I Signed Up For A Free Trial Of Join It, Here's What Happened

Last year, I wrote an honest comparison of Joint It and Member Jungle, breaking down the two membership management platforms and their pros and cons. While I covered a lot of information on both Join It and us at Member Jungle, there were a few things that I just didn't have time to cover. So, to help you really compare, I signed up for a free trial of both Join It and Member Jungle to compare how each system works. 

It is worth pointing out the elephant in the room here. I work for Member Jungle and have an obvious bias when comparing Join It and Member Jungle. However, I promise to be as unbiased and honest as possible. I will only include hard facts and honest opinions in the following article because, at the end of the day, Member Jungle will not be the right choice for everybody who reads this article and lying about it isn't going to do any good. 

If you haven't read the original Join It vs Member Jungle: An Honest Comparison article, or if you have, but it's been a few months, I would suggest going back and reading it as I will be taking everything discussed in it as read. 

During this article, I will go over the process of signing up for a free trial with Join It, what was easy, what I struggled with and where appropriate compare against the process of a Member Jungle free trial. So, without further ado, let's get trialling.

Disclaimer

The review presented here is solely my interpretation based on information sourced from Join It's official website at the time of writing. Every effort has been made to rely exclusively on direct information from their site, intending to avoid including personal opinions. Any inadvertent omissions, misrepresentations, or inaccuracies regarding the functionality of Join It's products are unintended and attributed to my interpretation. Readers are strongly advised to verify details independently through Join It's official documentation and support channels. 

Signing Up For A Free Demo Of Join It  

Signing up for a free trial of Join It was a super easy and intuitive process; all I had to do was provide my email address, name, and club name, and I was in. 

 

 

From here, I had the option of filling out two more pages of information. The first was about myself and my club, and the second was about setting up my first membership level. These pages could be skipped or completed now. 

These pages included the following information: 

• Organisation name 
• A club logo
• Description of organisation 
• Preferred currency 
• Preferred language 
• Related URL 
• Adding initial membership level

 

Once I had done this, I was brought to my trial site dashboard, as you can see below. 
 

 

As I had initially decided not to add a membership type/level, I still needed to build my first membership level. I also needed to choose which Join It package I would prefer to have a free trial of, as Join It allows you to have a free 30-day trial of any of its four packages. I chose to try their "Growth Package", which costs AUD$49 a month and is what they described as their Most Popular package. 

I will say that as Join It has less functionality than Member Jungle, there was less for me to set up, resulting in the whole thing being easier and more intuitive to set up than Member Jungle. That’s not to say that Member Jungle is hard to set up, just that Joint It set up is a simple and well guided process. 

Setting Up A New Membership Level With Join It

Personally, I found setting a new member level on Join It to be a super simple and easy process. I just had to follow the prompts on my dashboard and was taken to the below page, where I could quickly build my first member level. 
 

 

With this, I could do pretty much everything I could do using the Member Jungle system, with the exception of setting discounts for returning members. There is a chance that this is still possible with Join It, but I couldn't find it. 

You can see the Member Jungle version of creating a member-level page below. It has a few more customisation options than the Join It one, but for the most part, they are basically the same. 

 

Adding Members To Your Join It Site

When it comes to actually adding members to your Join It site, there are a number of ways you can do this. 

Firstly, you can simply bulk-import your members straight into your new database. This is great if you already have all your member information stored on a database or spreadsheet somewhere. This feature is only available for paid accounts, however, and not in trial.

You can send your members a link to allow them to sign up themselves; this can also be permanently added to your website. That way, when new members visit your existing website, they will be able to click the link to your Join It portal to sign up. 

When members do this, they will be brought to your version of the following page. 

 

 

This is what your members see on your Join It Member Portal. How this looks will vary based on what you add to it, but generally speaking, it will look pretty similar to this. 

Finally, you can also manually add individual members yourself. 

Using Join It, you can also create custom member forms to collect information from members when they sign up. These forms can be customised extensively to collect whichever information you need to get from your members. 

This is all much the same as it is on the Member Jungle system. While there are a few differences here and there, generally speaking, they were about the same. 

How Does The Membership Database Look and Function? 

Once your members have been added to Join It, they go to the membership page. This page allows you to see how many total members you have quickly, what the status of their membership is, their email and their joined and expired date. 

 

 

You can filter your membership by all of the following filters to help make finding members easier: 

• Membership type
• Status
• Expiry date
• Joined date
• Alphabetically 

Plus, several more. 

The Join It membership module is a neat and easy-to-understand way to search through your membership for whoever it is you’re looking for.  

Compared to Member Jungle’s membership module, Join It is a little underpowered and might be too simple for some clubs. That said it would absolutely do the trick for a smaller club. 

Setting Up A New Event With Join It

Once I had set up my first few member levels with Join It, I went about creating my first event with their system. 

 

 

I was able to give my event a name, a start and end date, a description, an image, and a location and set the event to member-only or public. I was also able to link to an external website. 

This is where I ran into my first significant difference between Join It and Member Jungle. Via Join It, I could not create or sell tickets to my event; I needed to use a third-party system like Eventbrite to create and sell tickets to my events. As far as I can work out, that’s why there was an option to add an “External URL” to my event so I could link it to my event post. 

The Join It event module is pretty simple and barebones. Still, its ability to integrate with Eventbrite will help it be more detailed and helpful. 

Eventbrite is a popular and powerful event and ticketing platform that is a great option to help you run club events. You will need to remember that Eventbrite has paid versions and collects fees on tickets sold. These fees and prices are quite reasonable, but you will need to factor these prices into your decision when looking at the affordability of Join It. 

The Member Jungle event module contains many more customisation options than Join It’s alone. However, the differences are much less profound once you factor Eventbrite into the equation. 

You can see the Member Jungle event page below. As you can see from the menu at the top, more information and customisation can go into an event with Member Jungle.

 

 

After I had set up events on both Join It and Member Jungle, I was left with two good-looking and inviting events. 

 

 

 

Ultimately, whether Join It or Member Jungle is best for you depends entirely on your preferences and tastes. Both systems are good quality and reliable; there is no wrong decision here. It will all come down to what works best for you and your club. Remember to take the time to compare any plugins and integrations you will also need to use. For example, you should be weighing up Join It and Eventbrite versus Member Jungle when it comes to events. 

If you are looking for a place to start, try reading, Trybooking vs Eventbrite vs Member Jungle.

Setting Up Emails With Join It

Join It has a basic and easy-to-use email system that allowed me to set up custom emails, design email templates and connect to third-party services. 
 

 

I could set up custom renewal reminder emails, filter by renewal date and several other beneficial factors and send them off with no problem. As far as I can work out, Join It cannot automate emails. While you can create a renewal reminder email and template, you will need to regularly check who is up for renewal and send them your premade email. This differs from Member Jungle, which completely automates this process. 

However, Join It can do automated emails by integrating with third-party services like MailChimp. MailChimp is an excellent specialist service that is very good at automating emails and running email marketing campaigns. Just like with Eventbrite, it is essential to factor in the price of Mailchimp when considering Join It so that you can get the full picture. 

Digital Membership Cards At Join It

Just like Member Jungle, Join It has customisable digital membership cards available that include QR codes and can be added to digital wallets. Overall, Join It’s digital membership cards are nice looking, relatively customisable and have all the usual great benefits of digital membership cards. 

 

 

It’s worth noting that while I had signed up for a trial of Join It’s most popular package, the $49 per month “Growth Package”, digital membership cards are only available on their $99 per month “Total Package”. Also, the ability to create different membership cards for your different membership levels is locked to their $249 per month “Extra Package”. 

All of Member Jungle’s packages include all these features, including our cheapest one. Member Jungle has standard digital membership cards, as seen below, which are free to all customers, as well as premium custom-designed cards for a one-off fee. Member Jungle can also create different membership cards for different membership levels; these are available in all packages, though it does cost a custom setup charge.

You can see some examples of Member Jungle’s standard membership cards below.

Widgets And Engagement Tracking With Join It

Join It has a good range of data reporting tools that allow you to track your member demographics and member engagement with your club. These include reports on your members, events and payments. These reports can be composed as requested, or you can schedule them to be sent to you every week or every month. 

Join It also offers metrics that allow you to track how your membership changes from month to month. 

Unfortunately, that is all I could tell about Join It's reporting and metrics; because I didn't have any members to add to the system, I couldn't investigate the reporting to the same extent that the average club admin could investigate while trialling the system. And their metrics could only be turned on once the system was live. From what I could tell, though, Join It's data reporting was easy to use and fairly detailed. 

As I couldn't investigate Join It's reporting function in too much detail, I don't feel I'm able to really pass judgement on how Join It and Member Jungle stacks up in the data reporting department. 

If you want to know why data reporting is a valuable tool for your club, then read Why Your Social Club Needs Data Reporting.

Website And App With Join It

One of the significant differences between Join It and Member Jungle is that Join It does not offer a website or app as part of its service. Join It allows you to add a widget to your website that will funnel people to your Join It site when it is clicked. For example, if your members need to log in or renew, they could just click the appropriate button, and they will be taken to Join It to do so. 

 

Member Jungle provides a fully custom website and an integrated membership app as standard. Allowing for greater cohesion between your platforms. Most membership management systems offer a custom website to accompany your management software. The fact that Join It doesn't isn't a significant problem. It just means that you will need to factor a website builder into your calculations when deciding which system to use. 

Is Join It Or Member Jungle Better For My Club?

After signing up for a free trial of both Join It and Member Jungle, I can safely say that either would be a great choice. There is no right or wrong answer here. At the end of the day, it will come down to your club's needs, preferences and budget.

 

Remember that you aren't comparing Join It to Member Jungle. You are actually comparing Join It, Eventbrite, MailChimp and your website builder/hoster of choice to Member Jungle. That's not to say that Join It and its integrations can't be the right option for your club because they absolutely can. You just need to make sure you are considering every possible cost and factor involved in your decision. 

Join It Or Member Jungle How To Decide Which Is Best For Your Club? 

I hope you've found this deep dive into Join It's system and free trial helpful and informative. I would strongly encourage you to do your own research into all of Join It's and Member Jungle's systems to see them for yourself and help determine which is best for your club. 

 

If you haven't read it already, check out Join It vs Member Jungle: An Honest Comparison. 

 

If you are still trying to decide on the perfect membership for you, why not read The 3 Best Membership Management Software Systems In Australia.