Non-Profit Club Dues Membership Plug-in

  • crsouser

    (@crsouser)


    11 years ago

    Hi,
    Like many before I am looking for a Non-Profit oriented sports club membership plug-in to simply collect club membership dues and build a very basic membership list.
    I have looked at several and nothing quite has fit the bill yet and there have been many previous forum posts looking for the same thing but none have really outlined what they ended up doing, as well most seem to be oriented towards protecting site content vs. “membership” management.
    We had one custom developed a couple years ago that for the most part rocks, but it is not integrated into WordPress (requires a seperate URL and Login) and we can’t get developer support on even original project issues so we are looking for a more mainstream application to fit the needs.

    I’ll outline what I have looked at so far with the hopes of others chiming in and pointing me to a solution that will meet my needs.

    My requirements are relatively simple:
    A) Provide all site information as public information without requiring registration to view the content.
    B) The information is stored on the site itself and not require the use of a 3rd party registration website.
    C) Collect membership at three different levels checking out via Paypal, during checkout collect basic information about them and a checkbox they have reviewed the liability waiver (as we are a sports club).
    E) Have extra meta fields defined for each level; the 3rd level being a Family style membership for one of the levels where we can collect the name and date of birth date of each member in a single registration.
    F) Be simple to install and maintain the app
    G) Current Member report and some basic membership management functions; including mailchimp integration.
    H) The code gets updates at least once per year and support is easily accessible.
    I) I have a small budget to work with so it does not need to be free, but the software should not disable itself automatically if we do not renew (or more so if the developer decides to stop supporting it).

    It does not need to integrate with any other things like a forums or event registration plugin which we have separately working, that would be a nice to have.

    I also tried various Donation Buttons/Widget as when it comes down to it in a way what I am doing is collecting donations to the club as there is not deliverable and I don’t want to protect content but they lack other features or are too ‘donation’ oriented.

    At the time I am writing this I am leaning towards Paid Memberships Pro or S2 Member as I think I can work through and tweak them without much coding
    to fit the bill.

    Some of the ones I have looked at.
    1) S2 Members https://www.s2member.com/pro/ Cost $69
    -Meets all requirements but G and F.
    -If you get past the horrid configuration screens; super easy setup. Great documentation.
    -Have to create your own forms (but supposedly in paid version), setup and configuration cumbersome.
    -No reporting or management tools for membership.
    -Makes a mess of your normal wordpress registration forms if you have custom fields at different levels.
    -If it had some membership management function and out of box forms it would be the clear choice for me.
    – Has some 3rd party plugins available for the plug-in.
    2) Paid Memberships Pro https://www.paidmembershipspro.com/pricing/ $97
    -Meets requirements of B,C,D,E,F,G
    -Meets requirement A; though you can shoot yourself in the foot pretty easily in definition of the membership (which is easy to fix).
    -Still unclear on H; as support; source, recipes, and plug-in available once purchased; but even the docs are locked down.
    -Still unclear on E; recipe avail once purchased.
    -Still unclear on I; not clear on if app expires.
    -G Mailchimp’s integration requires a plug-in only available after purchase.
    – Several plug-ins via different sources for the plugin; some that S2 just has built in.
    -Smooth forms
    -Super easy to setup (Other than A)
    -Great Side Widget in WordPress Control Panel
    3) wpmudev.org Plug-ins (Membership, Fundraiser, etc)
    You can’t use or try them without purchasing; did not attempt.
    At ~$20 per month; out of budget for low volume of funds we deal with for the one widget I need (if it meets the needs).
    Odds are does not meet the non-expiration requirement.
    3) Wishlist Members
    I played with it a bit but was a bit put off by it as it wasn’t what I was immediately looking for and very focused on content protection.
    4) WooCommerce (and other e-checkout ones)
    It is very nice and would recommend for some things, but we have no deliverables or ‘products’ and so do not need to track delivery or shipping.
    5) NonProfit CMS
    https://www.nonprofitcms.org/category/wordpress/
    Has not been updated in more than 2 years and what is available is the initial version.
    Their other software tends to imply external integration.
    6) Seamless Donations
    Limited features, but if you I didn’t need to pitch it as a membership and actually need/track some of the info an option.
    7) Smart Donations
    Can’t do much other than create campaigns in free version.. but seems like it would be for just campaigns and wouldn’t have granularity of individual member info.

    I did read MANY articles, blogs, and youtube membership plugin review like so please do not just refer me to another review.. as in some ways I am writing a review here with this question.. so I am looking for specifics solutions.

    Any thoughts or feedback, is there any plug-ins I am missing?

    Thanks.
    Christopher

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

  • WOW,,, excellently written post.
    I am in the same boat as you it seems. I’m setting up a membership/payment form for a running club in the UK.
    S2member SEEMED the way to go, and as you outlined above the setup is horrid looking, confusing and cumbersome.
    We too will have a rather lengthy registration form (link to photo),,and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw what happens to the WP dashboard USERS page (but I am fairly certain I can work with that,,re-styling mostly.
    What gets me the most though,,unless I am wrong, is that a new member needs to pay first via PayPal (on the Member Options page via what is really just a simple PayPal button that I could have made in a minute via PayPal itself),,,then fill out our registration form,, this seems backwards to me,,, anyone else experience this/agree???
    The advantage of S2 is though,,that all the work of collecting our registration form data is in fact put into the USers profile,,,and we want/need that (such as Emergency Contact info).
    Anyway,, so I am thinking/working/looking for an alternative to S2,,, wondering how you proceeded and what you used,,, or are you still working at it?
    Cheers, Kevin Logan

    Replying here so that I can be notified if anyone comes up with an awesome suggestion. This is also something I’m looking for!

    I also am looking for something like this – a contact form that can collect name, address, phone, email, then the user can select membership level from several, an optional donation (it’s a non-profit club), and send it off to paypal to process the total. And would like to be able to use Paypal’s sandbox to test. Need to be able to track donation amount separate from membership fee.

    Don’t need for user levels – it’s not for logging into the website, just to collect/renew memberships and optionally donations.

    There are so many clubs out there which could use this, I guess I know now why I couldn’t find one that uses a plugin + paypal to do it. Wish I could write it myself. Seems like it would be something Paypal would have their developers write and make available.

    Anyone have any suggestions?

    Thread Starter crsouser

    (@crsouser)

    We ended up going with #PaidMembershipsPro and a couple months in seems to be working pretty well but it had some rough starts. There are definitely some outstanding issues, but for the most part it is running smoothly.

    I did have to utilize several of their Plug-ins; including some less publicly known ones as well as make heavy use and customization of their Registration Helper plug-in in the shape of a custom plug-in I had to start using. I am not a PHP guy but was able to figure it out, but of setting up a refreshed website with a new installation, look-and-feel, and a plug-in set it took nearly the longest to get working the way I really want it.

    The support forums that you get access to with the Paid version are essential to really flushing out a lot of the issues as you can search on what others have encountered and that is where their internal staff tend to linger and respond fairly actively in a mostly useful way. The lead developers are very active there as well.

    Caveats though of what I have noticed with Paid Membership’s pro.
    -It is very “Protected Content” oriented; we don’t want to protect hardly any of our content and this was something that had to be worked through to prevent PMP from actually blocking the display of items on our website.
    -It doesn’t play as well with Paypal as I would like, but works.
    -It doesn’t integrate with Time.ly so I can’t register someone for an event (Time.ly doesn’t have its own event registration either though) and have them sign-up for membership at the same time.
    -You can’t make an ad-hoc / free-form donation independent of signing up of registration. We don’t actively seek donations outside of membership but one of the previously mentioned donation plugins would work well for this in combination with PMP. Otherwise you can setup a “suggested donation” membership level at a fixed price for a 1 minute duration.
    -Emails and checkout screen are customizable, but not as easily and as much as I would like.
    -It generates the heaviest load on my wordpress installation , hosting of ‘almost’ all of my other plug-ins. So if you are already running slow, you should get that worked out first.

    I don’t consider myself an expert per say, but I would be willing to help a non-profit or organization get PMP setup and going on their website.

    Christopher

    Adding a reply to track any updates to this thread.
    Thanks for the good data thus far.
    Rusty

    Not having found anything to quite fit the bill, I went with a combination of Fast Secure Contact Form to gather the name, address, email, phone, membership level, etc. information which is sent to the membership chair, then used a couple of PayPal add to cart buttons so they could pay for their level of membership and add a donation if they wanted. Not elegant, but hopefully it will be sufficient.

    I need this too so just posting to get notified.

    I am playing with Gravity Forms and its user Registration and PayPal plugins but it is proving to be a headache.

    6 months and no updates from anyone… Good I’m here for the same issue. Currently using sports sign up they’re increasing fees.

    I am making some headway with the Gravity Forms User Registration plugin. I have had help from the GF support people to achieve this.

    There is going to be some code to add to functions.php to enable the extra profile fields. I will not be turning this into a plugin but will make a blog post about what I have done and share the code in due course.

    I hope to have this finished and working for what my organisation wants in the next couple of weeks.

    I have been looking into this for sometime and I am yet to find something that really works.. but it sounds like my project is like crsouser’s.
    Is PaidMembershipsPro worth the cost?

    Well I have finally got the first part of my requirements sorted using Gravity Forms and Extra User Details plugin. If you are interested a full write up is at https://fotos-espana.com/?p=321

    Crsouser, I have a similar experience with different plugins, trying to make PMPro run like I want. Everything seems to match my requirements in the beginning, but if it comes to important details you have to find a couple of workarounds to fit your needs.
    I would like to exchange some experience with the setup and worklflow with you? Is your installation still running fine? Did you import Members in the beginning? This is an issue in my case, since I can import user data but of course not the payment details. So I have to send the users anyway to some sort of checkout. Downside is once they are in the system they dont have a “sign up” form any longer.
    Do you had different member levels with different “extra fields”?
    What is your experience with following up the members. Do you use mailing lists?
    Thanks
    Andreas

    Christopher,

    Do you still think that PMPro is the best choice? I’m in the midst of trying to find a solution and like you and others have found that many need to be twisted and bent to work as desired.

    My problem is very close to your’s. I just need something simple to keep track of memberships, when they are due and a way to donate and pay dues on line.

    Mostly posting to see what you come up with.

    Thread Starter crsouser

    (@crsouser)

    In general, yes I still think PMPro is the best option for our needs for a self-hosted member database. It has some issues that I have mostly worked through through the creation of a custom plug-in and the paid support community is ‘relatively’ responsive to good questions.

    My primary issues with it that I have not worked completely through.
    1) It is the heaviest load component of my WordPress website, even when they are not in the membership section you see it affect load times. It is digestable, but with SSL and use of low cost shared hosting sometimes the site has slow load times.
    2) Entering into the second year of use for it I have seen membership renewal issues where there is a high abandonment rate for understanding how to login and renew their membership. It could simply be a bit more straight forward. The biggest challenge is most people not remembering their credentials or following through with the password reset process and duplicates are not allowed.. we also manually input some members and so this creates additional issues. I’ve considered purging the member base, but this defeats the purpose.
    3) Customer login and profile information. I would like the member to be able to login and see more information about themselves and not feel like they are in a WordPress blog. I would like some sort of near one-click renew or donate in addition to standard membership renewal as well as be able to have some personalization like “Member Since”, year to date and previous year donation totals, an electronic membership card they can print out, as well as ‘member benefits’ section / panel; we could display benefits exclusive to members to show increased value of membership.

    Christopher

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
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