I hope that soon you can set up automatic renewal with authorize.net. I know it is offered through paypay but I do not think paypal is as easy to use for people are not internet savy. I really need this tool for my website.

Kathryn - I agree. For us, most of the payments we receive come from businesses and they don't use Paypal. They have company credit cards, so it would be very helpful to set up automatic renewal with authorize.net. Authorize.net already offer automatic renewal anyway, so it appears that the solution lies with Wild Apricot integrating it. It surely cannot be difficult to offer automated renewals via credit card -- and it really helps keep renewal revenue up, and no chasing!

Secondly, I would like to offer a free trial access period to new members. Rather like Wild Apricot do, but not necessarily for 30 days. Paypal offer this and it works very well. You can choose how long the free trial period is, and then when the payment kicks in etc. Asking people for money upfront puts a lot of people off.

 

 

Thanks for the feedback. Your are right, the issue lies with us coding the necessary interface to integrate with Authorize.Net recurring payments API. I am surprised this thread has not received more comments - but we do receive frequent requests about this in tech support so this is rising up to the top of our development queue.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Just to clarify the terminology (I adjusted the post name). What we are talking about here is automatic recurring payments (and in WA this for now relates to membership renewals - but in the future can also be integrated with recurring donations)

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Yes - automatic recurring payments or Continuous Credit Card authority as it is sometimes known (CCC).

The web owner can offer the option of annual (or other term) subscriptions by automatic payment so no renewal notices need to be sent out.

The next step would be to offer an introductory trial rate for, say 30 days, followed by, say quarterly or six-monthly payments to spread the cost over the year. That is very helpful during a recession, when many WA website users will find revenue dropping as their members cut back. To be able to spread payments looks very attractive to new prospective members: four quarterly payments of $10 is much easier on the budget than one payment of $40.

Thanks for putting this on your 'to-do' list. Any idea when it could become operative? I am,  by the way, very impressed with the professionalism of your whole operation. It has taken me around three days to get the hang of managing my site. A personal best!

 

 

Thanks Peter,

This particular work item/thread is focused specifically on implementing recurring payments with Authorize.Net - similar to implementation we now have with PayPal Standard.This one we hope to put into one of the next 2-3 iterations. (= 2 to 6 months before released)

Your other suggestions make good sense - we have been thinking along the same lines. I would appreciate if you could create a new thread in Wishlist forum on this. Basically I think the question is about separating concepts of membership renewal term with  the concept of payment plan. E.g. membership renewal can be annual but payment term can be either annual or monthly or quarterly.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Many thanks - I have posted in the Wishlist forum about payment plans and trial periods. It would be great if we could offer some kind of trial and staged payments to counter the recession. I am sure a lot of memberships will be down in the USA and Europe etc., where the recession is pretty harsh with almost everyone counting their pennies and cutting back on expenditure.

And to have a free trial is no different from a club saying: 'Come along and meet the crowd. See how you get on!'.

It's an appealing invitation and pretty common with subscriptions marketing. 

With regard to automated recurring payments for publishers subscriptions: renewal rates average above 80% as a general rule. I don't know what the average is for WA clients' members?. 

 

 

 

 

I agree this is a very high priority for me any my organization.

dbracken- thanks for your post.

Many website owners do not realise the implications and advantages of recurring payments. It's like fixing a bucket that has holes - recurring payments means that the holes do not open. Members renew without being chased and so do not flow out of membership.

In publishing, for cash payers, we send out renewal reminders for as long as the members keep coming back - so 10 renewal letters is not uncommon, all asking for a check. So we have moved to continual credit card and direct debit payments and things have changed. Renewals are up at around 80%

With recurring payments we do not need to send out renewal letters as members are automatically renewed and the funds arrive at the bank. It leaves us free to go after new members.

 

 

 

 

This is very important to us.

We are working on supporting recurring payments with Authorize.net.

We are aiming to launch this with version 3.3, which is expected towards the end of 2009.

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Giuliano Valentino, Useful Apricot

We continue to hope you are able to get the recurring payments with Authorize.net in place soon.

As Giuliano said above, recurring payments with Authorize.Net will be released in our next update around December 10th

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

As promised, recurring payment with Authorize.net are now available. They were introduced with version 3.3 of Wild Apricot which was released on December 14th.

This thread is now archived. If you have any other suggestions regarding payment providers and features, please add them to the Wishlist forum.

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Giuliano Valentino, Useful Apricot