There are many different ways to implement content gating or memberships with PayWhirl and Shopify. When a customer signs up for a subscription through PayWhirl, we can tag their account in Shopify. Many Shopify apps can read these tags to enable custom features. 

For example, the EasyLockdown App can be used with PayWhirl tags to grant or restrict access to specific Shopify Pages. Please note, there are many apps in the Shopify app store that offer content gating.
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When a customer signs up for a subscription through PayWhirl, the tags that you specify in the plan's settings will be added to the customer's account in Shopify. The customer can then login to their Shopify account to access the 'locked' content.  
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​Note: The tags are applied after the first invoice processes. If you have a trial period or billing start date, that will delay the tags from getting added to Shopify until after the invoice is paid. 

The process to get this set-up in PayWhirl begins with Payment Plans. The payment Plans determine how much and how often to charge the customers.
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1) Go To Dashboard > Plans and Click "Create a Plan."

2) Fill out the plan form and customize your membership rates.

Add the tags to the 'tag this plan' section below the main plan settings. The tags are added when the first order is placed, so make sure the plan is set to place orders.
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3) Once you have finished setting up the plans, you can add them to a widget to display the plan options for the customers.
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4) When you have your Widget created and ready, you can add it to your Shopify Store, by copying and pasting the embed code provided in the PayWhirl Widget. 

You can add the widgets to almost any page in your Shopify store. 

Note: Make sure not to lock the page with the widget, otherwise customers won't be able to sign up.

5) Once you have your Paywhirl Widget embedded to a Shopify Page, you can install the EasyLockdown app and set-up the content gating rules.
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A "Lockdown" rule limits access to Pages, Product Pages, and Collections in your Shopify Store and controls who has access. 

Select "create Lockdown" to begin configuring your first rule. Then select May Access > Selected Customers > Add rule to specify which customers are allowed access the content.

You can select the "tagged with" option and enter the tag used in PayWhirl. In this example, the PayWhirl Payment plan tag associated with this lockdown rule is Access Collection 1, so add Access Collection 1 to the 'tagged with' section 

After you configure the unlocking rules, you will need to select the Pages/Product Pages or Collections you wish to lock. This will prevent customers who don't have "Access Collection 1" tagged in their Shopify Account from viewing those pages. 

That's it! You have now locked down the content so only members can access it.
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Note: When the customer cancels their subscription, the tag on the customer's account in Shopify is removed automatically. This will prevent them from accessing the content until they subscribe again.

We also have dunning settings so you can control what happens if a customer's payment fails. By default, the tags would remain active if a payment declines. However, you could adjust the payment decline rules to have it automatically cancel the customer's subscription on the first decline (which would remove the tags).

We also recommend adding the customer portal widget that can be embedded on your site. Usually, clients will embed this on a separate 'manage my membership" page on their Shopify stores. This way, customers can manage their membership or update payment information.  

Please let us know if you have any questions. 

Sincerely,
The PayWhirl Team