How to Migrate from Wild Apricot (Step by Step)

Why associations leave Wild Apricot

Wild Apricot built the category and still works for many organizations. But the most common reasons a volunteer board starts looking elsewhere are consistent: the interface hasn't changed meaningfully since 2019, there's no AI to take repetitive admin off the board's plate, support response times have stretched to weeks, and the 20% fee Wild Apricot adds to your subscription if you use a third-party payment processor (like Stripe) quietly adds up. For a small, volunteer-run association, the platform ends up creating more work than it removes.

If you've decided to move, the good news is that migrating is far less daunting than most boards fear. Here's exactly how it works.

Before you start: what you'll need

You need three things: admin access to your Wild Apricot account (to run the export), a list of your currently active events so nothing gets missed, and access to your domain's DNS settings (usually wherever you bought the domain — GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, or similar). That's it. You do not need any technical skill beyond downloading a file and copying a few settings.

The five steps to migrate

Step 1 — Export your members from Wild Apricot

In Wild Apricot, go to Contacts → Export. Choose the full export so you capture every field: names, emails, membership levels, renewal dates, and any custom fields your organization uses. Save the CSV file. This is the one piece of the migration you do by hand, and it takes about two minutes.

Step 2 — Import into the new platform

Upload the CSV, map each column to the matching field, review the preview, and confirm. With Veldun, this step is done for you as part of onboarding — you hand over the export and the data is imported and mapped, including membership levels and renewal dates, so nothing is retyped and nothing is lost.

Step 3 — Recreate your active events

You don't need to migrate years of past events — only what's currently open for registration. List your active events, then recreate each one. On Veldun, you describe an event in a sentence and the title, description, pricing, and confirmation emails populate automatically, so this is minutes of work rather than re-entering forms.

Step 4 — Point your domain

You keep your existing domain. Migrating means updating your DNS records to point at the new platform. Veldun gives you the exact records to add, and your old site stays live until you make the switch — so there's no window where members hit a dead page.

Step 5 — Notify your members

Once the new site is live, send a short "we've moved" announcement with login instructions. On the new platform this goes out as a normal email campaign to the list you just imported. Members log in, confirm their details, and you're done.

How much effort is each side, really?

The export is yours; almost everything else is handled for you on a concierge migration.

What about my data and history?

Your member records come over intact — names, emails, membership levels, renewal dates, and custom fields. You keep your domain and your email address. Your existing site stays up until you cut over, so there's no downtime your members will notice. The only things you choose not to bring are years of archived past events, which rarely need to move.

Frequently asked questions