Plan & Membership

Dashboard → Plan & Membership shows what the profile you’re acting as currently has: the plan you pay United Pet Club for, and the memberships you hold in organizations’ programs — a breed registry, a rescue, a veterinary association, or United Pet Club itself.

The two are different things. Your plan is your own subscription to platform features (see Billing & plans). A membership is your standing in someone else’s program, with its own tiers and benefits. Switch profiles in the sidebar to see a different profile’s memberships.

Your United Pet Club membership

The United Pet Club Membership program is the club’s own ladder, open to every profile. Its grades are:

Grade	What it is
Companion	Free — community access, member number, meeting notice and your class’s vote
Guardian	Annual dues — member store pricing, event access, early feature access
Steward	Annual dues — deeper member pricing, certification discounts, priority support, event hosting
Patron	Annual or lifetime dues — the supporter grade, with recognition benefits

United Pet Club also runs the Professional Fellowship (Associate → Fellow → Distinguished Fellow) for verified pet-industry professionals, the Welfare Alliance (Ally → Sanctuary Partner) for verified shelters and rescues, and the invitation-only Founders Circle. All dues are in USD.

Upgrading your plan

The Upgrade button in the top bar changes your platform plan — it opens a window offering the plans on sale (with a monthly/annual toggle) or, if you’d rather not change plan, add-ons and credit packs for the specific feature you’ve run short of — a Litter Pass or a pack of contracts, for example. Payment happens inside the same window and the upgrade applies as soon as it’s confirmed. The same window opens automatically when you run out of something you buy mid-task, already narrowed to the feature that was blocked. Limits on listings, breeds, litters and blog posts never open it: no plan changes them (see Limits on listings, breeds, litters and posts). See Billing & plans for what’s on sale (the Family, Breeder Pro and Rescue plans were retired on 12 October 2026) and Litters and the Litter Pass for what a pass buys.

Already on a paid plan? A bigger plan starts today and costs its price minus a credit for the days left on your current plan; a cheaper plan waits for your renewal date. See Changing your plan.

Everything below this point is about memberships — your standing in an organization’s program, changed through that program’s own tier flow, not through the Upgrade button.

Joining a program

This is how you become a member — of United Pet Club itself, or of any organization running a program on the platform. Nothing here happens on your behalf: no membership is ever created until you complete this flow.

Choose Join a program. The list shows the programs open to the profile you are acting as — switch profiles in the sidebar first if you meant a different one.
Pick a program, then the grade you want within it. Grades you are not eligible for are shown with the reason rather than hidden, so you can see what to fix.
Confirm. What happens next depends on how that grade is set up — see the four cases below.

What confirming does:

Open free grades admit you immediately — you’re a member as soon as you confirm.
Open paid grades (for example Fellowship Associate) show the annual dues right after you confirm. You become a member the moment your payment is confirmed — a grade is never granted unpaid. If the grade’s dues renew automatically, the payment step also offers Renew automatically — see Renewing automatically.
Grades that review applications (for example Fellowship Fellow) need both the organization’s approval and your dues. You can pay right away or after the decision — the membership appears once both have happened, in either order.
Invitation-only grades can’t be applied for at all; you need an invitation (see Redeeming an invitation).

You do not need a verified identity to join at the entry grade. Verification is a gate on the grades above it — join first, then verify from your account’s security settings when you want to move up, and your saved request picks up where it left off.

You can only have one application in flight per program at a time. If you already have one pending, you’ll be told so rather than filing a duplicate — withdraw the first one if you’d rather start over.

Clubs and other organizations on United Pet Club can give out promo codes for their own dues. When you join one of their programs, pick the program, choose Have a promo code? and type the code before you choose Join. The dues you are asked to pay already include the saving, and the dues panel shows it, for example Promo CLUB20: 10.00 off a month, for the first 3 months. After those months, your dues return to the organization’s regular price.

A code only works on that organization’s own memberships. United Pet Club’s own memberships don’t take promo codes.
If the code can’t be used, the message appears under the field and nothing is filed: check the code, or continue without it.
You can use a code the same way when you change tier in one of that organization’s programs.

Changing your tier

Each membership card shows your current tier — the rung you’re on in that program’s ladder. Choose Change tier to open the picker. Your current rung is pinned; choose another to stage it, then file the request.

Filing a request doesn’t change anything yet. The organization’s program decides whether the change costs money, and United Pet Club works out the fee at the moment you file:

If the change is free, accepting it applies the new tier straight away.
If there’s a fee, the card shows the amount and how long the quote is held. You’ll need to pay before the change takes effect.

While a request is open, the button changes to Review request so you can come back to the same decision instead of filing a second one.

Paying for an upgrade

When the change carries a fee, choosing to accept opens the payment step inside the same dialog. Enter your card details and confirm.

What happens then:

Your card is charged.
We wait for confirmation from the payment provider — this is usually a second or two.
Your tier changes and the dialog confirms the new rung.

If the new tier’s dues renew automatically, the payment step also offers Renew automatically — see Renewing automatically.

Your bank may ask you to approve the payment (a 3-D Secure check). That appears in the same dialog; complete it and the payment continues.

If a payment goes through but the tier doesn’t change — for example the price changed between quoting and paying — nothing is silently kept. Contact support with the membership code shown on the card and the charge will be sorted out.

Renewing your membership

How a membership renews depends on how its organization bills that grade:

Dues that renew automatically, every year or every month. United Pet Club’s paid grades — Guardian, Steward, Patron, Associate, Fellow and Sanctuary Partner — renew every year. Other organizations choose yearly or monthly for each of their grades. The membership renews by itself at the end of each term, charged to the card you saved. See Renewing automatically.
One payment per term. Some grades are paid once for a term and renewed by hand. The card shows when the term ends, and Renew is available at any time — renewing early never costs you days, because the new term is added to the end of your current one.

If a term runs out without being renewed:

Your membership enters a grace period (normally two weeks). Your benefits keep working; the card tells you to renew.
After the grace period it becomes expired — benefits stop and the card says so. Renewing an expired membership brings it straight back: the new term starts the day you renew.

Renewing automatically

When you pay dues that can renew automatically — joining, changing tier or renewing — the payment step shows Renew automatically, already ticked:

Leave it ticked and the card you pay with is saved for the renewals. Each term is charged at the end of the one before, for the same dues, until you switch it off.
Untick it to pay for this term only. Nothing is charged later; you renew by hand when the term ends.

You manage it on the membership card in your account’s Subscriptions & memberships page (from Plan & Membership, choose Manage). The card shows Renew automatically with a switch, the date of the next renewal, the amount and the card it is charged to.

Switch it off and your membership stays until the end of the term you’ve paid for, then ends unless you renew it yourself. Nothing more is charged.
Switch it on to have it renew again. If no card is saved for it — for example because you joined before automatic renewal existed — you’re asked to add one: use the card already on your account, or enter a new one. The membership renews by itself once the card is saved.

While automatic renewal is on, the card has no Renew button — the renewal happens by itself.

Reminders. You get an e-mail and a notice in the app 30 days and 7 days before a term ends (just 7 days before for a monthly membership). Depending on your membership, it tells you that it will renew and for how much, that it could renew automatically if you switch that on, or that it is about to end. The link in the e-mail opens your membership in your account.

If a renewal payment doesn’t go through, we try your saved cards again. Your membership keeps working during the grace period, and it’s back to normal as soon as a payment succeeds. If none does, it expires at the end of the grace period — renew it by hand to bring it back.

Redeeming an invitation

Some grades — the Professional Fellowship’s Distinguished Fellow, the Founders Circle, and anything an organization chooses to offer by invite — arrive as an invitation token. Choose Redeem invitation next to Join a program and paste the token to see exactly what it opens before committing.

An invitation can carry dues set by the inviting organization for that specific invitation. If it does, the amount is shown; pay it and the invitation redeems automatically the moment the payment is confirmed. A free invitation redeems in one step.

Withdrawing a request

An open request can be withdrawn from the same dialog with Withdraw. If you already paid, withdrawing is not the right route — contact support instead, so the payment and the membership are settled together.

Leaving a program

The ⋯ menu on a membership card has Leave program. Leaving ends the membership immediately: you lose the tier’s benefits, and any benefits granted through it stop being available. You can rejoin later, but you start a new membership rather than resuming the old one.

Your language and your region

Membership appears in your language — grade names, benefits and statuses are translated across every language United Pet Club supports (a handful of technical terms stay in English everywhere).

The grades and benefits themselves are the same worldwide: changing your language never changes what your membership includes. Where availability genuinely differs by region — a physical item that can’t ship to your country, a service that isn’t licensed there — that depends on your verified country, and the benefit says so. Dues are always charged in US dollars, whatever your region or language.

Where to manage payment methods

Cards, invoices and subscription lifecycle live in the Account app, not here — this page links across to it. See Billing & plans.