YourMembership is "okay" but somewhat half-baked
We bought a 2-year contract with YourMembership in 2017, and have been using it to manage memberships, handle event registrations, track contacts, and send email campaigns. We quickly realize that we wish we'd had a chance to do a trial account, or at least a monthly contract, before signing up.
Four big takeaways from using YourMembership (YM)
First, our membership structure is at an organizational level. YM supports this... sort of. It's great that you can have a master and sub-accounts (staff), but the flexibility is very limited and not well implemented. It's obvious their primary market is individual memberships. For example, there's currently no way to merge the organization's name into membership dues reminder emails. And there's no way to differentiate contact roles within an org (e.g. "billing contact" versus "executive contact")
Second, YM attempts to be an all-in-one solution... so you're stuck with their tools. You have to use their event system, email system, etc. There's little to no easy integration with the outside world (like a MailChimp or Eventbrite), apart from some other platforms -- some of which are owned by Community Brands (parent company) but have sizeable price tags. They have an API, but functionality is limited. Event registration is functional and better than some other options, but the user interface (graphic design) has led to a lot of confusion from our members.
They also have a "social media" piece, where members can log in and access the site. But this is a bit underdeveloped and not very intuitive compared to other options.
Third, YM has a very defined and somewhat confusing data structure. Their reports tool seems robust but requires a lot of trial-and-error to get good information. Also, you can add custom fields but this is somewhat cumbersome to manage.
Fourth, we have been generally disappointed by their tech support. It's gotten better, but we had a support ticket open for over a year. It was a technical question about their previous email system, but there was little follow-through on their part to understand or address what the problem was.
Bottom line: YourMembership is okay, but know what you're getting into. Do a trial account if you can. It's obvious the software is a bit dated and lacks a more "modern" feel. They are making improvements, but it's a slow process. I'm not sure how much effort they are putting into adding new features and making improvements -- the promised overhaul of the email system came almost a year after they initially said. That said, it's a good system for the cost -- but for our structure and needs was rather limiting.
