Wild Apricot Review

Wild Apricot has a lot of features for a small association's needs (ours has about 2500 records), but a year after implementation we only use a few at this time. Implementation is very easy if your data is well organized. If it isn't, then implementation will be as complex as the problems with your data make it. I highly recommend learning how Wild Apricot is structured and taking your time to plan how your organization will use what it has to offer to your best advantage. Then do as much data hygiene as possible before you upload. That process is pretty slick, as is downloading and other basic functions. I would rate Wild Apricot's database fairly high for functionality and reliability. Reports could be better, but a lot of that has to do with how you organize data in the first place. We have used the email and newsletter functions as well. The email works well as long as your needs are modest. However, both the email and newsletter templates are extremely limited in their functionality and flexibility - and they can be "buggie" and unstable, e.g., constantly reverting to pre-set formats, refusing to accept changes, disallowing basic formatting things like adding/removing blank lines, professing to be WYSIWYG but that not actually be 100% true, etc. If you are familiar with how Mail Chimp templates behaved 5 years ago, these quirks are even a bit worse than those were. We use the email function pretty regularly, and so we have learned keep it simple. When we want to do a newsletter or anything more complex, we send an email through Wild Apricot (so that bounce backs, tracking, etc., are coordinated with the database) but the email contains a link to the publication which we created in a different program. I am not happy about this as we are having to pay for both programs, but it is the best we can do for the moment. Wild Apricot boasts other features such as basic website integration, discussion groups, etc. Both because our current website is pretty functional and because of the frustrations with the email/newsletter templates, we have not even considered using these functions yet. I do hope to implement online payments and integration with Quick Books later this year. Both of these things were important to us when we chose the software, but we have had to get the basics done first. Support is certainly better than other platforms I've used, but you won't want to be in any kind of a hurry if you need help. Once you get past the basics, they can be painfully slow and/or they will sometimes admit your bug is a problem but won't have a fix for it. Perhaps, eventually, they'll address it in a new iteration of the software - a small comfort when you have an issue NOW. To Wild Apricot's credit, they are constantly improving and upgrading. So I am hopeful that the things that most irritate me will be addressed eventually. They have also just introduced a sizable price increase, which they claim is the first in many years and justify because of the all the bells and whistles they've added. The old, lower price was also a reason we chose Wild Apricot. It is still more affordable than several others.