Tools for member payments, subscription and events

Hello,
I'm trying to evaluate how/if your tool(sets) can accommodate a not-for-profit organisation's requirements, which basically fall into two categories:
1) (Annual: rolling/fixed, lifetime) Membership registration/subscription, payment and auto-resubscription (w. auto email reminders) in a variety of categories and price-points

2) Subscription to Events, such as an annual conference, weekend workshop etc w. various payment options, cost based on membership type (lookup), or non-members.

3) Import of existing Member-DB

4) Export of postal mailing labels

5) Access to various sub-site regions (I'm assuming this is "yes")

We're running a J1.5 site with out own templates.

Many thanks for your help, including what the most cost-effective solution would be for those needs (<500 members).

David

1) (Annual: rolling/fixed, lifetime) Membership registration/subscription, payment and auto-resubscription (w. auto email reminders) in a variety of categories and price-points

CBSubs can offer a number of durations such as this calendar year, lifetime, 1 year, 1 month, etc.. Please note custom durations are NOT supported. Recurring subscriptions (auto renewal) is also supported by CBSubs supported payment gateways (Paypal, Authorize.net, etc..). CBSubs only sends email reminds on actual subscription, they will not receive the email BEFORE they expire such as 2 days in advance. This is something we've planned for later release.

2) Subscription to Events, such as an annual conference, weekend workshop etc w. various payment options, cost based on membership type (lookup), or non-members.

CBSubs package comes with CBSubs Eventlist integration offering joining of events based off subscription.

3) Import of existing Member-DB

CBSubs does not import users. It can input subscriptions based off a properly formatted file however. To import users please use CB Juice.

4) Export of postal mailing labels

CB nor CBSubs has an export feature, sorry. You could perform your exports using direct database queries and exporting results to CSV for example assuming you require user to provide invoice address (configurable in CBSubs).

5) Access to various sub-site regions (I'm assuming this is "yes")

CBSubs can control access within its own install. This means if CBSubs is installed on Site 1 (site1.com) it can not control Site 2 (site2.com). You can to an extend do this using CBSubs Folder Access to use .htaccess protection on a second site assuming it is on the same webhost.

krileon wrote:

1) (Annual: rolling/fixed, lifetime) Membership registration/subscription, payment and auto-resubscription (w. auto email reminders) in a variety of categories and price-points

CBSubs can offer a number of durations such as this calendar year, lifetime, 1 year, 1 month, etc.. Please note custom durations are NOT supported. Recurring subscriptions (auto renewal) is also supported by CBSubs supported payment gateways (Paypal, Authorize.net, etc..). CBSubs only sends email reminds on actual subscription, they will not receive the email BEFORE they expire such as 2 days in advance. This is something we've planned for later release.

Thanks very much for your detailed reply, Krileon, it certainly promotes confidence in the product. It looks like everything but the above will work for us. (We're currently using civiCRM and find it a bit too 'clunky'/obtuse). So 4 questions, if I may:

1) Do you have any idea when the reminders feature is likely to be implemented? Is it for, e.g. in dev. or just 'on the drawing boards'?

2) When implemented is it likely to be compatible with J1.5 as well as J1.6?

3) On receipt of payment ahead of expiry, for say a 1 year membership, will the current system add 12 months to the current expiry date, or simply add 12 months to the date of receipt of the funds (as if it was a new membership)?

4) Is it currently possible to roll the subscription dates algorithmically? What I'm thinking is, what if we were to, say today, tag/group subscriptions according to some specified date, such as '6 weeks b4 expiry' and wind those subs. back to today, then wind them forward again.

Thank-you for your assistance. It is much appreciated.

David

1) Do you have any idea when the reminders feature is likely to be implemented? Is it for, e.g. in dev. or just 'on the drawing boards'?

I've no idea when it will be implemented as it also requires API additions to CBs core it self. Currently users are using cron jobs as a way to sent reminders in advance.

2) When implemented is it likely to be compatible with J1.5 as well as J1.6?

CBSubs is already compatible with both. There is only minor issues regarding article controls and usergroup changes for J1.6.

3) On receipt of payment ahead of expiry, for say a 1 year membership, will the current system add 12 months to the current expiry date, or simply add 12 months to the date of receipt of the funds (as if it was a new membership)?

This depends on configuration. If you use by calendar year it will add on another year ending at the end of the next year. If you use by 1 year duration then it'll simply extend the subscription by 12 months. Renewal in advance all together can also be disabled if you like.

4) Is it currently possible to roll the subscription dates algorithmically? What I'm thinking is, what if we were to, say today, tag/group subscriptions according to some specified date, such as '6 weeks b4 expiry' and wind those subs. back to today, then wind them forward again.

Don't understand what you're meaning by this or it's purpose. Subscription dates are the date the user subscription actually became active (after payment). If using say 1 month, then they'll expire 30 days from the date they subscribed. If using calendar month then they could end up with 30 days, 10 days, 1 day, etc.. depending on what day of the month they subscribed.