User Reviews

( 30 customer reviews )

Pros

Wonderful help with problems, always nice. Easy to use and I never managed a website before this one. Easy to make changes to pages. Appreciate the newsletter directed to nonprofits, get good ideas from it. Love the email blast. Appreciate the organization of member lists and information.

Cons

Would like to conduct online surveys and member voting through the website. Would like job listings.

Overall

Very pleased. Would and do recommend it to others.

Pros

My experience with Wild Apricot has been fabulous!! From the very start with the free trial to the details of the well thought out features...AMAZING!

I really enjoy the ease of the backend and being able to teach others how to use this service is so simple! What is really great is how it is so easy to quickly post events to the calendar and schedule reminder emails. Also, what I like is the ways in which you can customize your site for your group, so many options and sooooo easy to implement!

The cost of this service is very affordable, before finding Wild Apricot I was paying 4 times more each month for a more complex & hard to use service oh and they also charged a HUGE set up fee...Thank you Wild Apricot!

Cons

My ONLY two complaints...
#1 is that I have never spoken to a live person when calling in the help/support line...that being said, I ALWAYS receive a quick & detailed response when I send in a ticket via the online customer support. So, really I can submit any question, big or small, day or night, via the online customer support and really I prefer to submit my questions/issues in it that way anyway!

#2, the recurring billing is not compatible to Authorize.net, which apparently they are working on and will be launched in a near future update.

Overall

My recommendation is that any organization that would like to communicate with their members and give their members the opportunity to pay on-line quickly & easily should be using Wild Apricot!

Pros

Excellent combination of powerful member management tools with integration into a great website templates.

Absolutely fantastic even for non-IT professionals. It enables you to easily (really!) create a nice looking site with being very techy.

As a non-profit we could not afford to invest in major web development and thanks to Wild Apricot we are able to run a professional looking website, and manage our membership easily.

Contact databases, events and membership management functionalities are easy to use and quite flexible too, with the possibility of customizing to the needs of most organizations.

Wild Apricot has great response time to clients' requests for information or help. They are always very thorough in their answers, and kind and considerate too, which is extremely pleasant.

Furthermore, their development plan is really driven by the needs of their customers ensuring that most demands are met at some point or another.

Cons

Any "cons" are quickly read by Wild Apricot as client requests and transformed into upgraded into new functionalities in the next update!

At this day, the improvements that could be made are in facilitating the web page editing and formatting (fonts, tables, etc.) and new functionalities in membership management which are probably in the pipeline anyway.

Overall

Wild Apricot is excellent. It fulfills the needs of a small to average-size non-profit in terms of web creation and membership management.

Pros

* Easy to set up
* Powerful features - almost all you'd want on your club's site
* automates renewals
* allows committee members to contribute to the site
* great dashboard to see status of membership
* quick and friendly support when needed
* very well priced for the features

Cons

* missing some features specific to our club type
* doesn't rate so well on search engines

Overall

I searched high and low for a software package to help streamline our renewals and couldn't find something that met our needs. I was hesitant to try Wild Apricot at first as I prefer to have my own data with me locally, however the web presence allows members and committee officials to undertake their duties on the site. Feel free to visit www.duttoncycles.org.au to see what we have done with little technical knowledge. Highly recommended and I am sure that more features will be added as the product matures.

Pros

Very easy to set up and use. Really makes your website, emails and events look extremly professional. Great why to organize many membership levels and keep in contact with them. Customer support is unbelievable for the small fee structure. Being able to run our website internally with mulitple people have different levels of access is a big plus!

Cons

Slighltly limiting in web page layout being a WYSIWYG program but they are constantly updating and improving the program.

Overall

We have had companies run our website and have ran our own several different ways but since having it on Wild Apricot for over 1 1/2 years our members really enjoy all the bells and wistles we can offer them.

Pros

Flat, all-inclusive fees for system access, regular upgrades and support. They do not charge a setup fee, customization fees, training fee, or per-transaction fees. Credit card processing fees are handled directly between you and the payment processor (PayPal).

The software is very simple to learn and use, and you can 'farm out' some of the maintenance tasks to volunteers if you want (through different levels of site access). You'll find contact database management features, an online donations page, and event management features, among other offerings.

They provide a free 30-day trial if you want to test-drive the features, and there is a discount for annual contracts.

Frequent updates are provided automatically, and often include member-requested enhancements. Their e-newsletters and blogs even include helpful information of more general use to associations and nonprofits.

Cons

Knowledge of CSS and HTML are helpful if you really need to have things look a certain way. Event management can sometimes be clunky for more complex programming choices. No integrated group calendar function as yet.

Overall

Other choices that I've considered for groups include eTapestry, MemberClicks, and CitySoft, but according to my research, their costs, complexity and features are generally not as good a match as Wild Apricot for smaller charities.

All in all, I am confident in suggesting WA as a choice for nonprofits and associations. I've implemented sites for a number of clients and have been satisfied with the services and options available for every one.

Pros

Easy to use templates and great membership management.

Cons

I do not have any issues with Wild Apricot.

Overall

I would definitely reccomend Wild Apricot to anyone I know.

Pros

- One place for all of your data.
- The "self-service" approach to membership management reduces the administrative burden of any group.
- Excellent customer service.
I have created 11 web sites using Wild Apricot with many different requirements -- Wild Apricot fit the bill in all cases! In the time that I have been using this service I have found them to be very responsive to suggestions and constantly improving the service.

Cons

None that I can think of.

Overall

Wild Apricot is an exceptional service and their technical support (which is free) is excellent. They are very responsive to suggestions and constantly improving -- I have no hesitation in recommending Wild Apricot.

Pros

Very easy to use; customer support is absolutely fabulous; the price is extremely reasonable for the richness of the program; anytime I have had a question or suggestion, I have been contacted--this is the best customer support I have ever experienced

Cons

I honestly have nothing to complain about. This system gives me all I need. See above

Overall

I am 200% satisfied with this system and this company.

Pros

I searched around a lot trying to find the right membership software for my organization. All had steep learning curves and also needed to be integrated into your hosting plan. WildApricot.org gave me one complete package with some powerfull features. My organizations site is running smoothly and it is so easy to build your site and keep up with everything going on. I would give it an A+. And the price is going to be very hard to beat. I am very satisfied.

Cons

Very, very few. At this point the only thing lacking for my own site is the ability to use Google Friends Connect. But in the future hopefully it can be integrated into our site. Nothing significant in any other area that I can find.

Overall

If your organization is in need of a powerfull yet easy way to build a site and keep up with all of it's members then I don't think you could go wrong here with WildApricot.org Give it their test drive, which is free, and I think you will be impressed.

Pros

Wild Apricot's team is extremely customer service savvy and quick to respond to problems (of which there have been very few). They also are always making product enhancements (on nearly a monthly basis) based upon their customers'/users' requests, suggestions, recommendations, and needs. The functionality is as simple or as complex as needed, based upon the size, structure, and budget of an organization. Online registration has made keeping track of events a breeze; although we have not yet instituted online payment, several options are available. Automatic reminders of membership renewals are easily programmed and customized, as well as event reminders; membership blast e-mails; opt-out feature; advanced search and filtering of member records; back-end administration rights can be customized; importing and exporting records; viewing and editing member records and privacy settings; CSS and Javascript customization; saved e-mail drafts. Pricing is based upon number of active records.

Cons

I have very few complaints. I have requested several features that have been incorporated into the software's functionality. I have made a request that is in the queue for consideration: because our association is for public relations professionals, we have a lot of news, and it would be nice to be able to set news posting dates and archiving dates with individual articles with a library of past news stories. The WYSIWYG formatting for pages is a little clunky, but there is a wealth of documentation for customizing pages as well as support materials.

Overall

I have used other software to manage our association's membership, and Wild Apricot is far ahead of the curve as far as functionality, customization, and ease of use. But probably the best feature is Wild Apricot's team of wonderful customer-focused developers and support personnel who respond quickly, efficiently, and reliably to all support requests...at no extra charge!

Pros

Ease of use
Superior Functionality
Reasonable Rates
Awesome customer service
Always improving on offerings

Cons

none that I can think of

Overall

Wild Apricot is a SUPERIOR product for building websites. When I found Wild Apricot, I didn't know anything about building websites and I was able to easily teach myself with the help of their site, tutorials and information. I can now design websites that look extremely professional in very little time complete with videos, slide shows, merchant account, etc... I am EXTREMELY SATISFIED with Wild Apricot and would recommend this product to anyone. Since I have learned the product, I was able to quit my job as an Executive Assistant and start my own business designing reasonably priced websites for non-profits and other businesses.

Pros

Great customer support. Easy to use.

Cons

Wild Apricot is missing some functionality that is important to us. But they are very attentive to customers' requirements and come up with frequent improvements. Our needs should be fulfilled soon with a future release.

Overall

Wild Apricot is full of interesting features that might go way beyond what you had thought about in your initial list of requirements. I would recommend that any membership based organization review Wild Apricot even if they already have their own website. It doesn't take much time to try the 30 days free trial.

Pros

Best membership database system I have worked with! Highly recommend.

Cons

Some features are still in development - but the team at Wild Apricot is doing a great job adding new features based on customer requests.

Overall

Highly recommend.

Pros

Easy to get an attractive, functional website up and running quickly. Combines meeting, membership, and web content management. Decent GUI for administrators to create or edit pages. Fairly good system for sending event invitations, reminders, and other email blasts. First class customer service -- responsive and caring.

Cons

Certain functions are not flexible enough, requiring some awkward workarounds to accomplish the desired result. (But customer service has been very helpful with these workarounds.) Still needed are systems to allow administrators to enter and track offline transactions and to record actual attendees at events (not just registrants).

Overall

Positive. We gave up somewhat more flexible meeting/membership and reporting capabilities in order to gain a much-improved, much easier to manage, integrated website. In the process, Wild Apricot reduced our costs for these services by more than 50%. WA is still a work in progress, but the company listens to its clients and is continually adding features and improvements. On a 1-10 scale, I'd call it 8.5 and working toward 10.

Pros

You can create a fully functional website without knowing html code.
They offer a variety of templates and you can customize your header to display your logo. There's numerous functional pages to handle all your membership needs.
They database is easy to use and provides membership renewal reminders and integration with shopping carts that accept credit cards or Paypal.
The have a very detailed knowledge base to find most answers to your questions. There is a forum to ask questions or you can submit a ticket for individualized questions. I'm very happy with the response time to my questions.
The cost is very reasonable and well worth the money.

Cons

When setting up a page it seems slow to respond.
I find inserting ad links to be frustrating. They seem to reposition themselves after I publish. I can never get the alignment just right.

Overall

I would recommend Wild Apricot to any company that has a membership to keep track of. You can have an online presence as well and take care of your membership needs all in one place.

It would be nice if it could handle 6 month or 3 month memberships and an online store so we could make some additional revenue.

Pros

We are a recreational tennis club with 70 members. I created a great website with a customized membership application form in just one day with no coding required. Within a week, we were live, with online applications and online event registration for tennis tournaments and even electronic payment. I have ALL contact information plus player rankings available when it is time to do the draw; it is so much easier than taking paper entry forms which are not filled out completely or legibly. Thanks to customized event registration forms, I can solicit volunteers at the time that they register. No more calling people at their homes trying to find someone to help!!! I appreciate the security measures too -- I am able to provide club newsletters and photo galleries to club members only. My membership is very pleased with the functionality and everyone says that the club feels more connected this year.

The Wild Apricot support team has been responsive to all questions and problems.

Cons

The finance side of Wild Apricot is a little weak as their reports do not take into account the finance fees that Google Checkout and PayPal deduct. And you can't modify the numbers manually to reflect actual amount received, either due to finance fees or if someone sent in a partial payment. They are aware of these issues and are working on them.

The other enhancement request that we have is to have users be able to see who else is signed up for tournaments. That's because we are a social organization and because we make use of changing volunteers to help with every event. Wild Apricot is working on this but it was not an early priority because professional organizations that were hosting seminars, for example, had no need for participants to see who else was attending and did not necessarily use any volunteers.

Overall

I would definitely recommend Wild Apricot for any organization with a membership and events that require registration. They manage this amazingly well!!. I love the fact that it is so easy for both admins and users to use. Most of my admins and membership are not technical so this is important to us. It's easy to enable blogs, forums, and photo galleries to create community pages -- somewhere that members can connect to the club and each other.

Pros

I used it as a free account for 2 years while I built up the non-profit. We live in a very economicly challenged area, so I make sure and pass on as much information as I can for our members. Wild Apricot makes it easy to update the pages. I start my days by checking my e-mails and seeing if there is anything I need to put onto our web site. We have a community page and a fundraising page for our members.

Cons

I had a hard time finding things on the web site after their last update.For example I couldn't find where to update my e-mail address. I called their support line and a real person came on the phone to help me; I didn't even have to wait. So maybe the con is my lack of technical ability but Wild Apricot has great support to help even non computer people

Overall

I highly recommend Wild Apricot. The product is dependable, easy to use, great technical support and has really helped us up our visibility.

Pros

Incredibly well-integrated platform for membership management, event management, membership directory, donation tracking, web site, and payment processing. Consolidating everything was a blessing for our club.

Cons

Overall, it's hard to say anything bad about this platform. However, these are a few enhancements that we hope will arrive soon.

1. Security (Read, Edit, No access) on each group instead of the global "Group Participation" setting
2. Security groups to complement distribution/categorization groups
3. Different data types for fields (date, numeric, etc.)
4. Rules-based fields
5. Ability to have a page that doesn't appear on the menu, only as a link to another web site page
6. QuickBooks integration (API) to automatically feed transactions from the online payment process
7. Payment import for previous payment history

Overall

Excellent and a must-see for any organization or club, specifically on a tight budget.

Pros

Fantastic customer support that really listens to feedback.
Very easy to use for the most basic user.

Cons

While it may offer basic looks right now, they are continually upgrading with more features and abilities. It's always getting better!

Overall

This is a great tool for numerous different uses!

Pros

Always implementing and making updates and recommendations to the system

Cons

I've no Cons so far ... they are very efficient in making changes... I've rated 5 for them being excellent.

Overall

Very easy to use, very efficient and affordable. Great customer service

Pros

Our goal was to maintain a constantly-updated website, but we were working thru a vendor who designed our old site from scratch and one needed to know html to do any updating. Our events calendar was constantly missing events and full of errors which were difficult to correct. WildApricot allowed us to assign people who were only slightly computer-savvy because no coding was needed. The site is incredibly intuitive and easy to use and takes only minutes a day for people to update. We can assign multiple administrators with different duties and everything doesn't need to go thru a webmaster who may or may not get around to meeting our needs. The site looks wonderful and the membership is responding very positively to its features.

Cons

There is almost nothing I don't like. I wish Safari was supported (and I hear they may be working on that) but it is not inconvenient to use FireFox and it's free, so that's just a very minor annoyance. I would like to see a little more flexibility in the forms-templates -- we had trouble getting the membership categories in the order we prefer on the screen, but all-in-all our experience has been trouble-free. There may be some people out there who will feel constrained by the available templates, but there are enough that our problem was more of which to choose, and I understand that even the templates are customizable (if you know how to code). The standard ones met our needs.

Overall

I like this product so much, after setting-up the site for AGO-Milwaukee, I convinced my church to switch from the service supported by our Denomination to WildApricot and it's much easier to use. We're just getting started, but already our site is far better at serving our needs. I would highly recommend WildApricot for any small to medium organization which cannot afford to hire a full-time computer-geek webmaster but needs an attractive and functional website. The learning-curve was gentle and we were operative in a very short time. I am completely satisfied that WildApricot has allowed us to meet and even exceed our goals for our new website.

Pros

This is an excellent software for small-med sized associations. It takes a lot of the administrative tasks and automates them which saves groups a lot of time, money and energy. It is also very easy for a volunteer to learn how to use. I would highly recommend it!!!!

Cons

I can't think of any

Overall

I have helped several groups implement this software as it is the perfect solution for many of them, and very affordable.

Pros

Super Easy to Implement, Transition from Old Provider was seamless and took about 5 minutes. Support has been tremendous. They are constantly working to improve the product.
My organization did not have a Member-based system prior to our implementation of Wild Apricot mainly due to the barriers of cost and the tech expertise required for such a system. We identified Wild Apricot through a Google search and after some preliminary testing went with an implementation that we were able to do ourselves without any outside help. This new and improved web-site has so many more features then the old one and the cost difference has been minimal. The 30 days free trial was a great way to learn about the product and I was able to give a demo to the club owner that really sold him on the possibilities working with Wild Apricot would bring.

Cons

Our biggest problem is that many of our members are retired couples and for some reason they share e-mail addresses. This causes a problem with the system since the e-mail address is a used as the login id. This has caused us some trouble trying to convince these members to obtain a new e-mail address. They just are not interested.
There are work arounds but they are a little clumsy.
No other problems to note.

Overall

Highly recommended for small organizations or for someone wanting to build their own web-site and who is not particularly tech savvy.

Pros

*Online hosted solution - great for mobile or virtual offices and small orgs with little-to-no tech support
*Seamless membership transactions and automated renewal process
*Very responsive customer service
*Good price
*Ability to create custom fields
*Aggressive development happening - new features are rolled out quarterly
*Ability to manage event registrations and donations in addition to membership
*Custom website capabilities

Cons

*Growing pains around tracking and managing donations (as distinct from memberships)
*Some clunkiness in navigation and processes - mostly around donations, which is an area they are working to develop
*Not great export/import/reporting capabilities

Overall

Highly recommended for anyone for whom membership is the primary revenue and relationship engine. Customer support is great, and they are constantly implementing suggestions from clients and striving to improve features and functionality.

Pros

It's the perfect member database solution.

Cons

Macros cannot be added.
Cannot produce membership cards.

Overall

I highly recommend this product. It's very user-friendly and tech support is phenomenal.

Pros

Handles membership data very well.

Cons

Limited to membership focus, which I suppose is the real point of the program, but expansion to better forum capability with "moderator", shopping cart for non membership sales and classified ad's would be great. The ability for members to select pay pal or credit card would also be very nice. PayPal gets a little tiresome and may members refuse to use it!

Overall

Improve web page load and edit functionality. Often takes excess time editing and creating new pages because font will not change, colors lock and will not change, alignment will not let you change etc. Seems to have the same problem whether you use firefox or IE. This may be my problem though, not the program. Overall it is a great program!

Pros

The Blog function has allowed our network efforts expand a national outreach capacity. Volunteer has become easier and with the economy, now volunteers can volunteer from the comfort of their homes. No more worries about the fuel to drive somewehre and volunteer. The post comments on blogs composed by Veterans that are part of our reintegration program. The blog is a very powerful tool and a nation of people are enjoying the leveraging of these efforts.

Cons

The function is under development to provide email updates and alerts when comments are posted and blogs are reviewed. This next update will catalyput an ever growing social network.

Overall

Incredible power house of a system and non-profits that need more volunteers can get creative and use this function to develop a web based volunteer force.

Pros

Time saver, gives back valuable man-hours to service the program cause

Cons

Limited to the users creativity.

Overall

MUST use system for all non-profits!

Pros

I love the ease of implementation and management. I created our beautiful new website in about an hour. I found the features very easy to use and whenever I ran into a snag there was always a tutorial at my fingertips.

Cons

The design templates are not very exciting.

Overall

I would definitely recommend Wild Apricot to other non-profits on a budget. After pricing a custom website and periodic upgrade Wild Apricot is hands down the best value.