WildApricot

Pros

Most efficient platform. It genuinely supports manhour savings. What takes 100 manhours to achieve, is literally less than 20 manhours to achieve using all features of wild apricot. Imagine an 80% cost savings on manhours!

Cons

Email verification during registration. Unfortunately, some register with an email error. If there were an email verification during registration, it would further save manhours in contacting the registrants to correct email error.

Pros

Our whole ski club is run using Wild Apricot. It's a very comprehensive system to broadcast events, track registrants and collect payments. As director I found it extremely helpful to oversee event status, and track sales as they occur.

Cons

Admin access needs to be more granular. Giving someone admin access exposes major parts of the system. Our need is to limit admin access to a specific event or event grouping. Considerable computer experience is necessary to manage the system and our volunteers don't all have the same level required. This puts the system at risk of unintended damage.

Pros

It has lots of great features like the forums and all the different letters you can generate and set up dates to have them automatically sent out. It’s also great for setting up events and then attaching all the reminders. It’s just all very difficult to do though.

Cons

It’s not intuitive and very difficult to work with.

Pros

For our organization, Oregon Potters Association, it has helped to solve a number of our problems. For example, not only do we use the platform to get membership dues, we rely heavily on the directory, and well as having a place to get our members to register for upcoming workshops and sales. It really is great!

We are about to connect Quickbooks to our website, which we really think will help us. We have a big pottery show once a year where sometimes 200 + members sign up to participate, it is always complicated on our end- because they pay a down payment to reserve a booth (like $50), and then we need to collect the remainder of the booth fee (like $300) when it gets close to the show ( about 8% cancel so they don't have to pay the remaining fee but we keep the registration fee)- I spent last year adding invoices manually to each participant, because I don't think WA has a way to do split-payments and it was a bloody nightmare! - but Quickbooks integration will surely help us this year, right!?!?! Please tell me it will 🤣

Cons

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do newsletters for non OPA members. It seems that a non-member could sign up for a newsletter, and then their email is in our system, but it kind of gets muddy when we want to only send a newsletter out for our members (member only events, get togethers at peoples houses, etc. ) and public events (come to our big pottery show). I also get confused then, when I see all of the numbers in the system - who is a member and who do we just have their email. We sometimes write grants and we like to share our reach for certain events we do - it would just be nice if it was clearer to separate the members/non members in our system. Maybe there is, and I just haven't quite figured it out.

Pros

Wild Apricot makes it easy to process registrations for events, dues payments and store purchases in addition to being a website. It is very easy to use. There are user groups that you can join to get help from other users. Also, it is very easy to create a manual invoice for things that I might need a product for or a registration. There is also an app for administrators which is super convenient when to try to look up open invoices, etc. when away from the office.

Cons

There are several features that should be available that are not. First and foremost there should be the availability within in the software to create a pdf and email it to contacts. The store does not appear to be integrated with the mail database and there are not a lot of reports. When I have orders from my store I have to constantly watch for duplicates. There is also not an email report to run that will search for possible duplicates in the system.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

I appreciate not having to ask anyone else to help me run the website or set up events. If you have a basic understanding of computers, you should have no trouble getting about. You can customize your page and report generation in a number of ways.

Cons

When I have a question about how to use the site, I wish I could talk to a real person. It would be fantastic if there was a real assistance line.

Pros

It is generally very easy to use and we have really good success with member use.

Cons

My main issue, and it's a big one for me, is that there is no live support. I just can't accept that there is no way for your company to offer support personel for training or trouble shooting.
The other important thing that could really be useful is the reporting. The options are not great and I find it hard to get data in a way that could be useful for our organization.

Pros

I have used wild Apricot to build 4 websites since 2008 and several sites are still issue today.
The User Friendliness in Building a website for a non-developer. The COMPLETE features to include e-mail marketing and SaaS. (Members can join and update their details and register for events.

Cons

Storage space can sometimes limit keeping organizational files in the cloud. I would like to set more udpated plug and play web pages.

Pros

It allows me to have a secure place to make tickets to a class I teach for injury prevention.

Cons

I wish there was a way to incorporate more admins at no charge and more geared to classes not fund raising.

Pros

That it is an one-stop-shop for all things membership & event & website management. Plus, it has all the Finance features, fantastic reporting, and Paypal integration.

Cons

No way to identify Duplications in the Contact List. We have to manually figure out which contacts to MERGE.

Pros

The simplicity yet robust nature of this software is awesome. The user-friendly setups and ease-of-use make it an effective tool to help manage various facets of the organization. Many screens are at-a-glance summary overviews while others provide sufficient detail to meet a variety of needs. Many of my volunteers are elderly and they can navigate the system just as ease as a techny-teenager. The system is user-friendly enough that, if you are in it every day, it is not cumbersome and, if you are an infrequent user, it is quite intuitive.

Cons

While I like many things about the software, I only wish there was a way to (1) track volunteer hours within member profiles and (2) have the ability to use more than one payment system (I have a 501c3 and 501c4 organization with different financial needs) so I wish I could manage both within the same software system. So, those are big wish list items that I hope come along in the future but so far those are manageable through other less than ideal means. Otherwise, on a daily basis, there is very little I have issue with within the software.

Pros

We are a recreational tennis club with 70 members. I created a great website with a customized membership application form in just one day with no coding required. Within a week, we were live, with online applications and online event registration for tennis tournaments and even electronic payment. I have ALL contact information plus player rankings available when it is time to do the draw; it is so much easier than taking paper entry forms which are not filled out completely or legibly. Thanks to customized event registration forms, I can solicit volunteers at the time that they register. No more calling people at their homes trying to find someone to help!!! I appreciate the security measures too -- I am able to provide club newsletters and photo galleries to club members only. My membership is very pleased with the functionality and everyone says that the club feels more connected this year.

The Wild Apricot support team has been responsive to all questions and problems.

Cons

The finance side of Wild Apricot is a little weak as their reports do not take into account the finance fees that Google Checkout and PayPal deduct. And you can't modify the numbers manually to reflect actual amount received, either due to finance fees or if someone sent in a partial payment. They are aware of these issues and are working on them.

The other enhancement request that we have is to have users be able to see who else is signed up for tournaments. That's because we are a social organization and because we make use of changing volunteers to help with every event. Wild Apricot is working on this but it was not an early priority because professional organizations that were hosting seminars, for example, had no need for participants to see who else was attending and did not necessarily use any volunteers.

Pros

Ease of use for general public, ability to create an attractive, efficient website, Paypal link for easy registration for memberships and conference fees, great customer support

Cons

Some limitations for the structure of the website

Pros

Not much. It does have some features built in that are easy to use, like the member forum. It also has some customizable features in the membership rules...if they work. Sadly, you can't rely on them and the support staff is less than supportive.

Cons

Where to start. Support is only available via chat or email, and only Monday through Friday from 10:00 - 5:00.

Next, the system is full of bugs. Members renew and it doesn't advance their renewal date. Members try to log in and it won't let them establish a password. Members can't log in so they create a whole new account, and there is not duplicate warning, so we just have to stumble on the duplicates. There were several member files that had the wrong renewal date but we couldn't change them manually. The system would give us error messages. The system would also randomly change information that we entered into the fields. The search features are less than reliable and do not show all the information unless you export the file to a spreadsheet. If changing member levels it will automatically revert someone to the current member year. You should be able to set that option or create a rule where if the member price is the same it keeps the already paid for years. We have an extremely high rate of payments that go unprocessed, for various reasons. Recaptcha not working, card declined because the payer used auto-fill on the form, card declined because the website is in Canada, and more.

I have spent almost every day in some sort of chat session with the support staff, and you cannot interact with the higher tier support, only the base level. Plus, there have been times where it was a week or more before we received a response.

Pros

This software worked for our organization for years when we were not focusing on our online process. Wild Apricot helped us create our first website.

Cons

The ability to customize the front-end website needs work. Styling never seemed to save and we felt very limited to the templates Wild Apricot provided. We also wanted to offer monthly memberships, but it was important that the member couldn't cancel before a set amount of time had past (i.e. a year obligation). This is not possible in Wild Apricot. Lastly, the email builder leaves a lot to be desired. Font-faces, font-size and padding would often revert back to the default after saving, causing us to test emails multiple times before sending. We eventually migrated our website to Wordpress, and had to use iFrames for our member application, forums and member directory. Half of the iFrames never worked, and it slowed our website down significantly.

Pros

We use the software to host our website and manage our membership database/contact system (emails to members and potential members). Before moving to this system, we were using separate tools for these three functions and it was extremely cumbersome. The consolidation was straightforward, their online help documentation is superb, and their technical support is astoundingly prompt and thorough. Seriously. It rarely takes more than 3 hours to get an extremely high quality response, and during one interaction the support staff proactively suggested a completely different approach that had advantages over what we were trying.
The contact management system (emails) is beautiful. It has given us a much more professional look and feel for our user base and many of our members have told us they feel it is impressive.
We are not using all the features (in particular, photo albums, user forums), but may want to use them some day, it is good to know we have these options for expansion.

Cons

I gave it a three star rating on ease of implementation only because they do not have the ability to easily import your old website into their system. This frankly is not a big problem for us, we wanted (and needed) to overhaul our website anyway, but it means that as of today (three months after go live on the member database and contact management system), we are still transitioning our website. We are all-volunteer with no staff, it is truly not difficult to re-do the website, but if a user is satisfied with their existing website, the effort to transition over should be part of consideration.

Pros

It was very nice to have a software to organize our membership. The software was built into the website directly, so members can directly renew their membership while browsing the website. You can build different user permissions into different levels.

Cons

The UI of the websites you build with this and the backend feel outdated. I feel like the event tool could be more powerful, especially with how powerful you can easily build websites with Drupal/Wordpress. It would feel more like a membership program if the events could be dynamic with attendees, volunteers, being able to list what is still needed, etc. We found ourselves moving to Facebook or Next Door a lot to interact with our members.

Also, in the span of one year, our plan went up by $20/month, which was an extra $240 a year for our small, local advocacy group.

Pros

Wild Apricot's team is extremely customer service savvy and quick to respond to problems (of which there have been very few). They also are always making product enhancements (on nearly a monthly basis) based upon their customers'/users' requests, suggestions, recommendations, and needs. The functionality is as simple or as complex as needed, based upon the size, structure, and budget of an organization. Online registration has made keeping track of events a breeze; although we have not yet instituted online payment, several options are available. Automatic reminders of membership renewals are easily programmed and customized, as well as event reminders; membership blast e-mails; opt-out feature; advanced search and filtering of member records; back-end administration rights can be customized; importing and exporting records; viewing and editing member records and privacy settings; CSS and Javascript customization; saved e-mail drafts. Pricing is based upon number of active records.

Cons

I have very few complaints. I have requested several features that have been incorporated into the software's functionality. I have made a request that is in the queue for consideration: because our association is for public relations professionals, we have a lot of news, and it would be nice to be able to set news posting dates and archiving dates with individual articles with a library of past news stories. The WYSIWYG formatting for pages is a little clunky, but there is a wealth of documentation for customizing pages as well as support materials.

Pros

As a small non-profit, this software has made organizing and communicating with our membership SO much easier. Membership is now automatic and registering for our events is easy for our guests and much less work for us. The website is easy to manage, and our financials are much more organized. I think what I like the most about this company is that they are CONSTANTLY improving according to a "wish list". It is very obvious that they care about their customers (US!) and continually work hard to improve. I love Wild Apricot!

Cons

The software is missing just a few things that would be great for us personally, but with 1000's of wishes, I understand that not all of mine will be granted :)

As far as function, I have no complaints.

Pros

Used to work very well. Lots of features and descent integration. For 2+ years I loved this software. Not anymore.

Cons

After the company was sold and the CEO left the price went up and the quality dropped- a lot! Customer money was being taken and the payment info wasn't propagating through the software. In other words customers were paying and not getting what they paid for. WA tech said the problem was contained to two days only, then to 12 days... here I am a month later and the problem is still occurring! Their best solution was a suggestion to no longer use paypal because their integration with WA was bad. They support paypal integration then say not to use it. Insane. Thousands of dollars wasted and a ton of frustration. I am switching to a word press based platform.

Pros

The software has a good integration of features, but those features are fast becoming dated with limited to no upgrades.

Cons

With the acquisition by a private equity firm, the company has totally changed. Price increases are frequent with very limited time for a no-profit to adjust budgets. They force you to use their in-house payment processor or face very stiff price penalties (20%). Their in-house processor has many shortfalls and simply will no work for certain non-profits.

Pros

What I liked most about the software was signing up for the account. They were very nice back then. Four years later - of making monthly payments - they change their policies now I can't talk to a human and have to wait for HOURS. Yes - this is still in the Pro comment section.

Cons

Their customer support is absolutely the worst experience I've ever had with any customer service group. Absolutely rude - and that's IF you can actually spend 2-3 hours waiting to talk to a chat box - not a human that you can talk to. The person on the chat is clearly working multiple customers at a time so you're never getting their attention. NEVER USE THIS SERVICE.

Pros

Membership management, Easy of posting to website, Albums for our members (their art work is getting attention), Donation and payments, Just about everything is great....Oh email in one system and don't have to do constant contact.

Cons

Need help with members directory....not responding to changes very easily .... had to rebuild several times to get it working. Also, would love to see a flag or way to highlight members who are using their albums. I did figure out a work around by adding a yes/no button to the members questionnaire. Once the member click yes they are using their photo album, I have a saved search that pulls that member to a special membership directory "Members Ark Work to Review". This allowed me to direct viewers to this list instead of the membership directory to view art work. We only had 35 members of 204 using their albums. Now the public doesn't have to hunt and peck and get frustrated trying to see members art work in albums.

Pros

The best thing is that it is an all-in-one software. So with the backend management system you have a web-site sitting on top of it. It makes everything super simple for us to only have to use one main software.

Cons

Honestly, nothing. It does take a bit of time to figure it all out and their are limitations of it in terms of website design. But from what you pay for it is a solid software.

Pros

WildApricot provides an excellent platform for the website for our arts and crafts guild. The website development tools are powerful and easy to use and customize. The platform allowed us to build our website ourselves without incurring costs for an outside web developer.

Our organization is membership-based, requiring that all participants in our events and activities be current paid-up members. The Wild Apricot platform ensures that this criteria is met at all times.

Great membership and event management features include customizable membership and registration forms, a helpful mobile app for administrators, easy payment processing, and effective search and reporting tools.

Cons

The main limitation of WildApricot for our organization is the inability for a individual to hold more than one category of membership at a time.

Pros

I don't like anything about it compared to other platforms, I inherited it

Cons

Complete lack of response to customer needs, the program is inflexible, archaic, no improvements have been made in years and no attention is paid to the user forum where customers have been requesting basic functionality that was available on other platforms in the 1990s. Their support materials - check them out - now all start with an article telling you what the platform CAN'T do. In these, you'll find lists of all the functions that normal platforms a fraction of the cost of this one have been doing routinely since the internet was invented, like, oh...being able to proof the copy of a blog before it goes live, or schedule an event on a calendar to blast out at a specific date and time - a feature that is available on another part of their platform but not in the event module - I could go on for a long time. Customer service is useless, all they do when you finally get them on a chat is send links to articles that describe how customers needing more flexibility can add custom css. Isn't that the developers' job? Or they refer you to their 'partners.' My organization interviewed 4 of their partners. None of them had knowledge of css, or any more access to the staff at Wild Apticot than the general public. Their disregard for the needs of their users is shocking.

Pros

Wild Apricot is a single source for nearly everything needed to manage a membership organization. It has revolutionized our database, taking it into the cloud, it has streamlined our renewal process, given us greater visibility into our email marketing, and overall allowed us to function more efficiently as an organization. Since its deployment, we've been able to replace the work of up to 2 FTE because of how Wild Apricot has allowed us to streamline our operations.

Cons

Their payment gateway, Wild Apricot Payments, does have some unique challenges that we are working through. It has errored out a number of times and there was no intuitive alert to let us know we were missing out on authorized donations. Their customer support team has been slower than we'd like to respond to these issues and have yet to provide a clear reason for them and any timeline for resolution.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing WildApricot

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

Product is full-featured and the least expensive for a small non-profit on a limited budget. Of particular interest were membership management features, including self-service join, renew, and update. Also critical was event management and integration with membership, since the organization's main publicity and fundraising activity is a large bike ride. Web site integration was also attractive. Good platform for communicating with members and event participants. Payment processing integration for memberships, donations, and event registrations.

Cons

Lacked QuickBooks integration, although the organization's treasurer at the time did not consider this a needed feature. Lack of volunteer management, though that was not considered an essential feature at the time of review. Web site integration works best when using the built-in CMS. Integration with WordPress, the organization's existing CMS was largely successful. However some issues did arise with the forms for things like memberships, donations, and event registrations, especially on Apple devices.

Pros

I absolutely loved setting up this software, I found it very challenging but I do enjoy a challenge.

I migrated out of Associations Online (AO) to WildApricot (WA). I found that using the CSV export of the membership out of AO really easy and the upload in WA simple as well.

The events system is fantastic for Zoom and events that need to have someone at the door checking people in. The admin app for WA is awesome when I'm on the go and just want to see who has checked into an event or who has registered for an event.

Cons

The biggest, and I mean this is a deal-breaker, the site builder is seriously broken and needs a massive update. I have checked about 30 other sites that use WildAprioct and they all look the same. Very Narrow, broken up into blocks of either 1/2/3.

There is a basic function of having a button added but the customization of said button is the link and text. Not the colour or the size. The blogging functionality for the site is very basic which is fine but it would be nice if I could categorize it and allow for displaying the post on other pages so that it isn't locked to the single blog page.

WA integrates with WordPress so I wanted to build a better-looking frontend for my site but the downside is the integration is not in full. You can have the login and some profile migrated over but things like Events, Profile Updates and even administration of membership can only be done in WA. So any changes in the profile can not be done in WordPress as it is only a one-way sync. The plugin for Wordpress is only a SSO for WildApricot.

Finally, the Support/Feature request, WA is probably one of the slower ones for it. It may take years for anything to happen. They update often around the 4th of each month but its never anything that is really useful for the Admin or User. Its usually bugs in the system which is awesome, but I would really like to see some more functionality with the system like the website builder and other integration into online Accounting Packages.

Pros

Integrated features for membership management, communications, event management, and website development. Great coaching services during implementation and then support after.

Cons

Nothing that would stop me from selecting it again. Some of the newer features like polls can use some development, and formatting is sometimes challenging. But the tradeoff for a fully integrated system is well worth it.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

Wild Apricot offers ECF an opportunity to create, modify and update our online software when needed, allowing our in-house staff to make necessary adjustments without having to spend association funds to hire programmers to complete the tasks.

Cons

There is one item on our "Wish" list that we hope to see in the future. It would be nice to upgrade to a newer version of Excel or Word when exporting information. It's a small thing, but when you are trying to handle multiple lists for conversion to reports, etc., the first move is to save and rename the document based on the compatibility function. On a busy day, it's an added step that's time lost.

A 2nd wish would be for a bit more friendly e-mail design module. It works but can be challenging.

Pros

It offers a large selection of features and can be a one stop shop for membership tools. Although most of the features are not nearly comparable to equivalent stand-alone services, they are functional.

Cons

Customer support has been quite poor. They dropped telephone support in the last year and did not provide any guidance or assistance to us when they forced a payment system change that affected our members.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

Wild Apricot is a full-feature membership management program. It handles every problem I have encountered since I stated using it in 2014. It has steady grown more powerful and they have developed solutions to almost every issue.

Cons

It is sometimes easy to skip a step in the financial part of the software, and cause trouble later - such as not settling a payment before voiding an invoice. It works great if you know what you are doing, but you use one of the functions rarely, it is important to review the steps carefully.

Pros

It's universality, it works well on every device, giving us instant functionality. I can find members, schedule events and make adjustments instantly, anywhere.

Cons

Sometimes I get lost doing certain operations.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing WildApricot

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

WA has a great feature set that includes a lot of the functionality we need to completely manage our membership, communication, and payment collection. I especially like that we can have bundle memberships and can create saved searches for email distribution or member management.

Cons

There are occasionally issues with some of the search fields that can only be resolved by logging off and back in. I would like to have group texting capabilities.

Pros

Easy of use, ability to customize the member database easily and the integrated content management system for a professional website.

Cons

The software does not allow you to determine the membership ID within he system. This creates a challenge for any organization that already has a member number schema.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing WildApricot

Reasons for Switching to WildApricot

Pros

Wild Apricot provides a great deal of hope that you've finally found the magic solution that will do it all. Event RSVPs work well.

Cons

We were unable to successfully add Wild Apricot widgets to our website (which was not hosted on Wild Apricot's system). I contacted support multiple times and even they couldn't figure out how to fix it. So one of the chief reasons we wanted to use Wild Apricot (so that people could become members online through our website) never worked.

Pros

With the baseline requirement for membership management completely fulfilled by Wild Apricot, we have found considerable value in the events management features to manage training courses, and the mass emailing features for communications. Of course, solid invoicing and payment processing are also very important. Overall, the user and administrative experience with Wild Apricot is satisfying and very productive. We built or re-engineered our business processes around the capabilities in Wild Apricot, to a significant degree.

Cons

It takes quite a while to get what look like simple enhancements made to the search and select features within "saved searches". We don't seem to be getting attention, and the enhancements we've requested have been in the queue for over a year. The result of having to wait is that our saved searches are needlessly complex and hard to maintain.

Pros

I like how easy it is to keep a consistent looking website using the themes.

Cons

I don't like that you don't charge in local currency. It is very had for non-profits to budget when the cost varies so much based on the US dollar.

I also don't like that you can not easily change the default theme colours for a theme so that they show up at the top of the selection box. Instead, we have to constantly use the hex codes for any text etc that doesn't pick up the theme colours automatically instead of picking one of the theme colours because they remain the colours of the original theme.

Pros

I was the Secretary for my Chapters well known organization. The Secretarial duties are vast and important to the life of the organization. Wild Apricot appears to have everything a non-profit organization needs. It allows me to do all of the required things necessary.
The membership database allows for custom as well as preset categories with specified access. I can keep track of membership categories, addresses, dues due, and
Quick books is a part of the application. Reports can be easily generated using the information entered into the database. My favorites are the communication sections. I can announce events that all members can quickly view, be registered for or wait listed. Reminders can also be sent to all members or those specified.
Payments can be taken and recorded, invoices and receipts sent. The confirmation emails are customized and can be personalized. Documents that need to be shared can also be done.
I find that Wild Apricot can complete all necessary duties assigned to an organization. While all officers can have premium access to all documents, reports and finances 24/7, it also allows for all shades of transparency to members while keeping confidential information secure.
I haven't run across any application as thorough as Wild Apricot. I've only used the application a few days as they allow a 30 day trial to try it out and show off their goods to potential users.

Cons

My only concern is that the way in which things are laid out aren't as intuitive as I would have liked. I would rather have an illustrated manual on the dashboard for when a new user signs in. There is a quick 4 minute video guide that I may find usable later on the opening page. But its definitely not a deal breaker for me.

Pros

Our agency hosts many repeated events not only multiple times during the school year but that also repeat year after year. The ease with which events can be duplicated and edited for specific dates allows staff to set up a year's worth of events in just a few hours.

Cons

We have many users creating events and Wild Apricot has only one events manager. We do have a very talented group but there is still a bit of nervousness since events are unable to be compartmentalized by a user or a department. PayPal payments are collected into one bank account and have to be parsed out after receipt by registrant as to which account the funds need to be deposited. We would like to have payments tied to department accounts for each event and pass that info through PayPal to our Fiscal Department.

Pros

The primary driver was to find something that was intuitive to use. Our staff are all part time volunteers and needed to be able to use the software with minimal instructions from their homes. Wild Apricot provided this by making the import of data simple as well as creating a new Web site that had same look and feel of existing site. Also migrating the DNS was easy.

There are plenty of tutorial and FAQ pages to guide you along. Once you under stand the basic concept everything else becomes easy. Best part is being able to grant limited admin access to certain pages for updates and changes. Also by letting users update their own information we saved a lot of time updating Membership data. Creating Events proved very popular as well with Members now being to sign up on line and also remit payments. Integration with PayPal was easy as well.

The application packs enough features to make it much easier to manage the Swim Club without making it too complicated to use. Everything beforehand was Excel driven and therefore never synchronized or up to date.

I also like the mobile app a lot. Easy to take a look if new members signed up, paid or if member are delinquent without going online.

Cons

We have encountered some minor issues we wished were a little different but nothing to deter from the overall functionality. I think that would be the case with any software packages. So no major cons to report. We like the software. It is easy to use and has powerful reporting etc capabilities.

Pros

We are the oldest ski club in the USA, and run hundreds of events each year, including over 20 high-dollar flight trips. WA has excellent features for setting up and managing events. The membership management software is also first-rate.

Cons

WA recently implemented an in-house credit card processing feature. Soon afterwards they started charging a 20% processing surcharge for those who do NOT subscribe to their product. Their processing fees are higher than what we are paying with a very large merchant provider, so we don't want to switch. We are waiting for the "other shoe to drop" when WA will drop support for 3rd-party payment processors.

Pros

I manage the memberships for a club that has over 15 teams and 240 members, so it is not the easiest thing to manage. I went through a few different programs and Wild Apricot seems to be the best fit for the numerous needs the Club has! It is easy to track payments - overpaid balances and balance due, I can enter manual payments, add extra line items to keep track of fundraising credits, and easily email families or certain individuals from the software. There are workarounds for some of the limitations that the software has, which has been helpful.

Cons

There are a few issues that I have with this software: 1) it does not allow group invoicing so if I need to add an invoice to all members on one team, I have to go into each account and manually create; 2) it is not intuitive when it comes to families with 2 or more players, as it does not allow two different memberships to be linked to one account - I end up having to create a unique account for those families; 3) it does not allow partial payments. As with most membership sites, I have found the website portion to be somewhat clunky and limited, so I have the actual website on a different platform, which is unfortunate.

Pros

Easy, quick, and efficient transition over to Wild Apricot from other website types such as WordPress, Weebly, and other member platforms. Excellent for small to mid-size organizations to consolidate all needed features and tracking/reporting in one place.

Cons

The only weakness is the choice of new "themes" to help speed up a new website. You can certainly do almost anything you want with the templates... but the ready-made themes make it so much better (and easier). Just need to keep the sample themes up-to-date and competitive with WordPress... so the organizations are happy with the basic choices available when they are deciding to move to Wild Apricot.

Pros

Ease of use, functionality, and cost are all attractive to our small Associations.

Cons

The new email feature is AWFUL. Not being able to add an image within content (you actually have to build out different layouts just to accompany a picture - it's ridiculous) has been a huge area of discontent for our staff that used to use WA for email blasts and newsletters.

Believe it or not, it's easier to create in Constant Contact or Mailchimp and send out that way (and it looks better too).

Pros

Rich funtionality; ease of implementation; terrific customer support

Cons

Complexity of handling our multiple member "types" (but at least we can handle them!); complexity of analyzing financial data

Pros

Our goal was to maintain a constantly-updated website, but we were working thru a vendor who designed our old site from scratch and one needed to know html to do any updating. Our events calendar was constantly missing events and full of errors which were difficult to correct. WildApricot allowed us to assign people who were only slightly computer-savvy because no coding was needed. The site is incredibly intuitive and easy to use and takes only minutes a day for people to update. We can assign multiple administrators with different duties and everything doesn't need to go thru a webmaster who may or may not get around to meeting our needs. The site looks wonderful and the membership is responding very positively to its features.

Cons

There is almost nothing I don't like. I wish Safari was supported (and I hear they may be working on that) but it is not inconvenient to use FireFox and it's free, so that's just a very minor annoyance. I would like to see a little more flexibility in the forms-templates -- we had trouble getting the membership categories in the order we prefer on the screen, but all-in-all our experience has been trouble-free. There may be some people out there who will feel constrained by the available templates, but there are enough that our problem was more of which to choose, and I understand that even the templates are customizable (if you know how to code). The standard ones met our needs.

Pros

I will have to think on this one. I guess - the price BUT, you get what you pay for.

Cons

Web page builder is not intuitive, lack of new features, poor customer service, no response to any of the registration action items that have been requested for YEARS. I could go on for quite a long time. We have used it for four years now and our team has had enough. I sent an email to them and it took WEEKS for them to respond. They have never made ANY upgrades to the software that are noticeable to the users in the four years we have used the product. They focus all their time on creating content to tell me how to run my organization as opposed to improving their product. They recently sent out a survey requesting feedback which I provided. I told them all the things I am writing now. Their response? No feature improvements but they are raising their prices! We are moving on. Unless you are seriously strapped for money, look elsewhere.