ManageMemberships

VS

Wild Apricot

ManageMemberships vs Wild Apricot

ManageMemberships is built for owners who want fast daily workflows, a mobile friendly admin, and real person support. It includes member management, waivers, access control with door logs, classes, events, resource booking, CRM pipelines, and automation. A custom branded app is included free on Core, and you can add a full POS without stitching together multiple systems.

Wild Apricot positions itself as membership management software for organizations that need member management, event management, email management, a website builder, financial tools, donations, and online payments. It also promotes mobile apps for admins and members.

Why owners switch to ManageMemberships

Side by side comparison

This table is designed to scan quickly, similar to common alternatives pages.

The winning conversation is simple. If you want direct support, fast owner workflows, built in access control with door logs, and the option to add a branded app and a full POS without disconnected systems, ManageMemberships is built for that.

If you want membership management with events, a website builder, email tools, donations, and online payments for an association style operation, Wild Apricot can be a strong fit.

Where Wild Apricot wins

Wild Apricot is built for associations, nonprofits, chambers, clubs and chapters, and it shows. It says more than 15,000 organizations run on it. Its strengths are the things those organizations need: event registration with waitlists, guests and coupons, donations, an online store with inventory and sales tax, a member directory, and a website builder with WordPress integrations. Both products include a drag-and-drop site builder, so the website itself isn't the difference; the events, donations and directory are. If your organization looks more like a club or association than a gym, with dues, events and a public website as the core of the job, that's the problem Wild Apricot was designed to solve.

Its terms are friendly too. Every pricing tier includes the same features, so you never upgrade to unlock something. Wild Apricot says there are no setup, customization, training, per-transaction or cancellation fees, onboarding is complimentary, and you can try it for 60 days without a credit card. Organizations with several chapters can get volume pricing. If you're running an association on a budget and want one tool for the website, the events and the renewals, it's a reasonable choice.

Where ManageMemberships wins

A gym runs on things Wild Apricot doesn't describe. There's no native door access: Wild Apricot doesn't describe one, and its check-in is for event attendees scanning a QR code. There's no class scheduler: classes are typically set up as events. And its waiver support on registration forms is a rules and terms checkbox with a link to your document. ManageMemberships is built around a gym's day: classes with attendance, e-signature waivers stored on each member's profile, and a door that opens for paid-up members and locks itself when a card is declined.

Pricing works differently as you grow. Wild Apricot charges by contact count, so the bill climbs as your list grows: $66 a month for 100 contacts, $154 for 500, $265 for 2,000. ManageMemberships Core is $99 a month with unlimited members. Payment fees work differently too. If you want to use Stripe or PayPal with Wild Apricot, it adds a fee of 20% of your subscription price, even if you don't take any online payments that month. With ManageMemberships, processing is one all-in rate with Stripe's fees included, and there's no separate servicing fee.

Your members also get your app. Core includes your own branded member app; Wild Apricot doesn't describe a custom-branded member app. Lead pipelines, email drips and automated retention come with the base plan, so trials and cancellations get followed up without a separate CRM. When something breaks, you talk to the person who built the software.

Pricing comparison

Contacts aren't the same as members. Wild Apricot counts the contacts in your database, so check how many you'd have once leads, past members and event guests are in it. For a small association, Wild Apricot's entry price is reasonable. For a gym that keeps growing, a flat $99 with unlimited members tends to come out ahead by a few hundred members, before you add a door system or a Stripe servicing fee.

Migration from Wild Apricot

Start with timing. Wild Apricot says you can cancel at any time, that monthly and annual plans renew automatically, and that there are no refunds for a period you've already paid for. If you prepaid a year, plan the switch around the end of that term. When you cancel, your Personify Payments account closes automatically, so keep it open until every member is billing through ManageMemberships.

Exporting is straightforward. Wild Apricot lets you export contacts and member data as XLS, CSV or XML, financial data as CSV or for QuickBooks, and store orders to a spreadsheet. We use those exports to bring over your members, membership levels, renewal dates and history, and we map your levels to ManageMemberships plans one to one.

Expect members to re-enter their cards. Wild Apricot says card details are held by the payment processor, not by Wild Apricot, and that members on automatic renewals must re-enter their payment details when the payment system changes. So instead of a card transfer, we build branded card-update forms and run an email and text campaign so members can update their card in a couple of taps.

Cutover is where double-billing happens, and we handle it by hand. Your old system stays live until you've checked that every member came across, and you pick the cutover date. Then we turn off each member's old renewal individually, timed to land just before their next charge date, so nobody pays twice and nobody has a gap. Most migrations take two to three weeks from start to launch, and migration is included on every plan.

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