01 / Legacy
The legacy AMS trap
Built for administration, not experience. Bolted-on marketing tools, third-party CMS, separate email systems and integrations nobody in-house can maintain. A renewal engine at the centre nobody wants to touch.
HubSpot for Associations & Membership Organisations
Mange Less, Grow More.
As if you’re not already busy enough.
Someone on your team is exporting a list from your AMS, cross-checking it against Mailchimp, and manually chasing lapsed members through a spreadsheet only they understand. The board wants growth and retention numbers by Friday. Nobody can produce them without days of reconciliation.
Then someone asks for an engagement report, and suddenly you’ve lost another day pulling data together instead of acting on it.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s an architecture problem, and it’s the one thing most HubSpot partners have never actually had to solve.
We’ve rearchitected HubSpot for national industry bodies, professional associations and certification registries, bringing memberships, renewals, CPD, events, governance and self-service portals into a single connected operating model.
Why associations are moving
off their AMS
Most legacy AMS platforms like - iMIS, Wild Apricot, Membes, were built well over a decade ago to manage records, not relationships.
They still do that job. What they don't do is meet the experience members now expect, or give a board the visibility it now demands.
You're probably in this position if:
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Renewals are still tracked in a spreadsheet somewhere, “just in case”
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Board reporting takes days of manual reconciliation, not minutes
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Your member portal is the thing members complain about, not the thing they rely on
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The person who understands your integrations is one resignation away from taking that knowledge with them
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Your AMS vendor's roadmap hasn't meaningfully moved in years, but the invoice has
None of this is a people problem. It's what happens when an administrative system gets asked to run an entire member experience.
Thats why we built AMS functionality on HubSpot
We recognised that associations didn’t need another standalone AMS. They needed the operational capabilities of an AMS combined with the customer platform they were already using to engage members.
By bringing association management into HubSpot, we’ve created a single operating model that reduces complexity, improves reporting and gives every team access to the same trusted member data.
Specialism is cheap to claim. Here's what we've actually rebuilt.
Marketing Association
Industry Body
Membership, ecommerce and marketing automation were running as disconnected systems, with no single owner of the member record.
We took on a full operational redesign, not a marketing engagement, and migrated the entire membership platform natively into HubSpot.
Natively AMS now runs all membership commerce and forms the backbone of every marketing campaign the association sends.
Australian Energy Producers
National Industry Association
One organisation operating as three in practice: industry body, national association and certification body, each with its own membership, billing and events logic.
We built one HubSpot environment covering membership commerce, event ticketing, recurring billing, CPD certification commerce and full selfservice member portals, all through Natively AMS.
Three membership operations now run on one data model instead of three.
Australian Sonographer Accreditation Registry (ASAR)
A certification and accreditation registry where compliance isn't optional. Renewals, CPD points and certification status all had to be auditable and correct.
We delivered a full operational redesign inside HubSpot, membership lifecycle, certification workflows, renewals, CPD tracking and self-service, architected as core business process rather than a marketing add-on.
Members can now see their own certification and CPD status without calling the office.
What changes for your association with Engaging Partners
Lifecycle
The onboarding that fell through the cracks
Signup, engagement scoring, lifecycle stages, lapsed-member reactivation and tier upgrades, one connected journey instead of five disconnected steps.
Renewals
The renewal that used to leak
Automated billing through Stripe via Natively AMS, fixed and join-date anniversary cycles, self-service payment management.
Events
The event that needed a separate tool
Conferences, AGMs, training and sponsor activations, member pricing tiers and group bookings run natively via Natively AMS, every interaction flowing back to the member record.
Reporting
The board report that took a week
Real-time dashboards on member growth, retention, revenue, engagement and event ROI, pulled from source.
Portals
The portal members complained about
Self-service account management, CPD tracking, document downloads and member directory, behind one login.
Compliance
The compliance headache
CPD point tracking, certification status, renewal triggers, audit logs and certificate issuance.
Governance
The AGM and governance mess
Board portals, committee management, voting workflows and document distribution running through HubSpot instead of email threads and a shared drive.
Migration
The migration everyone's afraid of
Structured migration from iMIS, Salesforce NPSP, Wild Apricot, Membes or a homegrown database, without losing member history or breaking renewal cycles mid-flight.
Platform
The five different platforms
CRM, CMS, marketing automation, service and reporting consolidated into one system your own team can operate, extended with Natively AMS wherever commerce complexity goes beyond what HubSpot does natively.
Why HubSpot, why Natively AMS?
Most associations running national-scale membership operations land in front of three options: stay on a legacy AMS, move to an enterprise CRM like Salesforce or Dynamics, or consolidate onto a modern platform like HubSpot. Each is a different operating reality, not just a different price tag.
02 / Enterprise
The enterprise CRM tax
Total cost of ownership typically runs three to five times the licence cost, once you add:
- Implementation partners
- Ongoing admin resource
- Marketing Cloud or equivalent
- Experience Cloud for portals
- Integration work to connect modules that should already talk to each other
Twelve to eighteen months before full operations are live, and day-to-day running stays dependent on specialists you don't have on staff.
03 / Extended
HubSpot, extended with Natively AMS
CRM, CMS, marketing automation, service, reporting, AI and workflow automation in one platform your own team can run.
Where event ticketing, recurring billing or member commerce need more than HubSpot delivers natively, Natively AMS, our HubSpot-native commerce extension, closes the gap without a third-party AMS or a custom build.
One platform, one data model, one team operating it.
How we work with associations.
Robust and considered, our five-step methodology bends to your needs but won't break - from structured discovery through to ongoing enhancement across the full member lifecycle.
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Step 01
Discovery & Scoping
We kick off every engagement by identifying key stakeholders, understanding expectations, and establishing scope and objectives — captured in a Solution Requirements Document with budget, timeline, risk and quality strategies and a communication plan.
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Step 02
Solution Design & Specification
We design the automated and manual processes that will achieve your project goals, then specify functional deliverables and system configuration for each part of the solution - aligned to your objectives.
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Step 03
Configuration & Development
Your team executes the plan, configuring and developing the deliverables scoped in the SRD - with tight performance tracking, control of scope, costs, quality and risk, and clear regular communication throughout.
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Step 04
Deployment & Optimisation
We deploy, optimise and test the solution, ensuring it meets the needs and expectations of your members and internal teams - including iterative post-deployment changes and stakeholder training and support.
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Step 05
Evaluation & Enhancement
We evaluate project outcomes and processes, identify lessons learned, and seek stakeholder feedback - identifying incremental improvements and assessing the value of enhancements for future Discovery + Scoping phases.
Frequently Asked Questions
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For most mid-market and enterprise associations, yes - particularly where you need marketing, member communications, event management, certification workflows and self-service portals to operate from a single source of truth. HubSpot's gap is typically commerce-heavy or membership-billing-heavy use cases, which is exactly where CommercePro closes the loop without requiring a third-party AMS or custom build.
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iMIS has been the default enterprise association management system for decades, but increasingly we're brought into evaluations where associations want a more modern member experience, better marketing capability, easier reporting and lower total cost of ownership. HubSpot - properly architected and extended with CommercePro - competes seriously with iMIS in mid-market and large association environments, and wins on member experience, marketing depth and platform consolidation. We've migrated associations off iMIS without losing renewal continuity or member history.
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Yes, when architected properly. We've built full CPD tracking, certification renewal cycles, audit logging and compliance workflows for professional associations like ASAR. CPD point accumulation, certification status, renewal triggers and member self-service visibility all live inside HubSpot rather than in a separate compliance system.
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Through CommercePro, yes. Event registration, member-tier pricing, early-bird logic, group bookings, sponsor packages, dietary and accessibility data, and post-event engagement all run natively inside HubSpot. No separate Eventbrite or Cvent integration required, and every event interaction is attached to the member record.
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Yes. A meaningful portion of our association work is structured migration from iMIS, Salesforce NPSP, Wild Apricot, Membes and homegrown databases. We've built a structured CRM migration practice specifically for moving complex membership operations onto HubSpot without losing data integrity or breaking renewal cycles mid-flight.
Get architectural clarity
before you commit
Whether you're scaling a growing association, modernising a legacy AMS environment, or running an evaluation against iMIS, Dynamics or Salesforce - we'll provide the operational confidence association leadership requires.
