Why We Switched to Recurly at YNPN-NYC—and How It’s Already Paying Off

When I stepped into the role of Board Chair at YNPN-NYC earlier this month, one of my first priorities was upgrading our recurring membership payment system. We’d been using a mix of PayPal and SquareSpace purchases, and while functional, it lacked the modern tools needed to streamline operations and improve member experience.

My familiarity with Recurly actually goes back to 2015, when I was a customer of a SaaS platform that used it to manage their subscriptions. I had a good experience—especially with the added bonus of a discount—which left a lasting impression. That experience stuck with me when I started looking for a better solution for YNPN-NYC.

The Payment Patchwork We Inherited

Historically, YNPN-NYC managed recurring dues through PayPal. Then, after a website redesign, new memberships were processed through SquareSpace and synced with Mailchimp. That approach kept the process seamless on the front end but fragmented things behind the scenes. By the end of 2015, we had members split between PayPal and SquareSpace, with no central system to manage them.

Why Recurly?

I needed a solution that was:

• Low-friction for users

• Self-managing on the backend

• Elegant and modern

Recurly’s ecommerce-like experience won me over: members check out once, and the system handles renewals annually. Simple, clean, and scalable.

One of the biggest wins? Recurly syncs active subscriptions to Mailchimp twice a day. No more manual exports. And if someone cancels, they’re automatically removed from the list. Even if that integration didn’t exist, I could have used Zapier—but luckily, I didn’t need to.

Implementation

I approached this rollout with a “day-one” mentality—something I’d recently done with a CRM overhaul at Stupid Cancer. I knew legacy members might be affected, but new signups wouldn’t feel a thing. The setup process for Recurly took less than 30 minutes, and once everything was configured, I pulled down the old form and waited for signups to begin.

January was the perfect time to launch—right in line with New Year’s resolutions—and the response was strong from day one.

After verifying that everything worked, I uploaded legacy members into the new Mailchimp list using their name, email, and membership anniversary date. That allowed me to begin mapping the past to the present.

Migrating Legacy Members

Recurly adds two private fields to Mailchimp. Since we only offer one plan, everyone has the same data in those fields. That made it easy to identify which 2016 members were new and which ones were legacy holdovers.

With Mailchimp’s segmentation tools, I created lists of legacy members based on their anniversary date. That allowed me to identify those who were expired but hadn’t yet been imported into the new system. I haven’t finalized how many reminders these members will get before being moved to the inactive list, but the goal is clear: win them back.

We’re experimenting with coupon codes and other incentives to reactivate lapsed members. Some may not even realize their membership expired. While we know we won’t win back 100%—life moves on for many—it’s worth the effort to retain who we can.

Why Members Love It

What makes Recurly so effective is how it puts the power back in the hands of members. Seven days before their renewal, they get an email reminder. They can cancel, update their billing, or do nothing and let it renew. If a payment fails, Recurly will attempt to fix it automatically (like updating an expired card) before notifying the member. It’s hands-off but thorough.

Looking Ahead

Migrating a membership base sounds like a heavy lift, but modern tools make it manageable—and worthwhile. Retaining a member is always cheaper than acquiring a new one. But more importantly, not spending time managing things that can be automated is a win for any organization.

The Results (So Far)

In the first 18 days of launching Recurly, we had over 75 new members sign up—strong validation that this was the right move.

Migrating from Volusion to Bigcommerce

The Beginning

In March 2012, I stepped into the ecommerce world and launched a Volusion store for my non-profit, Stupid Cancer. I understood the basic functions of ecommerce, and felt like I could figure the rest out as I went. My expectations were pretty accurate, and found that navigating the unknown was a lot of fun. I picked Volusion because a colleague of mine had found success with their platform, and like any other digital software vertical, there were so many options. The sales started, issues that popped up along the way were remedied, and before I knew it, I had a successful online store.

Remember when you learned how to drive? That sense of confidence that followed? Before you knew it, you wanted to go faster.

Enter Bigcommerce: I received a solicitation to take a tour of their product by a Bigcommerce sales rep. I found myself building a carbon copy of my store on their platform within the first hour, and noticed the little things that were different than what I had been used to. I found myself building out shipping rates by weight, and entering those pesky sales tax rates by county. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way, New York State. #sarcasm)

I have to insert here that Volusion did get me off the ground with a very generous 80% discount. So, while Bigcommerce was unable to offer the same discount, I felt like I was getting much more in personal back and forth e-mails with their team, along with some on-boarding conference calls.

So here I am, with the holidays approaching rapidly and a steady flow of orders coming in, planning to abandon ship with Volusion and start on a new course.

I had everything pretty much built out on BC when it came time to flip the DNS. I say pretty much, because you’re never really ready when it comes time to go live.

Going Live

To my surprise, my new store was online about two hours later, and the orders resumed. A critical step here is to put your old store into maintenance mode, and have your provider restore it back to its original(demo) URL. Luckily, I was headed to a conference for the days following, so I had some downtime to watch the fallout, which ended up being related to the following:

301 Redirects

This is arguably the most important thing you will need to do. With a new ecommerce platform comes a new URL structure. For example, http://store.com/productname could end up being http://store.com/product-name. Anyone who searches for your product and clicks on your old URL will get a big old “Page Not Found.” Bigcommerce makes it easy to point potential customers in the right direction.

Shipping Rates

You probably set these up once and then left them alone, right? With Bigcommerce, I had an issue where I capped off my shipping rates at 2 pounds, without a price for anything heavier. This resulted in customers not being able to proceed with checkout. Make sure you test everything thoroughly, and let customers get in touch with you easily. (Install a “Contact Us” tab.)

Payment Processor

I was operating under the assumption that I had a relationship outside of Volusion with Authorize.net.  I plugged in my payment gateway info into my new store, and subsequently learned that it would be a breach of contract if I moved forward with that setup. I investigated my options, and found that PayPal Pro is a very nice solution if you're already accepting PayPal payments in your web store. It's a seamless application, and you get the great service that PayPal provides. (It's important to note that you can use a new Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce. You cannot use your Volusion Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce.)

Moving Forward

Once I had everything pretty much straightened out, I focused on getting my product offering back up to 100%. A new store offered the opportunity to audit my product images, descriptions, etc.

Having been live on Bigcommerce for a few weeks now, I am much happier with the mobile version of my store, and am seeing a lot of mobile checkouts. I was also happy to see that a lot of my favorite tools integrate just as well, if not better, with Bigcommerce. Check them out on the Bigcommerce App Store.