How to Create a Custom Display with Subscription Info on WordPress

A subscription-based website charges users a recurring fee — monthly, quarterly, or annually — in exchange for ongoing access to content, services, products, or software. Think streaming platforms, online courses, digital newsletters, and SaaS tools. WordPress has powered subscription sites since the early days of membership plugins, and today the ecosystem is mature enough to handle everything from a simple paywall to a fully featured subscription management dashboard.

The key challenge isn’t taking the payment — WooCommerce Subscriptions, MemberPress, and Stripe handle that reliably. The challenge is displaying that subscription data to the right user, at the right time, in a way that builds trust and reduces churn. A subscriber who can clearly see their plan details, renewal date, usage metrics, and upgrade options is far less likely to cancel out of confusion or frustration.

In this article, I’ll walk through the WordPress-specific techniques I use to build custom subscription displays — from simple shortcodes to full CPT-based dashboards. Every approach shown here is something I’ve shipped on real production sites.

Before writing a single line of code, it’s worth understanding the available options. WordPress gives you three broad paths:

Plugin-provided account pages: WooCommerce Subscriptions adds subscription details to the standard WooCommerce “My Account” area. MemberPress has its own member dashboard. These work out of the box but are limited in how much you can customize their display without diving into template overrides.

Template overrides: You can copy WooCommerce or MemberPress templates into your child theme and modify the HTML/PHP directly. This gives you pixel-level control but ties you to the plugin’s data structure and requires maintenance on plugin updates.

Custom shortcodes and blocks: The most flexible approach. You write PHP functions that query subscription data directly and output whatever HTML you want. Embed them via shortcode on any page or create a custom Gutenberg block. This is what I recommend for any site that needs a branded, non-generic subscription dashboard.

One underused pattern in WordPress subscription sites is storing subscription-gated content as Custom Post Types (CPTs) with access rules tied to subscription tiers. Instead of hiding existing posts behind a paywall, you register a protected_resource CPT whose archive and single templates only render content for users with an active subscription.

This approach has several advantages: the content is cleanly separated from public posts, you can assign custom fields (like “required plan tier”) to each piece of content, and you can build a subscriber-only dashboard that lists exactly what they have access to. Combined with user meta that stores their subscription tier, the display logic becomes straightforward.

Register your CPT with register_post_type(), add a custom capability read_protected_resource, and assign that capability to subscriber roles when a payment is confirmed. On plan expiry, remove the capability. This keeps access control within WordPress’s native permission system rather than in scattered conditional checks throughout your templates.

Shortcodes are the simplest way to display user-specific subscription information on any page without modifying theme templates. Here’s a practical example that retrieves and displays a WooCommerce subscription’s key details:

/**
 * Shortcode: [wpdev_subscription_info]
 * Displays the current user's active WooCommerce Subscription details.
 */
function wpdev_subscription_info_shortcode() {
    if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
        return '<p>Please <a href="' . wp_login_url( get_permalink() ) . '">log in</a> to view your subscription.</p>';
    }

    $user_id       = get_current_user_id();
    $subscriptions = wcs_get_users_subscriptions( $user_id );

    if ( empty( $subscriptions ) ) {
        return '<p>You have no active subscriptions. <a href="/pricing">Browse plans</a>.</p>';
    }

    $output = '<div class="wpdev-subscription-display">';
    foreach ( $subscriptions as $sub ) {
        $status     = $sub->get_status();
        $plan_name  = $sub->get_items() ? current( $sub->get_items() )->get_name() : 'N/A';
        $next_date  = $sub->get_date( 'next_payment' );
        $end_date   = $sub->get_date( 'end' );

        $output .= '<div class="sub-card">';
        $output .= '<strong>' . esc_html( $plan_name ) . '</strong>';
        $output .= '<span class="sub-status status-' . esc_attr( $status ) . '">' . ucfirst( $status ) . '</span>';
        $output .= '<p>Next renewal: ' . esc_html( $next_date ? date_i18n( get_option( 'date_format' ), strtotime( $next_date ) ) : 'N/A' ) . '</p>';
        $output .= '</div>';
    }
    $output .= '</div>';

    return $output;
}
add_shortcode( 'wpdev_subscription_info', 'wpdev_subscription_info_shortcode' );

Place [wpdev_subscription_info] on any page and it renders the current user’s subscription status, plan name, and renewal date. You can style the output with CSS targeted at .wpdev-subscription-display.

WooCommerce Subscriptions is the dominant solution for e-commerce subscription businesses on WordPress. It handles the full lifecycle: trial periods, pause/resume, proration on upgrades, failed payment retries, and dunning emails. If your site sells physical or digital products on a recurring basis, WooCommerce Subscriptions is the right tool — the development cost of replicating that functionality from scratch far outweighs the license fee.

However, for non-commerce subscription use cases — a news site, a SaaS tool, a members-only community — a custom PHP solution built on top of Stripe’s API can be leaner and more tailored. You store subscription state in user meta, handle webhooks via a custom REST endpoint, and build your display layer exactly as your designers specify. This is more work upfront but gives you zero plugin dependencies and a UI that’s uniquely yours.

My general recommendation: use WooCommerce Subscriptions if you’re already running WooCommerce and selling products. Use a custom solution if the subscription is the core product, the UI needs to be highly differentiated, or the WooCommerce overhead isn’t justified by your product catalog.

Displaying subscription info is only half the challenge — the other half is protecting the right content behind the right tier. The most reliable approach in WordPress is to store the user’s tier in user meta (e.g., wpdev_subscription_tier with a value of free, pro, or enterprise) and then check that meta in your template or shortcode before outputting protected content.

Update this meta via a WooCommerce order status hook, a MemberPress membership event, or a Stripe webhook handler. The display logic then becomes: if the user’s tier grants access to this content, show it; otherwise, show a teaser and an upgrade prompt. This pattern is simple, fast, and doesn’t require a separate content restriction plugin.