Well, so far, I am extremely satisfied with my purchase of aMember Pro. I wanted to share my thoughts on certains aspects of the program: 1. Installation: POSITIVES: It was pretty easy to install, and it installs much like other popular PHP scripts out there. Simply upload all the files to your server and run the setup script. It asks for your mysql info and then does the rest for you. Like I said, installation was pretty easy! NEGATIVES: Installation of this system requires you to have IONCUBE Encoder installed on your system. When I purchased the pro version, I did not read anything about this as a requirement. THIS IS A HUGE REQUIREMENT, and should be disclosed at time of purchase. Fortunately for me, aMember is also available by request in Zend Optimizer format. I can understand Alex wanting to protect his files by encoding them, but there should be a disclosure that says we must have IONCUBE or Zend Optimer installed to run this program. 2. Setting Up: POSITIVES: Setup is pretty straight forward. If you wish to only sell one product, then it's extremely easy. Simply create a new product listing and click save. But, if you have multiple products available, then give yourself some time. I actually only have 1 product, but I have several ways for my customers to purchase it. They can pay for a New Registrations at full price, Upgrade at discounted price, Installatio Service at full price, etc... And I had to setup a product listing for each possible way a user can make these purchases. Took me about an hour, and I have only 7 products total that can be subscribed to. The more products you setup, the faster you can go. Took some time, to figure out all steps involved to setup a new product. NEGATIVES: My download came with no instalaltion guide and so I finally emailed support and asked them where I can help help setting up the system. They emailed me a link to a "Work-In-Progress" user manul located at http://www.cgi-central.net/amemberdocs/. This helped alot, and I was able to setup my program the way I wanted to by reading the manual. But, let me tel you, this "User Manual" is far from being complete. But, it does allow us to understand most of the features and how they work. I really didn't like the fact that aMember Pro does not create the .htaccess file for us. We must manually create these files, and upload to server. It's onlyl a text file and I bet it should be easy to do. Have the admin script check to see if the directy path exists, and if so, write a .htaccess file with the correct programs inside. And make them editable within the admin cp too! 3. Selling Products: ALL POSITIVES: This program is more flexible than I thought. I have seven products total, of which only 4 get displayed during signup for new customers. The other 3 products are setup in Group 2, and are for upgrading purposes. I can send out an email to all my registered customers, and give them a link to the Group 2 products, and they will see a list of "Available Upgrades" at "Discount Prices". Fantastic! AMember will also allow certain product to only display to "Paid" members. Great for adding "Benefits" to your paying customers, once they sign up. For example, "Free Screen Saver" can be applied to all paid customers account at any time during the length of their paid membership. I really love the Coupon Code feature too. You can specify all sorts of requirements and then post the Coupon Code in your advertising. I really love the "First 20 Customers - $25 Off" type of coupons and aMember supports this too, by keeping track of how many times its been used and expires it on the 21 try! This is a Feature Rich Coupon System!! 4. Reports: POSITIVES aMember Pro has Payment reports, Member reports, Customer Demographics reports and Income reports. These are all fine reports and can be used for most uses. NEGATIVES Most of the reports are fine and give good details. I think the Payments Reports could use some more "Filters", just like the "completed payments only" option. Things like displaying by paytypes, such as only show PayPal payments or Free Downloads. 5. Customization: POSITIVES aMember is highlyl customizable. Simply open the php files and add anything you want to them. Just be careful not to strip out any important code. NEGATIVES: The default layouts could use some work. They are pretty generic and plain. I would be willing to assist Alex in this matter if he so chooses to allow me too. 6. Language: NEGATIVES The program displayes 'English' to the users. It is hard-coded into the files. There are alot of "Broken" and "Bad Verbage" words throughout the whole program. You will need to edit alot of files, in order to correct the bad english used in the files! All-in-All, aMember Pro is a wonderful system. I have already recovered the cost of the program, with the revenue of my first 3 sales. So, cost should not be a factor for most. I was paying 10% per sale with companies like RegNow and RegSoft to handle my software downloads, and now I only pay roughly 3% to PayPal for each transaction. Wonderful Savings! I would recommend aMember Pro to anybody who is looking for a way to protect directories and files to be accessed by paying customers only. No matter what file type, aMember Pro can protect it, and make your customers pay you for accessing it. Have a Nice Day!
Brian, thank you for your feedback! Just some comments from CGI-CENTRAL: It's CGI-CENTRAL problem to make script working. We have abilities to resolve this thing for 99% hostings. For 1% where it cannot be done, full refund will be done without any questions, etc. PHP applications cannot write files (by default), you have to make directory "Writeable for all" to do it. Now lets think, what is easier : 1. create & upload 4-lines file or 2. make directory writeable, then go to aMember CP, select folder to protect, configure different options, click to "Build .htaccess" button, then go to folder again and make it un-writeable. I believe both ways requires the same time, isn't it? I don't like illusions. Please let me know if I'm wrong. I would appreciate your help in this matter. Thank you!
One thing I would quibble with in the original post: Generic and plain is GOOD! It allows easier integration into the look of any site. I hate when I buy a script and someone has fancied up the layout into their idea of 'kewl' and it takes forever to unpick it and make it look the way I want. I have aMember on 3 sites, it looks utterly different on each and it took almost no time to make it so precisely because the layout is plain and generic.