This will be a super-duper short mini-tiny review of three different kinds of WordPress membership software, because I’m so excited about the discovery I made today. What I found today, can not only be used as a membership script, but also to sell and deliver an ebook directly from your blog.
But first: The introduction… I’m going to give you a short review of three PHP-scripts, you can use to create a membership site with WordPress. There are several others, but I haven’t tried those, so I cannot tell you more about them.
The three, I can introduce you to, however, are Digital Access Pass, Rapid Action Press, and WP Sales Automator.
Those three products are priced very differently, as you’ll see in a moment. But they all have their advantages and disadvantages. And I’ll round the post off with a quick test for you… Test yourself: Which WordPress membership software do you need.
DAP
I tried Digital Access Pass a couple of years ago. The script was encrypted, and it caused me a lot of problems to set it up. Luckily, the vendor decided to change the code to normal PHP. I still had some problems with it, in that the admin of the WordPress blog had to be named “admin”, and not a unique user name, which I had chosen. This minor bug has probably been changed now, but I haven’t tested the later version of the script.
With DAP, you can drip feed your blog with posts, and make them visible for the user at the time, you choose. So, if somebody joins your membership site, he’ll start with post #1, and only continue to post #2 after a given period of time. When a new person joins, he’ll only get access to post #1, until post #2 is released automatically.
You can choose which pages should be visible to everybody, and which should only be visible for members.
DAP has a build in affiliate program.
Integration works with ClickBank, PayPal, and others, and you can use AWeber as your autoresponder.
Prices:
1-site license: $167
Unlimited license: $297
Important Update: Read This About Digital Access Pass
Recently, I bought Digital Access Pass, and for the first month, it worked smoothly.
Then, when our clients paid for the second month, some of them weren’t updated in the script, so they didn’t have access to the product they paid for.
I contacted the DAP support with an Urgent ticket last Saturday. The problem still isn’t solved. They want me to erase my test client, transfer money to my second PayPal account, do a test trial etc. – again – because I already did all that to test that the script worked, before we send out information about the site to our clients.
I told them to do the testing themselves (after all, I paid $300 for a script that’s supposed to work), but since then – no further replies.
Since then, two further clients have paid for their second month – the first client wasn’t updated in the system; the second was.
They only have a 30 day money back guarantee, which wasn’t enough in my case to see that there were problems with the script.
Rapid Action Press
If you already have invested in Rapid Action Profits (RAP), Rapid Action Press might be a better choice for you than DAP.
It seems like you can do the same things, but RAPress is cheaper. Since RAPress is build upon RAP, it also has an affiliate program.
Price:
Unlimited license: $197 (or you can pay 3 x $77)
WP Sales Automator
First, let me start with the bad news – what WP Sales Automator doesn’t do.
It doesn’t come with an affiliate system, but you can get it as an extra addon very cheap. You cannot drip feed your blog with new posts. It’s everything or nothing.
That said, WP Sales Automator made me very excited, when I discovered it today. It is so cheap that everybody can afford it ($9.95 at the moment), and it was so simple to set up. It took me only a few minutes to install it and have my first test campaign ready.
You can use this plugin to deliver digital products as well, without setting up recurrent payments. The link will be encrypted, and you can re-send the link, should a customer lose his download. So this is a perfect way to sell and deliver your ebook.
Price:
Unlimited licence: $9.95
Test Yourself: Which WordPress Membership Software Do You Need
Do you want to be able to drip feed your blog with content?
Then you’ve narrowed the choice down to either DAP or RAPress.
Do you need to drip feed, and you only have one blog? Then DAP should be your best choice, since it’s cheaper.
Do you need to drip feed, and you want to use the script on several blogs, you might still want DAP.
Unless – you want to drip feed, you want to use the script on several blogs, and you have RAP: Then RAPress is your best choice.
If you don’t need to drip feed, it’s simple: Go with WPSA.
Very nice review – and so happy you have that unique ability to narrow things down to what is really important for us internet marketers. This blog continues to deliver fine content, and is certainly much appreciated.
Hi Britt,
Thank you for naming DAP in your list 🙂
You wrote…
>>I still had some problems with it, in that the admin of the WordPress blog had to be named “admin”, and not a unique user name, which I had chosen<<
Actually, that is not true. DAP uses its own user tables, and you could always call your WP admin user anything you want. That has never been an issue.
Maybe it was some other problem whose "symptom" made you feel that way, but just so you and your readers know, that was never a bug, and you can have any username for your admin user.
Thanks again for including DAP in your review.
Cheers!
– Ravi Jayagopal
Founder & Co-Developer, DAP
Thanks for correcting the error. When I logged in, back then, with my own username, I had some problems (don’t remember which right now), but if I changed the username to Admin, it worked. Odd… But I remember back in 1998, when I bought Windows 98. I had to move the mouse around while installing, or else my computer (almost new Fujitsu) would freeze, and I couldn’t install the upgrade. Computers and programmes can behave in strange ways, and I wonder what it was, if you’d never had the Admin bug. Well, anyway, it’s good to hear that it isn’t a problem at all.
Informative reviews — especially about Digital Access Pass. That’s an infuriating situation.
On a side note, really like the innovative “reading time” note at the top of the post. Great idea.
Thanks, Dylan – I will have to add a review of the membership plugin I’m using now <- It's this one from tips and tricks. They have EXCELLENT service! And the price is only a fraction of what I gave for DAP. The membership plugin is called eMember, and I also bought eStore and eAffiliate. These are not necessary, though, just an extra help.
On my blog I have already reviewed several membership scripts, and
although I’m quite satisfied with the one I finally ended up with,
it lacked the drip feeding feature.
Then today, I read about a product from Copyblogger that could
create landing pages as well as being a membership script with
several awesome features:
From my memory it can:
– Drip feed content
– Accept payments
– Protect content
– Protect forum (anybody who has tried to run a forum and seen how
much spam it attracts, will love this feature)
– Create landing pages (squeeze pages etc.)
You can also learn some copywriting. I didn’t read about this in
details.
So I decided to buy the product, since the price is low right now.
They wrote on their site that it would go up, and for once I
believed such a statement.
Then right now, I was playing World of Warcraft (the old Lich
King), but lost connection, so I thought I would just get my mail,
and then I saw a message that was important.
The price of Premise 2.0 is going up tomorrow – that is later today
– at 5PM Pacific.
I’m going to buy it in a few hours (it’s – cough – 4AM here), and I
will not have time to do a profound review just now. It takes time
to see if there are serious bugs in a script, or to find out how
their customer service is etc.
But if you’re considering getting a membership script that looks
promising, get Premise. You have 30 days to ask for your money
back, if you don’t like it.
Here’s the link – you arrive on a blog post on Copyblogger, and it
will tell you more about this script:
http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/Premise2/
I will write a review of the script later this month, but at that
time the price will be $165.
So get it now:
http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/Premise2/
Thanks so much for this! I am a newbie to the whole IM thing…only been at it 5 or more years, made not one thin dime. Anyway! I know how much I really hate the upsells and one of the people I’ve been following believes in the upsell – so I am glad to hear that other people are like me and can only stomach one upsell. (Usually like you, I’ve decided to buy – unlike you however, I am hoping it will help me and then BAM the upsell of $100 or more when I am struggling to make the payment on the original product. So yeah, I hate them! My conscience wasn’t dealing well with the idea of 3 upsells (or more)….Thanks again!