To continue with the Member script battle, we are going to talk about aMember. The other day I talked about Wishlist Member... so today is round 2 with aMember.
I was thinking about aMember in the beginning when I wanted to start a small membership site. But I heard there were issues with getting use to it and having things work properly with it. But again it is also one of the most recommended membership scripts out there.
It was not till some of my marketing friends started making membership sites and they were using aMember. I ask them what they thought and they gave me their inputs.
After a good week of asking around I decided to purchase a license and install it and test it. At first it was time consuming trying to get use to the interface and its settings but after that it was fairly easy. Then came the plugins and versatility that I needed for my site...
The installation of aMember was very simple and very straight forward. I didnt have any issues installing it at all. Once in then you get to play around with the interface and settings. I have messed up a couple things in the beginning but I finally got use to the interface and use to what it can do.
At first it was working great and I enjoyed it, but then when certain things came up like how would I integrate it with my affiliate program, how does it handle with aweber, how does it remove canceled users etc. So these things I spent several good days researching Google and the aMember forum.
Good thing about their community and their staff is they are all helpful and I get a response usually within a couple of hours. It did take some several customization with my programmer to get some things working the way I wanted.
One good thing it gives me is the access logs and who have logged in and what pages they went to etc. Which I think is really good to help troubleshoot if any issues arise. The main dashboard is very informative and gives you a lot of information right away.
Another good thing about amember is the fact they have a ton of plugins free and paid. I have bought several plugins to seamlessly integrate a forum, some reporting, and soon I will be purchasing some other plugins to help with the selling of my membership site.
One thing I did not like was the fact that if you add someone for free it calculates it as an income, which I think it shouldn't. The only way to avoid this I think is to personally create the same product BUT without a price. This way it does not get calculated with the income reports.
...speaking of reports. Amember has a very basic reporting system and I think can be improved. They have very basic reports but one report stick outs, demographics. This can easily show you who your demographics are overall. Helping you who to target online.
I know some users have requested a more versatile reporting and more options than protection. But there are a lot of plugins for amember but sometimes you may have to create your own to get what you want.
.. Check out aMember and let me know what you think. In a couple days a total wrap up will be discussed. Maybe a video?
