Open Letter to Membership Site Plugin Developers

Dear membership site developers,

In 2015 I’m going to create a comprehensive membership site… Oh no wait, I can’t yet… because of the state of current membership plugins.

I think the problem is the ‘minimum viable product’ mind set where developers create something they can sell, generally as good as the mixed bag of competitors, and then get lazy about creating something truly comprehensive.

In this way, ‘market leading’ doesnt really say much… does it…?

Off the top of my head:

• Dashboard analytics revealing lifetime customer value metrics including retention and churn rates. (For a membership thats pretty darned important!!)
• Payment buttons that process via whichever source the visitor came from rather than having to create entirely separate sales pages for clickbank, jvzoo, stripe, paypal, etc.
• Internal affiliate management including campaign link tracking with the ability to integrate 3rd party affiliate systems that work simultaneously.
• Credit-based subscription system allowing members to select the premium content they want on a periodoc basis (eg so member can choose which module she takes in month 2)
• Member can add notes at various places throughout member content and then review them again on those pages or in a separate notes section.
• Proper Email api integration for email providers… and not just for the usual suspects (aweber, mail chimp).

…where all of these sytems including 3rd party affiliate and email solutions work seemlessly with eachother to properly pause, cancel, enable, remove or add members to lists and product access levels.

Maybe this kind of feedback from more membership site operators will encourage a few developers to quickly fill these gaps at the start of 2015.

The membership site industry needs these features to mature.

We’re all waiting and watching for it.

yours truly,

Shawn Shaw
Director
ITVibe