Industry Membership organizations
Professional associations, trade bodies, multi-chapter organizations, certification bodies. We ship the member directory, the dues engine, the event registration, the chapter sites, and the credentialing system on a platform you own.
Why this industry
Wild Apricot, YourMembership, and Personify charge per member. The math works at 500 members. It hurts at 5,000. It demands a re-platform at 50,000. Self-hosted on WordPress with the right plugins and the right architecture has a flat infrastructure cost. The crossover point is usually around 1,500 members and every year past it widens the gap.
We have shipped association platforms since 2018 and we have run multi-chapter multisite installs for eight associations. The patterns we use today are the ones that survived contact with national IT teams, regional chapter officers, and annual dues renewal cycles. The work is unglamorous and it is what determines whether the platform survives a board change.
What we work with
01
Bar associations, medical associations, engineering societies, trade groups. You outgrew Wild Apricot or YourMembership and the per-member fee no longer makes sense at your scale.
A member platform with no per-member tax and full data ownership.
02
Chamber of commerce, industry associations, certification bodies, standards organizations. Member directories, dues collection, event management, certification tracking, advocacy platform under one platform.
A trade-body platform that 5,000-plus members navigate without help desk tickets.
03
National associations with regional chapters. Chapter-specific subsites, shared member database, chapter-level event management, national-level reporting. Multisite is the answer and we have shipped it eight times.
A multi-chapter platform that local chapters self-manage without national IT.
04
Associations that issue CME, CEU, or professional credits. Member-tied credit tracking, certificate generation, renewal reminders, audit-ready records. The credentialing infrastructure that hosted platforms hand-wave.
Credential records that survive a regulatory audit two years after issue.
What we build
01
Searchable directories, member-only content, member-to-member messaging, granular access by member tier. Member opt-in for directory visibility, GDPR-compliant data handling.
Member directories that 10,000-plus members search without performance issues.
02
Annual dues, multi-tier pricing, group billing for corporate members, gift memberships, lapsed-member reactivation flows, automated renewal reminders, dunning. Stripe billing with the edge cases handled.
Dues collection with renewals, reminders and failed-payment recovery built in.
03
Multi-session conferences, member pricing, early-bird tiers, group registration, sponsor management, mobile check-in, attendee badges, post-event surveys. We have shipped registration systems past 5,000 attendees.
Conference registration that scales from 50 to 5,000 on the same platform.
04
National-level shared content library, chapter-level local content, chapter-specific events, chapter-specific officers, chapter-level reporting back to national. The multisite architecture done correctly.
Chapter sites that 80-plus local volunteers manage without national IT.
05
Member-tied credit tracking, certificate generation with expiration dates, renewal reminders, public credential pages, integration with state licensing boards where required. Audit-ready records.
Credentialing systems that survive regulatory audit without manual reconciliation.
06
Volunteer signup against a shift or an event, hours logged against the person rather than a spreadsheet, and applications for the roles that need one. The same member record underneath, so a volunteer is not a second copy of somebody you already have.
Volunteer hours you can report to a funder without rebuilding them from a spreadsheet.
07
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Bloomerang, NeonCRM, custom CRMs. Member sync, dues sync, event sync, advocacy action sync. CRM stays the source of truth for the database team.
CRM data that matches the website without manual reconciliation.
The software exists and you can buy it today. Members and profiles run on BuddyNext, events and ticketing on Eventonomy, volunteer roles and applications on the job manager, the directory on Listora, and training and certification on Learnomy. Licence them, install them, and run the thing yourself.
Or we build and operate it: the same components, configured for how your organisation actually works, with the migration off whatever you are on now and someone to call when dues season breaks something. Cheaper the first way, faster and less your problem the second. We will tell you which one your situation calls for rather than quoting the larger by default.
Either way it runs on your own domain. Volunteer names, member addresses and hours stay on infrastructure you control rather than in a vendor's account, which matters more in the EU than most vendors admit, and it is the one thing a hosted platform cannot offer at any price.
If you are a small organisation with no technical help, no intention of customising anything, and the per-member pricing is genuinely affordable at your size, buy the hosted product. It will be running on Monday and nobody has to maintain it. Wild Apricot and its competitors exist for a reason and there is no honest version of this page that pretends otherwise.
Self-hosting earns its keep when the per-member cost has started to hurt, when the platform will not do something your programme needs, or when where the data lives has become somebody's question to answer.
8
multi-chapter association platforms shipped since 2018
Multisite, member directories, dues collection, event registration.
What it costs
Associations rarely have simple members. Categories, chapters, renewal cycles and credentials are what turn a directory into a system, and what set the price.
What moves the number
Association work often suits a retainer better than a project, because dues cycles and conferences arrive every year rather than once.
Rough idea to delivery
Quick enquiry
Tell us how many members, how dues are collected and what your team maintains by hand today.
Prefer the full form? Start a project
Common questions
Per-member fees and platform constraints. Wild Apricot pricing scales with your member count and the customization is limited. YourMembership and similar platforms have the same dynamic. Self-hosted on WordPress means a flat infrastructure cost and full customization. The math usually flips at 1,000 to 2,000 members.
Eight to twelve weeks. Discovery and data mapping is two weeks, build is five to seven, member migration runs in parallel with content migration, and a four-week soft launch with the existing platform still live closes it. We coordinate the cutover during a low-renewal window.
Members get one email explaining the upgrade and a password reset link on the new platform. Member directories, member-only content, dues history, and event registration history all carry over. The migration takes one weekend from the member-facing perspective.
WordPress Multisite with shared user tables, chapter-specific theming, chapter-level event management, national-level shared content. Chapter officers manage their site without national IT involvement. We have shipped this for eight associations.
Yes. Salesforce, Bloomerang, NeonCRM, Personify, custom CRMs. Bidirectional sync, conflict resolution, audit trails. CRM stays the source of truth for membership data and the website surfaces it. We do not force a CRM migration on top of a website migration.
Wild Apricot replacements are scoped per project. Multi-chapter platforms are scoped after discovery. Conference-scale event platforms are scoped after discovery. Associations with continuing education credentialing add scope to the base engagement. Discovery call is free.
Where to go next
Running an association?
Discovery call is free. NDA on request. Migration audit available before the contract.
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