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A barebones AMS with only simple member management features
Submitted Aug. 25, 2015
If you have just started and are planning to stay fairly small (e.g. a few hundred to a few thousand mostly individual members), then Wild Apricot MIGHT be for you. Keep in mind that: 1. Whatever features you see is very much what you'll get. An aggressive sales person might promise you something else, as they did for us, but don't count on it. 2. The product offers only a very basic AMS functionality with very little if any support of organizational membership (e.g. having a delegated membership manager and then a delegated dues manager (e.g. the person who will pay the bills). 3. As your association grows, you will end up having to integrate Wild Apricot into other systems that you end up offering to your members. Forget it! This is where Wild Apricot support will bow out on you: "Sorry. We don't do and don't plan to do that..." Hence, you will find yourself with Wild Apricot in your hands and no path forward: "Now what?" Now...nothing. You have grown up beyond what Wild Apricot can give you. Time to migrate (e.g. spend more money you might not have). Hence is my recommendation: start with as solid solution as possible--one that will grow with you. Do not be left at the mercy of the "What You See Is What You [Don't] Get" little vendors. Here is one "dirty secret" that no SaaS AMS vendor like Wild Apricot or AMO wants you to know: CiviCRM, an open-source product you can download for free, a product with an extensive user base and enthusiastic knowledgeable development and consulting community, is WAY BETTER, right out of the box, than what these paid services offer you. I have spent thousands of dollars to learn this. If you read this carefully, you will save as much.
