Your Membership Site Software Recommendations?

Submitted by Don on Sat, 12/08/2007 - 10:05pm.

Christmas is coming up quickly and I always find myself busy at this time of year. For the last week I've been in rehearsals for and performances of my church's annual Christmas production, so my time spent on Internet marketing has been rather limited.

With so little time to invest, it's interesting that quite a bit of that time was spent on investigating membership site software. Not only have I got a project that I'm working on in that area, but I received not one, but four requests this week for a recommendation for membership site software.

I don't know what to tell them -- or what to go with myself. Amember Pro looks like the top contender in terms of features, but Easy Member Pro seems to be a favorite of many. And there are solutions to tie membership sites in with popular content managementsoftware like Wordpress and Joomla.

So, let me ask you: what have you tried? What do you like or dislike about the current membership site solutions?

A vote for Amember

Submitted by Hilary on Sun, 12/09/2007 - 5:33am.

I use Amember on my site for a popular free I Ching membership, integrated with Vbulletin, and also to sell access to downloads, so people can add new levels of access to the same account. The script works, solidly, and it's immensely versatile - for instance, I can display different elements to members of different products even on the public pages of my site. You can also integrate it with Wordpress and Joomla if you want to.

There's one feature it doesn't have that I wish it did: timed content delivery. But if I were that bothered I'm sure I could hire someone to write a plugin to do this. (Actually, the integration with Autoresponseplus, which has an individual rss module, might make it possible already to someone who knows some php.)

But the most impressive part - what gets me to jump through your site's registration hoops and post this unsolicited testimonial! - is their customer service. They haven't merely answered my many questions on how to use their software promptly and helpfully, they've also written the code snippets I needed for several small customisations. And when I was having trouble integrating with a sales tracking script, they identified the line in the third-party script that was causing the problem and corrected it for me. (The author of the offending script makes a point of giving no customer support at all.)

Inexpensive - versatile - under active development - robust - and with customer service that goes beyond any reasonable expectations. Hard to compete with, I should think...

Site registration

Submitted by Don on Wed, 12/12/2007 - 12:15pm.

Thanks for your comments, Hilary. Very helpful for many, I'm sure.

Regarding the site registration, I'm now allowing anonymous users to comment, although I'll have to moderate those comments. Registered users can comment without moderation.

my choice for membership software favorite

Submitted by papajohnb on Sun, 12/09/2007 - 2:08am.

ive been using ebizac.com for a while now and have been very happy with there service. they have everything you need membership,affiliate,autoresponders,digital download product protection,and a whole lot more. youll be happy. check em out..:)

Membership site resources

Submitted by ronpass on Sun, 12/09/2007 - 12:46am.

Don, I'm very interested in what you find out - this question is exercising my mind at the moment. I keep hearing good recommendations about Amember. The 12 days of Christmas Giveaway has a number of free resources in this area that are very useful:
http://www.hunteridge.com/12days/index.php?id=1664

I also purchased Terry Markle's really cheap resources on membership sites which includes audio interviews with the likes of MikeFilsaime (who recommends Amember),
Sean Casey, Tim Knox, etc. I'm working my way through these at the moment. I located this resource through signing up for Terry's email course (available via the 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway).

Ron Passfield
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Membership Sites

Submitted by NadaJohn on Sat, 12/08/2007 - 10:55pm.

I like Amember Pro with a Joomla combination (need the Amember-Joomla plugin as well).
I'm still ironing out the aesthectics, but functionally it's an excellent
combo for the budget. I'd go with Membergate but I'm not ready to make
that $3k commitment.