Wild Apricot vs Member Jungle - how we compare

Choosing a membership system can be a daunting task, let alone the time it takes to review each system and decide on the best system for your club. We know that a number of our membership clubs evaluate multiple systems before deciding to use Member Jungle. A popular comparison product is Wild Apricot.  

To help you save time and avoid analysis paralysis, this article will cover the major comparison points between the two platforms, including:

• Where is each platform based?
• What are the differences in cost? 
• What are the transaction fees, if any?
• Who benefits from the system?
• Other differences to consider

We want you to be informed so you can make the best decision for you, even if that means not choosing us.

Where is each platform based?

Wild Apricot is a U.S.-based company with services hosted in the USA. Member Jungle is an Australian-based company with our services hosted in Australia.

Generally speaking, it’s better to use a service provider closer to your own location to ensure the fastest service and best access to their technical support team during your local business hours. 

The other aspect to be conscious of is data sovereignty. In lay terms this means where your membership data is hosted and what 3rd parties are allowed access to your data. With Member Jungle your data remains in Australia and is never shared or sold to anyone, ever.

Wild Apricot’s data is hosted in the USA and is under their local data laws. Wild Apricot uses 3rd party plugins to provide some of their services, which may not comply with data sovereignty and sharing of data policies regarding your member data.

What are the differences in cost?

For an accurate comparison, we will be displaying Wild Apricot’s fees in Australian dollars.  Their fees are normally charged in USD. At the time of this writing, the costs shown are the direct USD to AUD conversions. Additional conversion costs may apply which are not included in this comparison.

Wild Apricot plans range from $71 to $624 per month. The differences in cost are based upon the number of ‘contacts’ in your database. A ‘contact’ is defined as anyone in your Wild Apricot database. A contact can be a member, an event attendee, a donor, a newsletter subscriber, or any combination of these roles. Included contacts start at 100 for their $71 plan and allow up to 15,000 for their top plan at $624 per month.

Member Jungle plans range from $99 to $354 per month. Our differences in costs are based upon the number of ‘members’ in your system. A ‘member’ is defined as a user who has a membership to your club.  Email contacts, event attendees, newsletter subscribers are excluded from this count.  Included members start at 250 for our $99 Essentials plan and allow up to 5,000 for our $354 Enterprise plan.  Additional members can be added to any plan for a small extra cost.

What are the transaction fees?

Member Jungle charges transaction fees for credit card payments only.  Manual payment methods like bank transfers, cheque, and cash do not attract any transaction fees.  Transaction fees happen when a new member signs up to your club, renews their membership, purchases event tickets, or purchases club merchandise.  Basically, transaction fees apply for any credit card payments made via the system.

Member Jungle fees range from 2.3% + 99c to 2.7% + 99c per transaction.  Additional fees apply for international transactions.

Wild Apricot fees are 2.9% and 45c per transaction for customers located in either the USA or Canada. For customers in Australia, international transaction fees may apply on top of stated gateway fees.

Who benefits from the system?

Wild Apricot is targeted mainly at membership administrators. Member Jungle is not only for membership administrators, it is for the members and is focused on helping you build your Membership Community.  

Without happy members it’s pretty difficult to grow your club. Member Jungle aims to make club management easy and keep your members happy.  Happy members and a happy committee equals a great club.

Other differences to consider

Member Jungle’s service is 100% carbon neutral. That means our hosting, offices and company vehicles are all run from renewable energy sources.  We are firm believers in stepping lightly on our planet.

Member Jungle also offers you an awesome, mobile-responsive website that integrates all membership functions seamlessly into the website. Member Jungle’s mobile app is great for members as they can do everything they need via the app.

Digital Membership Cards!  Member Jungle has awesome digital membership cards!  No more wasted expense printing and posting plastic cards.

The Member Jungle development team are working constantly to improve the product and are releasing new updates every month. We actively encourage feature suggestions from our customers and feed that back to our expert coding team.

To experience the greatest difference between Member Jungle and Wild Apricot, request a demo today and a real person will contact you and show you how your club can benefit from using Member Jungle.