Wild Apricot

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.

Kommentare: I began using WA in 2011 for a non-profit managing 90 volunteers and various events and fundraisers. Since then, I have created WA accounts for 3 other non-profits of similar size AND, as of 2017, also created a WA software account to manage my professional association of 1,000 members with great success. I am a huge advocate for Wild Apricot software and how is can effectively manage members/volunteers and manage events/fundraisers/conferences while being a user-friendly, professional platform to market my organizations.

Vorteile: 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.

Nachteile: 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.

Kommentare: We use Wild Apricot to bring new members on board and to renew annual memberships, both of which are the primary revenue sources for a large non-profit like ours. We operate these processes with two employees who work with Wild Apricot on a part-time basis, and two volunteers who also work on a part-time basis. We studied the software (through "on the job training") and then designed and documented processes around the capabilities of the software.

Vorteile: Completeness: We use the Contacts, Events, Members, Finances, and Email modules extensively. Functionality for membership renewal and implementing a new member acceptance process are quite complete. The ability to manage hundreds of event registrations across dozens of events saves a huge amount of manual labor. Having a reasonably good member portal allows us to shift the burdens of contact maintenance and event registration to the members. They create their profile when they register to apply for membership and maintain it thereafter. If they want to register for an event or training, they do so online (only). We communicate with over 90% of our members exclusively by email, which is very efficient.

Nachteile: The enhancement request and fulfillment process could be improved, but that's more of a management than a software issue. It feels like we drop a request into the hopper and never see a connection to a software release, although I'm sure some of them get through. I have no idea where our requests stand, and don't know how to find out.

Kommentare: It is functional and works, but has a lot of room for improvement--especially with the increase in cost.

Vorteile: 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.

Nachteile: 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.

Kommentare: Wild Apricot has been an awesome tool for us. No complaints at all. I have only contacted Support a few times for special requests and they have been responsive and very good about answering any/all questions.

Vorteile: I have implemented Wild Apricot for over 20 organizations so far... and was involved in the decision to go with them by comparing to the many other membership website tools out there. In each organization, Wild Apricot always won out. The best part is, Wild Apricot provides for a nice website and all needed integrated features/tools to run a membership organization. Member management, auto-renewals, newsletters, events and management/payments for events, product sales, reporting, and much more.

Nachteile: About the only con I have heard from clients... is the cost increases that have happened over the past few years. When you consider all the features and how well Wild Apricot does things... it is not that expensive. I often show clients how if they had all the tools and features in separate services it would be much greater than the Wild Apricot price.