Why I Switched Away From Wishlist Member

27 | Posted In Technical by David

Today has been hectic.

Aside from some unusual family distractions, I’ve had to deal with a last-minute switch to a different membership site solution. And that’s about as fun as slamming a finger in the door.

I’m switching away from Wishlist Member. Wishlist is a pretty popular WordPress plug-in for “out of box” membership sites. A lot of people like it. Plus, as a subscriber of mine pointed out to me, I actually promoted it to my email list last week. So, it makes pretty odd timing that I’m ditching it.

I figured I’d post a quick explanation. Plus, I also want to emphasize the fact that my position on Wishlist Member is, shall I say… nuanced. :) I am NOT going to throw Wishlist under the bus. It works for many people. I’m just not one of them.

UPDATE: Be sure to see my update to this post at the bottom. :)

It All Started When…

… I installed Gravity Forms. I noticed that the conflict list distributed with Wishlist Member listed Gravity Forms as a conflicting plug-in. I could find no information about this, but was later told privately by Stu (founder of Wishlist) that there is no conflict. So, I figured I needed to just upgrade.

Yesterday, they released a brand new version of Wishlist Member. So, I upgraded. And all hell broke loose. My database load went through the roof and it literally ended up crashing all of my websites by choking it on high server load.

I thought that it HAD to be a coincidence. I mean, how could a plug-in do that? But, after testing, it definitely seemed to be Wishlist Member. When I de-activated it, server load recovered. Re-activated it, it shot up. Doesn’t get any more definitive than that.

Now, is it solely Wishlist? I don’t know. Perhaps it is a conflict with another plug-in and the situation is unique to me, but still…. this is a deal killer.

Pile On To Other Limitations

Even before this, I had a few issues with Wishlist Member. For example, depending on your payment solution, there wasn’t any full integration. This means that when somebody canceled, I had to manually cancel them inside of Wishlist Member.

There is no member account page where people can easily view/manage all information related to their account.

It did a crappy job protecting my private content from my RSS feed. I actually ended up having to hack up the RSS code a bit to deal with that. Which means if I update the WordPress core, I had to go back and fix it again.

Here’s The Thing…

I think it is possible that my demands on Wishlist Member might have been a little much. I think I introduced a lot of complexity because I was trying to keep free and paid content all on the same blog. Using a “walled garden” setup is MUCH easier.

Plus, it is highly likely that my issue with server load was atypical and probably wouldn’t be easily reproduced by the Wishlist Member guys. I was invited to submit a support ticket to them about it, but alas, I was in a hurry. I had to disable Wishlist Member to even keep my server on the Internet, and I had an active membership program to run.

So, in the end, I decided to jump ship and switch to…

Amember Pro

Yes, I switched to Amember Pro, using WordPress as my CMS in a “walled garden” setup. I have a history with Amember, having used it on 3 other membership sites already. I know the product fairly well.

Amember isn’t exactly the easiest solution in the world. Wishlist is MUCH easier. That said, Amember works dependably once you’ve got it set up. It’s like an old Toyota pickup… it might not be pretty, but it’ll work for a long time. :)

I checked out Digital Access Pass (DAP), and it looks to be a pretty worthy alternative as well. For me, though, I wanted to stick with something I already knew. And that’s Amember. I know I can get set up quickly with Amember, whereas I’d have to re-learn a bunch of things to use DAP.

So, In The End…

Let me be clear…. I’m not going to come out today and crap on Wishlist Member. I may use it again in the future on a fresh, from-scratch project. Wishlist is indeed super easy to use.

I just don’t think Wishlist is nearly as mature as many of the other solutions out there. Works for many, but not everybody.

Update: June 2011

Since I don’t show dates on my blog posts, it might appear as if this is an up-to-date post. It isn’t, and my position has changed since this was originally written. :)

This post was written in September of 2010. Today, about 9 months later, I have completely reversed myself and am now using Wishlist Member on all but one of my sites (and soon, the remaining one will be switched over as well).

As I said above, Wishlist DOES indeed work better if it is used as a standalone installation. So, give yourself a separate install of WordPress for your membership site, set up Wishlist and you’ll be happy. In my case, I have integrated it with Nanacast, and I have full integration. At the time of the original post, I was using 1Shoppingcart and there was no full integration, but they have even fixed that. So, if you use 1SC, there is full integration now and cancelations are handled automatically.

So, if you happen upon this post, just know… things have changed. Wishlist is now what I recommend to people. And I’m using it myself rather than Amember Pro. So much easier.

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  • Anonymous

    I use wishlist member on a membership site I run. And as you said, it works fine as long as you don’t task it and want to do something uncommon. One thing I don’t like about it is the lack of integration for affiliate software apart from one shopping cart and click bank.

  • http://www.karlhadwen.com Karl Hadwen

    Gotta agree with your thoughts on Amember David. The first time I set it up was really frustrating, got it working in the end though and It’s pretty decent. It really does take some configuring.

  • http://www.allthingsgerman.net/ Graham Tappenden

    I know that I use WishList Member on one site in a similar configuration to the Inner Circle, and I’m putting off upgrading at the moment.

    That is going to be a well planned upgrade with a complete backup first, and at worst I will rollback to the working system.

    It would be much better if WishList could solve such problems. I wonder how much testing they do before they release a new version?

  • http://www.reklambyrastockholm.com Reklambyrå Stockholm

    I think I´ll end up using amember for an upcoming membership site as well. Any suggestions as to training videos or something like that?

  • http://website-in-a-weekend.net/ Dave Doolin

    Hey hey hey… watch it with those cracks about Toyota pickups! I sincerely regret letting go of my red 89 4×4.

    That said, I’m ambivalent about Wishlist myself, from a technical point of view. They integrate their data into the existing WP tables instead of using dedicated tables. I now understand that WP encourages this, but I don’t see the benefit here.

    I put my membership site plans on hold after spending too much time attempting to chase down a whitescreen. Never did find it. I solved it by deleting Wishlist, Scribe and After the Deadline.

    That said, I like Wishlist very much, and for a walled garden I believe it’s a phenomenal value. It costs A LOT of money to write good software, and users are spoiled with so much free software available. I won’t have any problem promoting Wishlist as an affiliate once I open up the two sites I’m planning.

  • http://www.theinfopreneur.net TheInfoPreneur

    I tried wishlist…ended up settling on nanacast. Much better incorporation into email, affiliate stats, etc. An all in one solution…

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Yeah, I checked into Nanacast a while back. A nice system. I was just a bit nervous about it since it had very little track record at the time. Plus, if I recall, I had to host content with them.

  • http://mttoolsonline.com/blog Kathy Nicholls

    Good to hear another recommendation. I had some similar problems with the last upgrade and it crashed things on my site after adding over 10,000 extra pages. Imagine that call from my hosting service at 1 in the morning! :) I have taken it down on one site and they reinstalled the older version on another. Still not sure where it will end up as they haven’t provided any solution and there’s no way to call them. I have emailed, done a ticket, and faxed them asking for a call, but no response to the fax unfortunately. Still working on this one. Thanks, David, for sharing your experience here.

  • http://www.stevescottsite.com Steve Scott

    Thanks for the recommendation I am going to have to check out Amember it sounds nice

  • Jules

    Hi david,

    what do you make of the prospect Kajabi, out on Oct 7th, it is the creation of Andy Jenkins and is an all in one for product and membership launches use by people like Jeff Walker this year to test it. Will have a monthly charge attached though.

    jules

  • Dushan

    I work with Digital Access Pass… It’s pretty good on a technical point of vue, but it’s a shame that customer support is minimal to say the least…

  • http://internetmarketingformommies.com Jackie Lee

    I had the same issue as Kathy ~ it added 10K pages when I upgraded ~ on launch day no less. IT was a disaster. I will throw wishlist member under the bus. I had tried it a couple years ago with no success and switched to amember for that project. It had been a couple years and I thought it might work better now. no way. There was absolutely NO customer service, and problem after problem.

    I had someone do the amember side of things last time and didn’t want to have to learn it all myself. I went with Digital Access Pass and have really liked it. Dushan stated there’s no customer service ~ however ~ I’ve had excellent customer service from DAP.

  • Anonymous

    David,

    I’m Ravi Jayagopal, founder & co-developer of DigitalAccessPass (DAP).

    Is there any way we can bribe you to come over to the DAP world? :-)

    We can give your readers a special deal too, if you’re interested.

    Let us know.

    Cheers!

    - Ravi Jayagopal

  • http://www.allthingsgerman.net/ Graham Tappenden

    Ravi,

    I’ve just looked at the feature list and it certainly does look very interesting.

    If only I’d known before I setup my Wishlist Member site! I particularly like the idea of a built-in affiliate programme. Anyway, I’ve bookmarked it now for any future projects.

    Do you support the on-the-fly “subscription” buttons in PayPal? Some countries (eg. Germany) don’t offer them to their merchants, so I had to programme the last one myself.

  • Anonymous

    Hi eblogr,

    DigitalAccessPass has integrated affiliate management by the way. Every new member instantly gets their own affiliate link (of course, only if you want them to).

    So you could actually send out their affiliate link in the very same “Welcome Email” that has their login info to your membership site.

    - Ravi Jayagopal

  • http://www.crystalmade4u.com yejunglj
  • http://www.allthingsgerman.net/ Graham Tappenden

    OK thanks – that’s good to know. I’m definitely going to make a note of DAP for any future projects. Let me know if you need a PayPal button tester in Germany :-)

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  • Max

    Hmmm, I appreciate your position. Funny though, I have the exact opposite concern! I’m a developer who has reached his wits end trying to massage AMember Pro into custom scenarios. It all started when… and the upgrade track didn’t fix it when… and their customer service said they fixed it when…but they didn’t fix it when…

    So I won’t bleed on the lamb, but you obviously did the right thing back then. You didn’t have a developer on staff, and you didn’t have Wishlist Member API 2.0 which solves most of the issues you’re talking about.

    Having developed with both Amember Pro and Wishlist Member, I like to see your choices stem from robustness, or your comment about dependability.

    Wishlist doesn’t crash when I customize the experience in blogs- Amember didn’t either until… and since I know that bad coding can be the culprit, I test my junk first.

    I favor Movable Type instead of WP when it comes to sites which may experience heavy load. I now favor Wishlist with it’s new API and officially recommend it for those who want custom blogs.

  • Mike B

    I can appreciate your predicament with WishList Member. I am the webmaster for a state medical professional society. We have a simple membership model with one membership level. All memberships are annual. It seems that this is too simple for WishList Member as I have had to use several workarounds to get WishList Member set and running. That is okay and to be expected. The weak import capability WishList Member is not okay.

    All along, I was assured that WishList Member could import our current member list from a CSV file. It turns out that this is only partially true. What they didn’t tell me is that WishList Member has very limited import capabilities and can only import the data set in their sample file. Even more limiting is that the import CSV has to exactly match the sample file. This effectively means that the WishList Member import is useless to me, since it can only bring in part of each member record. There is no way we are going to hand enter nearly 800 records just so we can use WishList Member. To aggravate me even more, WishList Member support suggested that I could perhaps get help with the import if I joined their paid “Insider” group so that I could access the forum and perhaps contract one of their member developers to help. What??? Customer Support can’t help but you want me to pay more in the hope of getting support from outside the company? I’m dumping WishList Member as soon as I can find a membership system that will accommodate our simple needs and import out list. I have used aMember on several non-WordPress sites and it works very well. Also, the developers at aMember are willing to make minor tweaks for free and do custom programming for very reasonable rates.

  • Kenny

    I have used wishlist, amember and dap and I have to say DAP is hands down the winner. Great support and constantly updating and improving the system.  Dap is like having your own custom development team for free.

  • Kenny

    Dap can handle any membership model you can think up. 

  • http://simpleswingtrading.blogspot.com/ geldrausch

    Hi I am planning a content blog that sells memberships (3,6 and 12 month)
    The problem I have figured out with password protection is that I would need a protection system that:

    a) gives every member a individual password
    b) automatically closes membership for each customer when his/her membership time is over.

    Does any membership plugin provides that?

    Thanks in advance!

  • http://www.SlimandSexy.com.au Kylie Ryan

    I started out in Kajabi when they launched, and began building my site and then a few months in gave it the heave to switch to WordPress. Andy and what he’s doing with Kajabi are awesome. And you can get virtually the same thing without ongoing membership fees forever if you have a self-hosted WP site with Something like Optimize press and one of these membership site plug ins… 

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Yep.

  • Fake-email-lol

    there’s amember 4 now, it kills everything it its path lol, it’s built on top of zend framework, and it’s independent  so instead of having wordpress + wishlist independent, just go for amember 4 independent. last year the competition was though because of amember 3 but now…. there’s really NO competition anymore lol

  • bellasys

    Interesting info David. No system does it all. It is the limitations of each that give them form. Some of course, are actually hopeless, but your tried and true players each have a place.

    Technology needs to be carefully selected for the mission- no cadillacs offroad, no baja bugs uptown. I personally stand behind WLM since they released their API 2.0. I find I can *easily* develop what I need between it, PayPal’s API and WP. Of course, I have developed plugins and I’m comfortable with what it takes to get biz done. My clients are comfortable paying to have it done as well while still retaining the ability to manage content creation from their own desk.