Off Wild Apricot — without missing a single renewal
If your organization has decided to leave, the questions that matter are what it costs to stay, what actually comes with you, and when to start. This page answers all three plainly, including the part most vendors leave out.
Why do so many organizations leave Wild Apricot?
Mostly price rises and a payment surcharge, arriving at organizations whose budgets did not rise to match. Wild Apricot's price has risen roughly threefold since 2014, including an increase of about 20% in 2021 and about 25% in 2023.
The second cost is easier to miss. Wild Apricot applies a subscription surcharge of around 20% to organizations that use Stripe or PayPal instead of its own house payment system. If you kept your own processor, you have been paying that. SorrelSites takes no cut of your dues at all — your dues and event payments land in your organization's own Stripe account and you pay your processor directly.
There has also been a lot of ownership change. Momentive acquired Personify on 6 January 2026, which put Wild Apricot, MemberClicks and YourMembership under one roof — the third private-equity owner in nine years. That is not a scandal, but it does explain why the product has felt static, and it is a fair thing for a board to weigh when deciding whether to commit to another renewal.
Will my members' automatic payments break?
Your members' stored cards cannot be moved from one platform to another — not to SorrelSites, and not to anyone else. What happens instead is that they are rebuilt: each member authorizes their card once in your organization's own Stripe account, and their renewals run from there afterwards.
If a vendor tells you they can carry your existing autopay mandates across intact, ask them exactly how, because this is the detail that gets discovered in week two. The reason it does not have to cost you a renewal cycle is timing: you move before your renewal window rather than during it, so members re-authorize as part of a renewal they were going to complete anyway.
The upside is worth understanding, because it is the thing that stops this happening to you twice. In SorrelSites, those cards live in your organization's own Stripe account, not in ours. If you ever leave SorrelSites, your billing relationship is already yours — there is nothing for us to hold on to.
What comes with you
- Your member list — names, contact details, membership types and join dates.
- Who is current and who has lapsed, so your renewal dates survive the move.
- Your website's pages and content, rebuilt for you to approve before anything goes live.
- Your documents and files.
What doesn't
- Your members' stored card details. They live with your payment processor rather than with your membership software, and they don't come across when you change platforms — not to SorrelSites, and not to anyone else. Members re-authorize once, in your organization's own Stripe account.
- Your Wild Apricot theme itself. The content comes across and the site is rebuilt to look like yours, but it is a new site, not a copied template.
- Anything you built with a third-party widget or embed that Wild Apricot did not store.
When should we start, if we renew in January?
Start about two months before your renewal month. That leaves a couple of weeks to decide, about a month to move and check everything, and a buffer so you are live and settled before renewals begin running.
- 1November — decide, and tell us. We rebuild your site and map your member list so you can see the real thing before committing.
- 2December — approve what came across, connect your Stripe account, and go live. Tell your members once, in advance.
- 3January — renewals run in SorrelSites. Members re-authorize their card as part of the renewal they were completing anyway.
Leaving it later still works — it just means the re-authorization and the renewal land in the same few weeks, which is more to manage at once.
What will it cost us to move?
Nothing to move, and no setup fee. SorrelSites costs $99 a month for up to 100 active members, $199 for up to 300, $399 for up to 750 and $699 for up to 2,000, billed month to month with 10% off if you pay annually.
One difference is worth checking against your current bill: Wild Apricot's tiers count every contact in your database, while SorrelSites counts only members whose membership is currently active. If you have years of lapsed members and newsletter subscribers on file, those push you up Wild Apricot's ladder and do not push you up SorrelSites'.
You can work out three years against what you pay now, including the month or two of overlap a real move involves.
Where do I go next?
If you are still comparing, the side-by-side comparison is the honest version including where Wild Apricot is still the better choice. If you have decided and want the mechanics, read how switching works. If you would rather just ask a person, email support@joinsorrel.com.
Leave before your renewal, not during it
SorrelSites is in final testing. Join the waitlist and we'll let you know the moment it opens — Sprout will move you in and build your website for you.
Join the waitlist