SilkStart vs. WildApricot by Personify

Wild Apricot is well-suited for medium-size membership organizations with technically competent staff members. The cost of the platform (which is increasing) makes justification/ROI difficult for small organizations of non-profit associations with limited or sporadic income. The system is effective for organizations with 1200 or more active member and where the organization needs a website with a basic store. Wild Apricot will not satisfy organizations that are accustomed to robust e-commerce platforms or that operate with complicated workflows and/or complicated membership options or requirements.

• Controls registration through a linked series of events in the new member acceptance process: background check, orientation, and evaluation.
• Provides access to data through the export of membership, invoice, and payment tables for use with Excel, to respond to requests for queries and reporting.
• Generates renewal invoices en masse for email distribution.

Incentivized

• They could have more interactivity for the contacts (vs members) designation
• Easier way to customize required fields for registration

Incentivized

When compared to iMIS, Wild Apricot is an order of magnitude easier to implement and use. It is also a tool that can be administered without a considerable amount of outside support and expense. Wild Apricot is also a more fully integrated system that does not require complicated module licensing and the associated costs. iMIS is also much more expense than Wild Apricot Ultimate Membership Pro (UMP) is a WordPress plugin solution for managing association memberships. Since this is an add-on software, the cost is a small faction of the expense associated with Wild Apricot. The feature set of Wild Apricot is more extensive than the capabilities of of UMP, however, Wild Apricot is easier to use and understand that UMP. Being a hosted solution, Wild Apricot is also much more stable and predictable.

• Staffing expenses have been kept flat through significant membership growth.
• Operating costs for WildApricot are reasonable, considering the functionality available.
• Managing membership renewals effectively means that we get our revenue into the bank within a predictable, reasonable time.

Incentivized