If you’ve ever been a part of a club, company, or organization, you know how hard it can be to manage people. Once upon a time, it meant tracking confusing membership lists and keeping hard copies. But in 2022, there are so many great membership management software options that you can trust to keep track of your members.
Managing people can be a breeze, and whether your members meet online or in real life, there’s something for everyone. Some of these platforms will let you charge for membership, track who’s in and who’s out, create member profiles, and get detailed analytics about where your members are spending time.
And if you’re thinking of starting a membership site business online, we’ve got you covered here too.
Ahead, we’re going to explore what membership management software is; why membership and subscription management software is valuable for any organization; and finally, we’ll look at 7 awesome membership and event management software options. There’s something here for every type of membership business.
In this article...
What is membership management software?
Membership management software is designed to make organizing a group of people easier for you through automation. It tracks membership sign-ups, departures, activity, and gives you other valuable organizational tools to make your members’ experiences amazing.
Note that membership management software could be used for an online or offline membership community or business.
Why you need membership management software
Membership management software makes the life of any membership organization easier by giving you quality information and insights about your members' activity. It helps you keep track of memberships, payments, plans, and more. Some of them also let you communicate and build relationships with members, handling notifications, messaging, and more. This lets you focus on providing a quality membership experience to members.
One of the best features of a good membership management software is that it will let you automate a lot of member functions, freeing up time for you to focus on what matters. Here are some of the tasks you can automate:
- Approving potential member applications.
- Organizing all of your member data into an easily accessible database.
- Automating membership payments and renewals.
- Allowing you to send mass emails to your members.
- Detailed access to member activity reports.
Membership management software won’t completely eliminate these tasks but it will significantly reduce your work. It can also scale your customer service, including your ability to handle complaints and questions.
What to look for in membership management software
When we’re looking at membership management software, we’re looking for a couple of different things from it. First, we want features to make the management itself easier, things that will give you scale and automation.
Secondly, we’re looking at ways to build community and member interaction. While not every membership business needs a community function, a lot of them do! And community can make a big difference to member satisfaction and retention.
Here are some of the features that come in handy with a great membership management software platform. Which ones apply to your organization or brand?
Membership applications & fees
Applying for membership shouldn’t suck. A membership management software needs quick and easy purchasing (if you’re selling with it) to reduce cart abandonments and make it simple to buy!
If members are applying for membership, either without paying or in addition to it, this process should be quick and painless too.
The best community management software will offer a registration process that’s quick, easy, and seamless.
Mass notifications and messaging
Another important feature is the ability to quickly and efficiently send messages to all of your members at once. A lot of membership organizations have a choke point with communicating effectively and especially responding to member requests.
When you have mass-emailing and/or notification functionality, you can notify anyone where there are new deals or fresh content, and give members reminders about opportunities, events, and more.
Group messaging with a Mighty Network
Downloadable membership data and analytics
One thing is true no matter what sort of membership you offer: you’re going to gain a lot of data. The best membership management software will allow you to easily download and store that information. It should also make some sense of it for you, showing membership trends, activity, etc. Your data should give you actionable business intelligence.
Analytics with a Mighty Network
Discussions and Groups
Depending on your membership model, you may need ways to create and exchange content. This is especially true if you have an online membership site that brings together a group of people with similar interests.
Having a membership management software that also lets you build community, host conversations, and create content can create this type of space.
And, depending on your needs, you might watch for something that gives you small groups too. They’re an awesome way to get members active in more intimate conversations and with focused interest.
For example, a membership devoted to wilderness experiences might have groups for people who love fishing, hunting, and hiking.
Bundles and Plans
Not all members want and need the same thing. Having the ability to create bundles and plans that serve different levels of members can keep people happier AND create more revenue for you.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a free membership on your website. In the free space, you can still post announcements, new content, and more to all members. But you can also offer a paid membership tier that gives people who opt-in exclusive content, deals, and incentives.
Online courses
If you’re thinking of starting a membership site, offering an online course might not be your first thought. But don’t underestimate how valuable this feature can be.
A live cohort course in a Mighty Network
Remember, the best membership management software will allow you to automate tasks and offer members valuable experiences. With online courses, you can pile on the value by giving your members a chance to learn, connect, and get that much closer to their own goals alongside their peers.
7 of the best membership management software options
1. Mighty Networks
Memberships, community, and events on your own app
Mighty Networks is one of the best platforms for paid membership sites. Mighty is a cultural software platform that brings together content, courses, community, and commerce.
It’s designed to deliver membership websites and community together, all under your own brand. With flexible Spaces that bring features like pre-recorded or live teaching, easy event integration, custom course communities, messaging all members, and Q&As with each course module, it packs a punch.
Mighty's powerful membership management software allows you all of the features we’ve talked about (and more):
- Community AI
- Website and landing page builder.
- Member profiles and messaging.
- Automated membership applications.
- Activity log.
- Downloadable analytics for member data.
- Automated payments in different currencies + bundling.
- The ability to create exclusive content, host discussions, post video and text.
- Live streaming and built-in events.
- Online courses.
With Mighty, you get access to an awesome community app, available on iOS and Android. AND Mighty is building in community AI with Mighty Co-Host™, that runs on Chat GPT and can create a Big Purpose, community name, brand, landing and sales pages, and more.
2. Mighty Pro
Custom membership management apps
Mighty Pro is the completely white-label solution of Mighty Networks. It has many of the same membership management software features, but it adds a totally custom app in the App Store and Google Play store under your brand.
Many of the most successful membership businesses and communities decide to add this completely custom, white-label app to give their members even more value. And we work with you to create something your members will love.
When you build with Mighty Pro, you get access to the Mighty Pro Team: Account Executives and Community Strategists who have scaled 7-figure creator brands and 8+-figure subscription businesses.
We've built membership apps for Cambridge University, Fortune Magazine, TED, and more!
If you’re curious about what your organization could build with Mighty Pro, request a call with us and we’ll show you more!
3. Wild Apricot
Membership management for nonprofits
Wild Apricot is another major player in the world of membership management software. They describe themselves as a platform that will help you “attract, engage, and retain” your members, and their cloud-based membership management solutions were designed with nonprofits in mind.
It has its own website builder that lets clients create a visual landing page for their nonprofit organization, complete with a member portal function. And it has options for regional chapters of organizations to create their own regional websites and track their own members.
The brand has focused on providing tools to streamline the processes of collecting and analyzing member data. Some features we like are:
- Automated membership applications.
- Membership renewals.
- Online membership database.
- Live event management.
- Exclusive content.
- Mobile App.
Wild Apricot has many must-have membership management features, and they excel in automation. It’s a great pick if you’re solely looking for a way to streamline interaction with members.
Wild Apricot is primarily a member tracking site, with some very limited community features. If you’re looking for membership management that lets you host discussions and engaging content, it’s more limited. It also lacks a course feature, which may or may not matter, depending on your vision for your membership business.
4. Join It
Membership management only
Join It has created membership management software that emphasizes automation of repetitive tasks. When you choose Join It, you’re getting a lot of the features we’ve talked about above, but you need to have a lot of the infrastructure laid out already.
Here are some of the features that Join it has that we like:
- The ability to put memberships into different categories.
- Activity log.
- Automated membership renewal.
- Online payments and cancellations.
- Downloadable member analytics.
While Join It offers a lot in the way of monetization and automation, that’s basically all you’re getting. Their services are much more impersonal compared to Mighty Networks and Wild Apricot. On top of that, they don’t allow you to offer online courses, and there’s no mobile app.
5. Vagaro
Membership management for in-person businesses.
If you’re running an in-person membership business like a gym, Vagaro is a membership management software option for this. It has a bunch of different use-cases for bricks-and-mortar business, especially geared for business models with beauty, wellness, and fitness.
Vagaro gives you features like sales and incentives, branding, and integration with your front desk software so members can access your services with a phone or key fob. You can also integrate your calender for appointment booking.
6. Member Clicks
Membership management for associations
Member Clicks is a membership management software that’s built for membership organizations to manage their databases and websites, run marketing campaigns, collect info with forms, and pay membership dues. You can also add features like task automation and a job board.
It’s branded as a membership solution for association management, and lets you keep track of your members efficiently. It doesn’t have many community features but does offer a simple discussion forum.
7. BuddyBoss
Membership management plugin for WordPress
Finally, we’ll talk about membership management software for WordPress. If you’re a diehard WordPress fan and looking for a plugin to run your membership, BuddyBoss can work for this.
BuddyBoss comes with content gating, user profiles, and lets you create a membership area for your website. It has the option to track your membership and integrates with LearnDash if you want to sell a digital course and can be integrated with payment plugins to sell memberships.
But do note that most of the options on this list could be used to add a membership component to a WordPress site. BuddyBoss is really only best for those determined to do it with a plugin.
Ready to start?
We can’t stress enough how much membership management software can improve the way you work. It’s great that you’ve been thinking about how you can start your own membership site and hopefully, this guide will help you get started.
But using membership management software to create your website isn’t just about automating the processes of your business. It’s also about making it easier for you to create a space for your online community to convene and interact with you and your fellow members.
We hope this list has you excited for the added value you can bring to your members!
And if you want to give Mighty Networks a try, you can check it out free for 14 days. It gives you the tools you need to create a powerful membership business and community, no other software required!
This is an exciting time, and we can’t wait to see what you create!
