Description
Who This Add-On Is Built For
If you’re running a membership site with SureMembers and you’re tired of manually shuffling users between access groups every time someone upgrades, cancels, or completes a course, AutomatorWP – SureMembers was made for you. Site owners who manage tiered content, course creators who need to react instantly when a student finishes a module, and community managers juggling multiple access levels will find this add-on solves a very specific headache: connecting what happens on your site to what happens with membership access, without touching a line of code or babysitting a spreadsheet of user roles.
AutomatorWP – SureMembers works as a bridge between your existing SureMembers setup and the broader AutomatorWP automation engine. Instead of logging into your dashboard to manually add or remove someone from an access group, you set the logic once and let it run. It’s a small add-on with a narrow job, but that job happens to be one of the more tedious parts of running a protected-content site, and automating it changes how much time you spend on admin work versus actually building your site.
What You Get: Core Capabilities
At its heart, this add-on gives you two triggers and two actions, and that simplicity is the point. You’re not wading through a settings panel with forty toggles. You’re connecting a clear cause to a clear effect: something happens, a group membership changes, or a group membership changes, something happens. That’s the entire loop, and it’s enough to build surprisingly sophisticated automations when you pair it with the rest of the AutomatorWP ecosystem.
The plugin lets you react the moment a user is added to an access group or the moment a user is removed from an access group. On the flip side, it lets other automations in your site trigger the actions of adding or removing users from groups automatically. Combine those four pieces with triggers and actions from other AutomatorWP integrations, and you can build workflows like “when a user completes a quiz, add them to the premium access group” or “when a subscription lapses, remove them from the group and tag them for a re-engagement email.” None of this requires custom development. It requires setting up an automation once inside AutomatorWP and letting SureMembers handle the access side.
Because AutomatorWP – SureMembers is a plugin licensed under GPL, you also get the customization freedom that comes with it. You can adapt it, inspect it, or hand it to a developer to tweak for a specific workflow, without licensing restrictions getting in the way of how you use your own site. That matters for agencies and freelancers building on top of AutomatorWP for clients who need something slightly outside the box.
Feature Breakdown
Here’s the full list of what this add-on brings to your AutomatorWP setup, broken into triggers and actions so you can see exactly how the automation logic flows in both directions.
Triggers: React to Access Changes
- User added to an access group – fires the moment someone gets added to any SureMembers access group, whether that happens manually or through another automation. Use this to kick off welcome sequences, badge assignments, or notifications the instant access is granted.
- User removed from an access group – fires when a user loses access to a group, giving you a hook to trigger win-back campaigns, downgrade notices, or logging for your own records.
Actions: Control Access Automatically
- Add a user to a group – lets any other trigger in your AutomatorWP setup (a form submission, a purchase, a completed course, a forum post, anything) automatically grant access to a SureMembers group without you lifting a finger.
- Remove a user from a group – the reverse: pull access the moment a condition is met, whether that’s a failed payment, an expired trial, or a manual flag raised elsewhere on your site.
What makes this list valuable isn’t length, it’s precision. Each trigger and action does one job cleanly, and because SureMembers manages access through WordPress roles rather than a separate permissions layer, there’s no added performance drag from a parallel membership system running alongside your site. You’re automating something that’s already lightweight, which keeps the whole chain fast.
Real-World Applications
Picture a course creator running cohort-based content through SureMembers. When a student submits a final assignment (tracked through a forms plugin already connected to AutomatorWP), the “Add a user to a group” action fires automatically, granting access to the next module’s content the moment the work is turned in. No more end-of-week batch updates, no more students emailing to ask why they can’t see next week’s lesson yet.
Now picture a membership site with a paid tier. A payment plugin marks a subscription as canceled, and that event becomes the trigger for “Remove a user from a group,” instantly pulling access to premium content while the free-tier content stays visible. Combine this with the “User removed from an access group” trigger, and you can chain a follow-up: send a discount code, log the cancellation in a CRM, or add the user to a re-engagement email list, all from that single access change.
Community-driven sites benefit too. Say you run a private forum layer protected by a SureMembers group, and you want new members to earn access only after completing an onboarding checklist. AutomatorWP – SureMembers lets you tie that checklist completion (tracked via any compatible trigger) directly to the “Add a user to a group” action, so access unlocks automatically the moment onboarding is done. And when the “User added to an access group” trigger fires, you can layer in a welcome message or a role-based badge, so the new member feels the transition rather than just noticing it after the fact.
Agencies managing multiple client sites will appreciate that the same four building blocks apply whether the client runs a course, a gated resource library, or a client-only support portal. You’re not learning a new tool for every project. You’re reusing the same trigger-and-action logic and adapting it to whatever access structure that particular site needs.
Technical Specifications
AutomatorWP – SureMembers is currently at version 1.0.0 and requires WordPress 4.4 or later, which means it will run comfortably on the vast majority of active WordPress installations without forcing an environment upgrade first. As with other AutomatorWP add-ons, a license key is required for each individual site installation, and that license covers one year of updates and access to plugin information. This is a paid add-on distributed under GPL, meaning that once you have it installed, you retain the freedom to modify, adapt, or extend the code as needed for your own projects.
The add-on is built specifically to extend AutomatorWP’s automation framework with SureMembers-specific triggers and actions, so it assumes you already have both AutomatorWP and SureMembers active on your site. It doesn’t duplicate SureMembers’ access control logic. Instead, it plugs directly into that existing system so that groups, roles, and protected content behave exactly as SureMembers defines them, just with automation layered on top.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does AutomatorWP – SureMembers replace SureMembers’ own access group settings?
No, it doesn’t replace anything. It sits on top of your existing SureMembers configuration and automates the adding and removing of users from the access groups you’ve already set up. You still define your groups and protected content inside SureMembers exactly as before.
Can I use this add-on if I only have one access group set up in SureMembers?
Yes, the triggers and actions work with any number of groups, including just one. Even a single-group setup benefits from automating the add and remove logic instead of doing it manually every time.
What happens if a user is added to a group they’re already a member of?
The action simply confirms their existing membership status in that group; it won’t create duplicate entries or break your role assignments. The trigger for “User added to an access group” is tied to actual group membership changes, so it behaves predictably even with overlapping automations.
Do I need a separate license for each site I install this on?
Yes, each individual WordPress installation running AutomatorWP – SureMembers needs its own license key, which is what keeps you eligible for updates and plugin information for that site. This is standard across the pricing tiers, whether you’re covering a couple of sites or a larger number.
Will this add-on slow down my site if I have a lot of automations running?
SureMembers is designed around WordPress roles rather than a heavy custom permissions system, and this add-on inherits that lightweight approach. Because the triggers and actions are simple and direct, adding several automations built around group membership changes shouldn’t introduce noticeable performance drag.
Compatibility and Requirements
- Version: 1.0.0
- Requires WordPress: 4.4 or higher
- Requires an active SureMembers installation for group and role management
- Requires an active AutomatorWP installation to build automations using these triggers and actions
- Each site installation requires its own license key for updates and plugin information
