In this Digital Access Pass review, I’ll go through my experiences with this script and the founders, co-founders and the company’s service
Digital Access Pass (DAP) is a PHP and MySQL based membership script. You can use it to handle payments; subscribing and unsubscribe members; drip feed content; and if you have PayPal Pro (costly) you can also use it as a shopping cart. You can use it as a plugin to WordPress or as a stand-alone product.
That’s the features of DAP. Now, let’s take a look at the benefits and especially the drawbacks of Digital Access Pass. I want you to keep reading so you can be prepared, should you decide to purchase DAP.
Ravi Jayagopal – A Long Time Acquaintance
Several years ago, I bought a webmaster script package from Ravi Jayagopal. It was way before you could just buy a standard script to handle automatic delivery of electronic goods.
I used this script together with another script that would encrypt my PayPal buttons to avoid theft. It worked, but I had to do a lot of manual work. However, like I said: Back then you didn’t have much choice, so I was quite happy with the product.
I recommended it to two other persons that I saw asking questions on a PayPal developer forum. I had joined the affiliate program, so I earned a 50% royalty. Several months later, I remembered this and asked Ravi to pay out. He did so very quickly afterwards. I didn’t think much of the situation back then, since affiliate programs were in their youth as well.
Then Ravi wrote a book and asked if anybody would review it. It turned out that you had to buy the book (in print) to review it, so I wasn’t interested.
After that, I did a review of a WordPress plugin for him (a contact form), and then he came out with his first version of Digital Access Pass. He offered beta testing copies with no updates. I said that I would like to review it, but since it would demand a lot of work to do so (installing, testing, installing updates, etc.) I thought he should offer free life-time updates.
He said ‘okay’. So I got access in October 2008.
Do I have this conversation in writing? I think so, yes, but probably on a harddisk somewhere in the basement, so I’m not going to spend time looking it up. I trust my memory on this point as well as others, you’ll learn about shortly.
My First Experience With Digital Access Pass – Good And Bad
Like I wrote in an earlier post, I had some trouble making DAP work the way it should. And since I was in no direct need to use it, I just stopped. A couple of years later, they offered an iPad as a reward for promoting DAP.
Well, I didn’t have access to any downloads anymore. So I wrote, and the staff told me that since I’ve only sold one lousy copy of their product, they had stopped my access. Well, not in those words, but you can see for yourself here: http://getmoneymakingideas.com/pics/Ravi-Mail.png
Please note, how they twist my words from “It would seem fake to promote something I don’t use” to “But if you won’t promote DAP unless we give you a free copy, then unfortunately, we’re going to have to pass on your offer.”
I wasn’t asking for a free copy. I already got a “free” copy, when I did the beta testing, and I was promised life-time updates.
And oh yes, I’ve been promoting the script actively, and a lot of users downloaded it, but what can I say? Members of my list are not rich guys, who can just throw in $200 – $300 in a script. I thought to begin with that the script was too expensive, but my opinion was ignored.
Nevermind. I chose not to pursue and didn’t promote DAP.
Why Did I Choose To Purchase DAP In August 2011?
After all these negative experiences, after getting the impression that Ravi is somewhat stingy, and after noticing that the affiliate royalty is only 30% (RAP and other scripts offer 50%), why did I choose to buy Digital Access Pass in August 2011?
My husband wanted a membership site, and we’ve set it up with the Profits Theme. Unfortunately, there was a problem with this theme, and all our subscribers were unsubscribed by the script. Voupti! Out you go!
This bug had been repaired, but we were on our way to Israel, so I didn’t have time to take care of it. Months later, I found out that I couldn’t just set up an extra product and offer our clients to get back, where they left. So I decided to look for a membership script.
My first choice was WP Sales Automator. I got this script for free (with life time updates), but it sells for only $10, and the founder provides excellent service! Really! Even to those who got the script for free. He’s even created some special features just for me at a time I needed them.
However, this script couldn’t handle drip feeding, and I would have to purchase an affiliate addon to make that part work.
I also considered the addon to Rapid Action Profits, but I was lazy. Using that would mean that I had to install RAP on this new site as well. So the third alternative was DAP.
Buying and Installing DAP
Purchasing and installing DAP went smoothly.
Even though I hate watching videos and prefer to read a product manual, I watched the videos to learn how to install the script correctly, and how to set up the membership products and customer area.
I thought I had it all right, but somewhere along the line, I must have missed a detail.
I wasn’t about to know anything about that before the end of the 30 day’s refund guarantee period.
Oh, Oh… It’s Friday Afternoon and A Client Lost Access To His Content in Our Digital Access Pass Membership Site
Friday afternoon, a client paid for his second month, only to discover that he still didn’t have access to the content. Not even the content he paid for the last month.
I checked, but I had no idea why his data hadn’t been updated by the script. Yes, he paid. Yes, the script had registered that he paid. However, his access period wasn’t updated, so he only got a blank screen. No products at all.
I contacted support right away. They only work from Monday – Friday according to their home page, but I hoped that my urgent problem could catch somebody’s attention anyway.
As you will see shortly on the attached photo, my ticket actually arrived a couple of hours before the end of their business week, but I only got a reply the following day.
I got several possible reasons for why their script didn’t work for some of our clients: that I should use 31 days as a period instead of 30; if I’d followed their guidelines closely etc.
I replied ‘yes’.
Then I was asked to make a test purchase (again – I already did, before I relaunched the site). I said ‘no’.
Doing a test purchase would mean that I had to delete the test user (which I didn’t know how to do); transfer money to my secondairy PayPal account (which would cost fees); do another test purchase and send the log file to Digital Access Pass.
I simply didn’t have the time to do all this, and besides, I was convinced (and it turned out that I was right) that this was unnecessary work.
Which I told them.
Then no further replies from them.
Two days passed, and I wrote again. I said that I wasn’t impressed by their service (answering only about once every 24 hours; giving me unnecessary tasks; asking the same questions that were already answered), and I was told that I was “nasty and rude”.
Well, so be it. I’m a bitch. I expect to get a minimum of service, when I purchase a script to $297. And if telling a company that offers lousy service that I’m not impressed is being “nasty and rude”, then again … So be it!
The problem might be solved. I was told that I should have put “30” in the “Second trial” field. I’d written “0”, since I had no second trial period.
This, of course, still doesn’t answer the question: Why did it work for some of our clients?
I’m not going to ask. Neither about another problem I have with formatting the results in the script. I’m not going to expend myself to that kind of service again.
I should have bought Rapid Action Press or have given a damn about drip feeding content (which I could have done with AWeber).
Lesson learnt – again! I should have listened to my intuition that told me that if somebody is stingy (in my opinion), and doesn’t keep his word (in my memory), then I shouldn’t do business with them.
Oh, by the way, you can see the whole ticket thread here – I put it online so you can see for yourself how “nasty and rude” I am 😉
http://GetMoneyMakingIdeas.com/pics/dap-support-ticket.jpg
Digital Access Pass Review – My Final Words
I realize that I have no proof at the moment about the promise about the life time updates, when I beta tested Digital Access Pass.
I realize that you might think I am a bitch, and that I should just have done the costly, time-consuming and unnecessary tests, they asked from me.
In that case, please go ahead, try your luck with Digital Access Pass.
But if you believe me and want to save yourself from wasting time and having a bad experience, take one of the two other products, I recommend, either WP Sales Automator (really sympatic programmer behind this one) or Rapid Action Press (I haven’t tried it, but I love Rapid Action Profits, and Sid is the personification of good customer service).
But I care about you – the readers of my blog; my list members… I’ve recommended DAP earlier, and I wanted to correct this mistake. I wouldn’t want anybody to get back to me and tell me that he/she bought it, because I recommended it, and that now they’ve had bad experiences with it.
Hopefully the script will work without problems, especially after August next year, because I’m only getting updates so far. But if it doesn’t, I don’t want to feel guilty that others bought because of my recommendation.
UPDATE: I got a refund, although the 30 days had passed. Obviously, after I received the message, I no longer have access to Digital Access Pass, although I have to wait several days, before I can see the money back on my bank account and, technically, can buy a new script 😉
Yeah, well, I kind of expected that after the service they deliver 😉
Even more surprising… When I checked our MySQL database to export the users (easier than just using the screen dump I took, because I suspected that DAP would cut my access), I discovered that all our users passwords were in clear text!
Woah!
Good to know, if you should ever join a membership site that is powered by Digital Access Pass – you’re leaving your password open for the administrators to read.
Therefore this honest Digital Access Pass review.
Thanks for going in depth with this article.
I had set up a site using profits theme before and used their in built system and it worked really well but I needed to modify core files to use my own affiliate system which isnt great when updating profitsthteme so on my next site I have dap installed because I wanted to use their affiliate system.
I am finding DAP to be quite hard to work with and support is very slow to respond, I was disappointed that access to a product was still granted even after a refund was issued so I posted to the forum over a week ago and still no response!
Like you I was shocked that DAP stores users passwords as plain text in the database!
I do like that it can protect folders and zip files and can be run as a standalone system but I’m still feeling that there must be a much better system out there that does digital downloads, drip fed content and integrated affiliate system.
I guess I’ll have to keep trying new things and banging my head against the wall while I wait for support…
Good luck with your site!
Hi Andy, thank you for your comment and good wishes.
I ended up using the Thesis Theme (http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/thesis ) and a smart little plugin – actually two – called eStore and eAffiliate. Later we also bought eMember. Their service is BETTER than EXCELLENT! http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/tt
Drip feeding isn’t perfect, since you have to cheat a bit and make different membership levels and then upgrade members after a certain period. We use it to drip feed content on a monthly membership site, and it works perfectly. If you plan on dripping new content out more frequently, this plugin is probably not for you – unless they integrate it, soon.
Another alternative is Rapid Action Press ($197 last time I checked). You can read more about it here: http://getmoneymakingideas.com/169/wordpress-membership-software-should-you-pay-10-or-200/
Good luck with your site, and don’t do too much head banging 🙂 The only advantage to that is that it feels good, when you stop.
Hi Britt
Great article thanks.
I am also looking for a membership/shopping cart solution. DAP is always getting such rave reviews first time i see a bad one.
I am also looking at RAP and Sitemanpro, its difficult to decide on one script.
Thanks
Thanks, Theo 🙂
Well, there could be at least two reasons why you only see “rave reviews” about DAP.
1: Only a few, like Andy (commenter here) from CommentLuv and me have had problems, or
2: Many of the “rave reviews” are written by affiliates, who unlike me only write about products they like.
I have found some more glaring omissions..
* affiliates aren’t emailed when they make a sale.
-That has to be a major boo boo! I can’t believe that is missing from the code.
* you cannot remove a commission from an affiliate.
-I found an affiliate that referred themselves and couldn’t find a way to remove that commission so I submitted a support ticket. Do you know what they said?
“when it comes time to pay affiliates just don’t pay that one”
OMG
* Affiliates are only associated with members if that member buys something or you pay for leads.
This means you can’t get JV partners to refer affiliates and then pay the JV a 2nd tier for sales made by those affiliates.
– I know a number of affiliates with large teams of people. I’d like to offer them 10% of the sales made by their affiliates. Normally, you’d get the JV to use their affiliate link to refer their team to join as affiliates and then you’d be able to track sales made by them.
You can’t do that with DAP, it wont associate the new member to the referring affiliate.
***
I am a coder so I like to look at the code of things I buy and I am a bit put off by just how many “to-do”‘s there are and the large amount of commented out code there is.
I also don’t like encrypted code, I understand that they do want to protect their code but there are a lot of files that are encrypted that needn’t be.
I will have to use it for now for my tools to make money site because it’s already integrated but for sure I wont be using it on any more projects. I certainly don’t think it is worth nearly $300 .
I am looking at Amember again now, they have a new version and it looks pretty sweet. I am not sure it can do buy now buttons though, it is more aimed at membership sites but the protection and affiliate system is really well done. It also has a good wordpress plugin integration. (it’s also open source so no encrypted files!)
If I find a good solution for digital products, drip feeding and integrated affiliate system then I’ll let you know! 🙂
Yes, please let me know, Andrew, so I can write about it here 🙂
Those findings you’ve made are shocking.
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 Britt/Andy
Can’t beleive it’s so difficult to find a good platform to use.
What would you recommend for a first time easy to use
solution for membership site with decent features?
Thanks
I use WP eMember from http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/tt [aff]. It’s very easy to use. I also have WP eStore from them and WP eAffiliate. You don’t need those, but eStore makes it easier to produce the PayPal buttons, and I had the script anyway from our PLR Store.
It doesn’t have conventional drip feeding, but you can get around it by making different membership levels and use automatic upgrade. I do that on my husband’s two sites: ClubHypnose.com (French) and Assertion.In3Weeks.com (English, and I haven’t wrote the sales letter yet).
They have EXCELLENT service! Really! I’ve rarely seen anything like it.
The products are reasonable priced (actually, they are cheap for what you get). It’s $49.95 for the WP eMember plugin, and you save a lot of money, when you purchase one of their bundled solutions.
Thanks for the review. I’ve been using DAP and other than some things that are a bit clunky with the system, I’ve found it to work in every way I’ve wanted. While there are places for more expensive systems, of the 5 companies I’ve had a membership site, DAP has been rock solid on the ones I’ve used.
Sorry you had a bad experience.
Hi Greg,
Thanks for leaving a comment. I’m glad you had more luck with DAP than I had.
Can you tell me if the members’ passwords still are shown in clear text, or are they encoded now? That was something I only discovered after I deleted the script.
They’re encrypted now. Here’s a user’s password copied straight out of phpMyAdmin:
KLJpt7LzoM1qW0/HhlRohHncGvB90HmTylCAqebxvA4=
Thanks, JM. I’m glad that they’ve improved it.
Premise looks pretty interesting.
Been struggling trying to set up DAP. I’ll probably keep working at it but nice to see alternatives. I might try it if it hadn’t jumped in price.
Any limitations you see? No affiate program that I can see. Good it works with authorize.net which is a must for me.
Do you know know anything about the programmers? I want someone who will be around for long term.
Ron
Thanks for your comment, Ron.
Premise is made by the team behind Copyblogger, so I guess they will stick around for a while: http://getmoneymakingideas.com/go/Premise2/
I have owned Dap for 4 years and I still have not figured it out. I have it installed 3 times and I keep giving up on it. And I found them just like you did. A little rude when I asked for help and I am not happy I have to keep buying it again as the updates each year. That is upsetting to me. I own Premise, paid for it once and I get the newest version for life.
I think I will just give up on dap on learn how to use Premise. Also I want it to be connected to a forum and they do not have that feature , where Premise you can connect to vbulletin.
I am a website designer and I have over 200 clients and it should not be this hard to use a product and I resent the constant having to pay each year for support or the latest version.
My experience with DAP has been absolutely dreadful.
I purchased it a few months ago and when I installed it, it literally nuked my site.
So I decided to take advantage of their emails support as I’ve paid for an entire year for it.
As soon as I ask for assistance, they’re instantly upselling me and telling me I need to pay an installation fee.
So I thought screw it and coughed up the dough.
However, when purchasing the installation fee, I accidentally made a duplicate payment.
I contacted them about it and they said they would refund me it the next day… But never did.
Anyway, they logged into my site and attempted to install but it still didn’t work.
I told them about it and they started to blame the server. They said I needed to turn off a security feature and I needed to speak to my hosting provider about it.
I spoke to my hosting provider and they said they wouldn’t turn it off because it would be a major security concern and it wouldn’t be fair to others who are on the same server as I’m on.
They also said the plugin owner (DAP) should really update their plugin because it’s running on out of date code and future server patches will make DAP irrelevant if it isn’t updated.
Anyway, long story short, I ended moving my entire site to a new VPS server with this security feature disabled!
Did DAP work afterwards?
In a word… No, it didn’t.
In fact, it made no difference whatsoever – I still had the same problem as before.
I went to report this to DAP but suddenly I wasn’t able to submit support tickets anymore.
I was either blocked or their support desk isn’t working and it’s been like this for me for months now.
So I started emailing them as I have their email but I noticed they was taking longer to reply every time I emailed them.
It’s got to the point where they haven’t replied to any of my emails for literally months now.
Also, Veena (one of the co owners of DAP) can be very difficult to deal with – she doesn’t like criticism.
I have to literally tip-toe around her for the fear of not upsetting her and not getting the support I paid for (which is ironic because I’m not getting it regardless).
I’m just so shocked how bad DAP and their support is and I would never recommend it to anyone.
Anyway, awesome writeup, enjoyed reading it 🙂
James Scholes
Wow, that’s a horrible experience you’ve had with DAP there, James.
I have a marketer friend who uses DAP, and I thought they’d changed. (At least to some degree, because suddenly I couldn’t get access to her products with one email and I had to use another, so there are definitely still hiccups.)
I hope you get your money back – both for the product, the “support,” and the extra payment you made by mistake. That doesn’t help you with the time you’ve lost.
Haha, good old Veena. Yes, that was the one I dealt with too, who told me I was “rude and nasty.” Here: https://getmoneymakingideas.com/pics/dap-support-ticket.png
I use aMember now, but I consider getting Wishlist because they should be easier to set up. Have you looked at them? There’s an offer right now at AppSumo where you get lifetime access for only $49: https://malka.im/wishlist – but it’s ending in two days.
Thanks for leaving a comment here, and I wish you all the best.
Yup, that sounds like good ol’ Veena to me. I’ve dealt with her years before and she hadn’t changed one bit.
As it goes, she’s just replied to my email today… Which took her 26 days to reply to!
And her reply was telling me I needed to pay for even more support – even though I’ve already paid for a year’s worth of email support and multiple installation fees… Which she never did correctly in the first place.
Seriously, you just can’t make this stuff up, can you LOL.
As it goes, I’ve just wrote about it and I’ve linked to it from my name in this comment if you’re interested in reading more about it anyway.
I’ve been looking at MemberPress by the way, so I might be going with that next. We’ll see, eh…
That said, I’ll definitely checkout Wishlist though, so thanks for the heads up on that – appreciate it, Britt 🙂
No, you can’t make stuff like that up 😀
Can you get a refund or is it too late?
I just read your review. It’s so weird they are still in business with that kind of service and with all kinds of much better membership programs out there.
Nope, I’m afraid that ship’s sailed regarding a refund. I’ll just have to whether the storm on this one, I’m afraid.
Thing is, I’m in knee-deep with Digital Access Pass as I’ve been using it since 2013, so it’s deeply intwined into my site. Moving to another membership plugin would be a major hassle with moving the members etc… I don’t even know how to do any of that stuff if I’m honest with you.
If I was starting again though, I’d definitely drop DAP like a hot rock and jump over to another one in a heartbeat.
In fact, when I bring out another product, I won’t be using DAP, that’s for sure.
But yeah, it’s astonishing how they’ve stayed in business with how they treat their customers and how bad Digital Access Pass become.
I’ve even been looking at what others have been saying (that’s how I stumbled across your post) and we’re not the only ones to feel Veena’s wrath and been disappointed with DAP though.
Hello
Dap is a bullshit , i bought the dap and smart pay cart , and whne a subscribers pays it takes him 1 day to recive the log in details . i worked 9 months on my email list and DAP ruined my business . evryone who pays , he does not recive his log ind etails he thinks it is a scam , he ask for a refund . This bullshir ruined my business online. and whne i talk to Venna she does not care . i don’t know who is the customer she or me . she replies 10 days after . and she does’nt care about me and my issue . I think that these losers behind DAP know that their business will no more work , but they are stil in the market to trap new beginners … I don’t rceommend DAP it is a scam .
Hi Stephane,
I’m sorry to hear that it’s still the same… Ugh 🙁 But not that surprised. One of my friends use it. She’s used it for years. Lots of the time her customers don’t get access. She had to make me a completely new account, because suddenly my old account wouldn’t let her add new products to my membership. Things like that. I hope it’s not to late for you for a refund (if they offer that).
Oh boy!! I am using Dap and have been for quite some time. I asked Veena if they could make it so where a new member could NOT re register for the same product with the same email. I got a nasty response and was told that was not high on their priority list. Veena is nothing but rude and has been every step of the way. I wish there was a better solution because if there was I would dump their shit product right away!
I’m shaking my head. It’s incredible that they are still in business.