Digital Access Pass (DAP) WordPress Plugin Review – How Good Is It?

Digital Access Pass (DAP) is a complete solution for creating membership websites with WordPress (or in PHP/HTML if you really want to) and it’s been around for a long while now (since 2009) which is a very long time when it comes to plugins.

A lot of plugin creators disappear after a while or stick around but don’t update their plugins. This doesn’t seem to be the case with DAP because it’s still going strong and is the backbone of countless membership sites across the web.

Now the question is – how good is it? and is it worth you investing your hard earned money in? That’s a question I’m going to help you answer in this review.

DAP and Membership sites – what’s the big deal?

DAP makes creating a secure and functional membership site incredibly easy – but if you’re sitting here thinking, why a membership site?

Here’s what you need to know – building a membership site is a challenge and it takes a hefty investment of your time but there are some key things you need to know:

• Membership sites allow you to build loyalty even better than a mailing list
• Maintain relationships with your subscribers even more easily than before
• Everyone is doing it, from Copyblogger and Marketing Profs to Newspapers and Magazines
• Despite the huge amount of freely available content on the web, some of the most in depth and actionable content is kept behind closed doors
• You enhance your perceived value in your market
• Recurring profits = WIN

Countless people and even companies are making bank with membership sites and that’s a fact.

Digital Access Pass features you will love

Aside from all the features you’d expect such as unlimited members, unlimited user levels and all that stuff, DAP also has the following features:

• Easy to use system for drip feeding content that allows you to drip feed almost all post types and content types
• Secure RSS feeds
• Content protection
• Built in 2 tier affiliate system
• Forum integration with WP-Forum, bbPress, vBulletin & Simple:Press
• Works with regular PHP/HTML websites
• Sneak peek teaser content
• Built in auto responder but supports popular mailing list providers
• Email & Job queue allowing you to scale your membership site
• One time offers (OTO’s)
• Powerful short codes
• Pay per view or pay per download
• Trial products
• Free installation

I just want to highlight something in particular, the list of features are incredible and there is so much more to DAP than the above – it’s obvious that an incredible length of thought and continuous development has gone into this plugin.

What about payment processing?

Despite how PayPal has a strangle hold on what seems like most of the world when it comes to payment processing – a lot of other systems give some incredible features so having a membership plugin

• PayPal (Payments Pro and Standard)
• Authorize.net
• 1shoppingcart.com
• Premium Web Cart
• Infusionsoft
• Nanacast
• Plimus
• WorldPay
• Warrior Plus (WSO Pro)
• DigiResults
• ClickBank
• JVZoo
• E-Junkie
• + more

DAP also comes with a shopping cart that has support for most of these systems and also allows you to setup coupon codes and dime sales.

What about support for auto responders?

Veena and Ravi, the people who created Digital Access Pass have thought about everything – they have a built in auto responder which means you don’t need to use a mailing list provider such as Mail Chimp for example.

There is a difference however, because most plugins and systems that offer these auto responders that run through your server miss out an extremely important thing.

That is the fact that most web hosts have an hourly limit for sending emails, so to stop this becoming an issue you can choose to throttle emails sent through DAP.

There’s also an email & job queue that requires you to setup cron jobs – this ensures that you will be able to complete the sending of emails etc without your server timing out.

• GetResponse
• Aweber
• AutoResponse Plus
• MailChimp
• + more

To see just how easy the auto responder system is to use, take a look at this video.

A closer look at DAP

Features can only tell the story so far, so below is a condensed tour of certain elements of Digital Access Pass:

Installation success

I talk about this in a bit more depth in a moment, but installation time was around 5-7 minutes.

DAP admin area

All of the options that you need set out in a logical and straight forward way.

Affiliate module

The above screenshot is taken from the affiliate module within the setup menu, you also have some additional options relating to affiliates and payments too.

DAP email and auto-responders

Structure emails how you want, include attachments and save emails for sending to your members or admin/staff later on.

Payment processing

Plenty of payment processors are included along with an order search function, shopping cart, coupons and PayPal dime sales.

Product levels

Setup your products as either subscription or one-time product easily.

Search users

Administration is a breeze and you can see the situation with each user at a glance.

Stock templates

Templates are a necessity of running a membership site, the DAP team have made it easy by including a number of these templates that are straight forward and tell your users what they need to know.

How easy is it to setup DAP?

I have to confess that there are a few more hoops to jump through while setting up DAP than most other plugins, but the fact remains that DAP is extremely powerful and these extra hoops may mean that you will need to spend 3-5 minutes longer installing the plugin.

There’s also some incredibly detailed documentation that includes written guides with screenshots and video guides.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter how easy it is to setup because you get free installation as part of your purchase – that’s the easiest setup ever!

Verdict

There are plenty of membership plugins you can choose for WordPress (I explore some more of them here) that all have their good points, but the truth is you can just do so much with Digital Access Pass (DAP) and while it’s slightly more complicated to setup than some other membership plugins it more than makes up for it with it’s incredible set of features.

Your search for an incredibly functional and reliable membership plugin is over.

Photo Credit: ecstaticist via Compfight cc