ClubExpress Reviews

Pros

Completely Cloud-based
Most functions menu-driven and accessible without requiring "superuser" access or professional technology expertise
Access-controls to support Members-only information/functions, driven by Membership database
Includes basically unlimited SMTP (email sending) for membership bulk mailing
"Ahead of the curve" on compliance with privacy protections
High reliability

Cons

Component "building blocks" don't fit perfectly with the usage patterns of our (local civic) organization
Limited site-performance data collection or analytics built in
Editing function (for generating emailings, news articles, etc) is a little complex for completely non-technical users, and a little rough.

Pros

ClubExpress is very easy for our members to use. The event calendar (our Ride Calendar) is intuitive and registering for Events (Rides) is very simple. The Membership Directory is fantastic as is the number of privacy options each member has to determine what information to make available on the Directory. The Communications options make it easy to communicate with the full membership, or any defined subset of the membership. Accepting payments is easy with a Merchant Account. There are numerous customizable system notifications that will alert users and administrators of important items such as registration for an event, event cancellation, payment receipt, payment due, etc. The system has robust support for membership options and membership renewals. Overall the feature set is very robust.

Cons

The system is not the easiest to learn from an administrative standpoint. I’m a retired software professional and I found it very frustrating. I knew it could do what I wanted to do, but finding out how to do it was very cumbersome. The on-line help is not that helpful. However, the ClubExpress Support Team is fantastic. They are very responsive and helpful. I just felt I had to use the Support Function way too frequently during initial setup & configuration. So, it’s a steep learning curve, but it’s not hard to maintain once you crest that curve. The other major issue for us is the complexity of the Event Creation/Maintenance function. We host over 500 rides per year meaning we create over 500 Events. We have a cadre of approx 50 ride leaders who create these events. I had to manually grant each of these individuals the necessary admin privileges to create calendar events and train them how to create events. There are way more options than we use on our events which makes it quite confusing for many. I would love to be able to hide 75% of the options on the event creation pages.

Alternatives Considered

WildApricot, Club Manager and SignUpGenius

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress

Our previous systems were completely disconnected and required our members to navigate two different systems/user experiences. Our website was antiquated and our previous systems did not handle membership management.

Switched From

SignUpGenius

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

The overall feature set was more robust and ClubExpress received positive reviews by other cycling clubs in the region that use it.

Pros

It includes most of the features required by a Village (a grassroots, not-for-profit membership organization helping elder adults age in place in their community by offering a variety of services, programs and social and educational activities provided by volunteers), most especially in the provisioning of services (matching member service requests with volunteer service providers. It also includes the features required for managing membership and communicating with members and non-member volunteers. Support is very responsive and robust (see comments about overall experience)

Cons

The RMV/CE software is web based SaaS. The user interface is dated and in many cases awkward to use and difficult to learn. Integration with financial accounting (RMV/CE is the source for membership revenue and for some donation revenue) is unwieldy and requires a lot of staff time to reconcile.

Pros

ClubExpress appears to be the prefect solution for our nonprofit art organization as an affordable integrated member management program with the added web-based features we desired (directory, calendar, storefront, photo albums, custom video page). We appreciate the available tutorials and webinars. Our set up is not yet complete, so we are not presently fully operational, but we anticipate that our first impressions will soon proven correct.

Cons

We're behind schedule on completing our set up for various reasons, but from what we have been able to learn and accomplish so far, we found some of our biggest challenges in the areas related to edit windows with what we perceive as inconsistencies with tools and formats (i.e., we can't add a linked button to the homepage but we can accomplish this task in a news article). We're used to the ease of "drag and drop" templates and applications that we use now, so we are struggling a bit to learn how to use the new tools, symbols and options being offered that are not as intuitive to us. We're challenged with the photo upload variations. Volunteer opportunities don't have the option to be added to the calendar. Storefront products can't be copied to save time in adding multiple inventory variations of the same product type. The program allows for multi-level Membership Types but we had to pay extra for a customization to show the Membership Type in the Member Directory. This being said, we are confident that ClubExpress will prove to be the best solution for our needs and that we will continue to learn and appreciate what ClubExpress has to offer.

Alternatives Considered

WildApricot

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress

Needed an affordable and more comprehensive, integrated member management and online renewal program with greater capabilities and features that included easier reporting, private photo and video archives, an integrated storefront, and good customer service.

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

Initial cost and perceived better customer support

Pros

THe software is stable, relatively easy to use and has the functionality that are needed for a non-profit organization or club. Overall the tool is a great solution. I don't have to spend hours updating a CMS system and no longer have to worry about hackers attacking my site and having to fix/rebuild it. The support staff is excellent and know their product and its capabilities very well.

Cons

Some of the interfaces are a little klugey to use. They are constantly improving them however. There are some limitations to what can be done in terms of customization and tailoring the workflow and overall appearance of the site. Nothing that is a showstopper, but it has slowed us down a couple of times. I do wish they would update some of the templates and have more responsive options.

Alternatives Considered

Eventbrite

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress

Too hard to maintain all of the updates. The costs began to be unreasonable as all of the functionality we wanted charged separate fees for their software.

Switched From

Joomla

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

Functionality and price. ClubExpress was reasonably priced and we were not penalized for having a complete and robust site through them.

Pros

The Club Express (CE) platform is intuitive, modular, adaptable and continually developing and growing. As a non-profit membership professional association, with only one employee, Executive Officer (EO), and a bunch of volunteers, the 7 level password feature has been incredibly useful in terms of organisational management; being able to assign members access to a single page and/or module etc spreads the work load and, in turn, creates space for the EO to focus on other matters such as developing strategic initiatives.

As a single employee association, the exceptional Club Express support back-up affords extra support for our members as well as making the association less reliant on the tacit knowledge of a single person. In terms of creating our site, this was done by the EO with CE support - no developer expenses required:-)

Our association has 26 thematic groups, which our members can join. The Sub Groups CE module has empowered the conveners of our thematic groups who can be administrators of their own groups. Among other benefits, this feature has streamlined communication between the conveners and their members and has also reduced the EO's administration time spent on thematic groups, again creating space for the EO to dedicate to other matters.

Above all, the fact that CE are continuing developing their platform means that if it doesn't currently do something we want, we know that it will likely be doing it down the track.

Cons

The Club Express default email address (where our newsletters and renewal reminders etc come from) was blocked by all university firewalls and some industry workplaces. This was not a CE issue per se but it was a hiccup we thought we'd covered by emailing all members ahead of the website transition asking them to white-list the address.

It's a small thing but we'd prefer they weren't called Club Express! We get why they have that name but it doesn't have the right tone for us as a professional association. At the end of the day, their platform proved too good to knock back just because of the company name!

Alternatives Considered

iMIS

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress

Security and features.

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

We chose Club Express because their platform ticked more of our needs & wishes boxes.

Pros

ClubExpress supports EVERY user, as in every member of our group, not just administrators. This is a huge help to our small group. Example: Yesterday I had a member who was having an issue posting to the discussion forums via email. I checked everything I knew to check as an administrator, and still couldn't understand why he was having an issue. So I was able to direct him to speak with CE support, and they were able to resolve the issue for him - Helpful for all of us.

One other thing is that the development team seems to listen to suggestions and implement desired changes/features rapidly when they hear from enough users. In fact, there is an email address dedicated to receiving ideas/suggestions.

CE also had designer help us realize our vision for the look and functionality of our new site as we built it.

They are also very thoughtful and transparent about data privacy/ownership/usage in their policies.

Cons

The interface for writing/publishing text on pages is a little clunky.

Pros

The ClubExpress platform is a perfect fit for an all volunteer non-profit like Groton Neighbors. It is comprehensive, versatile, user friendly, and affordable. Features tailored to the needs of Villages allowed us to focus our energies during start-up on shaping and building our organization confident that we had the infrastructure needed to run it. We have grown considerably since opening for business 3+ years ago and ClubExpress has grown with us.

Cons

Initially most transactions were discreet - that is, repetitive tasks had to be completed individually. This never impacted our membership but it can be tedious for an all volunteer Virtual Office Staff like ours. ClubExpress has listened to their customers and responded with a steady stream of improvements designed to make our jobs easier.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud and GoDaddy Website Builder

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

Recommendation of other Villages, Village specific features

Pros

ClubExpress has many modules that helps organize our running club's organization. The membership module works flawlessly with little to no manual intervention required from administrators. The website generation tools make it easy to create new web pages to support club programs. Event creation and registration is valuable and versatile. Communication tools allow us to create surveys, polls, and email blasts to the membership. ClubExpress keep adding new capabilities like apps and text messaging to keep up with the current preferred methods of receiving notifications. Platform upgrades add new features and fix bugs to improve the user experience. The money management module works well with no issues. Above all, ClubExpress provides all these capabilities with the flexibility to tailor the privacy of content and its members.

Cons

Some content generation can be difficult to wrangle with the supplied tools after a platform upgrade. Some module upgrades to address bugs and customer requests can be a challenge to get working.

Alternatives Considered

WildApricot

Reasons for Choosing ClubExpress

Poor integration between membership and event management and web site.

Switched From

Camp & Class Manager

Reasons for Switching to ClubExpress

ClubExpress was selected as better choice to protect membership privacy. Also, ClubExpress was recommended for running club management by our over-arching organization, Road Running Clubs of America (RRCA.)

Pros

In ClubExpress, the Control Panel serves as the portal to the program's inner workings, and it conceals an astonishing array of features. Every piece of information that you enter into the Club Express windows grants you more authority and influence over your organization, whether it be a club, a league, or an interest group. It is similar to a massive relational database.

Cons

There's a lot of bureaucracy that makes everything tough to use. We've had to fork over more money in places where we've run into the immovable barrier. The website's features are clumsy at best.

Pros

This software has greatly improved our outreach and communications internally and externally and thus increased the scope and effectiveness of our organization, all the while being relatively easy to use. We can manage our member database easily and have saved much volunteer time though automated volunteer sign-up and member and event management, not to mention communications to our membership. The support response has been excellent with one support person assigned to our account, with others available if that person isn't. Club Express is continually improving and expanding what it can offer.

Cons

There are occasional issues such as non-members having difficulty joining if they have been on our non-member mailing list due to a conflict of their login as a non-member. The person attempts to join via the website without an administrator knowing they are trying to do this, and thus they are not able to join. Club Express has indicated it is working on a solution to this issue.

Pros

Club Express is easy to navigate. The learning curve was relatively brief for the things that I use: aspects of the People tab to locate members or update membership, the Website tab to access and update the Event Calendar, and the Money tab to keep tabs on purchases of tickets or memberships.

The Event Calendar is full featured. Some events recur with slight change from month to month, and this is easy to enter. Other events might recur irregularly, but it is easy to search for an event and duplicate it with changes.

There are lots of options in some of the menus, and it takes some time to determine what is the best choice. I like to view some reports online as a pdf, other times I prefer downloading in MS Excel format or csv format.

Cons

No real issues anywhere. The wealth of options can be overwhelming at first, but it is quick to learn.

Pros

It is fairly easy to use once you get started. We have a fairly simple set of requirements since we are a social organization and therefore don't use a lot of features. We do use it for events and membership renewal. The automation of the notices for the renewal feature is really helpful. The events module is very good though it has some limitations. The very best thing about CE is that the support is really fantastic. They are very responsive and I mostly get an answer to my question the first time I try.

Cons

Emailing. It is very clunky and often, even after testing, the final product does not look good (wrong justifications, colored background of header texts). And there is no record of the email going out (how many people got it, bounces etc --that info goes to the sender but there is no area where it is retained. The other feature we don't like is that you cannot have closed groups, that is groups that cannot have more members. So we have to hide those groups which make it impossible for the members or leader of those groups to access the email feature for communications (leader to member) or look at the internal page (the blue circle with the white "i"). And we don't like it that there are some features that are required to be used and cannot be suppressed, like the News tab which is useless to us.

Pros

Talking to their staff prior to our decision was easy and they asked all the right questions, things we did not think about on our end. I appreciated how Club Express worked with us to import our data. They made it easy, discussing the import fields, how things should be structured, and our requirements.They kept us advised every step of the import and made the initial process of set-up easy.

Cons

Understanding some of their terminology took a bit, but I believe part of that was our inexperience in this type of software.

Pros

The ease of use and the variety of options that fit the club's needs for a website. Periodic updates are received and the manual contains good information. The event calendar has many options and is easy to develop for various events. Registrations and payments for events is simple as well and membership renewals.

Cons

Would like to see a few more options that allow individual users to develop and save information. As an example, RYF uses a variety of colors that define specific programs and activities. These colors are not part of the standard colors offered by Club Express. The webmaster must use the HTML color code number each time that specific color is desired. There should be an option to save these specific colors in a semi-permanent basis for future use. Also some improvement could be better interaction with an Excel spreadsheet for downloading large spreadsheets and data.

Pros

The ease of use of the Club Express software as an administrator is what I like about it most. We went from managing our membership on paper to this system, and it has been a life saver. Our old website had no functionality and was only informational. We now have all of our membership information in ONE place for all admins to see in ONE place, and no longer have boxes and boxes of paperwork and endless spreadsheets.
We also now can manage and coordinate events with our membership, take credit card payments online, take in new members thru our website, and facilitate our membership renewal seamlessly online. Reporting in Club Express is also endless. You can extract information on your membership, financials, communication...to your hearts content.

I also really like the fact that Club Express regularly makes upgrades to their system, to incorporate new features. The attachments upgrade was one of the features that have made our renewal process much more streamlined.

Cons

Having minimal experience setting up a website, I found the construction and editing of the Home Page to be a bit confusing and difficult. In particular the upper part - where the login and profile sit. Luckily we signed up for a website technician to built it for us, enabling us to focus on the main content of our site.

Pros

The product offers multiple ways to accomplish the same or similar tasks, from fairly simple to very complex. After a learning curve for someone not familiar with web development, I find it well thought out and pretty well implemented. I have yet to find something that I really need to do that I can't find a way to do it. There are plenty of features this product has that I have not explored, but it keeps me coming back to see what else it can do.

Cons

I think the editors for various functions could use a little work. The editing screen gets a little tongue tied at times and the cursor has a mind of its own. Exiting the current session and starting back up always seems to fix the problem.

Pros

It's very customizable and works well for our association. We're able to collect dues and fees, which is very convenient. We're able to keep track of memberships and create events, which is necessary for what we do. I like be able to send emails to our membership and adjust the look or our site.

Cons

Because it's so customizable, it's difficult to administrate. I'm not an internet site builder or computer whiz, so I've had to learn a lot on my own, which has taken a lot of time. Most of the time I've reached out to customer service, the representative has been very helpful and friendly. Several times it seemed I was bothering them by calling, and they made me feel stupid because I didn't know certain things about the site.

Pros

ClubExpress allows us to communicate instantly with our 1,200 members. It also makes it easy keep our members informed of upcoming events and activities. It allows us to register both members and non-members for these events for both single and multiple activities and run meaningful reports about them. Ten years ago we had to use a paid third party to maintain our website. It was never up to date. ClubExpress lets us design and maintain our present site internally for free. The Club has an annual event that encompasses three days of events and includes17 different activities. ClubExpress makes it possible for us to do online registration, take credit card payments, and administer the event. We couldn't do it without it.

Cons

Custom reporting could be better. As it is, all data collected for an event can be output to Word, Excel, CSV, and pdf. It can then be manipulated but not always easily.

Pros

Our organization is a volunteer not for profit professional organization with no paid staff. Club express does a great job managing our membership database and it is relatively easy to learn how to post material.

Cons

I would like more flexibility on how to output data by being able to select fields rather than selecting from a set of reports. The events registration set up is clunky...could be much better. We would also like to have more flexibility for a non-member data base broken into categories. We would also like to be able to have an easier time sending emails to all or subgroups of members using our organization's email tags. There also should be an easier way for non-members to register for events and pay by credit card at a later date.

Pros

We are a cruise club and our main purpose is to host cruises for our members. With Club Express my members can easily sign up for a cruise, pay for the cruise online, and even see which other members will be joining them. I can track attendance which enables me to recognize those who are active with the Club. I can advertise the Cruises with photo albums and emails. Member photos allow our members to get to know each other a little easier. We need to notify the marinas who will be attending a Cruise. Club Express wrote me a report whereby my Fleet Captain can instantly print a PDF "Cruise Roster" to send to the appropriate marina.
We also host a number of social gatherings . For our Christmas party I was able to create a dinner menu that each member chose from. With this report I was able to easily plan for quantities. There's a lot to like with Club Express and in my opinion the pros outweigh the cons.

Cons

Club Express wasn't designed for MY Club but for ALL Clubs. The system is somewhat non-intuitive and it took quite a bit longer than I expected to setup. Since my Club is somewhat unique I often have to find workarounds for situations where I could, if allowed, write a bit of code to personalize the software for the Searayders. There's some system 'quirks' that require me to provide additional training for my members i.e., the 'primary' member must pay the dues even though our Club doesn't really have primary members or secondary members.

Pros

This program was recommended by a use in another professional society. For 10 years I was the webmaster for this Society's website using Microsoft Expressions. Though the software worked well, the manipulation of images, text and pages was tedious. Using the old site as a template, I was able to migrate and improve the information in the new system. I especially liked the functionality of assigning (limiting) roles to others without compromising security of site. The integration with PayPal was seamless. Behind the scenes I have been using this system as an archive of information allowing our organization to go "paperless."

Cons

On occasion navigation of the administrative pages is tedious. Some of the prepared reports associated with meetings are odd in format. However, the ability to choose the output is very useful. I would like to have an easier approach when building table. In some cases, the built in vocabulary is not applicable. For this organization the term "donation" is problematic for industry support. I would like to see a synonym table for some of the financial terms.

Pros

It offers a bundled solution for "birds of a feather" type groups

Cons

Maintaining the site and keeping content current. Facebook has clobbered ClubExpress with interactive or time sensitive activities such as user-to-user communications and comments and content uploads such a photos. Where ClubExpress could shine compared to Facebook is in archiving group documents and photos, but it is so convoluted to do using ClubExpress that few users are willing to go through the extra hassle, and instead use Facebook. When users user Facebook to share tips and tricks for example, we lose all that information as it is virtually impossible to capture and transfer Facebook entries into anything worth archiving. I have complained to ClubExpress until I am blue in the face about the antiquated photo and document uploads, but apparently no other clubs care about such things. ClubExpress is still a viable platform for us, but just barely. Taking a page out of Facebook's book allowing easy photo and document uploads would go a long long way to making us happier "clubbers".

Also, without solid HTML knowledge, it is virtually impossible to maintain the website. Not unusual for a 90's product, but hard to justify today.

Pros

Having all administrative functions under one platform - membership dues, events, emailing, etc.

Cons

It is not intuitive and our members don't like using it. The emailing system is not nearly as good as MailChimp or Constant Contact from a creative or marketing standpoint. Text only emails are fine, but other than that, it's very basic compared to other platforms. We also lost contact with membership at one point because there was not a distribution list that allowed for contacting expired members from a certain year or season. We had to temporarily resort back to Mailchimp until the issue was resolved. Customer support is usually prompt with responses, but the level of actual helpfulness is not awesome. I mostly figure things out through trial and error, not from the instruction received from customer support. For it being sold as a platform intended to manage memberships, it's seriously lacking in some very basic tools common to member-based businesses, like guest pass sales & tracking.

Pros

The system provides a wide range of capabilities. Pretty much all of our needs have been met by the standard system and it offers many services that we don't use or need. The few special capabilities that we desired we provided as a custom service at a very reasonable cost.

Cons

Since the users in the volunteer positions often change frequently there is sometimes a problem with the learning curve. The system provides so many functions that our volunteers sometimes have problems devoting the time necessary to adequately learn the capabilities of the system.