Wild Apricot Review
1 month free trialFlat-rate, all-inclusive pricing plans
Easy-to-use, do-it-yourself system
Professionally designed themes
Advanced site customization
Pros & Cons
- Leading all-in-one SaaS solution
- Website creation & management, for membership-based businesses and organizations
- Free plan for up to 50 contacts so you can test out the platform
- Manage email marketing directly from the platform
- Mobile application for administrators and members
- The user interface can be difficult
- The plans can get very expensive when you have a larger contact list
Plans & Pricing
Wild Apricot has many pricing plans that are divided based on the number of contacts you need to store within the system. All paid plans come with all available features with the exception of the free plan, which still allows you to store up to 50 contacts. All plans come with event management, email management, contact database management, a website builder, financial analysis tools, donations, online payments, an online store, and a mobile application. While pricier than other website building solutions, Wild Apricot’s all-in-one functionality makes it one of the least expensive options in the membership and association management space.
Wild Apricot was designed to help organizations such as non-profits, professional associations, and clubs manage everything related to their membership, including their website. Given their niche audience, Wild Apricot offers a suite of robust tools beyond just their drag and drop website builder.
Personal
The personal plan is $40/m and comes with 100 contacts.
Group
The group plan is $50/m and supports 250 contacts.
Community
The community plan is $90/m and has an allocation for 500 contacts.
Professional
The professional plan is $160/m and has 2,000 contacts.
Network
The network plan is $290/m and supports up to 5,000 contacts.
Enterprise
This plan costs $350/m and has up to 15,000 contacts.
Global
The global plan is $600/m and comes with support for 50,000 contacts.
Overview
Wild Apricot was created to help organizations such as non-profits, professional associations, and clubs manage everything related to their membership. Wild Apricot was founded by Dmitry Buterin in 2001 as a membership platform that allowed customers to build fully-fledged websites, manage contact databases, and collect payments. Over the years, it has grown to over 30,000 customers and continues to develop tools for small and medium businesses in different verticals.
Features & Functionality
Wild Apricot has a wide assortment of features to make it easier to build a website and manage contacts. The focus is on enhancing the membership experience for local and national organizations.
Mobile Application
Wild Apricot provides multiple mobile applications for administrators and members. As an administrator, you’re able to manage your website and contacts, set up or edit events, and even collect mobile payments. Members can interact with other members and stay abreast of the latest information related to your company.
Site Builder
The platform offers a simple drag and drop builder that allows you to create a custom website. You’re able to add your colors, content, logo, and images to get a site that matches your brand and tone. All websites created with Wild Apricot are mobile-optimized so you’ll create a positive experience for visitors no matter which device they use to interact with your brand.
Payment processing
Wild Apricot has multiple payment processors that integrate directly with the platform so you can charge for memberships or even collect donations. It integrates with popular payment systems such as Stripe, Square, and PayPal and allows you to collect money in multiple currencies.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most important aspects of marketing and growing a website. Wild Apricot has a built-in email marketing suite that allows you to create emails from templates and send them out as regular newsletters. You can also set up event-triggered messages and merge fields to personalize interactions with contacts.
Design & Templates
The platform comes with nearly 100 different templates. They’re not categorized by industry or use case. Instead, they’re grouped according to a base template which then has multiple variations users can choose from. After selecting a template, you can add pages, rearrange elements on the page, and change color schemes.
It does have some quirks associated with it. You can’t change the menu on individual pages. Instead, you’ll need to go back to the template level and edit the menu like that. It’s a drag-and-drop builder but you can only drop content into predefined areas.
You can edit the HTML on both a page level and site-wide level and there’s even an option to customize the CSS. At first glance, it provides a simple level of customizability but when you dig deeper you’ll see that you have a lot of control over how the website looks.
Ease of Use
Wild Apricot provides customer support for free users and paid users alike but paid users have more options. The support team is available via multiple channels Monday through Friday and the consensus online is that they’re responsive and knowledgeable.
Customer Support
When you first sign up for Wild Apricot there are multiple onboarding tutorials that help you find your way around the platform. The drag-and-drop tool is similar to what you’ll find on many other website builders but it doesn’t offer pixel-perfect control.
It has many options that go above and beyond building a website like contact management and payment processing. This extends the functionality but also makes it more complicated for the average user. In the end, it can get complex but there are many resources to help you along so go in knowing that you’ll have to dedicate time to learning it.
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Live Online Chat
Live chat is available within the application for paying customers. -
Email
Email support is available for free and paying customers. -
Video Tutorials
It provides multiple video training resources which are available on-demand and live. -
FAQ
There are multiple FAQs throughout the website and a detailed knowledgebase to answer the most difficult questions. -
Community Forum
A community forum is available to get answers to questions and even request features that you’re looking for.
Final Word
There are many tools to build websites and manage interactions with your contacts but Wild Apricot has a unique approach to it. It combines a fully-fledged site builder, payment processing, and membership management into a single platform. The website builder gives you deep customization options through the manipulation of CSS in order to create customized website. It integrates with popular payment processors and even allows you to launch email marketing campaigns to keep your contacts engaged.
It has a mobile app, an online store, and even lets you manage regular events. Though a robust tool, it does have a steep learning curve, and pricing is tied to contacts instead of features so it can get expensive when you grow beyond a certain point. If those aren’t deal-breakers then Wild Apricot is a solution that’s worth checking out when managing members is one of the most important things you need to do.
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