Registration System Review

Overall, the experience with YourMembership is a little frustrating and difficult. The registration is very confusing to set-up and not straight forward. There are good features to it but I think it's more confusing than it needs to be.

Pros

It's nicer looking for the attendees when they are registering for the conference than the system we had before. I like that the Attendee Types make it look cleaner and that you can attach different sessions and tickets to each attendee type if you want to instead of it being the same for each one.

Cons

1. There is no "back-end" to the registration system. I see exactly what the attendee sees when they register. This isn't the worst but there are many issues that could be solved if there was a back-end where the admin saw things the attendees couldn't and could change things the attendees can't change. For example:
1a. I'm unable to make Attendee Types and tickets that are hidden at attendees. For example, I register individuals such as Speakers, Exhibitors, VIP, Press, etc. for them - they don't register themselves. There is no way in your system to set up an Attendee Type and a ticket for each of those registration types and have it hidden from the attendees but available to me.
1b. I'm unable to change the cost of a ticket or session when I'm checking out (speaking strictly admin here). I would need to create a whole new ticket or session with the new price if I wanted to edit the price of an item for one individual.
2. I order of the attendee types is numerical. We should be able to choose whichever order we want them in (drag and drop). Same with the Tickets.
3. It's weird you have to go into Ecommerce to delete a ticket and can't do it in the event you created it in.
4. You should be able to make space changes in the Registration Form. The area of the left hand side is too narrow and the questions are too close to one another (top to bottom).

Big product and big value

Yourmembership as a product solves the needs we have as an organization. They have great customer service and are always willing to go the extra mile to keep valued clients. I look at it as a two way relationship, we are good to YM so they are good to us. People in leadership, are the kinds of staff members they need to keep around and find a way to clone. We have never had a bad experience that he or others on the YM team couldn't solve.

Pros

It's literally an all in one platform, I can do ANYTHING with Yourmembership for my organization. This kind of robust product doesn't come with a robust price tag it's price fairly and affordably.

Another upside, is we can have a beautifully designed website thats mobile responsive and its all a part of the yourmembership product. This eliminate the need to have to find a contractor to build us a wordpress site.

Cons

There are some things in the backend/product that could still use updating but I know it's something that the YM team has told me they are planning in their roadmaps for the future. (Groups, forums, and blogs)

YM for the Win

There are a great many things that I really appreciate about the YourMembership platform. There are a ton of features at your fingertips that can benefit your association that you probably hadn't thought of or previously hadn't had the ability to facilitate. Career Centers and integrated Blog and Forum platforms to Merchant Services and Event Management all residing in one space make it hard to argue that you were doing it all just as well before. I'm not exactly an novice to website design and appreciate coding without a WYSIWYG editor, (What You See Is What You Get) but the ease of use for someone who has had limited exposure to website administration should be able to get the hang of things pretty quickly. On the downside, YourMembership is a newer platform and still has some wrinkles. The team over there is definitely working to iron them out, but every once in a while you'll hit on something that hasn't been addressed before and there isn't currently a fix for it. Going into it though, you should probably expect that from a platform that is designed to be everything for everyone. Everyone has certain ways they like to do things or ideas on how things should be done, and at times, the YM platform has its own ideas and ways that you then have to adapt to accommodate. So in conclusion, YourMembership has been a wonderful experience so far. We're an Association Management Company and handle multiple organizations so we have thrown all sorts of problems at YourMembership, and they've fielded all but the most finicky with relative ease and minimal cost. The individuals that I've interacted with have all been attentive, friendly and eager to help out. All that and they are constantly evolving with new feature pushes, better solutions for common problems and frequent fixes that keep everything feeling fresh and a bit exciting (that sounds lame and nerdy, but when a cool new feature comes out, I have a tendency to check it out right away). From switching between no less than 4 CMS platforms, 3 event management tools, and 3 Merchant Solutions providers to get things done, to only having to fiddle in YourMembership has been a huge sigh of relief. YourMembership has been good to us so far and I'd recommend giving it a go without hesitation.

Initially very frustrating and painful, the set up didn't feel intuitive, and confusing.

Everything is under one platform.

Pros

I like that key features and functionality are under one platform. And that you can set up pages to edit from both the front and back end of the website.

Cons

Some of the functionality seems outdated (ex. unable to attach documents when sending a group email within a specific group). I think YM is set up to best manage member records when created in YM. Importing a detailed member database as I have to do is not easy in YM. Based on my past experience, deleting a group is beyond tedious and difficult. The member search function is sometimes quirky (ex. the member included their middle name initial, but you didn't include in the search, you get "record not found"). There are some features that are located in places that are not intuitive (ex. group management is under Website/Social but you first have to go to Features.

Great All-In-One Option

We have had a great experience thus far with YM! If we needed help getting something set up or corrected, we are able to contact support and receive almost immediate assistance. The ability to collect membership dues, event registration payments, provide an informative website, manage membership records, etc. all in one place is great and it's easy to use.

Pros

I like that everything we do is in one spot! We are able to manage our website, database and memberships, as well as events all with YM. I also have found it quite user friendly which is nice when I do not have much time to devote to figuring out how it works.

Cons

I wish it were a little easier to see our membership numbers but we have more than one organization represented in our database so I'm not sure if that's possible and I have not had the time to talk through with YM what our possibilities are with finding a solution to something like that.

Adequate with plenty of room for improvement. Slow support;

This is the third membership platform we've set up for the same client. All have strengths and glaring weaknesses and YM is no exception. The reliability of mail delivery is questionable, and the content management system is in need of a significant overhaul. As a power user, YM makes it difficult and troublesome to suggest improvements; technical support often takes days for a response. It manages members well — but all the other things that are important for engaging and communicating with members, such as events, email, and content are clunky and weak. In my opnion, the platform is not living up to its potential.

Pros

Attempts to be an all-in-one platform.
Integrated "content management system" (with limitations)
Strong support for one-to-many membership model (Main representative and sub-accounts)

Cons

Lack of support for conferences.
Rudimentary content management; editor is basic with limited functionality and confusing media manager/content editing
Too much upselling and not enough improvement occurring where it matters
YM oversells features that simply don't deliver on promises
Email editor lacks support for easy-to-create email templates and readable email
Confusing admin area. Organizational structure is confusing at best.
Antiquated URL structure for content pages
Very weak support for metatags and SEO
Forums are not useful

Yin/Yang experience

The migration to YourMembership was tied to YM's acquisition of previous AMS. Customer service/support at YM was non-existent 5 years ago; reps hid behind their computers, responded only by email, referred everyone to online videos/resources and never talked to anyone. This did improve for a while, but in the last 12 months as taken a huge step backwards. We are hopeful that this will change in the immediate future.

Pros

CMS for website. Overall Association Management System integration of website, online database, and ecommerce/event management platform.

Cons

Lack of a dynamic survey module (need Survey Monkey or Formsite features); limited flexibility and customization of member profile fields (member type-driven default settings instead of member-select options.)

Great value & Awesome Support

Our experience with YourMembership has been fantastic, we have had it for more than 5 years and have grown along with the software. The support team is great, they don't make us feel ignorant. They keep us informed of new rollouts and enhancements and they understand associations.

Pros

This software allows us to manage our non-profit association and keep track of our members, our webinars, events and manage our billing. Customer support is fantastic, they helped us add a credit card processor to make it easier for our members to pay and help us customize what we need so it makes sense for our community.

Cons

I would love to have a more robust email marketing and CRM platform

Do your homework...YM is not a turnkey solution for all organizations, lousy customer service.

Pros

Software has some interesting features, but not all were useful to our organization. Best pro: it's very easy to maintain a decent looking public facing website. Email marketing tools are excellent.

Cons

After the initial six-week set up, we were pretty much left to the wolves. We hired one of their recommended consultants to help us prepare our database for implementation to the system, but our dues schedule was too complex to be completely integrated, so we were forced to maintain two databases (one for membership services and communications, and the other for financials -- not an ideal setup, to say the least, but we were too far in to quit). Due to the difficulty for obtaining quick support solutions, our staff never fully bought in. Dealing with YM's customer support was always was hit or miss -- it really depends on your issue and which YM support member you reach. This isn't easy to control. To obtain support, you must create a ticket, which is prioritized by the company's support team , who then answers in order and/or importance. Answers to questions can take 48 hours, which is frustrating. The upshot for our organization is that we ditched YM after 3 years. On top of all that, the cancellation process was a bit murky as well, and we were even charged several months after we moved on to another AMS. Some of the blame for that was on us, but YM certainly didn't help clear the waters with the cancellation process. Overall, I can not recommend this software provider.

Great Membership Software

I've been using it for seven years now and it is a great product, very flexible, lots of great features.

Pros

I love it because it has capabilities for managing membership types, dues, events, groups, communications. The look and feel is great and it's pretty intuitive. The ability to sell merchandise and event tickets is really helpful and I can create a CRM of non-member types is really helpful too. Terrific tech support, when I call, they help me. That is HUGE.

Cons

I can't think of anything it won't do for me, it's just what i need to manage my members.

Great Product for Associations & Societies

Pros

Their implantation team is great to work with and streamlined the big endeavor. Their response time with their customer support team has vastly improved and they are very responsive. We are an AMC and have both trade associations and societies onboarded with YM. They always find a way to work with the organization to find solutions for each organization's needs.

Cons

There isn't much customization you can do, but if you need something that they don't offer, there is usually a workaround that can be done.