What membership software should I use A or B

If you'll be making a separate site, look into Joomla with Community Builder. It's pretty versatile, with plugins for paid membership, among other things. It's the only one I have firsthand experience with, and I'm happy so far.

Wordpress and S2Member. All free and powerful.

I love Wishlist and now use it for all my membership sites. Not the cheapest, but has an impressive list of feature and integration opportunites.

Digital Access Pass gets my vote. Ravi gives good support.

Ryan Lee uses Wishlist and he bills himself as a continuity king when it comes to membership....

Depends what you want to do with the membership site. How are you going to monetise it?

Vote for digital access pass here, using it on my site. Good support, you can drip feed easily and it has an integrated affiliate system.

It all depends on what you want to do with the site.
I use Members for WordPress with some custom modules I've made. Members support member only blogpost, post sections, whole blogs etc. It works with Gravity Forms and many other WordPress plugins.

If you use Wordpress I like S2Member - it's FREE and has a ton of features.

It really depends on how simple or complicated you want your membership site to be.

I bought scripts in the past based on the features I may need and the design of it. You'd be surprised how many membership scripts you can get- and only a small amount are worthy of praise because of their design. Others just look horrible.

I think you should go for C

I agree it would be helpful to see some sites you guys have created using these different scripts and programs. Either access or at least snapshots would be helpful.

I've used S2 and DAP for different membership sites / types. S2 worked great for a simple membership, no complaints. DAP is WAY ahead of S2 however. Lots of great features, easy to implement, easy drip system, affiliate system built in, connects to lots of 3rd party stuff. It has my vote.

Wow...

When I used to go to the local high schools to give entrepreneurial thinking
presentations as part of a college prep program here in NC (yeah, it's amazing
I know - I mean, we're just learning to READ in this state...) I'd start the conversation
with a short illustration and a question that went something like this (short version):

"Speaking of goals, consider this...

"You're on a road, pointed in a direction and you've got to get there,
you must use the most practical, efficient, vehicle possible - the question is,
which vehicle is best for you? How do you get there?"

People would raise their hands and give answers like:

Suzy Sweetbottom - "I'd use an eco-friendly car, because who wants the Amazon gone?"

Johnny - "Dude, I'd like, get a motorcycle, like, a crotch-rocket or, like, something and, like ram it to like 170mph and like, get there faster man."

Ritta Righteous - "Well, I'd personally use a mini-van so I could take all of my little
children and friends with me, we could discuss Jebus along the way together and
make the world a better place."

Jeffrey Jetsetter - "My father would just fly me there, who needs to drive anyway?"

--------

Amazing.

I'd just stare at the classroom and subtly shake my head or say something like,
"That's nice, but I'm not sure that's the best vehicle to use..." or "Maybe, it's an
admirable comment but the vehicle may or may not work." etc.

Finally, after playing my silly game and running out of "Duh, huh" guesses, inevitably,
one bright student - usually someone who was sitting in the back of the room reading
a Science Fiction novel instead of seeming to pay attention, would raise her hand
and ask a simple question:

"Uhm, where is the destination? I mean, flying a jet to the grocery store around the
corner might be a bit of overkill and taking your family mini-bus to an overseas
excursion heading to China from the US would, perhaps, not be too practical - after
all, I don't recall reading where those things could float."

"Mr. Odette, I believe the answer depends on the destination, if you will let us
know where we are going, I think deciding on the best way to get there might be
a lot easier, yeah?"

Yeah. I definitely agreed, and that was the correct answer.

-------------------

So, back to the OP - there are a LOT of membership scripts available and, in fact,
you can run your membership without a script at all by simply using e-mail to deliver
your content.

The thing is, even though I see the same people constantly saying "Get this one!"
or "I use this software, it's best!" or "Buy Mine, everything else sucks!" each time
this topic comes up (and it's a common topic, you should check out the "All-in-One"
membership topic for more information), how can anyone say without knowing
exactly where you are trying to go with your membership concept?

I mean... a porn site might not work so well in "X" or "Y" solution. Is that the
kind of membership site you are building?

How about an e-commerce membership site selling physical products in the
member's area? That removes a few options from the list.

Nobody talked about Sid's great program (RAP) or immediate pay affilaite programs
that you don't have to manage payments with, or file US 1099's for or deal with
huge tax issues collecting the correct ID's, SS#'s, etc. from your affiliates.

How about hosted or not hosted options?

What about multi-site licenses or single site licenses?

Membership levels? Coupons? Blog integration? Drip-Feed or, as I call it, Time-Released
Lessons delivery and management?

Got a coaching program in mind? How about a built in coaching platform? I've made
as much money and helped a lot of clients of my own with an upsell to a very cool
membership coaching program option/offer? How will you manage that?

Got e-mail? How will you integrate a 3rd party e-mail program? Is it included?

Are you a programmer? Joomla, Drupal, etc. are great for some things, ever tried to
customize Drupal?

What about, and this is VERY important, customer support? ALL software has a
problem eventually - even your blessed iPhones, how do you get the problem
resolved? Who's there to help you?

And a whole lot more.

The point is... until you are clear on the destination, helping you decide on the
best vehicle to take you there is not really very easy and opinions abound.

Want specific help? Ask specific questions...

Also, consider the answers in light of who is making the recommendations.

I own Rapid Residual Pro, soon to be launched - think that might make me
a little biased? As much as I try not to be, I kinda-sorta DO love my solution
better than all of the rest - for SOME THINGS and some membership models
(like Fixed Term Memberships, for instance).

Still... I'd rather have someone who uses RRP and who is making a boat load
of money doing so recommend it rather than me - even I think my comments
lean a little in favor of my own bank account... and I argue with me about it
all of the time! (yes, it's confusing in my head some days)

There are a few other things to consider also... regarding your membership site needs.

"WHY" are you building a membership site and what DON'T you want from it?

Those are sometimes more important than what you think you want in helping
you make your decisions.

Keep us posted, let us know what your research leads you to invest in...

Rapid Action Profits + RAP Press membership script

As has been said countless times around here over the years, no one can answer this question as you give no idea what you are looking for.

You need to know what you want your site to do before anyone can give you anything more than a shot in the dark as to which membership solution to use.

Do you just need a simple protected area for downloads or do you need advanced features?

Do you require drip feed content? If so what type, new content feed every month depending on the date or new content feed depending on how long someone has been a member. These two are both drip feed content but work in entirely different ways.

Do you require integration with an autoresponder service and if so which one? Some solutions will integrate with virtually any autoresponder service while some either integrate with a few or none at all.

What payment processor will you be using. Most solutions work with PayPal but many use other processors and which solutions you consider will depend on who you choose to handle your payments for you.

Do you need an easy way to edit site templates and are you able to edit html coding yourself? Some solutions allow easy customization from the admin panel while others require you to edit hard coded html files and some give you almost no customization options at all.

What SEO options do you need? Each solution handles built in SEO options differently and some do it much better than others. Is this something that you consider a major point or do you not care about built in SEO options?

How do you want affiliate commissions handled? Do you perfer to get all payments yourself and pay out commissions to your affiliates later? Do you perfer to use a third party system like Clickbank that takes the payment for you, pays the affiliate, and then pays you the balance you are owed? Do you perfer to use an instant commission system where the affiliates are paid their owed commissions at the time of sale? If you use instant commissions do you want to use the Rapid Action profits method of rotating the PayPal payee or use the new PayPal API systems which do all the payments in the PayPal backend?

Do you require a built in forum or integration with a forum?

Do you require a blog front end? If so can a mini blog work or do you need a full Wordpress blog?

Do you want an all in one solution or do you perfer a core program that handles the basics and then deal with all the plugins later? If you go with a plugin system are you prepared to keep all your installed plugins up to date and upgraded?

Do you need built in mass email systems or are you relying only on an autoresponder to contact customers?

Do you need the ability to handle fix term memberships where billing stops after a specific number of payments or do you just need pay me until you cancel options?

Do you only need to sell one product or are you looking at the ability to sell an unlimited number or products from one site. Not all solutions handle unlimted product support.

Do you need one time offer support? Not all solutions offer this.

Do you need upsell and downsell support? Not all solutions offer this either.

Do you need support to host your content on Amazon S3 services? Not every solution has options that allow you to integrate with S3.

Do you need protected download links? Even some systems that have protected member areas do not use protected links inside the member areas.

Will you require the solution you use to be fully supported? Some solutions, mostly the free ones, come with no support at all.

Do you need your solution to be installed on your own server so you have complete control over everything or do you want to give up a level of control and go with a hosted solution that doesn't require you to do anything but manage your content and members?


These are just some of the many things you need to consider before you even start looking at the massive amount of options that are available as far as membership solutions.

Until you know exactly what you want your membership to do now and in the future no one can give you any help at all as to which solution is best for you.

Every membership solution has its pros and cons and no one solution is right for everyone. There is no one size fits all where memberships are concerned.

I too am looking for a good quality membship site software, but must have forum capabilities as well as being able to star-rate topics. I have looked at dozens and the only one that I have come up with that does all that I want is Membergate (but it's way too expensive for me).
Does anyone know of of such a system that I could purchase ( I don't want to use WordPress either...just can't get it to work for me)?
Lawrence

I asked a similar question here in the forums back in October. Here's a link to the thread. Maybe some of the suggestions there will help you:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ggestions.html

Wordpress and Wishlist member is easy to install and set up.

Good for your first membership if you don't like getting stuck into coding and don't want to pay a developer, but it does depend on exactly what features you need.