Review of DigitalAccessPass.com Membership WordPress Plugin Software

The online membership site business model has been around for some time.  Membership sites are very compelling for the right product, yet a major challenge is having solid tools to help manage the content your customers are paying for.  Early products were expensive, often required a separate hosting account, required customization, and were inflexible.  In the last two years, several lower price options have come on the market.  One of those products is the subject of today’s post.  This post will cover:

• what DigitalAccessPass.com is and who this product is for
• my first impressions of the product, likes, and dislikes,
  
• if it is better than Wishlist Member, and
  
• what you need to know to get started.

Review of DigitalAccessPass.com Membership WordPress Plugin Software

Recurring revenue is one of the top benefits of having a membership site.  However, with so many WordPress plugins and membership software packages out there, determining which is the right one for your business is a time consuming challenge?  Last years Review of Wishlist Member showed one of the first products on the market to make it easy to use a WordPress blog as a membership site platform and although Wishlist Member does a good job, it is not without flaws.  Recently, I looked at Digital Access Pass, and decided to put this review together for you.

What is Digital Access Pass (DAP)?

Described on their site as a “Membership Plugin For WordPress (and regular HTML web sites)” Digital Access Pass positions itself as a flexible and robust tool for its customers to secure content and deliver it to paid members in a “TrueDrip” fashion (more on what that means later).

Feature Snapshot. DAP has many features one might expect in a membership software package:

• Simple Install, made for WordPress
• Time Released content for members (Drip feed)
• Supports Recurring Payments and One-Time Purchases
• Works with Paypal, Clickbank, 1ShoppingCart
• Built-In Affiliate Program: Single level only, (Pay per lead, Pay per sale, or both) with a host of Affiliate Analytics.
  
• Unlimited: Membership Levels, Users, Affiliates, Email Autoresponders/Broadcasting
  



• AWeber integration
• Built in Email Broadcasting:  Allowing you to self host, external host, throttle messages, target messages based on customer profile, etc.
• File Protection & Security: Very flexible configuration, with a host of content and user security features.
• Subscription support: Pay As You Go, Pay-Per-View, or Pay-Per-Download.
• Custom: Templates, Headers, Footers, and Emails.
• Free Trial for 30 Days.  It’s actually not entirely free.  It does cost $0.01 (details here)

Who Digital Access Pass is For?

Anyone who has or is going to launch a membership site, needs a way to secure content, and deliver it to paying (or free) customers in a timed fashion.  WordPress is a very popular website platform in recent years, DAP integrates with WordPress, but as a result of it’s design, it also secures regular webpages (html, and php pages).

My First Impressions

One of the benefits of using DAP is that they offer to install it for free, this is nice for people uncomfortable with doing tech things themselves.  I wanted to see how difficult is was to install so I did it myself.  In my view, software like this should be simple enough for a novice to get up an running without much hassle.  These were the steps I ran through.  I found them to be relatively easy:

• Download the 2 software zip files.  Unzip the files.
• Upload two unzipped folders.  I did this pretty easily with FileZilla.  You can do this with any FTP software after plugging in login details for your hosting account. Caution: only one of these folders goes in the traditional WordPress “plugins” folder, the other folder goes off the root of your domain.
• Activate Plugin via your WordPress admin plugin interface.
• Permalinks update: Last item is to verify a permalinks setting, and hit the save button.  Again, this is done via the WordPress admin panel.

Total Install Time: 10 minutes

The first thing I noticed in my WordPress admin panel was a new icon in the lower left of the navigation bar.  After selecting that icon, the right hand pane refreshed into another scroll bar, and I saw the administration area for Digital Access Pass.

I was a little confused because during setup, I was given another link to login to the admin panel separately from WordPress.  After talking with Ravi, the product’s creator, I learned that DAP actually does most of its work outside of WordPress, which gives it more flexibility.  I’m not a coder, but I was glad to hear DAP does most of its work outside of WordPress because WordPress has had issues with security.

To be fair, I didn’t have a ton of time to learn the entire package, there were some specific things I wanted to see in action, so that is where I spend most of my time testing it.  I’d encourage you to do the 30 day trial here for $0.01, and see if it makes sense for you.

What I Like About Digital Access Pass

These aren’t all the features (find them here), but a list of the ones that stood out to me while evaluating the software are (in no particular order):

• Email Integration: Ties in with AWeber nicely.
• TruDrip Feature: This feature allows you to create a product, then assign content to that product, which is released to the subscriber in a given # of  days.
  NOTE: By contrast with Wishlist Members Sequential Content Delivery feature, administrators create a “product” (piece of content), and determine when *it* is released.  Rather than a stream of content for a given product, the admin has to create another product for the next month.  If there are multiple membership levels, buckle in.  The admin has to create one product per level per month.  If you want to roll out 4 pieces of content a month and have 3 membership levels, you need to create 4 products per level, or 16 products a month, after 6 months you have created, (16*6) 96 products!  As you can imagine this becomes challenging (read more about it here).
  Another NOTE: I reached out to the owner of Wishlist to discuss this, but as of yet haven’t heard back.
  
  



• File Protection: Can protect the following file types, .mp3, .zip, .flv, .zip, .exe. .pdf, .doc. .xls, .mpeg. .swf, .js, and they don’t have to exist within WordPress structure for the site.  It also allows for partial content protection. For example; you can make a post public but the video, or PDF (like a checklist), or other media file, would be available for paid members.
• Pay-Per-View/Download: This is big for anyone who sells video training or coaching.  The ability to tie down a video or download on a “Per-View” basis can be a pretty big deal.
• Fraud Detection: There’s nothing worse that someone buying a membership only to share the login with friends.  This configurable feature by default allows a member to login from up to 5 unique IP addresses, then locks them out, sending an email to the member, and admin.  (Warning: Does not currently protect against multiple concurrent logins from the same IP – behind corporate firewall).
• WordPress Forums Integration: Membership sites that also use forums are great for building community among members.  DAP supports integration with WP-Forum, bbPress, and Simple Machines. vBulletin support is forthcoming.
• “Post Cancel” Affiliate Access: This allows those who are no longer members to continue to sell the product as a member of the affiliate program.
• Credits-based System: This addon (additional fee) solution allows one to assign value to products as credits. Credits are given to members for each month they are a subscriber in exchange for access to content. This offers flexibility for members who’d rather get your more advanced content, at their own pace.

What I Don’t Like About Digital Access Pass

• User Interface: Some may find this concern picky, and maybe it has to do with having a background at a software company – the user interface works, but could be improved dramatically with the right touches.  The admin panel may not bother those of a more technical nature, but for novice users, it may leave them a bit bleary-eyed in the beginning.
  
• No Support for Authorize.net: This is one of the biggest merchant providers out there, so it seems odd they don’t support it.  Their site indicates it is under development.  To be fair, others (such as Wishlist Member) don’t support Authorize.net either.
• CRM Feature: DAP has a feature that will mail the administrator a reminder to send a postcard, letter, or call the customer.  It will even merge their customer’s contact details so everything is right there in the email message.  While this is likely a handy feature, I have a hard time labeling it as a “CRM” feature.  Sure email or phone follow up is an aspect of Customer Relationship Management (small one), it is more of a task reminder function.  Access the DAP trial here.

Digital Access Pass vs. Wishlist Member Which is Better?

When it comes to leveraging WordPress to build an affordable membership site Digital Access Pass and Wishlist Member are the two market leaders. In this post I’ve laid out the standout features of DAP so you can make an informed decision about which membership site management system to go with.  At the time of this writing, here are a few things to consider (their “showdown page” is found here):

• Both Products don’t currently support Authorize.net the largest merchant gateway online.
• Setup Time: While both take about the same time to install, getting them ready for supporting members is the real time investment.  Both will require a decent amount of time to setup for any membership site.  However, with the additional labor required for building monthly WishList Products once it is installed makes it tough not to give the edge to DAP with it’s TrueDrip Feature (scroll up if you missed that part of the review).
• Support: When things go wrong, you want to know someone is there.  On both accounts, I’ve had positive experience with support from both product makers, timely responses to questions, etc.  And everything I see on Twitter and around the web backs this up (Yes.  There are always exceptions for the rule. But there are no glaring problems that I could see for either product at this point).  The owner of Digital Access Point even puts his personal phone number on his website and invites people to call about his product.  How’s that for putting your money where your mouth is?
• Financial Investment: Wishlist Member does not have a trial available.  It costs $97 for a single domain, and $297 for unlimited domains.  Customers get 1 year free updates and free support.  Digital Access Pass offers a 1 cent 30 day trial.  It then costs $97 for a single domain, $197 for 3 domains, $297 for unlimited domains.  DAP has a Membership Site In A Box setup option at $497.  DAP customers get 6 months free updates and free support.

For those serious about having more granular controls over their membership site, give Digital Access Pass a good look.  Both products are pretty good at what they do.  Time will tell how they mature.  For this round, despite the lackluster user interface, I have to tip my hat to Digital Access Pass.  The TrueDrip Feature puts it ahead of Wishlist Member. 

What You Need to Know to Get Started with Digital Access Pass

To install the product you’ll need a decent web host.  Make sure their servers support:

• PHP version 5+
• MySQL 4+
• PDO for PHP library installed and enabled for MySQL

These are common features among most hosts. Here’s the host I used during my test.  If you are like me, you’ll have it installed in 10 minutes or so.

Bottomline on Digital Access Pass

Digital Access Pass is a solid membership site software package.  Where it falls short on user interface, it makes up for it in robust, and highly configurable features.  The low cost entry with a 30 Day trial for a penny makes it great for those who want to be sure it will properly support your membership site business model.  Learn about the Digital Access Pass trial here.

Comments? Questions? Please chime in with your thoughts below.
Photo Credit: andyhay

Technorati Tags: membership site, membership software, product reviews, wp membership site software