What problems is Wylo solving and how is that benefiting you?
Wylo is an interesting concept for specific use cases.
Initially intended to replace Paid Membership Pro for a large membership directory, Wylo turned out to be not suitable for that specific purpose.
Instead, Wylo provides interesting membership features for special interest enthusiast groups. Here the limitations of the lower LTD tiers (e.g. max. 2.000 members, 2 roles, 3 collection folders, 10 channels in Tier1) are less relevant than for larger and subsequently ever expanding groups.
Only higher tiers in Wylo provide very essential features like custom domains which are especially important for focus interest group. But the implementation of such pricing concept for these LTDs is understandable from a commercial standpoint for Wylo, though not ideal for smaller communities.
Before making a decision, it is recommended to compare Wylo to ‘inappropriate’ alternatives like Wix, Google Sites, Weebly. Those are not dedicated community management tools, but can be fully sufficient options when adjusting the concept slightly, and being extended by additional tools (e.g. for online events). All alternatives come with individual benefits and limitations that a community manager would need to understand to make an educated decision.
Wylo Pros:
- Good basis to create communities and engage members.
- All relevant elements of community building and engaging are under one roof (membership levels, sales, discussions, chats, forums, emails, events).
- The integrated event hosting is a nice feature (not tested). Everything remains within the community without the need to utilize additional tools.
- Previous transaction fees for sales were removed from Wylo's pricing model.
Wylo Cons:
- Limitations in terms of members and channels for lower levels need to be understood.
- The monthly operational cost are significant if you are not participating in a 5- or 10-year deal and profitability of your community needs to be calculated very carefully. If you don’t have a community with constant income, you need at least a generous sponsor to maintain the group. Here also lies my biggest concern in terms of sustainability: Finding enough clients for Wylo willing to pay the regular price USD 600 per year for the Tier1 community can be considered very challenging. That would end up at USD 3.000 over a period of 5 years, for which you can get the special deal and just pay USD 59 for the same period.
- Transactions fees are high for lower tiers.
Wylo feature suggestions:
- I could be nice to include an auctioning function as another sales channel. Members in dedicated focus groups prefer such entertaining function over direct sales. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
