Custom membership systems
Web software is an ideal solution to the problem of managing members of a business or organisation. It allows for easy and secure access to membership information from any device. There already exists a multitude of pre-built membership software, but each service comes with its own way of doing things and they are usually not very customisable.
Web development frameworks have now evolved to a stage where custom membership systems are possible on a modest budget; so what advantages are there in building a custom membership system? Let's have a look.
The advantages of a custom membership system over existing software:
Flexible automated payments: While some existing membership platforms provide a system to charge members on a recurring basis, the degree of control that is possible with a custom system goes way beyond. Set up unique membership packages and interchangeable plans with automatic prorations.
In-person payments: A big problem with all existing membership software is that they generally don't handle in-person payments, especially cash payments. With a custom membership system, issuing memberships for in-person payments can be set up to suit any business.
Reduced fees: Existing membership systems act as a middleman between you, your payment provider and your customers; sometimes adding big fees. Custom systems, on the other hand, can take direct advantage of modern payment gateways and cut-out the middleman, or at least one of them. Check out Stripe's fees and compare them to your membership software provider.
Custom Notifications: Some organisations are very particular about how they engage with their clientele. A custom system allows for full control of notifications related to a person's membership, including emails and text messages. These can include automated renewal notifications, successful payment notifications, upcoming event notifications and general announcements. Take full control of your communications with your members.
First party Integrations: Imagine being able to provide a dashboard to your members, directly on your business's website; where they can log in, manage their membership and access members-only features. This is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with pre-made membership platforms, but it's completely within the realm of possibility for a custom membership system!
Third party Integrations: There's so much third-party software out there that can be integrated into a website, and a custom membership system makes integration with any of them possible.
Example use cases for custom membership systems
Museums: Recurring online payments as well as in-person cash payments for museum members.
Organisations & Clubs: Manage club membership dues and add features that make it easy to communicate with members.
Gyms: Recurring online payments and private members areas on your website. Automatically manage access based on recent payments.
Client Lists: Small businesses, contractors or tradesmen can use custom membership systems to manage subscriptions for their clientele and issue once-off payment requests when required.
The Laravel framework for custom membership systems
There's already a lot of material on my website about the Laravel framework, so I won't go on about it too much again here. Basically, Laravel is the best PHP framework and it gives a developer like me superpowers. It's a great foundation for any custom software and makes continued development of complicated systems much much easier.
Filament administration panels for membership systems
Filament is an amazing set of interface elements for building administration dashboards, and it sits like the icing on the top of Laravel. It's flexible enough for any administration task; in fact, it's so flexible you can build a custom membership system with it. It can save hundreds of hours of work over the course of development.
In summary
A custom membership system can do things than no pre-made software can. Talk to me if you think that your organisation may have outgrown it's existing membership system.