We have the same issue as Barefootgal, and would like to offer a discounted membership for one year only.

Related to this, I would like a limited term membership for another reason... Say we have a "new attorney" (or new doctor or new whatever your members are for the first year after they graduate) rate. After one year, I'd like to force them to renew at the regular rate. They can only be a new whatever for one year.

Reginald Grigsby: can you please click "Vote" button?

A delayed action free trial is a proven way to increase the number of sign-ups for a website. Memberships shoot up! Most people want to try something out before they buy or subscribe to it. It is the #1 way to revenue for subscription websites. Try it before you buy it!!!! Wild Apricot get on board with this. It has been too long. The #1 reason more people have not voted for it, is the same reason that most don't leave positive reviews online. It is just a hassle so why take the time..Same concept applies. Matter of fact, the feature request section is not easily found, nor do members have time to locate it..

I want to offer free trials as well.

Alternatively, is there a way to offer a .99 trial period. I want them to NOT be able to renew that, but change to another level if they choose.

Thanks for the suggestion, we will review it.

possibly in the shorter term you could add a "non-renewable" attribute to membership types. then you'd be able to approximate a trial membership by creating a level named "Trial" which is free, non-renewable, and has a list of the levels that can be moved to upon expiration. this would prevent the member from renewing the trial membership and could steer them to renew at a paying level

We do have it in our future plans to integrate and automate trial memberships, but we have a lot of other pressing issues to attend to first. The only workaround for now is to create a free 'Trial' membership level, put all new members in this level, and then manually track and change member level / status when the trial period ends. In our upcoming release 2.34 (end of June) members would also be able to change from one membership level to any other allowable level.

Bradley, right now if you setup free membership with a certain duration, they can renew on their own.

We do not have a good solution for trial memberships, this is something yet to be worked out.

What will happen when a free membership comes to renewal? If they renew on their own, do they go back into Active status or to Pending? It seems to me that someone could string a lot of free trials along that way. It would be great if you Apricots came up with a trial option of n days that could be checked for any membership level. Thanks Apricots!

Bradley H. Spurr

Hogan Group

Yes, there is a way.
You can create a free membership level. See: http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Member+levels
Any member in free membership level will be able to upgrade to any paid level. See: https://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Member+-+renew+or+change+level
Any cancellation will be processed according to the renewal policy. See: https://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Membership+renewal+settings

[quote user="Peter Hobday"]

"Try membership for 14 days. If, during that time you decide you don't wish to become a full member, simply cancel your order and pay nothing. If you do decide to continue, you will pay just XXXX a year."

[/quote]

Yes. This would be a great addition... I have a few other things to point out about it but i would lobe this feature. The only thing needed is the addition of a credit card upon application of a free membership option. Card is held to be charged at the end of the try should they not cancel... It seams easier for them to get out there card and input the info upon original interest then it its to have to bother them with don't forget to renew emails.

Also there is no days option only 1,3,12 month options for membership periods, a you choose how many days option would be nice. then we could do 3 day, 7 day, 14 day, trials etc.

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do - wildapricot.com and WA as a cloud software for clients are 2 very different systems, we cannot copy/paste code between them.

The option of offering a trial membership that can only be renewed after a certain number of days to a paid membership is something that would prove useful.

At present if you have a trial membership they can renew it for the same trial membership or upgrade to a paid membership. This should be very easy to do as it is what is happening with Wild Apricot Try it free offer at present.

Also the facility of blocking some features to trial members would be great.

We would be interested in offering a 3 month trial membership - that is paid for - but only with the option to renew for one year once the initial 3 months has expired. At the moment we can set up a 3 month membership option, but we wouldn't want members to keep renewing for 3 months.

If you have any ideas of ways around this until it is perhaps included as a new feature, I'd be very interested to hear.

Many thanks

Tiffany,

This sounds like a well-thought workaround, keep us posted on how it works for you.

FYI - in next version 4.3 (~end of November 2011) archived members will be able to apply and their profile would automatically be restored.

Just weighing in here on this topic.

I agree, it would be very helpful to have the ability to set up a free or very low cost short term trial membership. In my case, for example, I'd like to offer a 7 day trial for $9.99 to give potential members access to our video instructional materials.

-Sheryl

Wazing - I can't provide a link to Paypal because that page comes up when I access my account. You must have a merchant account, then you click on 'create button' and it takes you through the set-up procedure. One of the options is for a delayed action payment, and you can chose the length of the delay on the menu.

Hope that helps.

I use it on my websites to let visitors browse the paid-for members section, but make a commitment to pay if they like the material I offer and don't cancel. Otherwise, without that commitment, very few would pay, if any.

Can you provide a link to the details on how to setup Paypal Delayed Action Payment? Thanks.....

It may be because I explained the idea poorly.

The idea is to offer a delayed action free trial along the lines of:

"Try membership for 14 days. If, during that time you decide you don't wish to become a full member, simply cancel your order and pay nothing. If you do decide to continue, you will pay just XXXX a year."

If we can choose the length of the free trial, say, 7 days, 14 days or 30 days that would suit most kinds of membership websites.

A delayed action free trial is a proven way to increase the number of sign-ups a website will achieve. Memberships shoot up! Most people want to try something out before they buy.

Thanks,

Peter