Wild Apricot Price Increase 2026: The Hidden Fees

The Price You See Is Not the Price You Pay

Wild Apricot's April 2026 pricing, the numbers they show you before you've agreed to anything:

%strong 250 contacts: $886/year
%strong 500 contacts: $1,663/year
%strong 5,000 contacts: $5,238/year

For most organizations, these numbers are fiction. Not because Wild Apricot is lying, but because of what they're counting, and what they're not telling you they charge on top of it.

Two things push your real bill well above these numbers. Both are worth understanding before your next renewal.

You're Paying for Contacts, Not Members

Here's the first one. Wild Apricot doesn't tier your subscription by active members. It tiers by contacts , and those are not the same thing.

Every lapsed member who let their dues expire three years ago: contact. Every event attendee who registered once and never came back: contact. Every newsletter subscriber who never paid a dime: contact. Every donor whose name you entered into the system: contact. Every person who ever filled out a form on your website: contact.

They all count. Every single one of them. Against your tier. Every year.

An organization with 150 active dues-paying members (the people who actually show up, pay their dues, and care about the mission) can easily have 450 to 600 contacts after a few years of events and list-building. That pushes them squarely into the 500-contact tier at $1,663/year. Not because their organization grew. Because the platform counts differently.

Put that same organization on a platform that tiers by %em active members , and they're sitting in the 250-member tier at half the price.

Same club. Same 150 people doing the same work. Different counting method. Twice the bill.

The 20% Fee That Appears on Billing Day

Here's the second one. And it tends to land like a surprise.

If you use any payment processor other than AffiniPay (formerly Personify Payments, owned by Wild Apricot's parent company), Wild Apricot adds a 20% surcharge to your entire annual subscription the moment you enable online payments. Not a transaction fee. Not a per-payment percentage. A flat 20% on top of your whole subscription, every year.

Process one dues payment a year or process five hundred. Same surcharge.

Your 500-contact subscription just went from $1,663 to $1,996. Before any transactions. Before any processing fees. Just for having the audacity to use Stripe.

Most organizations find out about this charge the same way: they set up dues collection, onboard their members, and then see the line item on their next invoice. By then, the migration is done, the members are enrolled, and moving to a different platform mid-year is a genuine nightmare. You're stuck. That's not an accident.

What the Bill Actually Looks Like

Run the full math for a 500-contact organization using Stripe at April 2026 prices:

Line item	Cost
Wild Apricot subscription (500 contacts)	$1,663/year
20% Payment System Servicing Fee	+$333/year
Mailchimp Standard, because WA's built-in email is too thin for actual member communication	+$240/year
%strong What you actually pay	%strong $2,236/year

That's not a 500-contact subscription. That's a $2,236/year platform. And it doesn't include the next price increase, which history says is coming.

Full breakdown of every surcharge and add-on: Wild Apricot Pricing Comparison .

What the Same Job Costs Somewhere Else

Here's Wild Apricot's April 2026 pricing next to Groupable Solo at the same organization sizes. Same kind of organization. Same membership management job. Different outcome.

Organization size	Wild Apricot (annual)	Groupable Solo (annual)	You save
250 members / contacts	$886	$399	%strong $487 (55% less)
500 members / contacts	$1,663	$749	%strong $914 (55% less)
2,000 members / contacts	$2,862	$1,299	%strong $1,563 (55% less)
5,000 members / contacts	$5,238	$2,399	%strong $2,839 (54% less)

Roughly half the price. At every tier. Before you factor in the surcharges that stack on top of Wild Apricot's side. If you're actively evaluating Wild Apricot alternatives, Groupable's pricing page shows exactly what's included at each tier, and the full Wild Apricot comparison puts both platforms side by side on features.

Both Platforms Have Cliffs, but They're Not Measuring the Same Thing

Fair objection: Groupable has pricing tiers too. Push past a certain size and you move up a bracket. That's true.

But what triggers the cliff is everything.

Groupable tiers on active members in good standing , the people with a current, paid commitment to your organization. Wild Apricot tiers on contacts , meaning every address ever entered, including everyone who drifted away years ago.

That 150-member club from earlier? On Groupable, they're in the 250-member tier at $399/year. On Wild Apricot, with a few years of event registrations and newsletter signups, they're in the 500-contact tier at $1,663/year. Same cliff shape. Four times the price.

Then the surcharges stack.

Groupable doesn't charge a payment processor fee. Stripe works at standard Stripe rates. Email, member community, and financial tracking are all included. No Mailchimp add-on, no module upsell, no picking through a feature menu to find the things a member organization uses every single month. And the help desk supports every user who needs help, not just the admin who manages the account.

One Thing We'll Say Straight

Groupable does adjust prices for existing customers. We're not going to pretend otherwise.

Our adjustments are small, gradual, and spaced roughly every one to three years. They're sized to keep the platform sustainable to operate and improve. Not to hit a quarterly revenue target, not to service a private equity acquisition, not to extract value from organizations that would struggle to leave.

Wild Apricot's track record: 20% in 2021. 25% in 2023. Another increase in 2025. Roughly 5% in early 2026, within 80 days of a new PE owner taking over. Those aren't operational adjustments. That's a business model whose incentive is to keep raising prices on the people already paying. It's been running on the same customers for almost a decade.

Groupable has been independently owned for over 20 years. No PE firm. No exit timeline. No new acquisition that resets the pricing clock and gives someone a fresh mandate to squeeze more from the people already paying.

The organizations using Groupable are the reason we build the software. Not the lever we pull when an investor wants a better return.

Choosing a membership platform is a five-year decision. That difference matters more than any single year's sticker price.

The Real Question for Your Board

Most organizations frame this as a renewal decision. It isn't. It's a five-year commitment, and when you run the numbers over that horizon, the calculus changes.

If Wild Apricot's 2014-to-2026 trajectory holds, your 2031 bill could easily be another two times what you're paying today. That's what a Momentive-backed platform with PE investors on a return timeline looks like over time. They've raised prices in 2021, 2023, 2025, and early 2026. There's no reason to expect a pause.

Before your next renewal, three questions worth taking to your board:

What has your Wild Apricot bill been each of the last three years? Run the actual invoices, not the tier price.
What is your contact count versus your active member count? Log into Wild Apricot, pull the contact list, and count. The gap is usually larger than people expect.
What is your cost of switching if you wait another renewal cycle? The longer you stay, the deeper the migration gets: more data, more integrations, more members used to the existing flow.

The answer to the third question only gets worse. The right time to evaluate alternatives is before you're under pressure, not during a renewal window when you're already on the clock.

Wild Apricot Price Increase 2026: The Fees They Don't Show You