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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With Wild Apricot's assistance, we are able to easily add new events and maintain our website current with our ever-evolving needs. In addition to keeping tabs on emails and contacts. All of the personnel and volunteers of the several non-profit trade associations we oversee are constantly busy. Making a living in this industry is exciting and challenging, and there is never a dull moment.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

membership management

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The website walks you through the types of documents you need for the membership, so they not only provide a home but also the documents to lay out your home. It is something I havent seen elsewhere. They want to make sure that you are doing what you need to do in order to serve to the best of your ability and I really appreciate that.

With all that the website does for the users (paid and non-paid), it makes sense that the website can look a little clunky. Things are fairly organized but feel a bit clunky.

Wild Apricot is the best thing that works for our association. We have used the platform for multiple associations in the past and from day one to now, it is the best solution out there for our organization at a price that includes great 'self-help' information and multiple choices when support from WA is needed.

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.

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.

Prior to using Wild Apricot, we had a custom-built CRM and Website with a separate payment system for events. We wanted to change the look and feel of our website but it would have been expensive to have a company rebuild it. We switched to Wild Apricot and have since had two website refreshes using different templates. Prior to WA there was a lot of backend reconciling of events, payments, etc which only our [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was able to do. Now WA takes care of it all seamlessly which means we don't have to rely on the knowledge of one person to keep everything working.

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

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.

Our component school district staff members and members of the public who register for programs understand intuitively how to register for our programs. The function most used by staff is the Excel download. Staff are able to easily sort and filter data to invoice schools and other agencies for multiple registrants through our agency finance system as required by law rather than through Wild Apricot's invoicing system. Our Wild Apricot website was once very robust. We have been able to simplify it while using the same template so the site is easier to use and looks much more like our agency site making the flow from one site to another nearly seamless.

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.

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.

Wild Apricot worked for our organization for quite some time, however the features were not robust enough to grow with our organization.

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.

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.

I have participated in moving 20 organizations over to Wild Apricot and use it daily for administrative purposes. It is an awesome platform and would not recommend another to anyone. Hoping they can keep this excellent service going for a very long time. Also, the support team and responsiveness has always been great!

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Our implementation of Wild Apricot was very positive as our lists and fields easily transferred into Wild Apricot. Setting the membership levels was a challenge as we discovered that our different payment options created separate membership levels. If we could have simply set up four levels with different payment options it would be much simpler for our members. Wild Apricot support has been fantastic. Allowing our members to update their information and having members input their own information upon joining for the first time has saved us hours of manual put (both initially and going back to correct errors). One of the drawbacks of Wild Apricot for us is the inability to set up specific payment plans, while it is possible to set up recurring payments we must track the number of payments and turn off the renewal date once the required payment has been reached. Bundle memberships has also been a bit of a challenge as all the payment is required in order to set up the membership. We have created a way around by entering partial payments as a different membership level and moving them into the bundle membership once the required payment is accumulated. The inability to receive regrets for events has also been a bit of a drawback. Performing searches in Wild Apricot is one of it's strongest features. Searches may be saved and used for future needs. It is possible to search by every field that has been set up. Event are also easy to set up and track. The integration with our financial partner and square has also been very possible. Although, the integration with Square seems to be in the initial stages and not fully integrated with Wild Apricot.

Searches, ability to edit fields and event creation and tracking.

No ability to set up specific payment plans (i.e. 5 payments, 4 payments). No option to send regrets for an event.

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.

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

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.

Horrible. Awful. After four years, NEVER AGAIN.

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.

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.

This has streamed lined our membership and management there too. I love this website provider. They answer the phone all the time and work for solutions. Yes, there are a few things I would like changed but overall it saved our small organization. We are a nonprofit made up of only volunteers (no full time employees). Thank you for your comment to this software. Check our website out; we are a group of Artist with over 200 members and growing. Our people are starting to use their members photos so it is exciting. Take Care

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.

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.