AccessAlly vs. CustomerHub: a comparison
Our fans tell us AccessAlly allows them to earn more from their online courses and membership sites. We think you’ll love AccessAlly’s power features, along with its’ sophisticated interface.
If you’re curious to see how AccessAlly really stacks up to CustomerHub, read on!
How is AccessAlly different from CustomerHub?
AccessAlly and CustomerHub are both online course and membership systems that allow you to take payments and directly integrate with Keap (formerly InfusionSoft).
This is where the similarities end and the differences begin.
CustomerHub is focused on making things as easy as possible for Keap users to set up a membership site within minutes.
While this may be appealing to beginners, it also comes with drawbacks, especially in design customization and the ability to scale offers over time.
Beautiful & customizable out of the box
One pillar of a good membership site is great design and user experience. Of course we want our online areas to look the best…but even more practically speaking, the more intuitive a logged in area is, the more likely your customers will stay on as paying members or refer their friends.
CustomerHub is great for beginners who aren’t very specific about the look and feel of their sites, but not ideal for those who want full design flexibility.
CustomerHub’s downfall for brand-conscious entrepreneurs is their limited theme customization. As of this writing, they only offer two themes, both of which can be customized with colors and fonts, but may be a challenge to match to existing branding. While you can dig into the code to edit page layouts, media components, and the like, it’s not simple or intuitive to match your branding.
In fact, as of this writing, even custom domains for your membership site are still a “coming soon” feature.
On the other hand, since AccessAlly is a WordPress plugin, it can be integrated with any WordPress theme or design, and is extremely customizable as a result. If you can imagine it, you can implement it using your existing WordPress theme or theme framework and AccessAlly.
AccessAlly also comes with a beautiful mobile-friendly interface that you can customize, which is great for:
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- Displaying progress tracking, pie charts, and checklists
- On-brand cross-selling dashboards
- Affiliate centers, complete with tracking and downloads
We’ve even heard of folks hiring designers and developers to knock off AccessAlly’s look and feel, because it provides such a great user experience.
Deep 2-way street integration with your marketing automation platform
Next, compatibility and integration are a must for your membership site. After all, the CRM, email marketing system and billing tools you use will all come into play to make your membership site work.
Both CustomerHub and AccessAlly are designed specifically with Keap integration in mind.
With both plugins, you can take advantage of the features that we love Keap for — and here I’m thinking specifically of tag-based automation!
Both CustomerHub and AccessAlly allow your customers to update their credit cards, see their invoices, and make payments on an outstanding amounts. This is key for anyone who has a paid program or ongoing membership program, because it cuts down on admin time spent chasing up clients to pay their fees.
AccessAlly goes a little deeper with that need for tight integration by allowing you to tap into Keap’s affiliate referral information. You can use this to create an all-in-one members area for customers and affiliates so that they can promote your offerings without logging into a different site.
CustomerHub alternative that's open source, offers extensibility, and full control
With CustomerHub you’re hosting your website and courses on their closed platform, with no easy way to take your content with you when you cancel or decide to move on.
Additionally, you’re tied to either Keap or ActiveCampaign. A change from either of those platforms will require you to rebuild the membership site from the ground up.
With AccessAlly, all your content is stored in a WordPress website which is super flexible in terms of changing platforms, interfaces, and more.
Because the CustomerHub system is closed, you can’t easily extend it by installing add-ons and plugins. That means you can’t add an integrated forum, gamification, or other features that could improve your courses. Any extra functionality you want to include must be managed through Zapier — and outside of the closed CustomerHub system.
AccessAlly took a different approach: it’s a WordPress plugin that’s open source, so anyone can see and read the code, and it’s easy to back-up and export your content.
Plus, features like communities, gamification, quizzes, and more are built-in to AccessAlly, while they’re unavailable with CustomerHub.
With AccessAlly, you can take full control of the look and feel, and add the functionality you want.
Looking for a CustomerHub Alternative With Fewer Restrictions?
You want full control of your content, members, and their experience on your site.
So you can spend your time doing what you do best, not struggling with frustrating platform restrictions.
With AccessAlly, you’ve got all of the power and flexibility of WordPress, without any limits on your business’ growth potential either.
Get a Free AccessAlly Demo ExperienceOne client's story about finding a CustomerHub alternative...
There's a lot of opportunity moving forward that I'm excited about
“As a leader in the Infusionsoft ecosystem, it had been a point of embarrassment for me that my membership site on CustomerHub was this piece of tech that was collecting dust, and literally not evolved in years.
And not just because of the reality of the tech, but because I knew better.
AccessAlly is a powerful tool, and while I’ve only been using it for a few months I am more than happy to endorse it. Beyond the plugin itself, I’ve been just as impressed with the team and community behind the tool.“
– Greg Jenkins, MonkeypodMarketing.com
Gamification, automation, cross-selling dashboards with 1-click upsells
One of the best parts of both CustomerHub and AccessAlly is the ability for customers to update their own credit cards and run payments directly within the membership area. This is a huge time saver for any business owner.
They’re both viable options for those who are looking to build a membership site that integrates well with Infusionsoft and offer automated services for your online members. Drip feeding content, evergreen courses, and billing centralization are all features that you can use with both CustomerHub and AccessAlly.
However, AccessAlly gives you more flexibility in how you set up your pages and e-commerce features, such as 1-click upsells.
AccessAlly also sports the ability to create gamified credit systems, where members can earn points for completing quizzes, sharing on social media, or being paid members in good standing.
Members can redeem points for bonus content, services, or other goodies. Plus, AccessAlly makes it easy to do all of the automation your heart desires: follow-up with members who haven’t logged in for awhile, drip courses on various schedules, and automatically generate a PDF certificate of completion when they pass a course.
Styled Member Directories, and fully integrated member profiles in your CRM
While AccessAlly started off as an “access management” tool for online courses, it quickly developed into a full-fledged membership plugin for WordPress.
That means you can create beautiful searchable member directories, sorted by your marketing automation platform tags. This allows members to opt in or out of your member directory, and even to purchase a premium listing.
You decide what you want to include in your member directory — like a biography, or even points earned, and course progress. CustomerHub offers no member directory.
Plus, with AccessAlly’s profile editing functionality, a member can update their name, email, address, and password… or any other custom field inside InfusionSoft.
All with one click, and everything gets synced between your membership site and InfusionSoft. CustomerHub does not offer this in-depth integration, or easy to use interface for the member.
License your courses, teaching assistants, and have students submit homework
CustomerHub does not offer the ability to “license courses” to groups of people, which is also called Umbrella or Team accounts.
AccessAlly gives you the power to sell a “package” of licenses to your courses and content, and to have a team leader assign sub-accounts.
This is great for selling corporate training. It also allows you to design a “member management” dashboard, with custom operations to kick off automations directly by group administrators.
AccessAlly Pro will allow you to build out an even more robust, high-level teaching center…like if you’d like to run your courses through teaching assistants, or have someone monitoring participant progress. In this case, a team leader would be able to see student progress, quiz results, and even view recorded notes or questions asked.
AccessAlly Pro also makes it easy for students to upload homework attachments, like PDFs, Word documents, or other files for the administrator. CustomerHub offers no homework submission and replies, and no team feature.
What AccessAlly Customers Are Saying...
I Love The Flexibility Of AccessAlly!
I wanted something that looked good and worked well for my clients. We have used other membership platforms (CustomerHub, Teachable, Kajabi). I love the flexibility of AccessAlly and the support when needed.
In 17 years doing virtual support I really think you have hit it on the head with a fabulous tool for membership sites AccessAlly, well done!
The biggest reasons AccessAlly stands out?
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- The look of the membership site
- Ease of adding audio/video
- Branding options on the site
- Your own website versus someone else’s hosted platform
AccessAlly is an amazing tool!“
– Robin Hardy, IntegrityVirtualServices.com
AccessAlly Is The Only Sophisticated Solution That Comes To Mind
“Hands down the sophistication. I’ve used most membership softwares on the market but I needed something special, high class, sexy for this latest venture. Only one name came to mind: AccessAlly.”
– Amber Vilhauer, AmberVilhauer.com
Looking for something that integrates both ways?
Marketing automation tools are here to stay.
Use your marketing automation tool to power your course and membership program by taking advantage of AccessAlly’s deep 2-way street integration.
It’s built to help you sell more, teach better, and engage with your students longer.
Your Workflow on AccesAally vs. Customerhub:
- Set up your WordPress site
with your favorite customizable theme - Install the AccessAlly plugin on
your WordPress membership site - Run through the AccessAlly onboarding wizard to integrate
with your CRM and select
payment settings - Create your first offering with the Offerings Wizard and add your content
- Create emails in your CRM or in AccessAlly
- Name your CustomerHub site
- Create your first course structure
- Directly upload your videos, text, and course information to CustomerHub
- Edit the very basic look and feel (change colors and fonts)
- Figure out how to use your own domain (to brand your school)
- Set up payments and the terms of purchase
- Set up Zapier zaps to integrate with the other systems you’ll need to achieve the functionality
- Or, wait for ContentHub to release the features you want to add to your courses
See How AccessAlly and CustomerHub Features Compare
We’re a digital marketing software company built by marketers and software engineers. With our particular background and expertise, we’ve designed AccessAlly to give you everything you need in an easy to use, powerful package.
| Software Feature | AccessAlly | CustomerHub |
|---|---|---|
| Protected course content |  | |
| Built-in Recurring Stripe and PayPal payments | | |
| Course builder for modules, lessons, and topics | | |
| Automatically creates tags, pages, and menus | | |
| Deep 2-Way Integration with Keap (Infusionsoft), Ontraport, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Drip | | Keap Only |
| Multiple currencies, automated expiring coupons, and order bumps | | |
| Cart abandonment automation | | |
| Progress tracking, and progress-based unlocking content | | |
| Multiple types of quizzes, and auto generated certificates of completion | | |
| Course Licensing with Teams or Umbrella Accounts | | |
| Searchable member directories and editable custom fields through profiles | | |
| Gamification where members can earn points, and activity-based automation, login tracking | | |
| Media player, video bookmarks, tagging automation on quizzes | | |
| Cross-selling dashboards, with 1-click upsells | | |
| Built-in affiliate tracking with multiple tiers, links, and reporting | | |
You Might Change Your Mind About What Features You Want, so You Need a Platform That’s Flexible.
Get your own free demo sandbox account so you can experience the flexibility AccessAlly has to offer.
See it in actionShould I use CustomerHub or AccessAlly?
CustomerHub might be right for you if...
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- You need a bare-bones course website fast, with no plans for added learning management and gamification functionality down the line
- You want to have your site up and running quickly, so you can test your ideas without worrying about design
- You’re currently a Keap or ActiveCampaign customer and never plan on migrating away
- You don’t mind giving up full control to have your courses hosted for you on a 3rd party platform that you can’t easily export or leave
AccessAlly might be right for you if...
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- You’re a developer who likes get projects done quickly, and have happy clients who love the results of your work
- You’re a course creator with a vision for the design and flow of your courses, and want to leverage marketing automation
- You want everything to work seamlessly from one end to the other (payments, courses, and memberships)
- You’re looking to create an amazing customer experience, that’s functional, profitable, and helps you stand out in the marketplace
What AccessAlly Customers Are Saying...
Truly The Best Platform Out There
“I LOVE AccessAlly. It has become the cornerstone of my online business, I was on CustomerHub before AccessAlly Pro.
Since being on AccessAlly, my membership site has tripled in the number of members. The ability to do one-click upsells alone generates 1/4 of my revenue.
The mobile-friendly component is huge, as CustomerHub was not mobile-friendly. Plus, the quizzing functionality from AccessAlly Pro allows me to sell my membership program to corporations which also added an other 20% in revenue in the past year.“
AccessAlly Is The Best!
Migrating from CustomerHub to AccessAlly is easy
With the AccessAlly migration wizard, you can import all of your CustomerHub members and create their accounts quickly and easily.
You can also import members directly from your marketing automation platform (Keap, ActiveCampaign or other), and AccessAlly’s migration wizard will ensure all of your members have the right tags and permissions.
Then you can run through the Offerings Wizard to add existing course content, and you’ll be ready to showcase your new members’ area.
Researching Course Platforms on Your Own Is Great, but if You Want to Talk to Someone, We’re Here to Help!
If you’re wondering whether you’re on the right track or not, we can help you sort out all of the different options.
We’ll let you know if AccessAlly is a good fit or not, too. Not sure what AccessAlly is? Watch the video to find out now, then book a call to discuss further:
Find answers
Didn’t find an answer to your question? Just reach out to us, we’re happy to help!
Do you have comparisons to other platforms and plugins?
Yes, we’ve done the research so you don’t have to. Here are some options to consider:
Can I see examples of AccessAlly sites?
You can find videos and case studies with screenshots and descriptions of how people are using AccessAlly on our showcase page here.
Can I talk to someone about my project?
Researching course platforms on your own is great, but if you want to talk to someone, we’re here to help!
We can help you sort out all of the different options. We’ll let you know if AccessAlly is a good fit or not, too.
Planning to develop an enterprise level program?
We’d love to find out more about your project and find out if AccessAlly is a good fit.
Book a discovery call to start the process, or tell us about your project and select “Enterprise” on our contact form.