Yup, it's a showdown :-)

But first, some independent, impartial reviews...

Unsolicited: SpaceVidcast.com

"The big plugin in the industry is Wishlist Member and going in to this project I thought it would be the product I would end up with.

Boy was I wrong.

Other people rant and rave about their support, but in my experience I found them to be the slowest in responding, when they did respond the answer was wrong and even after I asked for a refund I don’t think I ever got it.

(WishList) does drip products / marketing very, very poorly.

Worst of all you have to go off-site, create an account with a third party and hope you don’t lose your customer in the process.

No on-site credit card processing (no matter what their support team says).

Wishlist does a great job of marketing themselves, but maybe if they spent a little less time making videos and a little more time adding features to keep up with DAP we would have gone down that road for Spacevidcast instead.

After a week long trial with each the clear winner was DAP.

....

So what did we do in the end?

When it was all said and done I actually purchased three plugins to get just the right ones to fit our needs: Suma Plugin, Wishlist Member and Digital Access Pass.

The final plugin we went with was Digital Access Pass.

Why? Because it does nearly everything on my features list and no other plugin comes even close!"

Benjamin Higginbotham

Read the full review (and don't forget to come back here :-)

 

Unsolicited: Focused2win.com

"One of the things that I absolutely hated about WishList Member was in order to drip content I had to set up multiple levels of membership for each and every membership that I decided to have.

So, if I was going to offer a silver, gold, and platinum membership level I would not only have to set up each of those membership levels themselves, but I would also have to set up membership levels for each week or month of content I wanted to deliver. This became a very daunting and time-consuming task. It was actually one of the main reasons why I left the plug-in.

With Digital Access Pass they have what’s called the True Drip feature. What this means is you can actually select the post and assign a sequence for it to be delivered. For instance, if I create a membership called the Gold membership, all I would need to do is set the membership, and then protect the posts. After that, I just tell the software when to release the post to the members. So, if I wanted one posts to be delivered the day they signed up I can do that. Then, seven days later to deliver another post, and then seven days later I could deliver another post, and so on and so forth.

Very cool stuff."

Shannon Herod

 

Unsolicited: MarketingProfessor.com

"(DAP's) TruDrip Feature: This feature allows you to create a product, then assign content to that product, which is released to the subscriber in a given # of days.

NOTE: (With Wishlist Members') Sequential Content Delivery feature, administrators create a “product” (piece of content), and determine when *it* is released.

Rather than a stream of content for a given product, the admin has to create another product for the next month.

If there are multiple membership levels, buckle in. The admin has to create one product per level per month.

If you want to roll out 4 pieces of content a month and have 3 membership levels, you need to create 4 products per level, or 16 products a month, after 6 months you have created, (16*6) 96 products!

As you can imagine this becomes challenging (read more about it here).

Another NOTE: I reached out to the owner of Wishlist to discuss this, but as of yet haven’t heard back."

Travis Campbell

 

Features
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WishList
DigitalAccessPass
Sequential Content Delivery: This is where you can drip content little-by-little.
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ContentResponder with Tru-Drip: This is where you can make individual pieces of Content drip, little by little, exactly on the day you want - just like an email autoresponder drips emails. Set a blog post or a file or a video to drip on Day #1, Day #7, Day #31, etc. Or you can set it to drip on a specific date - like 12/31/2010).

Only DAP has Tru-Drip.

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Dynamic "Live" Blog: The entire number of posts in a blog changes depending on viewer (non-member vs member who just joined vs 3-month member vs 1-year member)
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Integrates with WordPress
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Integrates with WP user database
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Unlimited Membership Levels
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Members can have Multiple Subscriptions: One member can have access to multiple one-time-sales and recurring subscription products.
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Works "WITHOUT" WordPress (regular HTML web site)
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Free Trial
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Free Installation
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Built-in Email-Broadcast: Ability to send emails to your members right from the software itself. No need to buy or signup for third-party services (like Aweber or GetResponse).
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Built-in Email Autoresponder: Ability to drip Emails - In-built Email Autoresponder that can send pre-scheduled emails to all users.
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Integrates with 3rd-party Email Autoresponder Services like Aweber, GetResponse, etc.
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Integration with Paypal (standard)
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Integration with Paypal Express Checkout
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Integration with Paypal Payments Pro
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No Recurring
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Integration with 1ShoppingCart
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Integration with ClickBank
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Integration with Authorize.net
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Integration with e-Junkie
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Integration with WorldPay
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1-Click Upsells/Downsells/Cross-sells: Customer enters their credit card information only once - during the very first purchase. For all subsequent Upsells, they just have to click on an "Add To Order" button and their credit card that was just used, is instantly authorized and charged. Do Unlimited Upsells & Downsells.
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1-Click Upsells using a "Regular" Paypal Account: No need for a merchant account. All you need is just a regular Paypal Business account.
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One-Time Offers (OTO): At any time during purchase, you can make "One-Time Offers". Doesn't have to be an upsell. It can even be a "Sign up for my exclusive list" offer.
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Features
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WishList
DigitalAccessPass
Integration with Paydotcom
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Being tested now.
Partial-Text Protection: Within one blog post, you can hide part of the post's text using special tags around just that text.
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Partial-Content Protection (Multi-Media): Within one blog post, the text content is publicly available, but the video/audio/pdf/other file is available only for paying members.
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Synchronized Drip of both Content and Emails. Your Content, Emails and Files ALL can be synchronized to be delivered simultaneously.
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In-built File & Download Protection: Can protect regular files like .mp3, .zip, .flv, .zip, .exe. .pdf, .doc. .xls, .mpeg. .swf, .js. Can even protect Images (.gif, .jpg, .png).

 

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Files uploaded through WordPress Upload function only

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True Download Protection. Will protect files anywhere on your site - both within WP and outside of WP folders. You will never need another download protector ever again.

Sneak-Peek: Show content from your blog posts up to the “More” tag. So when Google’s spider (or your visitor) arrives at your blog after you publish a new post, it/they will see a summary of the post, instead of being redirected to a login page. Extremely powerful SEO feature.
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Pay-Per-View
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Pay-Per-Download
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Multi-Level Recurring Cycles
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Post-Cancellation Access: Optionally enable members to access old content they had previously paid for, even after they cancel or unsubscribe.
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Features
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WishList
DigitalAccessPass
Built-In Affiliate Module
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2-level Affiliate Program
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Integration with iDev Affiliate
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Integration with Rapid Action Profits
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Integrated "Affiliate-Only" Access: A free member who also automatically becomes affiliate, gets an affiliate link and can promote your product and earn commissions, but cannot access site content. Very useful for Marketing- or JV- partners.
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Post-Cancellation Affiliate Access: Members who cancel, lose access to the content, but still retain their Affiliate link and can continue to promote your web site.
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Pay Affiliates both Per-Lead and Per-Sale
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WP-Forum Integration
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bbPress Integration
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Simple:Press Forum Integration
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vBulletin Integration
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Coming soon
Throttling of Broadcast-Email & Autoresponder Email: To make sure that you don't exceed your web host's hourly email-sending limits.
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Broadcast Email to 3rd-Party Lists of Unlimited Size (import using CSV) [WARNING: Spam is Evil]
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Job Queue: Having a job-queue is the only way to scale in size as your membership site grows to thousands of members, and as you start sending out tens of thousands of emails and your blog grows to thousands of blog posts.
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Import CSV list of members from third-party membership software or list software
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Use 3rd-Party Email Servers to bypass your web host's email sending limits
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Use Multiple 3rd-Party Email Servers in a round-robin manner to speed up broadcasting to a large member list
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3rd-Party Email Notification: Extremely useful in notifying your JV partners of a sale
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A Single Email can be part of multiple Autoresponders: Extremely powerful when you have multiple levels in your membership site, and wish to share some of the resources.
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Recurring Autoresponder Emails: Create just one Autoresponder Email (say, an email that contains login and support info to the member) and schedule it go out repeatedly (Day #1, Day #32, Day #63, etc). No need to create a new email every time. Just add the same email multiple times and schedule it a recurring manner.
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Features
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WishList
DigitalAccessPass
Own Access and Error Logs
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Advanced Access-Control: Access to content can be configured by Days, Date, or number of Clicks
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"Pause" Membership: A user's access does not STOP, but PAUSES when they stop paying. So if they decide to take a break and come back after a while, they pick up right where they dropped off, and not from where your other paying members are.
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Targeted Email Marketing: Broadcast Emails to a variety of groups of segmented members and non-members, like...

1) Members who have purchased "Product X"

2) Members who purchased "Product X" between "10-01-2009" and "10-15-2009" (any combination of products and dates)

3) All Members

4) All Members with Expired Subscriptions (who no longer have access to any products)

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Credits-based System

Using our separately sold "Self-Service Store" plugin, your members can be awarded "X" credits with each monthly subscription payment, and they can use those credits to purchase any content that *they* are interested in for that month, instead of being force-fed content only in a certain order as decided by you, the admin.

Think of it like an "Audible.com" membership where members get credits, and can redeem those credits towards any audio book from the store. All credits roll-over each month, and if a product needs more credits than what they have currently, they can wait for the next month to accumulate more credits and then redeem those credits when they have enough.

As Admin, you will be able to configure how many credits they get each month with each subscription payment, and also configure how many credits each "Product" (content) in your membership site is worth.

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"Admin Follow-Up": A CRM Feature:

Along with the Autoresponder Emails that you set up to go to each member on a specific day, you can additionally set up emails that get sent to you (as Admin) along with every individual member, so you can take some specific action.

If you are also doing offline marketing to your members, you can also add an autoresponder email to go out to you (the admin) every time a member gets to a certain level.

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Example 1:

You can set up an email like this, to go out on Day #7, to you, the admin:

Subject: [Follow-up] Call %%FIRST_NAME%%
Body: Ravi (you, the admin),

%%FIRST_NAME%% %%LAST_NAME%% is now on Day 7. It is time to give %%FIRST_NAME%% a call at %%PHONE_NUM%% and make sure they are able to log in to their account ok.

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Example 2:

Email to go out on Day #21, to you, the admin:

Subject: [Follow-up] Greeting Card to %%FIRST_NAME%%
Body: Ravi (you, the admin),

%%FIRST_NAME%% %%LAST_NAME%% is now on Day 21.

Time to send %%FIRST_NAME%% a greeting card at %%ADDRESS_1%%
%%ADDRESS_2%%
%%CITY%%
%%STATE%%
%%ZIP%%

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Now imagine YOU getting personalized emails for each of your members (not just them getting the autoresponder emails) at different times, personalized with the member's information, as and when they reach a particular level (Day #7, Day #21, Day #365).

Imagine what you could do with a "reminder" or "follow up" system like this, that alerts you to various member milestones.

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DigitalAccessPass.com

 

 

Legal Disclaimer: The competitors own their respective trademarks and rights to names. Digital Access Pass, the site owners, developers, and partners, collectively stated as "We", have made the most honest possible representation of our competitors' features, based on sales copy available (or easily accessible) at their web site. We are in no way guaranteeing the accuracy of this information, and may in no way be held legally responsible in any way. Please due your due diligence and research their web site before coming to a conclusion. We welcome all notifications of any errors or omissions to the above information, and if verifiably found to be true, we will immediately make changes to this page accordingly.

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