Subscription service—need technical pointers
I’m researching software packages for setting up a paid subscription service so as to offer more in-depth content (in addition to this blog). There are a number of packages out there, most of which are PHP-based and use the (annoying) IonCube loader, which caused some demo installation headaches. The software needs to run on Mac OS X Server, use MySQL database and Apache. If any readers have expertise in this area, I’d certainly like to hear from you!
I’ve been looking at CGI Central aMember Professional, which has a nice feature set, but those guys won’t respond to email in less than 3 days, and so far have failed to explain basic questions, like whether authentication can be done through a SQL database. I’ve set up a demo of the software on a “test mule” server and it looks like it will do the job nicely. But one wonders about post-sale support if pre-sale questions go unanswered.
I’ve also been looking at i2 Services PHP Membership Manager, whose interface looks somewhat less appealing, but support has been quite responsive. I’ll need to set up the demo and study it further.
Needless to say, I want a system with a good feature set that can support a large number of users. As a software engineer, I could roll my own, but that would take significant time not really available to me right now.
