MemberSuite Reviews & Product Details

We have been using MemberSuite for five years. It has a lot of functionality that our previous AMS didn’t have – such as seamless importing general ledger entries into QuickBooks,

We have found MemberSuite very configurable to meet most of our unique needs. On occasion we have to modify our process to fit MemberSuite functionality, but that would be the case for any AMS. They have a comprehensive API that our web developers have been able to use for integration with forms on our website.

They do have a process for customizations, but they discourage it in favor of configurability. On occasion the customizations have stopped working on an update, but the problems were eventually fixed. They are occasionally also open to absorbing a useful customization into their core software, which allows for the functionality to be included in their integration testing more seamlessly.

One major pro is that you get the entire system (less customizations) for one price. There is no need to decide whether to separately purchase a module or go without it. If you use the system, you have access to all core functionalities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like to be able to import data to any table, including invoices, payments, etc. THere are a few things that can be imported, but there needs to be many more.

I am disappointed that I am limited to using specific merchant services. We have an alliance with a service that we had to stop using when we moved to MemberSuite.

Our users sometimes have difficulty accessing and interacting with their portal accounts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

back end accounting is very sound; deferrals are possible and reporting is easy to run and understand; customer support has been invaluable; it has many modules that an organization could fully utilize; customizations are possible and are sound Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

it's very "rigid", you can't enter credits without them being an overpayment; the deferrals and AR modules are not very adaptable to "real" life; cancelling invoices is always a crapshoot if it's done correctly Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the multiple tabs and abilities for searching specific transactions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not intuitive - I'm used to hitting enter after typing in a search and on this platform I have to select "search" instead Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's not user friendly or intuitive. It is highly customizable but since nothing works consistently that really doesn't much matter. The API is difficult to program and my staff hates it. We have invested tens of thousands of dollars into the program and thousands of staff hours try to learn, customize, and specialize the software to our needs. To no avail. Save yourself, stay as far away from this program as possible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Extremely glitchy. Primary functions like event registration and the customer portal are constantly broken. Representations about the availability of features are flagrantly deceptive. Extremely problematic investment for our company. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It looks clean and useful. It is user-friendly once it is set up. The advanced search is a great function. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. It is a SQL-based program that tries to work like a business objects system, which is a technical way of saying it is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It leads to a lot of issues.

2. They claim EVERYTHING is a customization so they can charge you a lot of money to do it.

3. It breaks all the time. They will "fix" something and in the process everything else will break. They don't seem to want to do testing on things before putting it into production.

4. Customer Service is the worst. You think comcast has bad customer service, you haven't experienced MemberSuite customer service yet. Their customer service support team acts like gate keepers to prevent the rest of the team from fixing things.

We give them examples, specifics, and pictures and VIDEOS of issues happening, and they will respond that it isn't happening. I went a month going back and forth with them on an issue they insisted wasn't happening only for them to realize it is happening to all of their clients. It was a system wide bug. They didn't even follow up with me to tell me. They posted it on their site and acted like THEY found the issue and fixed it for us all--when we all know it was the clients that found it months ago and fought them to be listened to. This is literally how they respond to every single issue. Something tiny that takes them minutes to fix will take a month because they will fight you on it. They also will close tickets on their own the day you put in the ticket. To get anything accomplish at all--no matter how tiny--we have to put in a ticket, immediately follow up with a email to our rep and then contact a VP we know to push the team to actually do the work.

5. They are always looking for the next big thing or the next innovation. They want the flashy new toys. They do all this at the expense of their current base product. They want to acquire different pointless technologies they think look cool, but their main thing--the membership database--does not work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The membership functions - dues billing and tracking, joining, members on the roster....just the overall membership functions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customizing reports can be a bit complicated for non-tech people Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Membersuite is a robust, cloud-based system that allows associations to customize everything from reports to events to membership categories. If your association has a lot of specific idiosyncrasies this is the database system to choose. Additionally, they have several in-person training sessions which our staff has found very helpful over the years. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because the system has so many customizations, there is a bit of a learning curve with the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I am told the API is very useful. From a finance perspective, I had our IT team build something that allows me to build a query in MemberSuite, save it, and then I have a link that I can use to download updated data on-demand.

I like the flexibility of building custom queries. The functionality is confusing for some, but once you learn it, it is powerful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nearly every aspect of the financial and fundraising modules is flawed. It is a rare month I am able to close the period without having an issue. Customer support is of very little use. We have support tickets dating back months and years with unresolved issues.

Here are just a few examples:

- We have long since given up on trying to get our inventory to calculate correctly in MemberSuite after years of support tickets going back and forth. We do it all by hand now.

- We were told before we initially purchased the product that it would support multiple merchant accounts (i.e. one for our association and one for our foundation). We went more than 3 years without being able to process a single transaction in the foundation account. Finally, after that time we are now able to process some transactions, but recurring monthly pledge payments only work for as long as no changes are made to the credit card. If the card is canceled or expires, it cannot be updated, and we move the payment over to be processed directly in the merchant account and entered manually into MemberSuite later.

- Record keeping in the fundraising module is not comprehensive. If a gift is entered and later needs to be adjusted (e.g. a check bounced or ACH was returned), the easiest way to make that adjustment is to unpost a previous period, unpost the batch, void the gift, repost the batch, repost the period, redownload the batch, and reupload the batch into the financial system.

- Cancellations and refunds do not work particularly well. There has been an ongoing issue where if a conference registration is canceled and there are add-on sessions attached, the deferred revenue calculation effectively cancels it twice, and you wind up with negative revenue rather than zero.

- Not specific to finance, but a global issue is with membership flowdown. Our memberships are primarily organization-based, with individuals receiving member benefits by virtue of being associated with an organization. Membership benefits should flow down from the organization to individuals, but there are times when this flowdown can take minutes, hours, weeks, or months. This has implications for finance when someone who should have received member benefits registers for something at the non-member rate, and we later have to make adjustments to grant them the member rate. This ties back to the issues with cancellations and refunds.

Customer support is not particularly helpful with any of these issues. If one of us encounters an issue that is not cut-and-dry, we have taken to tackling it as a team. We have one person watch over the shoulder of the other so that when something goes wrong there is another witness to what actions were taken to lead to the issue. In other cases where there is an issue that we find, we often have to leave it "broken" because if a support ticket is submitted after we have already taken action to rectify the issue, the response is that it is no longer broken and does not require MemberSuite's attention. There are many issues that we cannot appropriately submit for MemberSuite's review because if it directly impacts a member we will not leave it "broken," and thus MemberSuite will not investigate further.

For all of these issues, we have developed complex workarounds that slow down our day-to-day business. There are certainly many other issues I am forgetting because these workarounds have become second nature, when ideally the system we own should be performing many of those tasks for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customer Service and Responsiveness to Requests Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We had some very complicated data to download and untrained staff. But, MemberSuite came to the rescue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are many things to like about Membersuite. The reporting function is excellent, and lets us pull all the data we need for making decisions about program development, marketing and member services. The customer portal gives our members and customers easy access to their accounts, and the ability to configure the system to our specific requirements is almost like having a customized system. It is the most comprehensive system our association has eveer used in my 30+ years of managment here. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is a steep learning curve in the beginning, but fortunately, there is good support from the Membersuite Team. For organizations who do not have a robust IT department, Membersuite offers an affordable Administrative Services option after implementation to make sure that the organization continues to have dedicated support to assure a successful transition to Membersuite. Sometimes the system is less intuitive than it could be, but Membersuite is continuously improving their product. One area, which would be my top priority for further development is the finance module. This module tracks transactions but is not a full-blown financial system. It requires integration with Quickbooks or some other program for complete financials. While this works, it would be ideal to have a complete financial package included. Using custom reports, even without the integration with another package, it is possible to pull any financial data that may be required. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.