Wordpress membership sites… not quite there
With 2010 very quickly approaching I have been trying to get Spacevidcast epic all worked out so you guys can enjoy post shows and hopefully an ad-free experience (here’s hoping we win the Livestream contest!) To make epic work I looked at a bunch of different membership plugins for Wordpress including DAP, Your Member, wp-Member, MemberWing, Wishlist Member and Suma. Combined the plugins do exactly what I am looking for, but each alone has major faults that make this a very tough decision.
There are a few key things I think a membership plugin for Wordpress should include:
- Payment processing should have the option of being on-site and not via stupid PayPal subscription buttons. It is far easier to get and keep a sale if the entire sales process is taken care of directly on the site. If the user has to sign up for a PayPal account or jump through any hoops at all, you have probably lost them. They already trust you, why send them away to another site for payment that they may not trust? In addition, not all areas of the world are able to create PayPal accounts. To this end, using PayPal Payments Pro which is their API allowing for on-site credit card processing is ideal. This does require the installation of an SSL certificate, but for anyone *serious* about a membership site this should be done anyhow (do you really want them to send their username and password in clear-text?)
- Free and premium content should be easy to manage. In the case of Spacevidcast we give most of the content away for free but keep back some of the added stuff like post shows for epic subscribers. Rather than having to remember silly short codes, or double enter my data in the post and excerpt section I should have multiple ways to protect my data. If I want to have everything above the ‘more’ tag be free and everything below be paid, that should be allowed. If I want to have only the excerpt be free and the main content be paid, that should be allowed. If I want to use a short code and protect just part of the post, that should be allowed. The plugin should not assume that one method is the best method for protecting content.
- Coupons and promotions. From time to time I may want to run a sale. The plugin should allow me to say something like ‘20% off your first 3 months’ or ‘$10.00 off a yearly membership’. This also allows me to track where the sales are coming from. If I want to give all NASASpaceFlight.com L2 members a 25% discount to epic then I would just give them a specific code to use, which I would then run a report against to see how successful that campaign is.
- Affiliate program. The best people to help sell epic are those in the Spacevidcast community. If I have a member that helps bring in 10 other epic subscribers, then frankly they should get free access for a duration of time. Affiliates get a kickback of sorts to offset the cost of their own membership.
- Drip content. I personally won’t use this and will allow every epic subscriber full access to the entire catalog of content for as long as they are a member, but it should be an option for those who want to use it.
- Recurring memberships as well as single payments. If someone wants to buy access to just one article rather than pay for a full recurring membership, they should be allowed. If they pay for a membership for 60 days and then stop, they should always have access to the 60 days worth of content that they paid for and nothing else. I should also be able to shut that all off so if you no longer pay, you no longer have access.
- Full bill and receipts on the site itself. I don’t want to send my community to a third party for my CC processing, nor do I want to send them there to get their payment history, receipts, etc. The ability to quickly and easily cancel their membership should also be on the site itself, not via a third party.
- E-mail marketing. I want to keep my epic members up to date with the content that they are privy to, in order to help show the value of epic. Since the epic content will be mixed with free content, it may be hard at times to understand exactly what they are getting. Weekly e-mail campaigns (with the option to opt-out) for members should be built in or at least it should tie to another WP plugin that allows me to do this. The advantage of using a different plugin is that I can also have non-subscribers get mail messages to showing the updates on the site as well as show what they are missing out on by not subscribing to epic.
- Detailed user reports. Who bought what, when. Revenue shifts. What coupon is working best. Who is the best affiliate, etc.
- I should be able to assign memberships to users. If I want to bypass the purchase system and give a membership to someone (my mom for example) I should be able to do that and have it tracked in the system as a subscriber, not just a regular Wordpress user.
- There should be multiple tiers of access. Silver, Gold and Platinum for example. Each tier could have a different amount of information, so a silver subscriber gets some of the content whereas a gold subscriber gets all of it.
- Access to all restricted content via an RSS feed specific for that user. When they are a paying member their RSS feed works showing all available content. When they stop paying the RSS feed stops working or reverts to the public feed with only partial information. Simply placing a ‘you need a subscription’ in the public RSS feed isn’t good enough, paying members should be able to see the content whenever and wherever they are, including their RSS reader.
Those are a lot of requirements. We can break that in to two sections. The first is credit card processing and account management. The second is marketing and user retention. Both are equally important but unfortunately not one of the above plugins does both.
I narrowed my search down to both Suma Plugin and Wishlist Member. I purchased both and have been playing with them. Wishlist Member has a ton of features allowing me to really advertise the system and retain members. It has a ton of options for how I will display my content, who I will display it to and when it will be displayed. I have marketing options after the fact so I can send out e-mail blasts to all of my users. The problem is that their credit card processing, which is very important, is sub par. Want to integrate with PayPal? Sure, create a PayPal button, send users to that site, have them create an account, enter their details and then they will get access to your content. If a user wants to unsubscribe that is all taken care of on the PayPal site. The moment I send them over to PayPal I already have the potential to lose them, which means from the beginning this plugin has failed. Too bad because the rest of the plugin is quite powerful. They even allow me to use other merchants, but in all cases I have to do the card processing on a different site which is a huge no-no when it comes to a real solution.
Suma Plugin is the exact opposite of Wishlist Member. This plugin does one thing and it does it extremely well… Process credit cards and give users access to your content via their subscription level. Anything beyond this and it falls flat on its face. Want to do coupon codes? Nope. Want to have affiliate marketing? Nope. E-Mail newsletters to members? Nope. Can I at least drip content to users over time so when they subscribe they don’t just get the whole library? Nah, you can’t do that either. All you can do is process a credit card on your site. They got the user from the beginning by allowing a very simple and straight forward way to purchase a membership without ever having to leave the site. They also help the member with their subscription by giving them the billing history and ability to cancel right on the site. But that’s about as far as the plugin goes.
In an ideal world the developers of Wishlist and Suma would get together and merge their products. That would allow for a very powerful solution where the card processing is done one site, the member management remains on site, and all the cool marketing and retention features would be available to keep the subscribers and get new ones. Unfortunately today it looks like the developers are either in the card processing camp or the marketing camp but not both. So what will I end up using for Spacevidcast epic? I have no idea yet. Suma 3.0 looks promising, but frankly I need/want a solution that does it all. Maybe I should just get going with one of the plugins until Spacevidcast has enough cash to get a programmer to develop the ultimate plugin, then sell that to other users who are in the same camp as we are. Or maybe one of the plugins will develop the other half of the solution that they are missing today by then.
Do you know of a plugin that does both and works with Wordpress? Think I’m crazy and should be going about this a completely different way? Leave your comments below!
Ben,
Based on your above list..
What DAP doesn’t do…
1) Payment processing
2) Coupons
What WL doesn’t do:
Doesn’t have any reports
1) Payment processing
2) Coupons
3) Drip content (it’s not what you think – see http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/blog/2009/12/true-content-dripping/ )
4) Email marketing
5) Affiliate Program
6) One subscriber can have access to only ONE product
7) Doesn’t protect files
I could go on. And you picked WL over DAP?
I’m curious as to why. Appreciate your feedback.
- Ravi Jayagopal
Developer, DigitalAccessPass.com
I actually did download the DAP demo, but had the same payment processing issues that WL Member had. It is worth pointing out that WL Member does have e-mail marketing and I seem to remember working out coupons as well. You’re right about most of the other items though.
Processing on-site is a HUGE DEAL that most of the plugins ignore. The first impression of the membership should not be a third party, it should be my brand as I already have their loyalty. In fact I think it is a bigger deal that almost all of the other features, so much so that I’m looking at Suma the strongest right now and will find a way to work out the other features I need with additional plugins. Build that in to DAP and it would be a completely different story! DAP would be in a league all its own. Just my $0.02
What do you mean WL has email marketing? They don’t have in-built email autoresponders or email broadcasting, like DAP does. Do they? I thought (and everyone else I know says) you have to integrate with a 3rd party service, like Aweber or GetResponse.
- Ravi Jayagopal
Developer, DigitalAccessPass.com
They do e-mail marketing. I don’t believe they have auto-responders, but I didn’t have a need for that so I didn’t look for it (so they might). I can even insert things like the users first name, last name, etc. I have WL member disabled right now as I test Suma, but the next time I enable it I can show you a screenshot. It’s not very advanced, but it is there. No 3rd party service required.
I did a general accounting of the features of both DAP and WL. Since Ravi’s DAP developer, I’d like to ask you both this question:
From an end-user point and/or site owner of view, would it matter if the email broadcast or auto-response system is built-in or 3rd-party?
Gwen,
>>From an end-user point and/or site owner of view, would it matter if the email broadcast or auto-response system is built-in or 3rd-party?<<
If you're just sending out general marketing messages, then it doesn't matter whether the email/broadcast system is built-in or 3rd party.
But if you need more "synchronized" or "segmented" emails to be sent – like…
1) When blog post 1 is released, send email 1
2) When video 2 is released, send email 2
3) Send email to all members of Product A
4) Send email to members only to "Free" members – those who have not purchased anything
5) Send email to members who members who have canceled
No, if it's all built-in to the membership system, like DAP has, then you can do all of the above, and many more such powerful segmenting.
But if it's all on an external system, first of all, syncing your external system with your main membership site would be a HUGE nightmare (every time someone buys a product, cancels a product, asks for a refund, upgrades from Product "Gold" to Product "Platinum"), can you imagine creating tens of lists on your 3rd party system just to "hold" these groups together?
Forget even creating tens of lists – how would you even keep them in sync, unless both your third party system and your membership software are both HEAVILY API based, where for every "action" on your membership site, you have an equivalent "action" happen on your 3rd party system.
It's a technical and logistic nightmare to pull this off.
But when everything's in one place, like it will be when you get DAP, then all of the above issues go away, and you can segment and market to your list with great ease, giving you much more power and control over your list.
Hope this helps.
- Ravi Jayagopal
And DAP’s Paypal integration takes literally 3 minutes (I could do it in 1
.
1) Copy product name from DAP
2) Create button in Paypal with same product name
3) Add notify_url at the bottom.
Done in 3 steps. No exaggeration. So I won’t agree with you if you say the payment integration is not satisfactory.
I do agree with the other 2 things though. We do need to have in-built payment processing and coupons.
We have been working on Authnet integration which should be out very soon, and we’re even going to have coupons, 1-click upsells and OTO’s. DAP is becoming a cart. And then I’ll be back here, bugging you to take back your words
- Ravi Jayagopal
Developer, DigitalAccessPass.com
No, I’m not saying it is hard to set up, I’m saying that it is bad for the end user on both DAP and WL-Member. I think both products have the same payment problems that make it really hard to select as a service.
Coupons would be nice, BUT built in payment processing as well as built in receipts and cancellation all on-site would be freaking amazing. It would make the setup more complex and I’m not 100% sure how many users would utilize it (there is a $30.00/mo fee from PayPal for example) but for anyone really serious about membership sites, sending the user away to a payment processor is a huge issue.
If you get on-site payment processing that works world-wide, while I won’t take back my words, I will certainly issue an update to this post in big bold print as well as utilize your plugin for Spacevidcast if. It would be a hands down no-brainer to have the processing on-site as well as all of the user retention/marketing that goes around it. Heck, you could convert me to one of your biggest evangelists if it works well. Keep the user on my site, my brand! I never want them to see anyone else. They know and trust me! I work hard to earn and keep their trust. Would hate to lose it to something like PayPal, etc.
Hey Gwen (sorry, we have exceeded the thread length so I have to write a new comment).
I personally don’t think the e-mail blast needs to be directly integrated, but there are pros and cons to each. As a site owner I have three groups of people I need to reach:
1 – Non members
2 – Members
3 – Ex-Members
With the plugin taking care of the e-mail blast I’m usually able to get to members and ex-members pretty easily. I can’t really reach non-members though as there’s generally not a way to sign up just for the e-mail newsletter. So in this scenario I can do customer retention as well as trying to woo old customers back.
With a third party service I can easily reach non-members by allowing them to sign up for my newsletter. For current members it may be possible to link to the service or at least do a CSV import. For ex-members though I’m sorta out of luck. In this scenario I can do some pre-sales type stuff and entice non-members to become members. I can also do some basic customer retention although it is a bit harder than an integrated solution. I can’t really try and win old customers back.
For me personally I’m thinking of just running two lists, one that members will get via DAP and one from something like constant contact or wp-newsletter. We’ll see what happens.
Hope that answers your question.
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