WildApricot

Friendly Website Design and Membership Management System

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Cost Effective Website and Database

Comments: Overall Wild Apricot is a great tool for associations and/or others who need to process dues payments, event registrations and keep up with your clients.

Pros:

Wild Apricot makes it easy to process registrations for events, dues payments and store purchases in addition to being a website. It is very easy to use. There are user groups that you can join to get help from other users. Also, it is very easy to create a manual invoice for things that I might need a product for or a registration. There is also an app for administrators which is super convenient when to try to look up open invoices, etc. when away from the office.

Cons:

There are several features that should be available that are not. First and foremost there should be the availability within in the software to create a pdf and email it to contacts. The store does not appear to be integrated with the mail database and there are not a lot of reports. When I have orders from my store I have to constantly watch for duplicates. There is also not an email report to run that will search for possible duplicates in the system.

Not the Biggest Fan of Wild Apricot

Comments: Frustrating, not intuitive, difficult to use.

Pros:

It has lots of great features like the forums and all the different letters you can generate and set up dates to have them automatically sent out. It’s also great for setting up events and then attaching all the reminders. It’s just all very difficult to do though.

Cons:

It’s not intuitive and very difficult to work with.

Best solution for small to medium sized associations

Comments: WildApricot is an excellent solution for managing association memberships and websites. The solution includes basic eCommerce and the ability to build a website with the Wild Apricot CMS - you can also connect easily to other website tools. Members love the easy of managing their own profiles and the other features for member communications.

Pros:

Easy of use, ability to customize the member database easily and the integrated content management system for a professional website.

Cons:

The software does not allow you to determine the membership ID within he system. This creates a challenge for any organization that already has a member number schema.

OCEY President

Comments: Converted our website in 2010 from a regular static to Wild Apricot. All of our users quickly adapted to using it. The features of WA allowed us to keep the club running smoothly during the pandemic. Utilizing all WA features has been a contributing factor to our growth.

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

Wild Apricot is great for non-profit membership, event and website management

Comments: It is easy to use if you are tech savvy. If you are not tech savvy, it can be overwhelming. There are tutorials and videos available and many of those are helpful.

Pros:

That it is an one-stop-shop for all things membership & event & website management. Plus, it has all the Finance features, fantastic reporting, and Paypal integration.

Cons:

No way to identify Duplications in the Contact List. We have to manually figure out which contacts to MERGE.

Amazing Website Platform

Comments: I love WildApricot and highly encourage businesses to consider as a viable website product!

Pros:

I loved how easy it is to create and maintain our website, host events, manage payments. I was in charge of the migration to WildApricot and it was a breeze

Cons:

Sometimes the format options for designing webpages and emails could be a little clunky.

Wild Apricot for Non-Profits

Pros:

The best thing is that it is an all-in-one software. So with the backend management system you have a web-site sitting on top of it. It makes everything super simple for us to only have to use one main software.

Cons:

Honestly, nothing. It does take a bit of time to figure it all out and their are limitations of it in terms of website design. But from what you pay for it is a solid software.

No major surprises - works as advertised.

Comments: Our society and its business processes and information management had grown without design, ending up a spreadsheet-driven beast with disjoint systems.Wild Apricot has allowed us to bring that all together with a single system, with clear business rules and a simple web user interface for admins and members.Yes there are bugs and limitations but no show stoppers for us.

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

No customer service

Pros:

Comprehensive membership management and membership data.

Cons:

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

This software has lots of features in addition to membership management

Pros:

This software is a one-stop shop for membership management. It also manages your website, event management, payments, subscriptions, members only content, and more!

Cons:

It has a learning curve for setting up, configuration, and for daily administration of the software.

A Dying Platform - Beware!

Comments: WA is a dying platform. Once there was a stream of new features and improvements. Now there is only a stream of price increases. When we adopted WA in 2015, there was a published development roadmap and robust interaction between development team and users. When Personify acquired WA in 2017 that turned around. Development ground to a halt, technical support has been cut back to chat and email during working hours only, and there are significant prices increases every two or three years.

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

AUTOMATIC ASSISTANT

Comments: MUST use system for all non-profits!

Pros:

Time saver, gives back valuable man-hours to service the program cause

Cons:

Limited to the users creativity.

Overall satisfied

Pros:

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

Cons:

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

Math Teachers Uses Wild Apricot

Comments: We have found that using Wild Apricot has simplified our membership and database system.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

The good and the not so good about WA

Comments: We switched 400 contacts to WA in 2012 and we now consistently bump up against the 2000 contact level, above which we are not prepared to go because of the large annual fee increase

Pros:

Event management and the updated email formatting

Cons:

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

Good Product for Non-Profit Management

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Excellent Management System for All My Needs

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Wild Apricot

Comments: Set up was frustrating …and use is fantastic

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

Wild Apricot is perfect for recreational clubs

Comments: I would definitely recommend Wild Apricot for any organization with a membership and events that require registration. They manage this amazingly well!!. I love the fact that it is so easy for both admins and users to use. Most of my admins and membership are not technical so this is important to us. It's easy to enable blogs, forums, and photo galleries to create community pages -- somewhere that members can connect to the club and each other.

Pros:

We are a recreational tennis club with 70 members. I created a great website with a customized membership application form in just one day with no coding required. Within a week, we were live, with online applications and online event registration for tennis tournaments and even electronic payment. I have ALL contact information plus player rankings available when it is time to do the draw; it is so much easier than taking paper entry forms which are not filled out completely or legibly. Thanks to customized event registration forms, I can solicit volunteers at the time that they register. No more calling people at their homes trying to find someone to help!!! I appreciate the security measures too -- I am able to provide club newsletters and photo galleries to club members only. My membership is very pleased with the functionality and everyone says that the club feels more connected this year. The Wild Apricot support team has been responsive to all questions and problems.

Cons:

The finance side of Wild Apricot is a little weak as their reports do not take into account the finance fees that Google Checkout and PayPal deduct. And you can't modify the numbers manually to reflect actual amount received, either due to finance fees or if someone sent in a partial payment. They are aware of these issues and are working on them. The other enhancement request that we have is to have users be able to see who else is signed up for tournaments. That's because we are a social organization and because we make use of changing volunteers to help with every event. Wild Apricot is working on this but it was not an early priority because professional organizations that were hosting seminars, for example, had no need for participants to see who else was attending and did not necessarily use any volunteers.

Great product but not for everybody

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Moved to a different software

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Don't expect improvements.

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

Gave us control of our web-presence (finally!)

Comments: I like this product so much, after setting-up the site for AGO-Milwaukee, I convinced my church to switch from the service supported by our Denomination to WildApricot and it's much easier to use. We're just getting started, but already our site is far better at serving our needs. I would highly recommend WildApricot for any small to medium organization which cannot afford to hire a full-time computer-geek webmaster but needs an attractive and functional website. The learning-curve was gentle and we were operative in a very short time. I am completely satisfied that WildApricot has allowed us to meet and even exceed our goals for our new website.

Pros:

Our goal was to maintain a constantly-updated website, but we were working thru a vendor who designed our old site from scratch and one needed to know html to do any updating. Our events calendar was constantly missing events and full of errors which were difficult to correct. WildApricot allowed us to assign people who were only slightly computer-savvy because no coding was needed. The site is incredibly intuitive and easy to use and takes only minutes a day for people to update. We can assign multiple administrators with different duties and everything doesn't need to go thru a webmaster who may or may not get around to meeting our needs. The site looks wonderful and the membership is responding very positively to its features.

Cons:

There is almost nothing I don't like. I wish Safari was supported (and I hear they may be working on that) but it is not inconvenient to use FireFox and it's free, so that's just a very minor annoyance. I would like to see a little more flexibility in the forms-templates -- we had trouble getting the membership categories in the order we prefer on the screen, but all-in-all our experience has been trouble-free. There may be some people out there who will feel constrained by the available templates, but there are enough that our problem was more of which to choose, and I understand that even the templates are customizable (if you know how to code). The standard ones met our needs.

Great software at a great price

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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