Duesroll vs Wild Apricot
The best argument against Wild Apricot isn’t ours. It’s on their own wishlist, where their customers have been asking for a one-click renewal link since 2012 and still don’t have one.
Wild Apricot is good software
They say 15,000 organizations use it. It has event registration, a website builder, email campaigns and an online store, all of which are deliberately not here.
If you want one system for everything your association does, it’s a fair choice and this page won’t talk you out of it. What follows is what their own customers say about renewing, and two things it can’t do for an association whose dues depend on member size.
The organization count is Wild Apricot’s own claim, not a measured figure. Their homepage said 16,636 in January 2017, so it’s quoted as what they say and never used to imply growth.
Their customers asked for this in 2012
On Wild Apricot’s public wishlist, a request titled “Dramatically simplify membership renewal process for members” has 67 votes. It went up on October 8, 2012 and still hasn’t been built.
What they asked for: “A direct link to the membership renewal page, bypassing the password requirement, included in every renewal reminder email.” That’s this product, described by someone else, fourteen years before we wrote a line of it.
“I tried to renew online and gave up”
“This process is very clunky and outdated”
“Members have to go through several screens to renew”
And the part with money attached. Administrators in the same thread report that members “either don’t renew or they mail a check”. A check is the slowest and most expensive way an association gets paid, and renewal friction is what produces them.
Read directly from the thread and confirmed on 2026-09-17: the title, the 67 votes and the October 8, 2012 date. No usernames are recorded. The thread is public.
It can’t hold a dues schedule
Its variable dues are a single multiplier with a floor and a ceiling. Their help center: “WildApricot automatically adjusts values below the minimum or above the maximum to fit within the limits.”
That handles “1.5% of revenue, minimum $200, maximum $2,000” well, because a formula is one smooth calculation. A dues schedule is steps, and a formula can’t do steps:
For that you build a membership level for each tier and name them after the tiers. The range only exists as words inside the name you typed, so the software never learns what it means, and each member picks the one they think applies. You never see a headcount. When the board revises the schedule, you rebuild every level and move everybody across by hand.
Here the schedule is the product. A member types 86 and lands in the 51–200 employees tier at $2,750 without picking anything. A figure matching no tier waits for a decision instead of being rounded into the nearest one.
Wild Apricot help center, checked 2026-09-14.
It bills per contact, not per member
Their own definition: “Everyone in your WildApricot database is a contact. A contact can be a member, an event attendee, a donor, a newsletter subscriber, or any combination of these roles.” So the number that sets your price isn’t your membership. It’s everyone you have ever added.
| Member companies | Wild Apricot | Duesroll |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | $66/mo | $49/mo |
| 100 | $82/mo | $49/mo |
| 150 | $154/mo | $49/mo |
| 500 | $265/mo | $99/mo |
Wild Apricot’s published tiers, checked 2026-09-08, assuming 2 contact records per member company. If you run events or a newsletter, more. On their own wishlist 124 people have raised the contact-tier jump: “this is a big price increase to just have more members/contacts”
Where Wild Apricot is the better choice
$49 a month, price on the page
No demo to book. Leave an address and we’ll write when it opens.
The first 10 associations pay $25 a month, permanently instead of $49.
For as long as you stay, in exchange for being willing to be named as a customer once you’re live.