Every GardenBuddy.au tool, the planner, the plant checker, the price tracker and the weekly digest, sits behind one account. Sign up once, at any tier, and the same login carries you into all of it. Here is how signing up, logging back in and the passwordless magic link actually work.
A minute and a half on signing up, logging in, and the magic link in your emails.
What the account system actually does
The plan page at gardenbuddy.au/my-account/membership-levels/ lists five tiers: Free, Starter Annual, Starter Monthly, Pro Annual and Pro Monthly, plus a one-off Plant Check add-on. Free is one garden bed, ten plants and one saved plan, no card needed. Every paid tier carries a seven day free trial before Stripe takes the first payment, so nothing is charged on the day you sign up.
Signing up is four fields, username, password, email and a confirm-email field, plus a hidden honeypot field that must stay blank (fill it in and the signup gets flagged as a bot). Free tier finishes there and drops you straight onto your dashboard. Paid tiers hand you off to Stripe’s own hosted checkout page for the card, so the card number itself never touches a GardenBuddy.au form or a GardenBuddy.au server, only a customer ID comes back.
Coming back later, the login form at wp-login.php (reached via My Account in the top nav) takes either your username or your email address plus your password. Ticking Remember Me sets a fourteen day session cookie. Without it, you stay logged in for that one browser visit only.
Why it matters
A card that never reaches our own servers is one less thing that can go wrong on our end if something is ever compromised, Stripe is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified and carries that risk instead of us. The seven day trial on every paid tier means you can try Starter or Pro properly, across a real week of planting advice, before a single dollar moves. And because every GardenBuddy.au tool reads from the one account, upgrading or downgrading later doesn’t mean starting a new profile, your beds, plants and saved plans stay exactly where you left them.
How to use it
- Signing up: pick a tier on the membership levels page, fill in username, password and email, and for paid tiers finish on Stripe’s checkout. Free tier logs you in immediately.
- Logging back in: click My Account, enter your username or email plus password, tick Remember Me if it’s your own device.
- Forgot your password: use the Lost Your Password link on the login form. It emails a reset link to the address on file, works even if you’ve forgotten the username.
- Managing billing: everything about your card, invoices and current tier lives at My Account, including a one-click “Update card” button if your card on file changes.
- Logging out on a shared device: hover your username in the black admin bar top right and click Log Out. Do this on any library, work or borrowed computer, the session cookie otherwise persists for up to fourteen days.
The magic link in your emails
Weekly digests and reports carry an “Open My Garden” button that logs you straight in with no username or password prompt. Behind that button is a permanent token tied to your subscription record, generated once and reused across every email you’re sent. Clicking it sets a normal session, the same as logging in by hand, and then GardenBuddy.au strips the token out of the address bar so it doesn’t sit in your browser history or get carried along if you forward the email. As of September 2026 the token itself also rotates after first use, with the old one still honoured for 48 hours in case you open the same email on a second device, so an old forwarded email can’t be replayed as a permanent login indefinitely. Privileged accounts, admins and editors, never get auto-logged-in this way, only ordinary member accounts do.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a card to sign up? No. The Free tier needs only an email address and a password, no card at all. A card is only asked for on Starter or Pro, and even then nothing is charged until the seven day trial ends.
Can I use my email instead of my username to log in? Yes, the login form accepts either.
What happens if I forget my username as well as my password? Use the Lost Your Password link and enter your email address instead. The reset email finds your account either way.
Is the magic link in my emails safe to forward? Treat it like a password, because until it’s clicked once it effectively is one. Once you’ve clicked it, the token rotates, so an old copy of the email stops being a live login after the 48 hour grace window.
Can I be logged in on more than one device at once? Yes. Phone, laptop and a shared family desktop can all hold their own session at the same time, and logging out on one doesn’t touch the others.
Related features
A few of GardenBuddy.au’s own help pages go deeper on parts of this system.
- Sign up, step by step: the full walkthrough of the checkout flow, including what to do if a card declines.
- Your first login: a tour of the My Account dashboard and what each section does.
- Account and billing: invoices, GST, failed payments and what happens if you cancel.
Try it now
Head to the membership levels page and start on the Free tier, no card required. If you’re already a member, log in here to get back to your garden.
