WildApricot Erfahrungen

Great software at a great price

Kommentare: Knowing that membership renewals and invoices and event reminders are automated means I can focus on what matters most, member engagement and retention.

Vorteile:

I'm a part time Executive Director of a membership organization. Before Wild Apricot a lot of my time was spent on billing and administration and event registration. Wild Apricot does all of that for me, so all I have to do is address specific questions or issues.

Nachteile:

The email functionality is not great. That is literally my ONLY complaint about the software.

An Out of the Box Solution for Membership Management

Kommentare: Other than the issues described above with the payment gateway, we have been extremely pleased with our Wild Apricot experience.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Not Customer Friendly

Kommentare: Our non-profit has approximately 1500 members we are managing and this was our first attempt at using a membership management tool. The implementation went well and our first year was generally positive. The features they offer are functional but pale in comparison to standalone services. For example the newsletter tool is extremely limited compared to our previous service, MailChimp, to the point where we are considering going back to MailChimp. After the company switched owners recently, the customer service quality has dropped dramatically. A recent forced change of payment systems resulted in our members' automatic subscriptions being canceled without warning, which was not expected or documented. We tried to engage customer support prior to the change but they were not helpful at all. This will likely result in a loss of members and thus income.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Deployment was our biggest fear, but it was a breeze

Kommentare: 80% of the deployment took a single 8 hour day. The rest of the transition took a week. And now we are on to implementing functions we never offered before like on-line payments and on-line event registrations. I was expecting this to take months of running systems in parallel for a club our size.

Vorteile:

Having an integrated system with a single member database. If a member email address changes we don't have to update the bulk email system and the member roster -- the member can do it themself.

Nachteile:

The fear factor in deploying this kept us from doing it sooner. It is a big package that has so many functions.

Wild Apricot, is it good for membership website builder?

Kommentare: Overall, the Membership Database is good, Event emails can be automated to send to registrants and managing the membership is good but there are some serious lacking features that need to be addressed by WA otherwise customers are not going to be satisfied by the $1670 (AUD) just on the system that can feel very broken. If WA could either do a large update on the Builder and start working on integration for Xero and other large Accounting packages so that it provides a simple integration instead of just having the one.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Expensive Means of Driving Yourself Nuts

Kommentare: Wild Apricot is difficult to use, to the point where one membership coordinator refused to use it and another is bravely struggling through, but it's been hard. Newsletters are clunky to put together and never come out looking quite like they looked in preview mode. Duplicated members are hard to find. Overall the system is unintuitive and difficult to use.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

A Sinking Ship

Kommentare: I have been a long time client of WA (7 years), but we are unlikely to renew. 3 years they ago they had a 40% price increase, but they allowed you to renew for up to 2 years at the previous rate. That increase was somewhat understandable because they had not raised fees for the previous 4 years we were clients. 2 years later they had another 40% increase but did not offer the same renewal. Neither increase coincided with major functional additions other than normal enhancements to existing functions. Today they announced a new 20% penalty if you don't switch to their payment processing system (US/Canada only). We have no intention to switch from PayPal so this was the last straw. We will be looking for an alternate option. They were acquired by a larger company and subsequently and equity firm. These increases are obviously cash grabs from current clients without considering the impact to the organizations. My suspicion is the company has a major cash flow issue and this is a way to get money now. I would be very leary of the stability of the company as they will lose many clients over this. This is really unfortunate because their tool is excellent!

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Wild Apricot is an easy-to-manage membership management software.

Kommentare: membership management

Vorteile:

Setting up event registration is a breeze. Annual membership dues invoicing is also easily handled by this software.

Nachteile:

You have to archive inacive members or they will continue to receive the registration notifications.

Best platform for membership sites

Kommentare: We use Wild Apricot on several of our membership-based organizations. Very helpful with membership management, event billing, and event management.

Vorteile:

Ease of recurring payments Easy membership management Great for event planning and management

Nachteile:

Customer service can be difficult to deal with Wish software had more customization features

Great option for Event Registration Management

Vorteile:

I had a charity 5K that I volunteered to help manage and intended on tracking all of the signups manually. I really wasn't looking forward to it. One of my friends recommended Wild Apricot as an option so I checked it out with their free trial. It was tremendously simple to use and juggle all of the event information in one place. There were still a few manual offline items to keep track of, but Wild Apricot was so much better! The ability to check in folks from my Galaxy phone was a Godsend, too.

Nachteile:

I was lucky enough to take care of everything I needed within their free trial period, but I'd be happy to pay for their software if I ever had use of it again. I wish there were free options for non-profits, but that only applies for smaller users. Great software overall, though.

Good Product for Non-Profit Management

Kommentare: The selection of Wild Apricot has allowed a small non-profit working with a hodge-podge of cobbled together "free" solutions to move into the 21st century. Volunteers and board members can work from a unified database rather than multiple, out-of-sync, task-specific spreadsheets. Tasks can be distributed without dis-integrating this data. Web site integration and payment processing allow members, donors and event participants to interact with the organization online, rather than the previous limitation to paper forms and checks. Implementation was straight-forward, if not exactly "simple". Years of old and inconsistent data always complicate a migration. The choice to integrate with the organization's existing WordPress web site rather than fully implement Wild Apricot's built-in CMS also provided some challenges. Support was mostly timely and helpful during the migration and implementation phases.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Complete, Logical, Reliable, and Quick

Kommentare: Wild Apricot is one of four web-based systems we use, the others being Quickbooks for accounting, Brivo for physical access control of gates and doors, and Online Exam Builder. Each fulfills a specific role, with very little overlap, but without Wild Apricot at the center life would be much more complicated.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Wild Apricot has everything a non-profit needs

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Great product but not for everybody

Kommentare: Biggest impact has been the reduction in paper processing for membership applications and renewals, and for tracking event registrations and financial results.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Great Service, no hidden costs and love the database

Kommentare: Have been with 3 other companies who promised great things for membership-based software and under-delivered. WA's response time for customer service is faster than any of the other 3. Sometimes takes several tries, but with stay with it and the issue is usually solved. Rather than promising many items before the contract is signed, then revealing that you get rudimentary versions and have to pay for the more robust item that you really need, WA is up front with what you get. They accurately answer questions about this type of issue before you sign on with them. They also have a free version limited to a small number of members, which can let you try everything before you totally commit to a fee-based version for a larger organization with more members. The database is faster than any other we have used. They allow a LOT of fields rather than limiting you to an extra 10 or 29 beyond the basic ones needed for a members-only database. As a result we have been able, for the first time, to keep track online of members, contacts, past members, exhibitors, donors, etc., all online without the need for separate offline databases for some of them. With other companies the limited fields means we could do a lot with members records, but could not adequately add or change anything enough to keep track of advertisers, sponsors, exhibitors for our conference, and had problems with trying to identify prospects for members or to track those who dropped their membership. There are a few areas that still are lacking. We currently use Joomla for content management, and find the Joomla templates, content categorizing, and methods of limiting access to be more useful than WA. There needs to be at least one responsive template, since a large number of our members have become more dependent on tablets and phones for their internet content. The report system gives a nice online report, but results are not printable and when downloaded, give you a spreadsheet including every single field in each record rather than the single items you were looking for in the report. WA makes upgrades about twice a year, usually incorporating the most requested improvements. They also make other smaller upgrades in between the main ones. If you can't wait, tweaks are available for a fee through a third party which is familiar with the WA environment. They are the only organization out there who makes me feel that they really DO care about what a non-profit organization might want.

Bringing our rowing club into the 21st century!

Kommentare: I was asked to "freshen up" the appearance of our club's static HTML website. I conducted user interviews, during which a lengthy list of wished-for functionality emerged, way beyond the site's appearance. The Board and our members wanted an online implementation for the following: up-to-date member directory; a wide range of membership "types" (scullers, sweep rowers, coxes, paddlers, kayakers, dragon boaters...); automated processing of membership applications and renewals; credit card payments; event scheduling; calendaring; email blasts; donations; and on and on. My research into available options within our limited budget yielded one clear winner: WildApricot. The Board agreed, I ported (and freshened up) the existing website content, and implemented all those requested features. The process was easy and straightforward. The WildApricot online help system is terrific, and the technical assistance is always timely and spot on. We have been using WildApricot for about five years now, and it continues to serve us very well.

Vorteile:

Rich funtionality; ease of implementation; terrific customer support

Nachteile:

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

Don't expect improvements.

Vorteile:

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

Nachteile:

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.

An inexpensive, easy-to-use, ever-growing association/member management software solution

Kommentare: I have used other software to manage our association's membership, and Wild Apricot is far ahead of the curve as far as functionality, customization, and ease of use. But probably the best feature is Wild Apricot's team of wonderful customer-focused developers and support personnel who respond quickly, efficiently, and reliably to all support requests...at no extra charge!

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

I have been with Wild Apricot for 2 years now, all I can say is THANK YOU!

Kommentare: As a small non-profit and an all volunteer board, we do not have the capability to run our membership sign ups and training registrations, by hand. We now have automated payments, registrations, renewals and are able to communicate in an instant with our membership. It is also very nice to have all of this with a user-friendly website in one place!

Vorteile:

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!

Nachteile:

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.

Was great. Now terrible.

Kommentare: Stay away! This company is falling apart. See cons comments.

Vorteile:

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

Nachteile:

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.

Good prior to December takeover by new management

Kommentare: Do not be fooled by the old positive reviews. In the past the software was great when it was a young, vibrant, independent company full of people who had a passion of helping non-profits. With the acquisition by Personify, and then the buyout of Personify by a private equity firm in December 2018 things have drastically changed quickly. The most recent change to force a 20% price increase on users was met with extreme frustration by the user base, but yet fell on deaf ears of the new management team. Buyer beware that what you buy into will not be what you have in the future.

Vorteile:

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

Nachteile:

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.

Everyone professes to be the best, while Wild Apricot is supreme of all the rest

Kommentare: Efficiency times a 1,000 plus effectiveness times 1,000

Vorteile:

The primary focus is tracking members and personalizing them. This is made possible with the back end user field creation. It is simple, user friendly and improves strategies on what to create, track and respond to the member with less man hours to use, that promotes huge cost savings when you achieve more with less using the full functionality and power of the the backend

Nachteile:

Two things, admin access has improved, but no option exist to disallow exporting members. This is a crucial consideration to manage and control member data. If a switch can be added where exporting is an option that would be great. Second is the forum or blog needs an option to screen a post prior to making it public.

Wild Apricot is Outstanding!

Kommentare: My overall experience has been excellent, and I have used it for another nonprofit and recommended it to a third who adopted it, and all have been more than satisfied with the product and service.

Vorteile:

The database and event management tools are excellent, and the website construction is very good as well. I pretty much love just about everything about the software.

Nachteile:

While the software makes it easy to create, maintain, and update the website, there are limitations when compared to other platforms for site creation, but that is the trade-off for getting everything packaged together, and I have been able to do everything I needed to do. On the back end, sometimes things can be a little idiosyncratic or unclear, but the important thing is that whenever I haven't been able to figure out how to do something, the online help guide has made it easy to find the answer, and when I needed to talk to someone, the live chat and phone service has been absolutely outstanding.

Great for Chamber of Commerce/NonProfits with Membership Base

Kommentare: Great for an organization on a tight-budget looking for an all-in-one database for membership management.

Vorteile:

Supports organizations with a few members up to 15,000 (large size range); template-based website design gives the user numerous options. Great customer support/help videos. Perfect for storing information on members, communication and billing of dues. Easy to import spreadsheets. On a tight budget, this is a great all-in-one tool. Minimizes the use of error-prone excel sheets and runs great reports.

Nachteile:

The user interface is a little bit dated and can be confusing. Does not integrate with social media. There are some other membership software that are a little bit more modern.

Not for Business to Business based Membership

Kommentare: As WA is so difficult to use, we only use it as a place to store contacts and financial transactions. Getting any more data out of it is more troble than it's worth.

Vorteile:

It seems like it would work well for organizations where individuals are the members. It was cloud based making it easy to access from anywhere.

Nachteile:

We are a membership organization where businesses are our members. Wild Apricot is set up to support individual membership. Linking individuals to their member companies is a headache and has caused all of our staff to revert back to managing all of our data in spreadsheets. There is little to no support online and it is extreamely difficult to learn to use.