WildApricot

Avantages

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 🤣

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

they promoted ease of use, quality of support, ease of launching and transferring data from last provider. None of those were accurate.

Inconvénients

ease of use, technical support, transfer of data, general user interface

Avantages

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!

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

Member management and communications is good.Event management is good.Support is good.

Inconvénients

Financial management needs work - only shows income not expenditure so no P&L view.Some permissions for admins need to be more fine-grained (e.g. FOH in event management with the app.)The contact-based pricing hurts organisations like us... the value is in our 300 members, the cost is in our 1000 other contacts.

Avantages

When we first got the system, it was very comprehensive. We were able to get a trial to set up everything before we went live

Inconvénients

There are two different mail systems/clients. Very fractured. Support is non-existent. There has been zero product improvement, in spite of multiple large price increases.

Avantages

One of the things I liked most about Wild Apricot was its user-friendly interface and ease of use. Navigating through the platform and accessing its features was intuitive, making it simple to manage and maintain membership-based organizations. The ability to customize the website and membership portal was a standout feature, allowing for seamless branding and personalization. The event management module was comprehensive and made organizing and tracking events a breeze. Additionally, the integrated email marketing and communication tools were effective in engaging with members.

Inconvénients

While Wild Apricot had many positive aspects, one thing I liked least was the limited flexibility in customizing certain aspects of the platform. There were some design limitations, and advanced customization options required technical expertise or assistance from support. Additionally, the reporting capabilities, while adequate for basic needs, could have been more robust with additional analytics and data visualization options. It would have been beneficial to have more flexibility in tailoring the platform to meet specific organizational requirements.

Avantages

Event management and the updated email formatting

Inconvénients

Price rise in 2022 is not commensurate with the level of improvements and the lack of support from human beings

Avantages

I like the fact that the software includes a membership area and an event area. Members are already contacts within the system, so they find it easy to register for conferences. We're also able to send emails to all contacts or to just our members.

Inconvénients

I'd like to see a way to set up sessions and a conference schedule in the system with each session having a QR code in order to keep up with session attendance.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

It's flexibility and simplicity. You don't need a degree to use it, it can be learned by almost anyone.

Inconvénients

Not enough features on using the App, compared to the website. For example, we have a carpool page on the website but unable to see it on the app.

Avantages

Comprehensive membership management and membership data.

Inconvénients

no customer service. I am locked out of our web site and WA does nopt answer.

Avantages

Wild Apricot is a fully featured membership platform covering both the back office administration as well as member-facing website/portal. It would be a solid choice for an organisation that is willing to fully adopt the "Wild Apricot way", i.e. working in the way the system works rather than trying to do anything unique.

Inconvénients

Wild Apricot is from North America. This means many of the settings are geared towards organisations based in the US/Canada. Customers elsewhere (e.g. UK) may find certain important features don't exist, or are slow to be offered. Examples would be Gift Aid on donations and BACS Direct Debit.

Avantages

Fairly easy to use. It was relatively easy to move over our existing member data base and website.

Inconvénients

Technical support is available only by chat and email, and not nights or weekends. System is inflexible in a number of areas, particularly with event management. Reports are few and not useful. Admin UI clumsy in places. Once we added some event reporting using the API, we were able to make it work for our organization. Polishing in response to user requests would help, but feature development and enhancement are no longer happening.

Avantages

The customer support was good as its live chat and email. It facilitated a members only database. There is a mobile app and supports mobile payments.

Inconvénients

It links with Wordpress but has limited other integrations. Does not have advanced social media intergrations.

Avantages

Great for membership management. Simple and easy to use. Great for email communication and scheduling with members. I like the events feature.

Inconvénients

Customer support needs help. Still learning the software so will report later if more comes up.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

We migrated over 14 different nonprofit organizations to Wild Apricot based on ease of use and a fully integrated online member management system WITH website builder, and all for an affordable fee. Wild Apricot handles "day to day operations" so you can focus on strategic initiative. One system has it all - contacts, members, events, finances, communications, and website builder!

Inconvénients

Wild Apricot needs to update the format of the event announcements.

Avantages

The different modules are pretty easy to use and generally are quite reliable.

Inconvénients

It is difficult to format email blasts and web pages sometimes; there are more options we would love to see such as a calendar of upcoming scheduled emails.

Avantages

All of it it’s so useful for our organization, and every part of it is really helpful.

Inconvénients

Setting it up. Could have used three months of daily health. We almost gave up. HTML and code or not something the average person knows and this was just exhausting.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.