Options for Membership web sites

Following are a summary of options there are for developing a membership site using wordpress.  It’s a rapidly changing market!

This is good and bad -> good -> will probably be up to date with latest web possibilities and bad in that it may not have had time to get robust.

At this point I have not used all these products, however I will be putting a new of membership sites live in the coming months, and intend to update this post with our experiences.    These notes represent our initial evaluation based on freely available information.

Requirements:

• a plugin type solution, could be one that requires integration, but no hosted solutions (want to minimise third parties)
• membership levels (free, or trial, and paid levels)
• may require rss or podcast secure access
• at least paypal gateway
• want wordpress blog posts to convert to  be emailed out

Your Members by New Media ( first choice so far)

• Paypal payment gateway, and Clickbank
• Single One off Payments(long Term or Pay per post)
• Subscription
• Free and Trial Membership, multiple roles
• Post/Page Delay – useful for course content delivery
• Protect parts of posts using Private Short Code, or
• Complete post protection
• Secure RSS with Tokens – allows full content feeds
• $50 for single license
• $200 for developer license
• domain registered since May 2008, newish
• a very human face, you can see who the guys are (Tim Nash and Sean Barton)
• I like the style of the website – augers well for the style of the code
• also has a affiliate program – vetted
• Support
  • manual
    – could use an update, but not that hard to get going
  • forum – they guys are very responsive
  • they do have some screencasts

Memberwing

• has a free version, without the gradual content.  Otherwise
  • $80 (automated membership, else manual effort needed, Also more gateways.)
  • $100 including the gradual content
  • $200  unlimited domains
• Teaser markers not that intuitive for non-tech clients – I’d like a more user friendly way – will have to think about it…
• Forum says “coming soon… “
• Uses paypal IPN (works with paypal standard), authorize.net, 2chcekout, Trialpay etc
• implements google’s First Click Free – is this a good idea or not?
• has a separate gradual content plugin ($80 for single, $150 unlimited)
  
• has a not completly setup affiliate program – missing the name in the email title!
• domain created July 2008
• No humanness, although I believe Gleb is the man – contrast to the shopp plugin where Jon is quite visible and forum active.
• I tend to be influenced by the style of the site as a guide to the “panache” (or cleverness of design) with which a plugin is developed.  Gleb – vamp up the style and get the forum going!!!
• Functionality wise it looks good -I have to give the free version a go and if the quality looks good, then give the premium a go.
• has an affiliate program so may be more reviews out there than would be otherwise – common sense and pinch of salt required!

Wishlist Member

• Unlimited Membership Levels, Free, Trial, or Paid
• Sequential Content Delivery
• Subscription Length Control
• Secure Content, partial content display
• Secure RSS feed key
• Supports PayPal, Clickbank, Google Checkout, and 1ShoppingCart.
• has lots of support videos
• no demo, but videos essentially deliver that
• Online “ticket” support M-F 9-5, nopublic forum – no visibility of general queries, no forum
• Has a customer area for when one has purchased
• $97 – One domain, updates and 3 months support (30 day refund offer?)
• $297 – multi-site-own personal domains (ei: not a developer license), updates plus training material
• domain registered since April 2008, newish
• no visibility of frequency of updates
• appears to rely on paypal, or quick pay pro to do any recurring subscriptions – have to set the products up in those system.

Amember.com

Amember control panel

• Has a plugin to integrate with wordpress, however the admin area has a very different look and feel from wordpress.
• $179.95 to $200, plus extra for cms plugin
• For incremental contemt (I guess this is the course type iodea, one may want amemberincremental
• forum support, accessible to public, and posts say support is great
• It is not completely clear to me at this stage, but it appears that the products provided in this joint venture between ithemes cory miller and David Moskowitz are in addition to amember: http://www.membershipacademy.com/wordpress-amember.php
• domain registered since 2003, more established
• I don’t like the look and feel of the control panel – what does it look like in wordpress?
• has some possibly useful demographic reporting
• It was first choice – see how far I got here

WP Member – advanced membership Plugin

• Dedicated wordpress plugin – may make for a more consistent admin interface
• Various levels of support, plus you can buy on-demand support
• Uses Paypal IPN
• Variety of membership types, levels
• Subscription control, teaser pages
• File download and link protection
• Requires IonCube Php extension
• Yearly license fees, (1 – $34.99, 5-$51.99 and 10-$84.99)so this means ongoing costs for your client.  This differs from the others in that they often simply restrict the upgrades that you have access to.
• domain registered since July 2008, so relatively new

wp-membership.com by Synergy Software

• has a demo where you can logon as admin, not enough pre-populated data – would take a bit of effort to test out.
• a forum which at time of writing was rather empty
• offers paypal and authorize.net
• similar to suma in having consistent look and feel but not that sophisticated in functionality yet, but probably has all the basic needs.
• Single instance, plus authorize.net ($30 + $10)
• offers a range of pricing for developers from $142.36 for 5 to approx $900 for 60+
• domain registered since October 2008, so one of the newest
• They need to provide more info to attract me.
• One has to enter/specify the posts that are restricted, or the categories.  We need also the shortcode idea with a “teaser” – that should be easy to add in though.
• users don”t seem to be integrated with wordpress users – why not, also has own pages.  From a design point of view, I’d rather worth with wordpress’s design than alongside it.

Suma Membership and Subscription Management

• has a demo site
• $199, one time, not transferrable,  no developer arrangement, so must buy in client’s name to be legally correct
• Uses Paypal express as payment method
• Says it requires you to have a PayPal Website Payments Pro accoun, so that means $30 a month at least.  Not sure why it says this, since the Express checkout can be free of monthly costs.
• Support – appears to be via  an email address only – no forum, no humanness
• Can download an evaluation copy
• Very much a part of wordpress, so consistent look and feel – looks like a clean, simple setup (nice for non tech clients), but probably limited to exactly what its says – paid subscription and membership – no drip feed, no course content
• domain registered since September 2008, so relatively new

Not a Plugin, but may be helpful to some – also indicates complexity of integration?:

membershipacademy

• Actually more of a facilitation service where David Moskowitz helps you get going with a membership system.  I found it amusing that it is essentially a meta membership site – a membership site about having a membership site.
• It also has a useful review of membership site software, although many of these are separate from wordpress or are hosted versions.
• Demo site: http://www.wordpressamember.com

Avoid the following

Don’t worry – there is a no follow on the links…..

membership-plugin.com

• Avoid..My feeling is not good about this one:
  • absolutely no “human face”, hidden domain name ownership
  • no forum, just a support form
  • Bullshit? I quote “Membership Plugin is the most sought after and most used wordpress membership / subscription plugin in the world” – I only found a mention it after several days.. .
  • Manual page text links don’t work
  • annoying animations
  • Site is hard to read green/blue text on green/blue background ??

wpmembersite.com

• what the ? See above (except there is a name attached)
• it’s a one pager and seemingly unattended
• ! video which clearly shows old wordpress and there is not much else there – maybe it does something, who knows
• support forum link is full of crap

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