Dues levels that match your bylaws.
Regular, student, retired and organizational rates, each its own membership billed annually, each with its own registration page.
For associations
Renewal season shouldn’t mean the office stops for a month.
Every spring the same thing happens. Dues notices go out, half the members never open them, the phone starts ringing, and a staff of two spends the month answering “did my payment go through?” while the board asks how many people actually renewed. Nobody on that staff joined the association to run software.
The work that piles up between board meetings
What piles up is the day-to-day running of the site, because an association’s website is rarely one thing. It is the dues schedule, with a student rate, a retired rate and a firm rate that someone set up years ago. It is the list of who is current, who lapsed in March, and who paid twice. It is the members-only page with the fee schedule and the chapter minutes. And it is the question the treasurer asks at every meeting: are we up or down on last year?
Most of that lives in whoever set it up, and when that person leaves, every change turns into a call to a developer or an afternoon in settings screens nobody remembers. Raising dues by ten dollars should not be a project.
What it sets up
Tell it how your dues work once. It handles the rest.
MemberPress.ai builds your association’s membership on your own WordPress site from a conversation. Describe your categories in plain words, the way you would explain them to a new board member, and it adds the setup to your site as drafts. That covers the dues levels and the Join, Checkout, Login and Account pages, which stay drafts until you publish them. What it sets up:
The pages members read, drafted for you.
On the paid plan, ask for the fee-schedule page or the chapter update and it arrives as a draft you edit and publish. Which members can open each page you set in MemberPress’s own access rules.
Renewal reminders that are actually on.
It reads which of your MemberPress renewal reminders are switched off, and when renewals drop it tells you if one that matters was off.
The board’s numbers, in a sentence.
Ask how many members renewed, who lapsed, and what dues brought in, and it answers from your own site’s records. On the paid plan, which reads your whole history, that includes this year against last.
When the board votes a dues increase, you say so once and it updates the dues. A refund or a change to someone’s subscription asks you a second time.
Running a membership nonprofit
A friends-of-the-library group, a historical society or an alumni association has the same shape with smaller stakes and even fewer staff hours: supporter levels renewed once a year, a members’ update that only paying supporters see, and a volunteer treasurer who needs to know who is current before the annual meeting. The same conversation sets up the supporter levels; you set who sees the members’ update in MemberPress’s own access rules. And a change a volunteer asks MemberPress.ai for shows as a preview first.
From your dues categories to the first member paying online
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Opal sets up your dues levels.
Each category becomes its own level, with the Join and Checkout pages drafted for you. Opal tells you what’s left before a member can pay.
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You hook up the association’s account.
You connect your own Stripe or PayPal in MemberPress, so dues land in the association’s account and nowhere else.
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Your first member pays their dues.
Publish the pages and share the link with your members. The first one to renew pays their dues right on your site.
When the board asks who renewed and who lapsed, Opal answers from your own records and points to who needs a nudge next.
The alternative you’re weighing
An all-in-one association system, or your own site
Build on your own site if the association wants its membership, dues and member list on a site it owns. Many associations look at an association-management system such as Wild Apricot, and for good reasons. It bundles an online member directory, event registration with online payments, a website builder and automated renewals into one subscription, and it prices by how many contacts you keep. If a searchable member directory and event registration are the heart of what your members pay for, that bundle is built for exactly that.
MemberPress.ai is a different choice: your membership runs on a WordPress site the association owns, with your member list and payment gateway staying yours, and an assistant that does the setup and answers from your own numbers. If the association already has a WordPress site, or wants to keep its content, its domain and its data in one place it controls, that is the case for building here.
What this looks like at a state professional association
Denise Washington
Executive Director · Mojave Dental Hygienists' Society
Denise is the executive director of a state dental hygienists’ association: annual dues in several categories, local chapters, a member directory and a few events a year. The pressure point is renewal season, when a small staff fields the questions and the board wants to know where membership stands.
Watch Denise's interview (video)
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal from MemberPress.ai.
And this is Denise Washington.
She's the executive director of the Mojave Dental Hygienists' Society.
Who sets it up?
Who keeps it running?
We pay $400 a month for our website.
And I still call the web guy for everything.
That's what I'm for.
I set up and run MemberPress for you.
Tell me how your association works, and I'll build it.
Three dues levels, a directory, four chapters, and the fall conference.
That's it?
That was easy!
When renewal season comes, members like Jamal, a hygienist in Reno, just renew.
It runs on its own.
I finally stopped calling the web guy.
Switching from Wild Apricot
Denise Washington on who keeps it running
Wild Apricot did the job. Denise needed the association on its own site, in a system her staff can work in without calling her first.
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Opal.
This is Denise.
She runs the Mojave Dental Hygienists' Society.
Wild Apricot ran her back office for years.
Every month, like clockwork.
Dues, a directory, chapter pages, event registration.
It did the job.
So what was hard?
Not the price. The maintenance.
Every renewal season, I'm the one who remembers how the chapter pages work, because nobody else on staff has had to touch it in 11 months.
What's a week look like for you?
Fielding "how do I update my chapter" emails.
Pulling a directory export for the board.
Making sure dues reminders actually went out.
And a year running it?
1,200 members, a staff of three, and it was always me who kept it running.
That's the line I keep coming back to.
Who sets it up, and who keeps it running?
What's different on MemberPress?
It's on our own site, not a separate portal.
Jamal's dues just renew on their own.
I didn't build that.
I just turned it on.
Would you go back to Wild Apricot?
It's not a bad tool for a small chapter just starting out.
We outgrew it.
I needed our site, our data, and a system my staff can actually touch without calling me first.
Denise Washington, executive director, formerly of Wild Apricot.
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me my Tuesdays back.
Questions associations ask
Can we keep different dues for different member categories?
Yes. Each category becomes its own membership level with its own annual price and its own registration page. You describe the categories once, the levels arrive as drafts, and members can pay once you publish them and connect your own Stripe or PayPal.
Does it replace our member directory and event registration?
Not on its own. MemberPress.ai sets up and runs the memberships and the dues on your site, and on the paid plan drafts the pages you ask for. If a directory or event registration is central for you, plan for it alongside, or weigh an all-in-one association system that bundles them.
Who can change things on the site?
Anyone you give a WordPress admin login to can edit the site directly, as on any WordPress site. Changes made through MemberPress.ai after setup preview as a dry run, and refunds or subscription changes ask twice. Pages it writes for you land as unpublished drafts that no member sees until you publish them. Your password never leaves your site.
We already have a WordPress site. Do we start over?
No. You connect the site you have. If MemberPress isn’t installed yet, add the free version first; MemberPress.ai doesn’t install it on a site you connect.
Get this renewal season back
Connect your association’s site and describe your dues once. Connect your own Stripe or PayPal, and members can pay their dues on your site. After that, when the board asks who renewed and who lapsed, Opal answers from your own records.
More on who MemberPress.ai is for
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Finish the coaching site you already paid for, and get to your first paying client.
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The paid front door, the tiers and the renewals for your community, on a site you own.
Read more →Publishers
Reader tiers and renewals that keep running, on a site you own.
Read more →Course creators
Turn what you already teach into a real course, on a site you own.
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