Ops & productivity
Flat-Rate Active-Member Membership OS
Membership management for dues-driven clubs, associations and chambers: bill only active paying members, store prospects free, no payment-processor surcharge.
Founder thesis
Dues-driven organizations get punished for keeping prospect lists. Incumbents bill by total contacts, so a club with 500 paying members and 5,000 past guests pays for people who never joined. Bill by active members only and the category's main pricing objection disappears.
What others got wrong
WildApricot meters price by total contacts, then adds a 20% servicing fee when a US or Canada account uses Stripe, PayPal or Authorize.net instead of its own processor.
WildApricot says billing is based on account access, not usage, yet its pricing page charges by contact count. Users have campaigned against this on its own wishlist for years.
Join It keeps a low headline price but stacks a 1.5% to 3% service fee on top of transaction costs.
MemberClicks gates pricing behind a demo and starts MC Pro at $4,500 a year, which prices out small clubs.
What should work
Charge a flat rate by active paying members, and store prospects, lapsed members, past attendees and newsletter subscribers for free.
Connect Stripe or PayPal directly and take no cut of transactions. WildApricot charges 20% of the subscription for that same choice today.
Sell through a parent association to all its chapters at once, one deal that lands dozens of member organizations.
Publish comparison pages that quote the incumbent's own users and do the pricing math in public.
What kills it
- Zeffy already gives nonprofits the whole product for $0, funded by optional donor tips.
- The low end is contested. Orgo now advertises from $380 a month with 0% platform transaction fees.
- Bill members not contacts is a 41-vote wishlist request, not a new insight, and incumbents can copy it.
- Stored contacts are not free. Email sends carry the cost, so unlimited storage still has a ceiling.
What users want
5Pay for paying members, not for prospects.
Oliver F. Lehmann wrote on WildApricot's own wishlist that the pricing system makes it impossible to manage prospects because they count as contacts and get very expensive.
Import a big prospect list without going broke.
Acer Ventura wrote that importing thousands of non-paying contacts would kill him financially, so he imports in chunks to stay inside his price plan.
Stop paying a penalty for using Stripe.
Cynthia Woodard wrote that a $20 penalty for not using Wild Apricot's payment system would push her away, and that she moved most operations to Airtable, Mailchimp and Google lists to avoid paying for non-member contacts.
No price cliff when a club crosses 500 members.
A club owner wrote on the wishlist that going over 500 members costs an extra $50 a month, which is a lot of money for them.
Not to be repriced after an acquisition.
A Reddit r/smallbusiness post described Wild Apricot raising a hobby club's yearly fees from $600 to $800, though the post body would not load on fetch.
- Sources
- 16
- Checked
- 12
- Competitors
- 4
- Gaps
- 7
- Page checked
- 12 · 75%
- Snippet only
- 4 · 25%
- Documented
- 8 · 53%
- Interpreted
- 7 · 47%
- pricing6
- complaint5
- market4
- playbook1
Competitors
4- Join It$29/mo
Parsed from public pricing blurbs (entry paid tier when available). Max in set: $29/mo.
| Competitor | From | Free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| WildApricot | Unverified | — | wildapricot.com✓ |
| Join It | $29/mo | — | joinit.com✓ |
| MemberClicks | See notes | — | memberclicks.com✓ |
| Zeffy | See notes | — | zeffy.com✓ |
What customers complain about
7| Gap | Src |
|---|---|
Contact-count pricing charges organizations for prospects, lapsed members, past guests and subscribers, not just active members. Users say they hold back growth to stay under a tier. | |
A 20% Payment System Servicing Fee lands on the whole subscription when a US or Canada account uses Stripe, PayPal or Authorize.net. On the $66 a month 100-contact plan that is about +$13 a month. | |
Tier cliffs hit common club sizes. One club near 500 members said the next tier costs an extra $50 a month. | |
Price rises after the Personify acquisition push small clubs to look around. One Reddit post said yearly fees went from $600 to $800. | |
Reviews point to weaker support and slower development since the acquisition. The G2 page would not load, so this is secondhand. | |
The community layer is thin: a competing vendor described the member forum as flat and single-level, with no activity feed or member-to-member messaging. | |
A $0 competitor already exists for donation-driven nonprofits. That the unserved segment is dues-driven clubs with big contact lists is a reasonable guess, not a proven fact. |
Documented Interpreted
How competitors find customers
3| Tactic | Src |
|---|---|
| Sell through a parent association to all its chapters via negotiated group pricing. WildApricot is said to do this with ATD, which makes chapters buy through the parent for the discount. The ATD page would not load, so treat this as unverified. | td.org· |
| Publish best-alternative and versus pages that quote the incumbent's reviews and do the pricing arithmetic. Orgo runs this play today. No conversion numbers are published. | orgo.space✓ |
| Run a partner and consultant directory so designers and implementation consultants recommend the platform. WildApricot advertises two partner programs and a Recommend WildApricot link. | wildapricot.com✓ |
Your angle & pricing wedge
| Piece | Claim | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Angle | Bill by active paying members only, store prospects and lapsed contacts free, connect Stripe or PayPal with no surcharge, and include dues, renewals, events, a member directory, a chapter website and a real threaded community layer. The model is not new: bill members not contacts is a 41-vote WildApricot wishlist request, Zeffy is free, and Join It and MemberClicks already serve the mid-market, so execution is the bet. | |
| Wedge | Change the billable unit from total contacts and a percent of transactions to active members per organization, and stop reselling payment processing at a markup. The $66 a month 100-contact account carries about +$13 a month for using Stripe, and Orgo now advertises from $380 a month with 0% platform fees, so the low end is already crowded. |
How others got traction
4| Move | Why | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Sell into a whole federated association at once instead of one chapter at a time | ATD is reported to have negotiated 25% off for its chapters. The page would not load, so treat this as unverified, though one deal covers many member organizations. | td.org· |
| Ask donors, not nonprofits, for optional tips at checkout | Zeffy reached 100,000 nonprofits at $0 by shifting the payer to donors, which removes budget approval, but it fits donation-driven groups far better than dues-only clubs. | zeffy.com✓ |
| Buy a beloved incumbent and ride a churn story | WildApricot joined Personify in 2017 and users report repricing and weaker support; its public count fell from over 25,000 in a 2018 post to 15,000+ now, though the two counts may use different definitions. | wildapricot.com✓ |
| Pair a low subscription with a transaction fee and a self-serve trial | Join It says the hybrid keeps pricing accessible, and free import plus no-credit-card trial lowers the switch, but it reached 4,000+ organizations against WildApricot's 15,000+. | joinit.com✓ |
Market heat
WildApricot's pricing page says over 15,000 organizations.
WildApricot's About page says 15,000+ organizations, 10M+ active users and users in 204 countries.
Join It says 4,000+ organizations and $100M+ in membership payments processed since 2016.
Zeffy says 100,000 nonprofits, $2B+ raised, and funds its $0 product from optional donor tips.
MemberClicks prices MC Pro from $4,500 a year and MC Trade from $3,500 a year.
WildApricot's contact selector scales to a 50,000-contact tier, but only the 100-contact price renders on the live page.
Revenue signals
6| Signal | Src |
|---|---|
WildApricot: 15,000+ organizations on its pricing page, plus 10M+ active users and 204 countries on its About page. Self-reported, not audited. | wildapricot.com✓ |
At the 2017 acquisition, Wild Apricot served more than 22,000 organizations and 7 million members, with 21% of clients outside the US, and the combined Personify entity was to serve 30,000 organizations. Press-reported at the time. | thenonprofittimes.com✓ |
Join It: 4,000+ organizations and $100M+ in processed payments since 2016. Self-reported, not audited. | joinit.com✓ |
Zeffy: 100,000 nonprofits, $2B+ raised, $0 in fees, revenue from optional donor tips with 2 of 3 donors tipping. Self-reported, not audited. | zeffy.com✓ |
MemberClicks: 3,000+ associations and entry contracts from $3,500 to $4,500 a year. Self-reported and sales-gated. | memberclicks.com✓ |
Self-serve pricing runs from $0 at Zeffy through $66 a month at WildApricot to $3,500 to $4,500+ a year at MemberClicks. Whether a $49 to $79 a month flat plan can profitably serve unlimited stored contacts is a guess, and the low end is contested by Orgo and free Zeffy. | memberclicks.com✓ |
Should you build this?
The category monetizes and the incumbent's own users document the pain, which is a better start than most ideas get. But the low end is contested by free Zeffy and Orgo, WildApricot's mid-tier prices could not be verified, and bill members not contacts is a long-standing wishlist item, so nothing here is a new insight. If you build it, bill active members flat, store contacts free, take no cut of payments, and lead with the pricing objection. Test first: recruit 20 dues-driven organizations that pay for an AMS and hold at least 3x more stored contacts than active members, get their current invoice, count active versus total contacts, and take a paid pre-order at $59 a month flat for unlimited storage and no surcharge. Kill it if fewer than 8 of 20 show non-paying contacts outnumbering active members, if fewer than 5 pre-pay, or if dues clubs say Zeffy or their incumbent already covers dues, renewals, directory and events.
More ▾
All sources
16| Source | Kind | Status | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| playbook | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 |