MembershipWorks – Membership, Events & Directory

Our club has been using MembershipWorks for over six years now. As a medium-size club of just under 300 members, this software has been a good fit in helping us to manage our members and events. On the rare occasions that I need help, support is extremely responsive. It is not unusual to get an email response from a real person within minutes of submitting a request.

We have been using this at a non-profit website we built several years ago. Since we helped the organization move from paper to this electronic platform, membership has more than doubled. Payments and cash flow are nearly 100% automated and members manage their own profiles.

I like the ability to login and manage membership outside of WordPress – the software makes it very easy to do this. Member management generally requires more time than website management.

Documentation available (you could always create a free account to check it out) and whenever I run into a question, the email support team has been quick and thorough. I’ve even used phone support a few times – but find that email and documentation works most of the time. The UI is clean and well thought out.

No software has every feature you want or need, but in practically every case, MembershipWorks has helped me come up with a solution.

Our organization of professional communicators is helped immensely by this membership plugin! We have had membership software in the past that was much more expensive and didn’t integrate with WordPress. We use just about every part of the plugin including the event calendar feature, membership database, directory, forms and shopping cart. The MailChimp integration allows us to use our favorite email marketing platform (that many of our volunteers are familiar with already) for our communications with members and prospects. Given our annual turnover of the board that runs our association, the training and support MembershipWorks provides is so helpful in transitioning from one board term to the next.

In reviewing the plugin’s website and description, this seems like a feature-rich system. NOPE. It has so many limitations you won’t believe it. Documentation isn’t available until AFTER you install the plugin, so there’s no way to know if it’s going to work for your needs until AFTER you’re working with it. And YES, there is an API… but it doesn’t help with some of the simplest isseus.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what this plugin can NOT do:

1. Sort events by multiple filters: Currently the ONLY way to sort events is category. But a second searchable/filterable/sortable option seems only logical. Why can’t I sort events by category AND location???? (They suggest having TONS of categories just to accommodate every location. NOT an acceptable work-around.)
2. Load more than one shortcode per page.
3. Paginate the directory listing page.
4. Sort members by anything other than one category.
5. Control what loads on the membership “cards.” Right now all it shows is a big rectangle with a name. VERY BORING AND UNATTRACTIVE.
6. Display members in a list, rather than those big awkward “cards.”
7. Alphabetize category lists. They’ll display in whatever order you create them. Period.

The ONLY bright spot is the support. Email support answered typically in 24-48 hours.

I am SO DONE with this system. I’ll be looking elsewhere from now on.

I could not be a bigger fan of this plugin and the great support they provide. I like that they provide hosting as well. They are super responsive when answering questions on their google community user forum. I have built more than 5 sites with this plugin and my clients have all been happy with how user-friendly the system is.