for diagnosing group inheritance problems in MemberPress based on specific symptoms you might encounter.
| Symptom | Most likely cause | Recommended solution | New users not getting child memberships | Child memberships not listed as benefits of parent | Add child memberships to parent benefit list | Existing users not getting inherited memberships | Inheritance not applied retroactively | Manually add child memberships to existing users | Users get child memberships but content still blocked | Rule not checking for inherited memberships | Check rule configuration and ensure inheritance is enabled | Inheritance works for some groups but not others | Specific group configuration issue | Recreate the problematic group from scratch |
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