WildApricot Reviews

The back end of it is great for non-profits as it is all intergrated. It allows a one stop shop for membership and events which is great! It also allows emails to be targeted to certain groups which is even better. They have great email templates and do offer a myriad of how-tos.

The front end is a mess. The website functions are awful and dated. You can't make it your own unless you're a wiz at html and writing code. What time is saved from the back end is lost trying to keep the front end looking sleek and up to date. You're painted in a corner by only be allotted so many fonts and the worst part, it's not reactive to mobile devices. The emails are the same. They have great templates that you can follow, but the problem is what you think you're sending out and what is actually sent out are two different things and all the hours trying to make an email look professional are lost.

Integrated features for membership management, communications, event management, and website development. Great coaching services during implementation and then support after.

Nothing that would stop me from selecting it again. Some of the newer features like polls can use some development, and formatting is sometimes challenging. But the tradeoff for a fully integrated system is well worth it.

Having an integrated system with a single member database. If a member email address changes we don't have to update the bulk email system and the member roster -- the member can do it themself.

The fear factor in deploying this kept us from doing it sooner. It is a big package that has so many functions.

Wild Apricot provides a great deal of hope that you've finally found the magic solution that will do it all. Event RSVPs work well.

We were unable to successfully add Wild Apricot widgets to our website (which was not hosted on Wild Apricot's system). I contacted support multiple times and even they couldn't figure out how to fix it. So one of the chief reasons we wanted to use Wild Apricot (so that people could become members online through our website) never worked.

Wild Apricot is a full-feature membership management program. It handles every problem I have encountered since I stated using it in 2014. It has steady grown more powerful and they have developed solutions to almost every issue.

It is sometimes easy to skip a step in the financial part of the software, and cause trouble later - such as not settling a payment before voiding an invoice. It works great if you know what you are doing, but you use one of the functions rarely, it is important to review the steps carefully.

It's universality, it works well on every device, giving us instant functionality. I can find members, schedule events and make adjustments instantly, anywhere.

Sometimes I get lost doing certain operations.

Software has lots of features that we were not getting from our previous event management software. In addition, we get a member directory and membership management all in one program.

The learning curve for using it is somewhat steep, but once that is conquered you can see the true value of the software

I don't like anything about it compared to other platforms, I inherited it

Complete lack of response to customer needs, the program is inflexible, archaic, no improvements have been made in years and no attention is paid to the user forum where customers have been requesting basic functionality that was available on other platforms in the 1990s. Their support materials - check them out - now all start with an article telling you what the platform CAN'T do. In these, you'll find lists of all the functions that normal platforms a fraction of the cost of this one have been doing routinely since the internet was invented, like, oh...being able to proof the copy of a blog before it goes live, or schedule an event on a calendar to blast out at a specific date and time - a feature that is available on another part of their platform but not in the event module - I could go on for a long time. Customer service is useless, all they do when you finally get them on a chat is send links to articles that describe how customers needing more flexibility can add custom css. Isn't that the developers' job? Or they refer you to their 'partners.' My organization interviewed 4 of their partners. None of them had knowledge of css, or any more access to the staff at Wild Apticot than the general public. Their disregard for the needs of their users is shocking.

I particularly liked how user friendly the Wild Apricot software was. The dashboard was easy to navigate and had a modern design that made it simple to find and access the features I was looking for. The software was also very customizable, allowing me to make changes to the look and feel of my online presence quickly and easily.

Although Wild Apricot is a great software for managing membership and registration, there are a few things that could be improved upon. For example, the software is somewhat difficult to use and navigate, with a lot of confusing options and settings.

I absolutely loved setting up this software, I found it very challenging but I do enjoy a challenge.

I migrated out of Associations Online (AO) to WildApricot (WA). I found that using the CSV export of the membership out of AO really easy and the upload in WA simple as well.

The events system is fantastic for Zoom and events that need to have someone at the door checking people in. The admin app for WA is awesome when I'm on the go and just want to see who has checked into an event or who has registered for an event.

The biggest, and I mean this is a deal-breaker, the site builder is seriously broken and needs a massive update. I have checked about 30 other sites that use WildAprioct and they all look the same. Very Narrow, broken up into blocks of either 1/2/3.

There is a basic function of having a button added but the customization of said button is the link and text. Not the colour or the size. The blogging functionality for the site is very basic which is fine but it would be nice if I could categorize it and allow for displaying the post on other pages so that it isn't locked to the single blog page.

WA integrates with WordPress so I wanted to build a better-looking frontend for my site but the downside is the integration is not in full. You can have the login and some profile migrated over but things like Events, Profile Updates and even administration of membership can only be done in WA. So any changes in the profile can not be done in WordPress as it is only a one-way sync. The plugin for Wordpress is only a SSO for WildApricot.

Finally, the Support/Feature request, WA is probably one of the slower ones for it. It may take years for anything to happen. They update often around the 4th of each month but its never anything that is really useful for the Admin or User. Its usually bugs in the system which is awesome, but I would really like to see some more functionality with the system like the website builder and other integration into online Accounting Packages.

Wild Apricot offers ECF an opportunity to create, modify and update our online software when needed, allowing our in-house staff to make necessary adjustments without having to spend association funds to hire programmers to complete the tasks.

There is one item on our "Wish" list that we hope to see in the future. It would be nice to upgrade to a newer version of Excel or Word when exporting information. It's a small thing, but when you are trying to handle multiple lists for conversion to reports, etc., the first move is to save and rename the document based on the compatibility function. On a busy day, it's an added step that's time lost.

A 2nd wish would be for a bit more friendly e-mail design module. It works but can be challenging.

WA has a great feature set that includes a lot of the functionality we need to completely manage our membership, communication, and payment collection. I especially like that we can have bundle memberships and can create saved searches for email distribution or member management.

There are occasionally issues with some of the search fields that can only be resolved by logging off and back in. I would like to have group texting capabilities.

I like how easy it is to keep a consistent looking website using the themes.

I don't like that you don't charge in local currency. It is very had for non-profits to budget when the cost varies so much based on the US dollar.

I also don't like that you can not easily change the default theme colours for a theme so that they show up at the top of the selection box. Instead, we have to constantly use the hex codes for any text etc that doesn't pick up the theme colours automatically instead of picking one of the theme colours because they remain the colours of the original theme.

Ease of use for general public, ability to create an attractive, efficient website, Paypal link for easy registration for memberships and conference fees, great customer support

Some limitations for the structure of the website

The primary driver was to find something that was intuitive to use. Our staff are all part time volunteers and needed to be able to use the software with minimal instructions from their homes. Wild Apricot provided this by making the import of data simple as well as creating a new Web site that had same look and feel of existing site. Also migrating the DNS was easy.

There are plenty of tutorial and FAQ pages to guide you along. Once you under stand the basic concept everything else becomes easy. Best part is being able to grant limited admin access to certain pages for updates and changes. Also by letting users update their own information we saved a lot of time updating Membership data. Creating Events proved very popular as well with Members now being to sign up on line and also remit payments. Integration with PayPal was easy as well.

The application packs enough features to make it much easier to manage the Swim Club without making it too complicated to use. Everything beforehand was Excel driven and therefore never synchronized or up to date.

I also like the mobile app a lot. Easy to take a look if new members signed up, paid or if member are delinquent without going online.

We have encountered some minor issues we wished were a little different but nothing to deter from the overall functionality. I think that would be the case with any software packages. So no major cons to report. We like the software. It is easy to use and has powerful reporting etc capabilities.

We use the software to host our website and manage our membership database/contact system (emails to members and potential members). Before moving to this system, we were using separate tools for these three functions and it was extremely cumbersome. The consolidation was straightforward, their online help documentation is superb, and their technical support is astoundingly prompt and thorough. Seriously. It rarely takes more than 3 hours to get an extremely high quality response, and during one interaction the support staff proactively suggested a completely different approach that had advantages over what we were trying.
The contact management system (emails) is beautiful. It has given us a much more professional look and feel for our user base and many of our members have told us they feel it is impressive.
We are not using all the features (in particular, photo albums, user forums), but may want to use them some day, it is good to know we have these options for expansion.

I gave it a three star rating on ease of implementation only because they do not have the ability to easily import your old website into their system. This frankly is not a big problem for us, we wanted (and needed) to overhaul our website anyway, but it means that as of today (three months after go live on the member database and contact management system), we are still transitioning our website. We are all-volunteer with no staff, it is truly not difficult to re-do the website, but if a user is satisfied with their existing website, the effort to transition over should be part of consideration.