What Does It Cost to Run a Membership Organization's Technology? (2026)

What a membership organization pays for

Most associations with 100 to 1,000 members pay for the same handful of things. Some arrive as separate bills, and some come bundled into one platform.

• Membership software: the member list, renewals and dues.
• A website: a domain, somewhere to host it, and someone to build it and keep it current.
• Email newsletters: a tool that sends to your whole list.
• Event ticketing: selling tickets to dinners, programs and the annual meeting.
• Donations: a way to take gifts, if you fundraise.
• Card processing: the fee on every payment, whichever tool takes it.
• Video meetings and integrations: board calls, online programs, and anything that copies data between tools.

This guide prices each line from the vendor's own pricing page, then adds up a full year for one example association. It covers costs in the US. A Canadian association pays in two currencies, so the Canadian version is a separate guide.

The membership platform

This is the line most boards already know, and it has its own guide. How much membership software costs prices the main platforms at 100, 250 and 500 members, with the fees some of them take from payments. The cheapest membership software ranks them by a full year's cost. Two points from those guides matter for the whole budget.

First, check what the price includes. A platform that includes the website and newsletters removes two bills below. One that plugs into a website you already run does not. Second, check what it counts. Some platforms bill every address in your database, so a large mailing list can raise the price while your membership stays flat.

The website

A website has three costs: the domain, the place it is built and hosted, and the person who builds it and keeps it current.

The domain. A .org address renews at $11.20 a year at Cloudflare Registrar and $18.98 at Namecheap. Both charge less for the first year as a promotion. Whatever else you change, keep the domain registered in the association's own name.

The builder or host. Squarespace's Basic plan, the cheapest on your own domain, is $25 a month month to month or $19 a month paid a year ahead. Core is $39 or $29. A year ahead also includes the domain free for the first year. If your membership platform includes the website, this line is zero.

The people. Nobody publishes a price list for this. The figures below are planning allowances built from two published benchmarks. Treat them as a starting point for a quote.

The build is a one-time cost and gets most of the attention. Upkeep is the cost that lasts: board pages that change each year, event pages, a new sponsor's logo, a page that broke on phones. At $15 to $149 an hour, 10 to 20 hours a year is $150 to $2,980. If a volunteer does it instead, the cost is paid in their evenings, and it falls due again each time that volunteer steps down.

Email newsletters

The three tools most associations look at charge by list size. These are their prices at three common sizes.

Two things change the bill. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed contacts toward your plan, so clean the list before each renewal. Its free plan stops at 250 contacts. Brevo charges by emails sent, and its free plan sends 300 emails a day, which suits a small list with one newsletter a month. Constant Contact has no free plan, only a free trial.

Size the tool on everyone who receives the newsletter. That list is usually bigger than your membership, once past attendees and subscribers are on it. If your membership platform sends newsletters, you may not need this line at all.

Event ticketing

Free events cost nothing on any platform. Paid tickets carry two possible costs: the card fee, which is unavoidable, and a ticketing platform's own fee, which is optional.

Eventbrite's US fees for a paid ticket are 3.7% + $1.79 a ticket, plus 2.9% of the order, including the service fee. By default the buyer pays them on top of the ticket price. The organizer can choose to absorb them instead. A ticket sold on your own site through Stripe costs the card fee, 2.9% + 30 cents, and nothing else.

On a $45 ticket, Eventbrite's fees come to $4.87, against $1.61 for the card fee alone. Over 360 tickets a year that is $1,753 against $580. When Eventbrite's fees are passed to buyers, the association's own cost is zero, and its buyers pay the $1,753 on top of their tickets instead. To work out the price and break-even point for a single event, use the event ticket calculator.

Donations

Donation tools are priced three ways.

• Zeffy charges the organization nothing, card fees included. It is funded by tips donors are invited to add at checkout. It is open to US nonprofits with an EIN, and its eligibility page names 501(c)(6) associations, so it is not limited to charities.
• Givebutter charges nothing online while donor tips are switched on. With tips off, it takes 3% plus card processing, which is $6.20 on a $100 gift.
• A plain Stripe payment form costs the card fee: $3.20 on a $100 gift. Stripe has a discount for nonprofits, but it requires at least 80% of payments to be tax-deductible donations, and dues and ticket sales do not count toward that. An association whose income is mostly dues and tickets will not qualify.

Before adding a separate tool, check whether your membership platform takes donations and what it charges on a gift. Veldun includes a donation page on every plan. Gifts can be one-off, monthly, quarterly or yearly, they are paid into the organization's own Stripe account, and Veldun takes no share, so a gift costs the card fee alone.

Card processing, and why monthly dues cost more

Every payment a member makes carries a card fee, whichever platform collects it. Stripe's standard US rate is 2.9% + 30 cents for a domestic card. Cards issued abroad add 1.5%. A bank debit (ACH) is 0.8%, capped at $5.

The 30 cents is charged on every payment, whatever its size, so how often members pay matters. Take 300 members paying $150 a year:

• Paid once a year, that is 300 payments with a fee of $4.65 each, which comes to $1,395.
• Paid monthly, at $12.50, it is 3,600 payments with a fee of $0.66 each, which comes to $2,376.

Monthly dues can still be the right call if they bring in members who would not pay a year at once. Price them knowing the difference.

Video meetings and integrations

Video meetings. Zoom's free plan stops a meeting at 40 minutes, with up to 100 people, which is short for most board meetings. Zoom Pro is $14.16 a user a month, paid yearly, or $170 a year. The budget below allows for one license. Google offers Workspace free to nonprofits, but in the US it requires 501(c)(3) status, which a 501(c)(6) professional association does not hold.

Integrations. If your tools are separate, something has to copy data between them, such as a new member from the membership system into the newsletter list. Zapier's free plan runs 100 tasks a month. Professional is $29.99 a month for 750 tasks month to month, or $19.99 paid yearly. This line usually disappears when the tools are one system.

A worked year: 300 members, $150 dues, 4 ticketed events

Here is one association priced two ways. It has 300 members paying $150 a year online, once a year, for $45,000 in dues. It runs 4 events of 90 tickets at $45, sold to members and to 120 people who are not members. Another 500 people receive the newsletter only.

The first column puts together low-cost separate tools: MembershipWorks for membership, a Squarespace site, Mailchimp for the newsletter and Eventbrite for tickets. The second is Veldun, which includes the website, newsletters and event tickets. Both have the same domain, one Zoom license and Stripe's card fees.

In the association's own cash, the separate tools cost $923 less for the year: $3,021 against $3,944. With Eventbrite's fees passed to buyers, the association pays no ticket fees at all. Its members and guests pay $1,753 on top of their tickets instead. Count everyone who pays, and the separate tools cost $830 more.

The table leaves out time. Four tools mean four logins, a list to keep in step between them, and a website someone has to update. The $300 allowance for paid changes is ten hours a year at a freelancer's rate, which is a light year. On Veldun, an admin asks for a change in plain words and Veldun drafts it for them to approve. The association counts 420 billable contacts, its members plus the non-members who came to an event. Newsletter-only subscribers are free up to 3 times the member count. That puts it on the Growth plan at $149 a month, which covers up to 500.

A budget template for the board

Use one line per cost, with a low and a high figure, and keep card fees on their own line. They grow with what you collect, so budget them beside the income they come from.

To fill in the card-fee line, take last year's dues, ticket and donation income and multiply it by 2.9%. Then add 30 cents for every payment. A board that knows its payment count knows this line to the dollar.

When a separate tool is the better buy

One platform for everything is not always the right answer. A separate tool earns its cost in these cases.

• You want strangers to find your event. Eventbrite lists public events on its own site, where people search for things to do. For an event aimed at people who have never heard of you, that listing can be worth its fee.
• Email marketing is a large part of your work. If you run campaigns with detailed automation and testing, a dedicated tool such as Mailchimp or Brevo goes further than the newsletter built into most membership platforms.
• You fundraise seriously. Zeffy costs the association nothing and is built for donors. A charity with an annual appeal is better served by a fundraising tool than by a dues system.
• You want a site designed from scratch. A designer who builds a one-off identity is a different service from a platform that runs your website. For a flagship site, pay for the designer.
• Your mailing list is far bigger than your membership. Price each platform at the number it will bill you for. Some count everyone, and some, such as Veldun and ClubExpress, leave most newsletter-only subscribers free.