That doesn’t break the bank and take forever.
So, you’ve got a membership organization, you’d like to redesign your membership website. Your board gave you a budget and a timeline. You’ve called around to the web design agencies in your area. They’ve told you to get the features you want it’s going to cost anywhere from $35,000 to $50,000 and they tell you it’s going to take 3-4 months to design you a beautiful custom website. So you’re feeling stuck. Then you go and research how to build your own, but you don’t know anything about coding; you just want to build one that doesn’t take up all your time and spend your entire marketing budget for the year.
Are there any other options available to you? Always.
Option 1: Sign up for a software package
I’m sure you’ve taken the phone calls from every membership organization software company out there. They are big powerful management systems, they’ll automate, and they’ll build you a website. Seems too good to be true right? Probably because it is.
Think of it this way, HVAC employees need to know about circuits and wiring to build your air conditioning unit, but are they electricians? No. You wouldn’t call a heating and cooling company if you needed a new circuit breaker box. You’d call an electrician. So why would you call a software company to build your website.
If you don’t need a huge management system, why spend the extra money just because it includes a website? Management software is important, but if it’s not necessary, save your money and spend it on things that will grow your membership to the point that you need one. If you are in a place where you need one, as far as price goes Wild Apricot seems to have one of the most straightforward pricing structures around.
Option 2: Drag and Drop Builder
You’ve heard the ads, gone to their website, they look easy and in a few weeks of hard work you’ll have a stunning website. Then you get into it and discover there’s limited functionality, the template doesn’t look the way the pictures do, and you’ve sunk 20 hours into something that looks unprofessional. At least it was free for 14 days right? Apparently this is not the best way to build a membership website.
Now you’re a month into your deadline, you’re completely frustrated with software, websites, your computer, the internet – all things technology. What do you do now? Let’s take a look at one final option.
Option 3: Membership Website Builders
Having been in the membership website building industry for nearly 10 years now we may be slightly biased that this is your best option. We’re the electrician coming to fix your circuit breaker, the experts in this industry. We don’t just build any website for anyone, we build specific ones for specific people. You the membership organization. But we’re not the only ones, you would just think so after doing some Google searching. In four pages of Google the only website only builder we could find was SubHub. There are definitely others such as Accrinet, Firespring, and also 34Five Solutions. Several of these are large companies whose focus may not be the individualized attention of a smaller agency like Build / Create.
What ever solution you choose the number one thing is that you can get it going quickly and have it very functional. If there’s one differentiator that we have is that because we’re offering everything out of the box, we can set it up in about two weeks. After that we can assist in design changes, code tweaks, and getting it to perfect quickly. So if you have looked at all the options, and not sure what to do, contact us and we’ll be happy to find a solution that works best for you!