Infusionsoft w/CustomerHub vs. iMember360 vs. Memberium
Memberium is a serious contender in the Infusionsoft / Wordpress membership site market. We were one of the first to become Certified Implementation Partners as you can see on their site. (Click here to take a look.) They have grown significant market share in the past several years becoming the number one membership site provider for Infusionsoft users. Customers looking for an Infusionsoft membership site solution should add it to their shortlist.
My team and I release 3 to 4 Infusionsoft membership sites a month. It's not like we've stopped building iMember360 projects. (Their the previous established solution in the market.) We have a number of long time customers and that's their platform of choice. We work with what makes the most sense for each client and make a selection that gets them the most benefits based on their particulars. More and more selecting Memberium makes the most sense.
Over the next few months, I'll be publishing a series of articles covering the available membership site solutions. I want to contrast and compare the features to help Infusionsoft users needing membership site functions have have more facts available to them for making their buying decisions.
Click here to read the first of these articles.
My Previous CustomerHub vs. iMember360 Article
Related posts:
I read the Infusionsoft CustomerHub blog post a second time announcing the features included in their upcoming winter release. I wish I could comment on it intelligently, but I'm the wrong person to do so. Several years back, I evaluated Infusionsoft membership site solutions and selected iMember360 as the platform we would recommend. Based upon my needs and the needs of a good number of my clients, that made the most sense as our strategic product.
I'll elaborate in a moment on why we selected iMember360, but I'd like to hear from those of you who are active CustomerHub users. My question to you is:
- What is it about CustomerHub that makes it a good solution for you and your clients?
- How, in your opinion, does it compare to iMember360?
I'm not wanting to cause any trouble for Infusionsoft or the great crew they have working on these products. I'm wanting feedback from seasoned individuals who can share the true pros and cons as they see it. I want to be better informed on the latest features it provides so that as we approach future membership site project, our customers can benefit from the best CustomerHub has to offer.
Let Me Be Up Front About My Personal Slant
Before I get too far, I want to point out that my team and I are Infusionsoft experts. We are Infusionsoft consultants that provide Internet marketing services of all kinds to Infusionsoft users. That's our target audience. We operate the way your typical Infusionsoft Certified Consultant operates, but I want to be very clear. We are Infusionsoft consultants, but we are Infusionsoft Consultants of the UN-certified kind.
We combine that expertise with high end Wordpress web design and development skills. Together we provide unified solutions, development flexibility and the ability to provide advanced features, which is important to us. That might not be the case for someone new to the space and wanting a way to build a do-it-yourself membership site.
iMember360 vs CustomerHub
When I reviewed the possible options for our own membership site two years back, I arrived as an experience Wordpress website designer and developer. Having a solution that would enable me to leverage the experience we had developed using Wordpress was extremely attractive to me. iMember360 provided a solid connection between Wordpress that we knew so well and Infusionsoft. iMember360 would enable us to use the Infusionsoft contact database to control access to content.
CustomerHub is NOT designed to connect Wordpress to Infusionsoft. It is designed to enable you to use Infusionsoft to control access to protected content. It provides an easy to use interface for uploading content to the web and provides for the hosting of that content including video on the web. So included in CustomerHub is website features that Wordpress provides for the iMember360 alternative.
As I looked into the options I would be offering to potential clients, I was looking for several things:
- I needed a platform that would provide me with the flexibility to build adaptable and highly functioning solutions. Customers need adaptable websites that can be easily changed to address unexpected user requirements that sometimes push the envelope.
- We started off ages ago as web developers. We see membership functions and features as add ons to existing sites. We haven't yet built a membership site that didn't collaborate with a pretty or brochure site that typically comes first.
- We wanted a platform that would make it easy for less experienced clients to update content and add material. We can provide virtual assistant and site update services, but many clients want to do that themselves.
One thing I will say up front is that CustomerHub is VERY easy to use. The problem is that updating content is different that updating content in Wordpress.
So the dilemma CustomerHub provided to us was that we would have to teach our customers both Wordpress and CustomerHub. Not a good thing.
iMember360 is delivered as a Wordpress plugin. It makes use of the standard Wordpress interface for updating and adding content. If you log into Wordpress and visit a page, a post or a widget, you'll see additional options (mostly radio buttons and checkboxes) that iMember360 makes available for providing controlled access to content needing protection.
Our typical projects involve configuring Infusionsoft so membership products can be purchased. This includes providing purchasers with credential they will use to access what they bought.
iMember360 can take some effort to install and configure correctly. It's no walk in the park, but this is a service provided for all our membership site projects. It's something you do upfront and never have to do again. (BTW, if you visit one of my earlier posts, you'll find an article that includes my iMember360 / Infusionsoft installation and configuration notes. Honestly, that's the hardest part of getting iMember360 working.) Once that upfront work is completed, managing content is as easy as publishing Wordpress content that isn't protected.
Finally, iMember360 provides so many functions that can be used in creative ways. If you've read any of Jermaine Griggs material, you'll see that he makes use of iMember360 features to auto login website visitors and track everything they do on his sites. He can tell how often a visitor comes by, which pages they visit and how long they stay. Because iMember360 connects the site to Infusionsoft, Griggs can take action based upon a visitors behavior. If you visit product pages for a certain type of product, he can assign you to an Infusionsoft sequence promoting it to you. I'm not a complete expert on all things Jermaine Griggs, but this guy is the master at making iMember360 do some serious magic.
Anyway, this is my two cents on the iMember360 vs. CustomerHub comparison. I welcome any intelligence you can share with me on your experience in this space.
Hope this helps.
