Is there a cheaper version of MemberGate membership software/service?

[ScottFox]

Hi all,

Membergate looks like a cool and fully integrated membership site service. It's fully hosted, includes forums and marketing tools, and all member subscription recurring billing is integrated, too.

But it costs $5000.

Does anyone have recommendations on a similarly integrated and hosted solution that doesn't cost so much?

Thanks!

[Terry Crim]

Do you want something that you put on your own website or do you want a service with a monthly fee.

[ScottFox]

Hi Terry,
I'd rather not deal with installing scripts or hosting, so I think that leaves me with a hosted service and monthly fee.

[MaxReferrals]

Unfort, IMO from experience, Membergate is clumsy and expensive.
Better off building it yourself by the time you tweak it out.

[TimKerber]

Originally Posted by ScottFox

Hi all,

Membergate looks like a cool and fully integrated membership site service. It's fully hosted, includes forums and marketing tools, and all member subscription recurring billing is integrated, too.

But it costs $5000.

Does anyone have recommendations on a similarly integrated and hosted solution that doesn't cost so much?

Thanks!

Scott,

MemberGate is $3,995 but payment plans are available. Since your site is installed and graphics are done for you, you can be working on your site within a business day of coming on board on average.

The payment plan options allow you the potential to start earning recurring income long before the final payments are due. There is a monthly hosting fee of $28 to $34.95 per month.

You can email me directly if you need more information:

tim @ membergate.com (remove the spaces)

We have over 1,000 membership sites running on our software including companies such as Zappos, General Motors and many well known marketers on this forum.

We have many customers that tried to create their own platforms either from scratch or from "free" solutions such as Joomla and Drupal. The overwhelming reason they came to us is that after many, many months the sites were still not working correctly and the various modules could not communicate to each other effectively. Often they spent thousands along the way and still weren't happy. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, they opted to go with a proven platform so they could grow their business.

Best wishes,

Tim Kerber

[evanrud]

Hi Scott,

Please check out SubHub. We're a leading membership website solution with hundreds of sites in the US, UK and elsewhere.

We charge $97/month including hosting (with Membergate, hosting is an additional charge over and above the $3,995 licensing fee). There are no additional charges.

You can take a free trial at our website. If you have any feedback, please let me know. We have a great and very responsive team and we would be glad to hear from you.

Best wishes,
Evan Rudowski

[DavidF]

Hi Scott,

Research a software solution before you choose.

While MemberGate is a one-time payment for everything and an additional $349 for hosting other companies will charge you for design like. So while Subhub is $97 per month ask them how much a design service is, what gateways they connect with, can you take merchant payments along side Paypal etc etc.

Don't always pick the cheapest sofwtare as later on you may find yourself switching to the more expensive solution.

Best regards
David

[charlesburke]

If what you've got is truly an upfront money squeeze, with not enough on hand to pay for getting it all set up the "right" way, why not just trim back your vision for your first site, build a simple version, get it going and money coming in, then use your cash flow to make a second, more ambitious site?

For a simple first site, you could either build a drip-feed membership on autoresponder, a la Jimmy Brown's Membernaire, or use the Amember script to run memberships for a regular website or blog.

The real challenge is usually motion, not money. Getting into action finds lots of reasons not to happen. If the first project you tackle has to be perfect, that's a very high hurdle to get yourself over, and many folks (myself included) find it hard to get things done because their vision for the project keeps growing and growing and....

Challenge - could you imagine doing a half-scale or quarter-scale version just to get people into a simple membership (and giving you a monthly cash flow) , then a year later announce you're launching a bigger, better, badder version, with big discounts to existing members? If you eased into it that way, what advantages might that offer you?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

[evanrud]

Originally Posted by DavidF

Hi Scott,

Research a software solution before you choose.

While MemberGate is a one-time payment for everything and an additional $349 for hosting other companies will charge you for design like. So while Subhub is $97 per month ask them how much a design service is, what gateways they connect with, can you take merchant payments along side Paypal etc etc.

Don't always pick the cheapest sofwtare as later on you may find yourself switching to the more expensive solution.

Best regards
David

Hi David,

I'm the co-founder of SubHub. Our $97/month cost includes everything including hosting. We have a wide and growing variety of design templates to choose from to create an attractive design, all of which are included in our price.

If one wants a custom design, then we can produce it for them for a one-time cost of $997. This is entirely optional.

Because we support open web standards, you can also choose to create your own design if you prefer. We will be happy to provide you with the details of our CSS in order to ensure that the design you create is compatible with our platform. There is no additional charge for this.

As for payment gateways, we support PayPal, Authorize.net, Sage Pay (formerly Protx), Worldpay, Patrasys and others. Most of our customers tend to choose PayPal and Authorize.net (in the US) and Sage Pay (in the UK). We can link with other gateways not mentioned, but we usually encourage our customers to choose one of the more popular ones.

In addition, since we are a true managed service, there is no additional cost for future upgrades. When we add or improve a feature, you've got it too. Forever. Some of our competitors use a more old-fashioned software model in which you get whatever version is the most recent, but future upgrades cost more. Support is also included, for as long as you're a customer.

If you decide that you want to leave us, your member database is fully exportable and you can take all member data with you. We never try to lock you in with proprietary tactics or closed architecture.

Our point is not that we're the cheapest, but that we follow a more modern hosted and managed model which we think is more flexible and economical for our clients in the long run. We've actually invested quite a lot, in time, money and effort, to build our service in this manner.

Thanks for providing the opportunity to offer more information about SubHub.

Best wishes,
Evan