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| | #1 |
| Active Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2008
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I have a need for such a tool and it appears that membergate is best suited for my specific situation. I have read every post on the forums pertaining to membergate (and competitors) and was hoping to get some additional feedback, etc., from anyone else who has experience with or knowledge of membergate. Almost all of what I've read is positive and I was hoping to discover any shortcomings or weaknesses related this tool, should any exist. I do not envision needing to customize membergate - the features and functionality address all needs associated with my user group and business model. Thanks in advance for your help! |
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| | #2 | |
| Advanced Warrior Join Date: Nov 2008
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Alright there Just checking to see if membergate is the one where you have to pay so much per month... On that basis I'l think it is quite expensive if you are just starting out ![]() Quote:
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| | #3 |
| Active Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2008
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Membergate charges a one time fee based on the number of paid subscribers to your website. Support is included the first year and after that I believe it costs $600 or so per year. This tool is not cheap, but the advice I have received from a number of "big name" guys who have large subscriber populations in that they were sorry they didn't go with a solution like membergate right from the start. In fact, I was listening to an interview this morning in which a highly successful membership site owner said he wasn't aware of membergate when he started his business and had a similar system created from scratch. He said it was way more expensive than membergate and that ultimately it didn't work well in some critical areas of supporting a membership site. He switched to membergate and now has several continuity/membership sites and swears by the tool. For those who may be wondering, I have no affiliation with membergate other than that I am on the verge of buying it to support my own membership site. Thanks! |
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| | #4 |
| Greg Schueler War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Las Vegas
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There used to be a bunch of horror stories on this forum about them. I am sure they are archived if you search deep enough. The problem I heard was that you are relying on a 3rd party that controls YOUR members. If (and when) their system glitches or goes under or whatever, YOU have no control. It is off of your servers and there is nothing you can do. You should install a membership on your own server where YOU have all the control. And you can pay a one time fee to own instead of rent. |
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Greg Schueler - Wordpress Fanatic... Living The Offline Marketing Dream... | |
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| | #5 | |
| Advanced Warrior Join Date: Nov 2008
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Greg Do you recommened any membership sites?? Quote:
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| | #6 |
| Paul Mabry-Gravity Sucks War Room Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: , , USA.
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Marine I've had a membergate site for 3-4 years maybe a tad longer and I ponied out $3,000 plus at the time plus much higher hosting fee's because it's written in cold fusion. I totally regret the purchase. Everything it does can be accomplished more efficiently and much cheaper with tons of alternatives. Everything you do to manage the site has to be done through the membergate interface and the .cfm file extension has to be included on every file. This really makes adding multi-media a real pain in the __! It's cumbersome, inefficient and time consuming. The support is frustrating as you wait for answers. Believe me I can do a lot with the $5 grand or so I sunk into this site. I'd never purchase it if I had it all to do over today. 3-4 years ago the alternatives maybe weren't as plentiful as they are now. Big thumbs down from me. PM me if your interested in a much more robust and way cheaper alternative. |
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Making Lemonaide... Skydivedad's Blog
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| | #7 | |
| Advanced Warrior Join Date: Nov 2008
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Skydive Do you have recommadtions for any alternative ones please? Quote:
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| | #8 |
| Active Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2008
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Paul, PM Sent! Thanks for your feedback - I look forward to hearing more! |
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| | #9 | ||||
| Warrior Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: , , .
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Hi, MemberGate is a one-time payment, no monthly cost after that other than your hosting. Support is included. The $600 fee after the first year is usually for site owners who want to upgrade to the latest version of MemberGate. That is only by choice. MemberGate continually build and develop new features. If you choose to upgrade it's $600 and support is included. It's not expensive when you think some companies charge an on going monthly fee, some people are always looking for the cheapest option to start a membership site and they usually discovered down the line that they need to upgrade to a better solution because the cheaper solution couldn't with stand there member volume or something. Quote:
Remember that MemberGate allows you to control your members. Not as Greg pointed out. You will find that some third party payment processor will store your member details but not MemberGate. MemberGate connects with a merchant account but the user details are double encrypted within MemberGate. Greg also said you should install a membership on your own server. Great advice there Greg as most people have little or no technical knowledge and running their own server requires Web Server software priced at X amount, probably not what they can afford if they think MemberGate is expensive. Unless you are referring to a reseller server which in that case means you still have no control over the server as you are renting it off another company. Greg please let us know of prices to setup our own servers, also include any costs of having someone setup the server for us. That is completely setup the server so our domains are running from it and we don't have to keep asking the next step to get our site online. I would love to know the prices so I can move my 50 sites over. Quote:
MemberGate offer their own hosting service managed by them 24/7 for under $35 per month or $349 per year. Well worth it compared to other hosting companies. Quote:
Yes everything has to be done through MemebrGate's interface as with any other content management systems. Each file does not have to include a .cfm extension, that is only if your are uploading your own custom pages which you want secured by MemberGate, otherwise you can upload standard .html files. MemberGate also includes its own, flv, mp3, mpg4 players all of which are secured to only play on your sites domain name so they can not be copied. Videos can be embed into fourms and any content page. Also other video embed coded can be easily be pasted into a content page making multimedia files a joy to work with. Quote:
Paul what is the URL for your site, can we take a look? If you are looking to develop a membership site overnight and make money the next day, just like it said you could in some stupid ebook, then MemberGate is not the fit for you. If you are looking to start a legitimate business in a niche market, selling products and building a community, then MemberGate is the way forward. Whatever you choose, research it properly and start your business off on the right foot. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Best wishes David | ||||
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| | #10 |
| Custom Video Creation War Room Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Big Lake, Minnesota
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I'm a virtual assistant for two Membergate sites and have access to all areas of the site. There are glitches at times, but overall, it is easy to use and fairly intuitive. Their support team responds to requests promptly. In helping to set up the second site, it took about 3 months to get everything organized and all of the content uploaded, but the site looks and works great. Obviously, the trick is to get the site paying for itself as quickly as possible and with all of the tools we have in the WF, that part is pretty easy! |
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| | #11 |
| Breakthrough Expert War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Finally in Branson, MO !!, USA.
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The sites that I am a member of that use membergate are a pain because of the old interface and yucky forum. They constantly say the fixes are just around the corner but never appear. Not to mention there is no way around the timing out of the system that logs you off. The forum is constantly getting complains because of limitations of membergate. From a stand point of a user, when I notice its a membergate site, I don't join. Mark Riddle |
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| | #12 |
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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Paul (skydivedad), A rebuttal to some of your points. You wrote: >I've had a membergate site for 3-4 years maybe a tad longer [I explained that his site was several years ago and his domain (and site) haven't been around for quite a while - Tim] To say that "I've had a membergate site for 3-4 years maybe a tad longer" is inaccurate and a bit misleading to anyone reading your post. >much higher hosting fee's because it's written in cold fusion Hosting is $28 a month (for a year) or under $35 for month to month. >Everything you do to manage the site has to be done through the membergate interface That is what a content management system does. You are free to create your own code or adapt any of the thousands of modules that are available in open source or via apache license (free). We have many site owners who have made significant personalized adaptations of their site on their own. >Everything it does can be accomplished more efficiently and much cheaper with tons of alternatives. Please feel free to share your recommendation that you have direct experience with. I will happily compare feature to feature with any other software on the market. i sincerely mean that. Please post it here. Keep in mind that your experience is also with MemberGate several versions ago. We are up to version 7.x now and there have been many changes and additions from when you had come on board. >This really makes adding multi-media a real pain in the __! It's cumbersome, inefficient and time consuming. Unfortunately this is inaccurate as well. I can attribute this one to possibly the version you were using several years ago. That may have been not as intuitive then but it was still pretty straight foward then. You (1) click "add video" in the control panel, (2) click the browse button to upload the video from your computer and then (3) copy / paste the code that is given on the page you want the video to be shown on. As for now we have even more multimedia options. If we could make it any easier we would but those steps are as intuitive as we could whittle it down to. Its even easier for your members in the forums. Simple post a link to a Youtube video. The player appears in the forum. No need to embed code etc. The url of the video itself will make the youtube video appear without any extra work. Again we are continuously making the software more robust as possible. >The support is frustrating as you wait for answers. Okay this one has me stumped. We archive all of our emails over the years. I did a search for your email address that we had on record at the time. There were a total of 5 emails from you in a 3 month period. In checking your emails to us versus the reply back, there were a total of 2 that requested a reply (versus you letting us know the status of an item in the setup of your site). The first reply back to you was 12 minutes after you emailed. The second one had to do with the hosting company (whom we no longer use). You emailed at 7pm on a Friday night saying that you were having difficulty reaching the hosting contact. I responded back exactly 1 hour and 31 minute later to let you know that I was contacting them on your behalf. They then responded a few hours later based on my followup. If that response time on a Friday night was frustrating, I apologize. I would however love to compare it to the solution that you are currently using. In addition to those emails, I emailed you twice for basic "how is it going and can we help with anything" emails. I never received any reply from you. My only thought is that perhaps you stopped using that email account. Other than than I honestly am not sure where the frustration with support lies. In the "for what its worth" category, in the time since you were last using MemberGate, we have increased support significantly. There is a support ticket system as well as we have quadrupled the size of our support team. I encourage ANYONE to contact us to check our response time. We even have UK support which are can handle any general support emails early the next morning that may have come in after our normal support hours ended (7pm EST). >PM me if your interested in a much more robust and way cheaper alternative. Please do us all a favor and post your existing membership site(s) urls so we can take a look. I am all for competition. That is what keeps things healthy. As for us, anyone is free to contact any of our existing clients. There is a list of several hundred of them at membergate.com - on the left is a list of our active sites. There is a reason why such customers as Zappos, General Motors and over 1,000 other membership sites are running on MemberGate. The proof is in the pudding so please show us what you have. Not only that but again, for anyone reading this, please contact our existing clients for their experiences. We have a VERY high repeat customer base. There are many of our customers with 3, 4, 5 all the way up to 14 sites for the same customer. There is a reason why they come back and refer a lot of business to us. Results. For others reading this, I am happy to answer any questions directly. My email is: tim @ membergate.com (remove the spaces). Tim Kerber |
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| | #13 | |
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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Well I hate to say you are wrong but... Both of those issues have been addressed in Version 7 of MemberGate. You can catch a glimpse of some of the new features (including the new forum option) by going to membergate.com/newinmg7 Shoot me an email and I will be happy to set you up with a comp membership on my membershipsiteowner.com so you can take a look yourself. Tim Kerber | |
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| | #14 |
| Breakthrough Expert War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Finally in Branson, MO !!, USA.
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Tim, At the risk of stating the obvious, did you actually read my post? It appears you may have just skimmed it and saw a supposedly incorrect statement ? It's great that you have addressed both those issues. Mark Riddle |
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| | #15 |
| Paul Mabry-Gravity Sucks War Room Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: , , USA.
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Tim The only thing I abandoned was Membergate. The OP ask for the opinion of anyone who had a Membergate Site. I expressed my opinion and said what my issues were. It's funny I'm going through my email archive and I count 25. I've saved everyone of them from day 1. As far as revealing my URL you'll just have to wait for the WSO. Membergate isn't the only game in town. There exist several fantastic options available to all without the hefty price tag and they're usable on more than just 1 domain! Ok so you've updated but still it's built upon Cold Fusion and runs atop Java and that will never change. You know as well as I do that 3.5 years ago Cold Fusion Hosting simply cost more, much more, at $28 a month currently Cold Fusion Hosting still cost more, so Cold Fusion Hosting prices have fallen, so has hosting cost pretty much a cross the board and hey for $29 a month I can get a Dedicated Server. Attacking me isn't going to fix the basic flaws in Membergate. I'll continue to express my opinion whenever anyone ask me about my "Membergate" experience. A few more things. PHP is run on 10,000's of the top companies around the world. ASP .Net is used by 10,000's of the top companies around the world as are several other web development languages other than Cold Fusion. 10,000's of companies around the world use open source software with mods and plugins. They use it because it works and works well. Bottom line, spare me the sales pitch. I've read your marketing material and you got your $3,000. Paul PS On Edit. Tim Thanks for the Violation of Membergates Privacy Policy Agreement with me. Anymore of my Personal Business Information you'd like to spew you do so over my objection. |
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Making Lemonaide... Skydivedad's Blog
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| | #16 |
| Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: West Hollywood
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I have a Membergate site and I'm pretty happy with it. Everything seems pretty simple and the support has always been fair whenever we've had a problem. It's not instantaneous, but they don't leave open tickets for days and days and days. And Tim himself has expedited issues for me promptly. That's hard to find. I don't use the site nearly enough to be a expert at it, but I feel pretty confident in Membergate being a good solution for someone who is serious about their business. Sure, there are lot's of alternatives out there you could use, but I feel safe with Membergate being a solid solution I can rely on. I wouldn't feel so sure about rushing a bunch of customers through some $17 script of even a $97 product. I also know that I don't understand 95% of the power of Membergate since I'm not really the guy who goes under the hood to mess with it. But the few times I have been in there it seemed pretty self explanatory. And, there's very good tutorials to teach you all that you need to know. |
| My Bloghttp://www.jasonmoffatt.com | |
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| | #17 | |
| Breakthrough Expert War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Finally in Branson, MO !!, USA.
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Making public statements about private data, and a thinly veiled threat to register someones former domain is quite shocking. Tim is it true that this is a violation of your stated policy ? What are the remedies that your agreement(s) provide for your company violating the agreement. More specifically; Is there any statement in current, or past agreement(s) that state specifically that you, your company, and / or associates or current and / or former employees, and / or current or former contractors will not purchase, domains, or use internal data including but not limited to keywords, traffic sources, subscribers, activity, any proprietary data of companies that are using or have in the past used your systems. Is it prohibited to create sites related to or based on former or current customers sites, and / or information acquired by their using your systems? Mark Riddle | |
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| | #18 | ||
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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Mark, I had read your post. You had replied: Quote:
Quote:
Tim | ||
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| | #19 | ||||
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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as a possible competitor in a different light to someone reading your remarks. Quote:
ColdFusion is owned and heavily support by Adobe. It runs on some of the top sites on the internet. myspace.com bankofamerica.com Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab As explained by Adobe: "Its in use at 75 of the Fortune 100 companies" Ref: adobe.com/products/coldfusion/customers/ To use your own quote: "They use it because it works and works well." That is exactly why they are using ColdFusion. Quote:
As you mention, your sites was 3.5 years ago. Many things continuously change for the better which is basically my main point in replying. Quote:
That's your prerogative and I sincerely wish it had worked out. It is not meant as an attack. It is to clarify statements that you are making to get a clear a picture as possible. Anyone can state anything in a forum and it can be taken as gospel. I prefer fact based, truthful exchanges. My hope would be that you are doing it with full disclosure. You would be doing everyone a favor if you put it in full factual context with full disclosure concerning any possible conflict of interest you may have concerning any other solution you may be involved with. No software is 100% perfect. None. In the case of MemberGate, we are continuously making improvements directly from the feedback from the customers. I am very interested in your offer you made in your post "if your interested in a much more robust and way cheaper alternative.". Robust as defined: "Powerfully built; sturdy." - To make this claim of comparison vs. other software, please list it here for everyone to check out. Tim | ||||
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| | #20 | |
| Breakthrough Expert War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Finally in Branson, MO !!, USA.
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Tim would you please comment on these items Thanks Mark Riddle Quote:
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| | #21 | |
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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Sorry for the delay. I am checking in as my work time table allows! You misinterpreted my statement about the domain. I had no intention, nor would I ever have registered that under any circumstance. My poorly communicated point was that Paul's use of our software was not nearly as long or still on going as his initial reply would lead someone to believe. There is nothing proprietary about his site that was shared. The information that I explained is readily available using public resources such as archive.org Please note that I have not mentioned the domain, nor would I ever unless Paul was okay with it. I am not sure where you got that particular section of an agreement but that is not from us. Paul (and every other customer) is provided with the agreement and there is nothing that was was mentioned here violates it. It is apparent that he wasn't comfortable with my rebuttal of his claims with my publicly accessible facts, so I redacted that paragraph from my original post. Its not my intention to embarrass anyone. I do wish for a truthful discussion however so that readers can get both sides of replies to the original post for assistance. Best wishes, Tim Kerber | |
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| | #22 |
| Paul Mabry-Gravity Sucks War Room Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: , , USA.
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OK Sure Here's some facts for you. 1. Get a dedicated server here $29 a month. 2. Adobe didn't buy Macromedia because it owned Cold Fusion! Cold Fusion was originally released by Allaire Corp in mid 1995. Allaire was later purchased by Macromedia. Membergate was written in Cold Fusion and released long before Adobe acquired Macromedia. Only this week did Adobe release the public beta of Cold Fusion 9. 3. Adobe supports Cold Fusion because they have contractual obligations that came with their purchase of Macromedia. It was in use by those corporations long before they purchased Macromedia. I'm under zero obligation to to drink your Cold Fusion Kool-Aide 4. I'm not set to offer a membership platform of my own. I'm compiling a resource for Warrior's on various membership platforms available and how to implement one in particular. Membergate isn't on my list of recommended platforms nor am I under obligation to discuss the pro's and cons of Membergate. There is no conflict of interest. 5. I PM'ed the OP, per his request, the information as pertaining to a robust, scalable, highly supported and with an active and helpful user base. It's a viable Membership Option other than Membergate. It's not some "some $17 script or even a $97 product" cobbled together by the way. If I had wanted to share that information publicly I wouldn't have originally asked the OP to PM me if he was interested in learning what that would be, I would have shared the link in thread in my 1st reply. I did pass that information gladly to the OP. |
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Making Lemonaide... Skydivedad's Blog
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| | #23 | |
| MembershipSite Pro War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: New Hampshire USA
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Paul, You wrote: Quote:
is an example. webhostingstuff.com/company/MEWebhost.html Read through that including the dozen or so links at the bottom of that page with complaints about them. I personally wouldn't be comfortable with that as an option. Just because someone posts a low ball price doesn't mean its necessarily legitimate. > 2. Adobe didn't buy Macromedia because it owned Cold Fusion! Cold Fusion was originally released by Allaire Corp in mid 1995. Allaire was later purchased by Macromedia. Membergate was written in Cold Fusion and released long before Adobe acquired Macromedia. Only this week did Adobe release the public beta of Cold Fusion 9. Adobe's owned it for nearly 4 years now. I am familiar with the history. They have released multiple upgrades including the newest version. That is not the sign of a company that doesn't stand behind their product(s). > It was in use by those corporations long before they purchased Macromedia. I'm under zero obligation to to drink your Cold Fusion Kool-Aide I totally miss your point on that. My point is that it is still in wide spread use and still heavily supported. Some very major sites are using it extremely successfully. There are thriving support communities with tens of thousands of programmers for it while your post implies that isn't the case. >If I had wanted to share that information publicly I wouldn't have originally asked the OP to PM me if he was interested in learning what that would be, I would have shared the link in thread in my 1st reply. I did pass that information gladly to the OP. That's fine. I think a public discussion of what you feel is superior to Membergate would have been very helpful for not just the OP but anyone else reading this thread. I would be more than happy to compare your secret recommendation in the light of day so that people can make an informed decision. It beats whispers of alternatives that can't be discussed in a factual way so that everyone benefits from the discussion. I apologize to to Marine0302 as the thread has taken on a life of its own. If you ever need assistance that I can help you with, my email is tim @ membergate.com (remove the spaces). I will happy to help you as best we can. Time for me to get back to work. Tim Kerber | |
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| | #24 | |
| Paul Mabry-Gravity Sucks War Room Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: , , USA.
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As far as your disclosure of my privileged personal business information (As a Membergate Customer) on this public forum is concerned my attorney showed me plenty of case law this afternoon. We can argue those points in court. See you there. | |
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Making Lemonaide... Skydivedad's Blog
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| | #25 |
| Warrior Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: , , .
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| Surely if you weren't selling a product or your services you would post the solution for us all to see and share with other members. I'm sure people would want to see it..... Come on share it with us..... we're waiting. . . . . . . . . Best regards David |
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