aMember Pro is a powerful and flexible self-hosted membership software script that should be able to meet the needs of a wide variety of membership applications.

Membership Levels and Member Subscription Options

You can have an unlimited number of membership levels with the aMember Pro script. Different products can be sold at different prices and these can be linked to specific membership subscriptions which can be used to protect certain areas of your content for specific membership levels. Recurring payments can be set up easily and the first payment can be configured to be of a different value than the subsequent payments.

Site and Content Management

aMember Pro has a basic content management system and new pages can be easily created with the built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor. Content can be drip-fed so that members can get access to new content every day.

aMember Pro comes with an integrated helpdesk which helps to you keep customer and member requests and responses organized.

Member Management

The integrated admin control panel allows members and their subscriptions to be managed. Reports and batch operations are also available. Members can also manage some of their own data, such as paying for subscriptions, cancelling subscriptions or viewing a list of subscriptions. Member signups can be configured to be handled automatically. Signup forms are quite flexible with new fields and coupon codes that you can add, and you can also have multi-page signup forms.

Coupon Codes

Coupon codes can be created to give discounts for the first payment or for the whole recurring subscription. Coupons can be linked to specific dates and products and the number of times a coupon can be used can also be configured.

Autoresponder Integration

Different autoresponders can be configured and it is possible to configure emails to be sent on specific days after subscription or immediately after purchase. You can create and manage various opt-in email lists through aMember Pro and you can send emails to different groups of members with very flexible selection criteria that can be configured.

Ecommerce and Payment Integration

aMember Pro is integrated with various payment processors, such as PayPal, Plimus, ClickBank, SWREG, 1ShoppingCart, WorldPay, 2Checkout, Zombaio and a lot more. A fallback payment processor option allows that a customer can go back and choose another payment processor to pay if, for some reason, their select payment processor did not allow the payment to go through. aMember Pro also includes a shopping cart module and you are allowed to sell products from your membership site through aMember Pro.

Content Protection

aMember Pro can protect your website folders, files, scripts, blog posts, forums, and even more. Different types of content can be protected, such as downloadable files, website folders, pages and URL links.

Third-Party Software Integration

aMember Pro can deeply integrate with various Third-Party software such as content management systems, bulletin boards, and so on, for example the software integrates with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB3, Moodle, Vanilla Forum, XenForo, SMF Forum, myBB, VBulleting and SilverStripe. With this type of integration, aMember acts as the “master” and controls the third party script’s user database to assign user groups, control access, change passwords, and emails. However, with WordPress, aMember Pro integrates even deeper and allows you to control the content protection from within WordPress itself and you can also configure aMember Pro to use the header and footer sections, as well as the style from your WordPress theme.

Requirements

aMember Pro requires that you need to have your own web domain hosted on a Linux shared hosting account which provides support for the following: PHP 5.2+, MySQL 5.0+, Zend Framework, and HTML_QuickForm2 Libraries.

Support

You get six months of free upgrades and support with your purchase of the software and after that, you may upgrade your subscription to further upgrades and support for a small fee. The product comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Affiliate Management

The integrated Affilate Program is set up to correctly handle commissions on recurring billings, and also handle refunds and chargebacks. The Affiliate Program allows payouts to affiliates to be done with PayPal, MoneyBookers or by means of checks. The program also allows different commissions to be configured for first payments and for rebills. You can also reward your best performing affiliates by paying them a higher commission.

Pricing

aMember Pro has a one-time fee of $179.95 and it includes six months of free upgrades and support.

Finally

The advantages of aMember Pro is its large variety of features which includes basically everything that you could wish for in a membership site, plus the ability to sell products from your site. Its drawback compared to some of its competitors is that you only get six months of free upgrades and support with the product. However, if you are looking for a full-featured self-hosted membership software script that can also deeply integrate with other third party programs such as WordPress, then aMember Pro might be the one for you.

WishList Member is a WordPress plugin that converts your WordPress-based blog or website into a full-blown membership site.

Membership Levels and Member Subscription Options

WishList Member offers multiple membership levels, as well as free, trial, or paid membership plans, or even any combination of these plans, and allows you to protect exclusive content for members of a particular level. You can also provide multi-level access to protected content, which means you can give your members access to multiple levels within the membership structure. The sequential content delivery option allows you to automatically graduate your members from the one level to the next after a specified time period.

With WishList Member, you are able to control the period of time that each member has access to your membership website, and any membership can be set up to automatically expire after a specified period of time.

WishList Member also allows you to drip-feed content to your members, however it is not a straightforward operation, and it involves using the built-in sequential upgrade feature.

Site and Content Management

Since WishList Member is a WordPress plugin, it means that if you are already using WordPress, the most widely-used blog and website content management system on the planet, you will have no learning curve as far as content management and website configurations goes. It is very simple to install WishList Member by simply unzipping the compressed file, uploading it to your WordPress installation’s plugins folder and activating the plugin.

Member Management

The integrated member management dashboard allows you to view your members’ details, their registration status, their membership level, etc. It allows you to easily upgrade members to more advanced levels, to move them to other levels, to pause their membership status, or just to remove them completely from the site.

The registration procedure can be set up manually approve each new member’s registration before granting them access to the web site, or to automatically process new registrants. With automatic approval, a confirmation email is automatically sent to the new user which requires of them to confirm their registration before they can get access your protected content.

Autoresponder Integration

WishList Member integrates with the following well-known autoresponders: Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp, Interspire Email Marketing and Autoresponse Plus.

Payment Integration

WishList Member integrates fully with payment processors and shopping carts such as PayPal, 1Shopping Cart, Infusionsoft, ClickBank, QuickPayPro, Premium Web Cart and Red Oak Cart. If a user cancels payment or stops paying, WishList Member automatically handles the cancelation process and such users are automatically blocked from accessing the protected content in your website.

For the more technically-minded, full integration can also be set up with additional payment options and the plugin also offers simple integration options which will work with all types of payment providers, but with this option cancellation of members becomes a manual process.

Content Protection

WishList Member boasts that it can provide total content protection and as such, you will be able to configure exactly which content your members can get access to and can even provide access control to a very fine degree by being able to grant specific membership levels access to specific posts, pages, categories and comments. The plugin also makes provision for secure RSS feeds, which means that members can view their membership content in a RSS reader. Non-members won’t be able to access the RSS feed and if a member cancels or stops paying, their RSS feed automatically ceases to work.

Content can be protected not only to the whole post level, but to the content that actually makes up the post. The plugin can be set up so that only summaries are shown for posts and everything after the “more” link in the post will automatically be protected for member access only. With the plugin’s Partial Content Display feature you can even hide a specific sentence in the post from non-members, and only display it to your site’s members.

Backups

Backups can be done with one of the many free WordPress backup plugins available.

Requirements

The WishList Member plugin requires that PHP 5.2 plus WordPress 3.0+ is installed on the hosting web server.

Support

There is an online support desk with a dedicated full-time support team for WishList Member and a section on their site with training materials, including more than 30 training videos about the plugin. You also get unlimited software updates for 1 year as well as unlimited support for a full year. The WishList Member software is constantly updated to keep up with any changes in WordPress that might affect its functioning. The product comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Affiliate Management

WishList Member provides integration with the iDev Affiliate tracking software.

Pricing

The single site license has a once-off payment of $97, allowing you to install the plugin on one domain only, and the multi-site license is $297 and allows you to use the plugin on an unlimited number of your personal domains.

Finally

If you are already using WordPress, then the WishList Member plugin with its wide variety of features will shorten your learning curve and will definitely be worthy of your consideration.

Membership software is key for running a membership site that lets you focus on your sales and content and less on the software technology to run your site.

Check http://visiongateportal.com for more information on membership software

Related articles:

• How To Start a Money Making Membership Site – Part 3 (johnchow.com)
• How To Start a Money Making Membership Site – Part 4 (johnchow.com)