ClubExpress

Solid service offering and very good value

Comments: We needed a product/service that handled membership operations (dues, renewals, info updates, mailings) without depending on continuous availability of a "computer-techie" volunteer or a paid IT support contractor. ClubExpress meets this core requirement very reliably at quite reasonable no-contract monthly fee based on active membership. The integrated Website functionality lets us have an on-line secure repository for our documents accessible by all or various subsets of membership. Included telephone and email support from ClubExpress is responsive and available to any member (not just a few admins.) Overall we are quite satisfied with the service and consider it very well worth the fees.

Pros:

Completely Cloud-based Most functions menu-driven and accessible without requiring "superuser" access or professional technology expertise Access-controls to support Members-only information/functions, driven by Membership database Includes basically unlimited SMTP (email sending) for membership bulk mailing "Ahead of the curve" on compliance with privacy protections High reliability

Cons:

Component "building blocks" don't fit perfectly with the usage patterns of our (local civic) organization Limited site-performance data collection or analytics built in Editing function (for generating emailings, news articles, etc) is a little complex for completely non-technical users, and a little rough.

ClubExpress does a great job for our Cycling club, however it’s a bit cumbersome to setup/configure.

Comments: ClubExpress has been a great improvement for our club for both our members and those of us who manage the club. It replaced two systems, one home grown, and one commercial and has reduced manual processing considerably. Our Website looks great and our Ride Calendar is so much easier for our members to navigate and use. In addition, the team at ClubExpress has been a joy to work with. They have been responsive and helpful in every interaction.

Pros:

ClubExpress is very easy for our members to use. The event calendar (our Ride Calendar) is intuitive and registering for Events (Rides) is very simple. The Membership Directory is fantastic as is the number of privacy options each member has to determine what information to make available on the Directory. The Communications options make it easy to communicate with the full membership, or any defined subset of the membership. Accepting payments is easy with a Merchant Account. There are numerous customizable system notifications that will alert users and administrators of important items such as registration for an event, event cancellation, payment receipt, payment due, etc. The system has robust support for membership options and membership renewals. Overall the feature set is very robust.

Cons:

The system is not the easiest to learn from an administrative standpoint. I’m a retired software professional and I found it very frustrating. I knew it could do what I wanted to do, but finding out how to do it was very cumbersome. The on-line help is not that helpful. However, the ClubExpress Support Team is fantastic. They are very responsive and helpful. I just felt I had to use the Support Function way too frequently during initial setup & configuration. So, it’s a steep learning curve, but it’s not hard to maintain once you crest that curve. The other major issue for us is the complexity of the Event Creation/Maintenance function. We host over 500 rides per year meaning we create over 500 Events. We have a cadre of approx 50 ride leaders who create these events. I had to manually grant each of these individuals the necessary admin privileges to create calendar events and train them how to create events. There are way more options than we use on our events which makes it quite confusing for many. I would love to be able to hide 75% of the options on the event creation pages.

Alternatives Considered: Wild Apricot, Club Manager and SignUpGenius

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress: Our previous systems were completely disconnected and required our members to navigate two different systems/user experiences. Our website was antiquated and our previous systems did not handle membership management.

Switched From: SignUpGenius

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress: The overall feature set was more robust and ClubExpress received positive reviews by other cycling clubs in the region that use it.

Meh

Comments: I was here with ClubExpress was chosen by management but had very little training on it as I left the organization shortly after. Now I am back in a management capacity and there are still many things that are clunky about the platform. It seems to take a very long time to get the hang of the ins and outs and has caused at least one ex-employee to cry. Seriously. I have stuck with it, and it does become easier, but SOOOO much time to figure some of it out. The videos have been a bit helpful but often it is just easier to ask a colleague how to do something in the system rather than have to sit thru a 10 minute video and only have 1/2 of the question answered.

Pros:

It keeps all of our customer history information in one place.

Cons:

It can be rather clunky and sometimes just will not save things they way they were typed or created. It is not very intuitive and there always seems to be a 'work around' needed.

Alternatives Considered: Wild Apricot

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress: Management at the time chose Club Express because it worked well with the website host we were using. Now we are switching hosting and it will be easier to have most of the information be moved over to the new host and use ClubExpress for only the necessary items.

Good framework for member based non-profit organizations

Pros:

The software is easy to use unless you are a computer novice. Anyone with moderate technical ability can set up and manage the website based on this framework. Unlike Wordpress or Drupal CMS, it is a closed system which is a strength and weakness. The strength is that a mistake will not take the website down. The weakness is that if you need a feature not supported by the modules, you cannot implement it.

Cons:

Some features are inflexible and cannot be changed. Some examples: If a non-member fills in the Ad-Hoc form, they must fill in the fields that do not apply such as Organization and Title. Events do not support entering latitude/longitude under an event location which is a problem when the parking location is far from the street address of the building. When the event organizer wants to set a deadline for registration, everyone with coordinator access can still register after the deadline. When the person registering uses the browser's back and forward buttons instead of the registration wizard's next and previous buttons, the fee is $0 instead of the correct amount. The only way to fix it is to cancel their registration and have them re-register properly. We want to monitor who is downloading the training documents. Club Express does not support adding analytics code to measure it.

Anxious to Get Started

Comments: We believe we've made the right decision with our switch to ClubExpress and that they will provide the support needed for our nonprofit to sustain and grow. Presently we are behind schedule for completing the set up, so we are anxious to finish and get to work.

Pros:

ClubExpress appears to be the prefect solution for our nonprofit art organization as an affordable integrated member management program with the added web-based features we desired (directory, calendar, storefront, photo albums, custom video page). We appreciate the available tutorials and webinars. Our set up is not yet complete, so we are not presently fully operational, but we anticipate that our first impressions will soon proven correct.

Cons:

We're behind schedule on completing our set up for various reasons, but from what we have been able to learn and accomplish so far, we found some of our biggest challenges in the areas related to edit windows with what we perceive as inconsistencies with tools and formats (i.e., we can't add a linked button to the homepage but we can accomplish this task in a news article). We're used to the ease of "drag and drop" templates and applications that we use now, so we are struggling a bit to learn how to use the new tools, symbols and options being offered that are not as intuitive to us. We're challenged with the photo upload variations. Volunteer opportunities don't have the option to be added to the calendar. Storefront products can't be copied to save time in adding multiple inventory variations of the same product type. The program allows for multi-level Membership Types but we had to pay extra for a customization to show the Membership Type in the Member Directory. This being said, we are confident that ClubExpress will prove to be the best solution for our needs and that we will continue to learn and appreciate what ClubExpress has to offer.

Alternatives Considered: Wild Apricot

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress: Needed an affordable and more comprehensive, integrated member management and online renewal program with greater capabilities and features that included easier reporting, private photo and video archives, an integrated storefront, and good customer service.

Switched From: Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress: Initial cost and perceived better customer support