--- title: 'MemberPress.ai for certification programs: the course, the fee and the renewal on your own site' description: A certification is a course, an exam, a credential and a renewal date that all have to agree. MemberPress.ai sets up the memberships and, on the paid plan, drafts the course on your own WordPress site by conversation, and tells you whose renewal lapsed or failed. image: https://memberpress.ai/og/for-certification-programs.png url: https://memberpress.ai/for/certification-programs/ --- For certification programs # Your credential is only as good as the day it expires. A certification program is four things that have to agree: the course, the exam at the end of it, the credential the candidate earns, and the renewal that keeps that credential current. When those live in separate tools, a candidate passes and nobody bills the renewal, or the renewal bills and the course access never reopens. The candidate notices before you do. ![Illustrated portrait of Dr. Marcus Reyes](https://memberpress.ai/images/personas/marcus-reyes.webp) ## Where certification programs lose the thread Certification programs lose the thread in the wiring around the curriculum, not in the curriculum itself. You know the material better than anyone. The hard part is the rest: the quiz that must be passed before the credential appears, the credential that should lapse after two years, the annual fee that should bill the month before, and the list of practitioners who are due back this quarter. Each of those is a setting somewhere. Get one wrong and a credential stays valid after it should have lapsed, or a practitioner who paid can’t reach the refresher course. Those are the mistakes a credentialing program can’t afford, and they’re the ones nobody checks until a candidate emails. What it sets up ## Describe the program. Review the drafts before anyone enrolls. MemberPress.ai works on your own WordPress site, with MemberPress and MemberPress Courses underneath. You describe the program the way you’d describe it to an accrediting reviewer, and it does the parts that eat the most time: ### The course, drafted. On the paid plan, describe the curriculum and it drafts the course outline, its sections in order, then the lessons. Everything arrives as a draft that no candidate sees until you publish it. The exam itself you build in MemberPress Courses’ own quiz settings. ### A credential with a shelf life. In the course’s own settings, MemberPress Courses can issue a certificate on completion, hold it back until the exam is passed with the score you set, and let it expire after the period you choose, resetting the learner’s progress so recertifying means retaking the course. ### Pricing for a program people invest in. An initial certification fee and an annual renewal, set up as memberships, each with its own registration page. It can suggest a price structure for a high-ticket program before you commit. ### Whose renewal slipped. Ask who lapsed and whose renewal failed, and it answers from your site’s own records. On the paid plan, which reads your whole history, you can also compare this renewal cycle with the last. Setup itself adds its membership levels as drafts for you to publish. After that, membership changes preview as a dry run, the course and its lessons stay unpublished drafts until you publish them, and a refund or a subscription change asks you a second time. ## From a course outline to your first candidate’s fee 1. ### Opal sets up the certification and its renewal. The certification fee and the yearly renewal become memberships, each with its own Join and Checkout page as a draft. Opal tells you what’s left before a candidate can enroll. 2. ### Fees go to your program. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal in MemberPress, so every certification fee is paid into your program’s account. 3. ### Your first candidate pays the fee. Publish, send the link to the people waiting to enroll, and your first candidate pays for the certification on your site. When renewals come round, Opal tells you from your own records whose renewal lapsed or whose payment failed, and what to fix next. The alternative you’re weighing ## A dedicated learning platform, or your own site Choose your own site if you want the course, the credential and the renewal fee to work as one program. Many programs start with a dedicated learning-management or continuing-education platform, and some need one. If you report credit hours to an accrediting body in its own format, or proctor exams under formal conditions, a platform built around that reporting may be the right fit, and MemberPress.ai does not claim to replace it. Where MemberPress.ai fits is the program that wants its course, its credential and its billing on a site the program owns, under the program’s own name, without stitching three tools together. The candidate signs up, learns, passes and renews in one place, and you ask one assistant what is happening across all of it. ## An academy with the course still in slide decks ![Illustrated portrait of Dr. Marcus Reyes](https://memberpress.ai/images/personas/marcus-reyes.webp) ### Dr. Marcus Reyes Founder · Reyes Aesthetics Academy Dr. Reyes runs an academy that certifies aesthetics injectors, with continuing-education credits and a recertification cycle. The material exists as a folder of slide decks that never became a course, and whose recertification is coming due depends on what he remembers to check, between full clinic days. [Watch Marcus's interview (video)](https://memberpress.ai/videos/personas/marcus-reyes-interview-final.mp4) Read the transcript Hi, I'm Opal from MemberPress.ai, the AI that builds and runs your membership site. Today I'm with Dr. Marcus Reyes, who trains nurses to become certified injectors. Thanks, Opal. I run Reyes Aesthetics Academy. So where did your course live, before all this? In 40 slide decks. I teach it live, but it never became a course anyone could take on their own. So what got in the way? Time. I'm in the clinic all week. WordPress is like buying a car in a box, and I only had Sunday nights to build it. That's the kit, not you. Just talk to me. I build it with you, step by step, and you stay in charge. So I get my Sunday nights back. [View the full profile→](https://memberpress.ai/personas/marcus-reyes/) ### A year in Dr. Marcus Reyes on his first year running the academy Marcus finally built his certification course, and recertifications now renew on their own. A year later, he looks back on what changed. Read the transcript Hi, I'm Opal. This is Dr. Marcus Reyes. He runs the Reyes Aesthetics Academy. Injector certification, continuing education, the whole thing. For years, it was slide decks. Good slide decks. They just never became an actual course. What changed that? I finally sat down and built it in MemberPress. Modules, a quiz at the end of each one, a certificate when you pass. What was the hard part? Honestly, the renewal billing. Certification isn't one-and-done. People recertify every two years. Getting that to bill itself correctly took real setup time. And once it was running? A month in, Rosa Delgado earned her first certificate through the system. I watched the email go out automatically and just sat there for a second. A year later? Recertifications renew on their own schedule. The quiz catches the people who aren't ready yet before they're in a room with a client. That's not a convenience. That's the actual job. What would you tell someone still doing this with slide decks and a spreadsheet? The slide decks were never the hard part. Building the system around them was. Don't wait as long as I did. [Watch this episode on YouTube](https://youtu.be/_kYXCNsE1ow) ## Questions certification programs ask Can a certificate require a passing exam score? Yes. In MemberPress Courses a quiz can require a passing score, in percent or points, before the learner moves on, and the certificate follows completion of the course. Quizzes are part of MemberPress’s Growth and Scale plans. Can the credential expire and require renewal? Yes. A certificate can be set to expire after a number of days, months or years, and the course progress can reset when it does, so the practitioner retakes it to recertify. Does it track continuing-education credit hours for us? Not as a credit-hour ledger for an accrediting body. It sets up the memberships, drafts the course and its lessons on the paid plan, and can tell you whose renewal lapsed or failed. Can we price the first certification differently from the renewal? Yes. The initial program and the annual renewal are set up as separate memberships with their own prices and their own registration pages. ## Put the whole program in one place Connect your program’s site and describe the course and the renewal, once. Connect your own Stripe or PayPal, and your first candidate can pay the certification fee on your site. When renewals come round, Opal tells you whose renewal lapsed or failed. [Connect your program’s site→](https://memberpress.ai/connect/) Starting a continuing-education program from scratch? See the course, the quiz, the certificate, recertification and the renewal fee one step at a time: [continuing education software on your own site](https://memberpress.ai/continuing-education-software/). ## More on who MemberPress.ai is for [ ### Associations Dues, renewal season and the board’s questions, on a site the association owns. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/associations/)[ ### Coaches Finish the coaching site you already paid for, and get to your first paying client. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/coaches/)[ ### Communities The paid front door, the tiers and the renewals for your community, on a site you own. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/communities/)[ ### Publishers Reader tiers and renewals that keep running, on a site you own. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/publishers/)[ ### Course creators Turn what you already teach into a real course, on a site you own. Read more →](https://memberpress.ai/for/course-creators/) [Personas: meet every owner](https://memberpress.ai/personas/)