membes

Easy, intuitive, exciting and refreshing.

Comments: Reduction in costs
Great looking easy to use website
Event registrations which were simple for people follow
Reduction in data errors

Pros:

The SAS platform ensures the costs are kept to a minimum. The errors on the site are also managed quickly as there is only one platform. The support during set up and after 'go-live' date is priceless. They really work with you to make sure your system is at its optimum.

Cons:

Further features with email notifications will take the product to the next level. Small limitations within the finance module can seem problematic but this can be rectified through full training.

Good value software that is easy to use.

Comments: The software has allowed us to decrease our reliance on external developers by moving more functionality in-house.

Pros:

The membership management aspect of the software is highly effective. Custom fields can be easily added to tailor the information you need to collect from members and includes options to make particular fields available only to certain member types. The CMS is also great for managing the website and is very user friendly, with pages and menu items easily added. It's also very easy to lock particular pages to members only, which increases the member value proposition. We've been able to adapt areas of the CMS to great better functionality for members on our website. The events module works well and it will be interesting to see this work even better as it undergoes continued development.

Cons:

The software is reasonably new and undergoing development and updates all the time. Sometimes you need to wait until they have greater demand from other users for particular features to be added. Initially the CPD management functions were somewhat limited, but have undergone regular development to push through some much needed improvement in functionality.

Lots of benefits, but could do with a little polish

Comments: We are launching a professional association for a health profession organisation. We estimate that there are up to 20,000 potential members. There are 8 membership tiers, which introduces some complexity. We looked at a number of different membership solutions and liked what we saw with Membes. We will also be managing other associations (and in other countries), so this is really a preliminary test of the software.

Pros:

Membes is an Australian product, specifically produced for association management. It is an affordable price point for starting in the market, and the SAS, 'software in a box' saves a lot of time and thinking. A lot of functionality is built into the system.From our end, our program administrator with no web development background was able to get a plausible product to market. Compared with other systems, that seem to need dedicated system managers, this appears to be manageable in-house by our existing staff.

Cons:

I am slightly disappointed with the end result. While we had support from Membes to get the web design, a little bit more support to polish the final product would have been helpful. We have had to get developers in to help support some of the functionality and appearance - unfortunately, when glitches have appeared in critical parts of the website, they've been blamed on our developer additions (which were very minor, and doesn't seem to be the case).Support has been slow - even for minor issues; support requests were not read properly; and tickets 'resolved' without the issue actually being resolved. Small issues - like reformatting a single button - have taken more than 2 weeks to resolve. Admittedly, this is probably 'peak' association time, but we have all had to put work flows in place to accommodate that - and this is a critical part of our business.The actual association application form - which is the crux of the whole product - is pretty clunky and the least modifiable aspect of the whole form.With a little bit more support to polish the product at the front end (ie a little more web support), and perhaps even a quality check at the back end, this could be a fabulous tool. This would also support the Membes brand, and that of the purchaser.

Our association has grown since using Membes, training income plus new member income is up.

Pros:

I love the integrated registration & payment system, our new memberships are up. Events & payment system, we now run all our courses via the system and our training numbers and income is up. The web builder backend is easy and we have saved money by updating the web ourselves.

Cons:

Compared to our previous Association software, I really cannot give a Con. Obviously, there is always a period of training and change required from an old system, but overall we had real financial benefits in the first few weeks.

Been using membes for our website and database for over 12 months and are very happy with it.

Comments: We have improved member retention since transferring to membes, as members can renew online. Event registration is so easy and straight-forward on membes - we used to have a lot of people register via a paper form as the previous system was not easy for them to use.
The office staff love the admin site - and can quickly respond to member enquiries regarding membership, event registration, CPD tracking and can easily send communications to a selected subset of the database. We highly recommend membes as a solution for membership associations.

Basic solution but cheap

Comments: Cheap and you get what your pay for. Next time I will buy a proven product as the downtime has been a major issue.

Pros:

It has basic functionality so this makes it easy to use.

Cons:

Functionality is poor and support/training was not as good as we were promised. Some features simply do not work.

this software promises so much and does deliver on some of it...

Pros:

our site looks great and was so easy to set up, there's some great features that make managing the association much easier than what we had before

Cons:

there are glitches with some very basic functions which is very frustrating... some errors have taken a long time to fix and then glitch again. nothing too serious, but time wasting and frustrating to have to deal with again and again

Fabulous product which fits the needs of several of our clients

Comments: Membes has proved to be both cost-effective and features rich for a number of our clients who are utilising the platform. From contact management to emarketing, online shops to member locators, cpd tracking to complex conference management management, this platform has it all. Designed with both administrators and users in mind, we wouldn't hesitate to recommend this platform.

Simple as 1 2 3

Comments: A great system that is very easy to use from an operational stand point. Keep track of communication of your members, issue certificates at the touch of a button. Run your own events from the one site. Simple, easy and great customer service from the team at Asset Media. Everything you want and more.