Mountainbird

Hello forum,

I'm seeking desperately for a very good Membership Site Management Software / Membership Script. I've already done a lot of research on the WarriorForum and the internet but I'm still unsure what is really the best software with the best value for money available today.

I found the following products:

• AEC Membership Manager (a Joomla extension)
  
  
• aMember Pro
  
  
• DAP DigitalAccessPass (a WordPress plugin)
  
  
• DLGuard (not really a membership management software)
  
  
• EasyMemberPro
  
  
• JoomSuite (Joomla extension "Member")
  
  
• MemberGate (very expensive)
  
  
• MemberSpeed (quite expensive)
  
  
• (Memberzilla – it turned out to be vaporware)
  
  
• OpenCrypt
  
  
• Simple Member Pro
  
  
• (SubHub – not a script, subscription based)
  

I would appreciate your honest opinions very much if you have any experience – good or bad – or even if you know some other scripts not mentioned or if you know some honest reviews about membership scripts.

Thank you very much in advance,

Karl

P.S.: Thank you all for your great and helpful responses. If someone wants to add his product to this list, please PM me.

Ernie Lonardo

Put Simple Member Pro on the top of that list and buy it.

I havent tried the rest, but I've been a simple member pro customer for almost a year now and the free support and upgrades are a welcome addition and the script is fantastic.

It's got everything you'd ever need, seriously and it's fully customisable.

You dont want to save a few bucks on another script and regret it later, like I have done in the past.

PM me if you want my affiliate link

Or not...but just get it either way, you won't regret it,

Loren Woirhaye

In it's simplest form all a membership script needs
to do is create and manage passwords so only those
who have signed-up or paid to be members can
access the member only content.

This might seem alarmingly crude - but I have seen
memberships sold which are nothing more than
password protected blogs.

Which begs the question:
Other than passwords what do you want the script
to do?

Do you need the script to manage downloads?
Track and pay affiliates?

And so on.

webdude2000

Hi Karl

I had the same problem so at the end of the day I built my own system and recoded parts of Geeklog CMS - Open Source

You can get a feel for the site here:
The Giants Of Marketing - Training, Content & Resources

I was waiting for Memberzilla and Joomla can quickly get complicated.

Regards
Mark

Hilary

I just have experience with Amember, and I'm very happy with it indeed. One disadvantage: it's not beautiful-looking out of the box; you will want to tweak templates and maybe add code to personalise pages etc. Advantages:
1) It works - solidly, all the time
2) You can adjust it to do more or less anything you have in mind, not least thanks to the range of add-ons to integrate with other scripts (eg forums, Wordpress, Joomla, affiliate scripts (though it also has its own)...)
3) The support. It's stellar. The time other people spend on marketing, they spend responding to support tickets, frequently providing custom code at no extra cost. They've actually been so instrumental in getting my site set up that I watch forums like a hawk for threads about membership site scripts where I can sing their praises.

Charles Harper

Does it integrate with Aweber or is that a relevant question?

Charles

David Neale

I am part owner in two Membergate licenses. It' nice software but I wouldn't buy it again. Too expensive for what it is.

David Neale

Karl, for what it's worth. I've done a lot of work in the membership space in the last few years. My largest client makes more than $1,000,000 per year with two sites my company ended up building for him from scratch.

Myself I've never had the time to launch a really good membership site, at least not yet.

Don't know what your site will contain but I'd like to offer you my thoughts.

For one... my impression is the vast majority of membership sites fail. There are many reason if so but a big one might be that not many members stay members for very long.

Soon I think you will see the membership phenomenon begin to fade just as AdSense websites did when Google made enough changes that seriously hurt our monthly revenue. As membership after membership fails or doesn't generate enough revenue to be worth the time something else will come along to replace it.

I'm predicting it will be e-learning sites. A fixed term membership site if you will. These will work better as the user or "member" needs to complete the fixed term to get his value. This should solve the high turnover rate common to most membership sites. I think you will see 365 day courses, 52 week courses, 7 day courses etc. Each course begins to presell another as it comes to an end.

Just a thought Karl. Good luck with your project.

David-JP

I have a table comparing the most popular membership software products on my site (free registration required).

David

PPC-Coach

Amember is the best and very easy to use. I have two currently running with it and about to start a third.

Tracy

David,

What kind of software would be good for a fixed term elearning course method? ONe that would sell one course after another?

Thanks,
TRacy

drnet

Interesting to hear about the e-learning ongoing model. I am working on a site now that has that built in.

Instead of giving it all away upfront..it will be a series of progressive steps to learning what needs to be learned.


I am using memberspeed and it is very powerful. It is a total management system that in my eyes after being out for 15 months, really just came out of beta 3 months ago.

It has too many features to list here, but most everything you can imagine has been built into this puppy. Autocontent delivery based on number of days in the membership is awesome, so on day 30..suddenly this new content appears for them..day 45 suddenly new content appears for them..

This will allow me to do alot of the work upfront for the content, and set and forget it. Freeing me up to focus on other aspects of development and marketing.

You have to first determine WHAT kind of membership you are going to offer. Mine is going to be rather large and more complicated so to speak, so using memberspeed makes sense.

I have heard nothing but good things from amember, although I do not have experience with it.

Sam

Hilary

It does as much as anything is allowed to. That is, it can put an Aweber sign-up form on your thanks page and pre-fill it so that people only have to click 'submit' - and if you head the page something like 'one final step...' and describe the benefits nicely, they generally do. Aweber won't allow an automatic subscription in the background.

It'll also unsubscribe from the product-related list when membership expires, and when I put in a request for the ability to unsubscribe from list a when signing up to product b (so purchasers could reliably be removed from a prospect list), they added that for me free of charge.

affenpinscher

David,

The e-learning model is intriguing.

Would this be aWeber series of emails or have
you seen some software that is designed for this?

P.S. You might have the gist of a good WSO!

KimW

I believe I'm registered there but dont remember seeing the table

TeamGlobal

Hi Karl,

Many good suggestions were made here for the various types of membership management software that Warriors have had experience with.

I was thinking that if you listed some of the capabilities you wanted to incorporate into your membership site then others could chime in with whether or not the software they are familiar with can or can't do things on your list.

I personally chose JV Manager Fantasos for it's ability to manage mutil membership sites from one central location.

Good luck in your search.

All The Best,


Tony

Noah Fleming

aMember + e107
Solid combo.

David-JP

Simplest and cheapest method it to use an autoresponder like aweber to send out the lessons via email and place an add for your next course in the email.

Other method is for content to be viewed online in a fixed period of lessons.
aMember can handle this with the Incremental Content Plugin. You can then also use wordpress to handle the content management side of things.

David

PatriciaJ

I've been using memberspeed for nearly a year now and have very mixed feelings about it. first of all I had no idea that it was in beta when I bought the license and there have been continuous upgrades, patches and new plug ins. Good for improving your sites but when you have more than one site you just get that here we go again feeling after a while. Apart from that the new plug ins were listed on the sales spiel and at least one of them is still to come but it was advertised with the package when I bought it. As my first year is nearly up I have to make a decision on whether or not to pay a years upgrades and support fee which has nearly doubled in cost since I bought in.

As the software is very sensitive it doesn't take much for things to go wrong. One day something is working the next it isn't with no apparent reason and that has happened several times. Without having their support I would lose my sites and all of the work that I've put into them so I would be crazy not to pay for it, but I feel as if I'm squirming on the end of an hook and too dependent on them.

I initially had great difficulty in understanding how to use the software and plug ins and when it comes to updates one site will update successfully and I can go through exactly the same motions with another site and mess up. In fact one site crashed when I was doing a simple update and the only way that I could get it back was to pay my host. Now I pay memberspeed to update my sites it's less stressful. Initially the instructions were thin on the ground but they have got better and support is very good.

Moan over now for the good. Memberspeed is very SEO friendly and traffic starts coming in effortlessly. It only takes a couple of weeks to get Alexa rankings of around 600,000 and as each time I've been too busy trying to figure out how to build the sites to do any promoting it's pretty good.

After a time consuming, stressful and frustrating beginning I am now using the software quite easily and am actually beginning to like it. Although I would have preferred to have had everything promised to start with I can appreciate that the software is very good and getting better all the time. I am finding myself looking forward to what else they come up with - as long as I don't have to install it!

I recently had a Joomla site installed on a domain that I had bought to use with memberspeed but I thought Joomla would be easier to use. I am finding the Joomla admin side more complicated than memberspeed so I guess you get what you pay for.

Simplweb

There is a new Joomla membership plugin coming our this fall/winter based on Community Builder. We are actually privileged enough to be pilot testing a service with it.
Exclusive Pilot Program of Simplweb Membership Sites for Teaching Sells Members

Having used most of the scripts you mentioned, I can say this one beats the pants off them. What is really good about it is that it combines the paid subscription with the social networking aspects of community builder.

matthewd

I am using Digital Access Pass.

It was just released today but I have been Beta testing it for a while now. It has a lot of really cool features.

I have used Amember and Joomla before and they seemed a bit confusing for me.

mirage800

I use Instant Membership Site Creator. It is very simple to use.
Kenneth Kee

UncleHQ

Hi Karl,

A couple or three not mentioned above:

John's Little Script For Running a Membership Site
JVManager (1 or 2)
ContePass

PM me - will be glad to advise you...

Brian

Resale Rights Ninja

I am partial to launch formula marketing myself. Awesome script, and you can build as many memberships sites as you want. The script is also very easy to modify. I received above par customer service on this product, and have been very pleased with the results.

I have also used amember, and although it is a good script, I found it too expensive considering the limits on the license.

If you want to see amember in action visit my blog in my sig below. I just added a bunch of how to videos.

Enjoy

Mountainbird

Thank you all very much for your honest and very informative posts,

Karl

Mountainbird

David,

thanks for your thoughts. I'm going to build an e-learning site in internet marketing especially for the German market.

This complicates things a bit because most payment processors will not work quite reasonable in Germany.

Karl

beablessing

How about abizac.com?

It offers an all-in-1 marketing solution which includes: membership manager for unlimited membership sites, unlimited autoresponder, affiliate program manager, rss autoresponder, digital download product protection, ad tracking system, customer support manager, mailing list manager & many more. It allows you to fully automate your business in 1 single panel.

If you are interested in using their services, DON"T signup on their website. PM me for the link of their sister website that offers all of the above features + hosting of up to 20 domains + pro website builder with 370 templates for a very very low cost. Much lower than what abizac.com is asking.

Hope this helps....

shreder

I'm using InstantMember.com though I expected much more from it.
Overall it's good but there are many better scripts for that price tag...

pmore

Hi Karl,

I recently designed a membership site for a local swimming club and I chose to use Joomla! Mainly as I wanted to get it up and running asap. The sheer number of modules available mean you can do almost anything you want with Joomla! and the community support is top notch.

The only drawback I found was that the site felt rather 'clunky'. Especially as you begin to add more and more modules. Most users won't notice this but at times I felt that it was taking quite a bit longer to load than a simpler site might have. We're talking maybe an additional half a second at busy times - nothing serious, maybe I'm just being overly critical

Pete

Chris Egan

If you want a decent (and low cost solution) which comes with some PLR products to get started with try the link here: Start your own Free & Paid Membership Sites - Easy Cash Method Membership Software and Ebook

Right now I am preparing a relaunch of Easy Cash Method moving on from the script and offering pre-built membership sites, with content, etc all setup.

I will then roll out probably in the new year our Product Launch Formula Script which has a major package of web2.0 features built in. Click this link: Product Launch Formula Script - launch a product today! for more details.

The reason why I developed Easy Cash Method and am working on the new script was the lack of quality scripts that could be easily setup (minimum fuss) but worked and had the features built in to start making money. So many come with additional paid features or are simply out of the price range of new marketers.

We have about 600 users during the past year alone.

Stu_M10

I'll add another one to consider:

wpwishlist.com WishList Member

I'm a little biased because it's my product but if you are wanting to create a membership site with WordPress as the content manager, then you should definitely take a look at this.

Take care.

Stu_M10

I'll add another one to consider:

www.WishListMember.com

I'm a little biased because it's my product but if you are wanting to create a membership site with WordPress as the content manager, then you should definitely take a look at this.

Take care.

scorpio9

Hi Karl
JVManager1 is a great script with the following features;
Package and Product Manager
Universal Payment manager
Download Manager and URL Protector
Sales Manager
Refund Manager
Joint Venture (JV) Manager
Charity Manager
Affiliate Manager
Membership Manager and Automatic .htaccess / .htpasswd Generator
Autoresponder Manager
Template Driven
Multi-Lingual
And More... for under $100

JVManager Fantasos is even better but a hell of a lot more to buy (2997+), you can also rent hosted solutions at reasonable cost

scorpio

dollarware

I think Jimmy D. Brown offered a 52 week elearning course a few months back. I did not join, but his comments were of the same nature about people joining and then dropping out after a while.

It seems that when there is a definite schedule of information to be followed and a definite time to finish the training the members know exactly what to expect and how long they must commit to it.

cashtech29

You say that DLGuard is not a membership script, can you elaborate on that?
I am getting ready to launch a membership site that I have taken
a very long time to build.

xlfutur1

Stu, I 've been watching the videos and your plugin looks very powerful. I'll be taking the plunge soon. Just wondered if you have, or have run a WSO on this plugin.

4today

thanks for all of the very useful information everyone. You have helped me narrow my search.

rmx

Also take a look at Memberstar.com

Memberstar

Nothing to install which makes it especially appealing if you aren't
a techie.

RMX

EdnaM

Hello,

My favorites and that have used are:

Instant Member
Easy Member Pro

Bayo

I recommend

1 - DLGuard (not really a membership management software)
2 - EasyMemberPro

DL Guard acts like a membership site and has solid features that hackers cannot get around

EasyMemberPro is nice looking but there are many of the sites built on this script that appear to have their backdoors exposed for some reason. I use it and haven't had any real problems to date.

In 2004 when I started my IT Freelancer website I used VisionGate but wasn't too pleased with it.

Gerrit

There's no alternative but Fantasos (from John Delavera)
There's a learning curve involved, however this is the real professional choice for me.
It's much more than a membership program, it's the HUB of your entire online empire.

Gerrit

cashtech29

Anybody with over 5,000 posts have anything to say about this?
Maybe someone that's actually been working with their software for several years.

Nutrifitness

What is athena gold?

taylorhenry

I don't have 5,000 posts but I have spent good deal of time and money in research and implementation so maybe I'm a bit qualified answer. I have tried amember with Wordpress and it's very good but not for the technically faint of heart! Membergate is excellent but expensive and the current forum structure is a bit restrictive. Recently, after a lot more research I have signed on with Extrememember which gas been outstanding. Built on Wordpress and very definitely an all in one type solution. Tech support has been top notch, too.
Not a paid endorsement, etc etc

rprosser

I've done a lot of research on this topic over the years and currently my preferred option is Drupal - it seems to be more robust and flexible than Joomla! but like a lot of OS projects it is very poorly presented. Also I have yet to use it in earnest yet (I am paying for a 'drip feed' modification before I use it) so I may not know what I am talking about :-) See Drupal case studies | drupal.org for some good examples.

Currently I intend to use DL Guard combined with GetResponse for a 'Subscription Profits' course that I am developing - basically you set up content folders on your site for Day1 etc. and then use DLG to provide unique URLs per customer.

I also have a full Fantasos licence which can also do the job of course but it is not the easiest thing to use! However it provides a complete online business management solution and I may well offer hosted accounts via a WSO soon. If anyone is interested please send me a PM for further details.


Cheers ...

Richard

BrainDance

I've been using amember for several years with no problems at all. The initial cost of 179 or so can be an issue, but it pays for itself. I have a member site of 11,390 and it handles everything without a hitch, databases run smooth and fast, cron jobs a breeze. Built in affiliate program and many other nice features.
I use it with 4images gallery with a plugin and perfect.
LindaB

JNFerree

Actually, I "think" I sourced this from a fellow Warrior a couple of days ago.

DAVID MOSKOWITZ is the site owner of this Membership Academy. He also has a few nice Videos on You Tube that I think are useful to review.

You can Google his URL or locate him on You Tube.

Hope this helps,



James Neil

cashtech29

Is this amember or amember pro?
I like the affiliate feature you talk about.
If I want to run a simple members area, is there a high learning curve?
Will I need other plugins for affiliate features?

Sounds very interesting.
How is the security?

peterj

EZ Lesson Manager by Big Mike, a member of WF, might be what your looking for.

Incansoft | Experience The Difference Today!

Pete

David-JP

Thanks

aMember can do drip fed content with the incremental content plugin:


I've also figured out how you can present this content using wordpress.

Or you can use the automated email system

David