iMIS Review

I have been using iMIS for over a decade.  In my role as Director of IT I have I have had to deal with using the front end and also supporting the back end.  My experience has been with various versions of iMIS, from 17 (just desktop) to 20 (desktop/wen hybrid) to EMS (which we are in the process of deploying as of now - May 2024)

iMIS is a very feature rich product.  Especially once it moved to the desktop/web hybrid model  It contains all the functionality an association needs, from member engagement and tracking to retail to event management to accounting.

iMIS is a modular system, which allows for a great deal of customization.  With the older versions a strong knowledge of SQL was a great benefit, as that and tools like Access were the best method for querying the data.  All that changed as iMIS developed a very robust tool for querying (called IQA).  In the EMS version IQAs are the only way to query data (though there is now a product from a separate vendor that allows for a great deal of SQL style work), and this has pluses and minuses.  On the plus side, it is very easy to create and modify queries and use them to build dynamic web content (something that was far harder with SQL).  On the downside, IQA can be a confusing tool to learm (especially if you are used to using SQL, as IQAs do not always utilize table names that are immediately recognizable, and examples that ASI creates are predicated on an ot of the box installation, which means that any customization that was done to the 'desktop' version is harder to find in the IQA tool.

One truly great facet of the product is a very powerful web tool that makes constructing websites that integrates well with member records and utilizes a robust permissions-based constraint on who can view and utilize web content..

iMIS also features a feature laden accounting module that can be integrated into Sage (and other products).  As we are in the process of doing so I cannot speak yet as to how well that has worked out.

There is one main drawback to iMIS - it is expensive.  That is to say it is more expensive than several other AMS products that I have looked at.  In its defense, iMIS does have more and better features than many other AMS systems.  But iMIS is still a very large portion of our annual budget,