A managed website for small associations.
We design and build your site, host it, and keep it current. Edit pages yourself, or send us the change. Either way, updates are unlimited and included.
- Hosting, SSL, and backups included
- Unlimited content updates included
The website a larger association would have, without the upkeep
A fast, managed WordPress website on your own domain, built with Cantata’s custom theme and custom plugin and cared for by the people who make association websites.
A professionally designed site
On your own domain, with hosting, SSL, and backups included. Analytics and clean SEO come standard.
Unlimited content updates
Events, officers, dues, photos, documents, news, new pages. Send as many as your year requires. No cost per change.
Managed WordPress, without the upkeep
WordPress gives you a familiar, portable foundation. Cantata’s custom theme and custom plugin keep the experience focused, while we handle hosting, updates, security, and maintenance.
Forms & sign-ups
Contact, volunteer interest, newsletter sign-ups, nominations, RSVPs, with submissions routed to whichever inbox you choose.
Directories & resource libraries
Board and committee rosters, chapter lists, document libraries, newsletter archives, with search and filters.
Site-wide search
Full-text search across every page, event, and record you publish, and it is quick.
Make the change yourself, or hand it to us.
Essentials puts an admin mode on your own website. Same unlimited updates either way.
Sign in on your website
Your site is built on WordPress, and Cantata’s custom plugin gives you a simple editing experience on the site itself. Sign in and edit controls appear on the things you can change.
Edit it, or request it
Click the thing you want to change, edit it in place, and press Publish. Would you rather we did it? Use the request tool built into the site: attach your photos and files, say what you want, and send.
It goes live
Your own edits are usually public within minutes. Requests you send us are usually done the same day, and anything urgent, like a weather cancellation, goes to the front of the line.
All of it is included. There is no cost per change.
Nobody on your board ever has to decide whether fixing a typo is worth a ticket.
Is Essentials right for your association?
It is not the right answer for everyone, and we would rather say so up front than sell you the wrong thing.
Your website informs
- One or two people look after the website
- Your content is pages: who you are, how to join, events, news, the board
- Dues, registration, and payments already run in outside tools, shown on the page or linked from it
Your website needs more
- Several departments each own content and need their own logins and sign-offs
- Members transact on the site: portals, submissions, or purchases completed on your own domain
- You need custom workflows or integrations beyond the Essentials framework
Essentials is WordPress too. The difference is scope: Essentials uses Cantata’s proven custom theme and plugin, while a fully custom website starts with a broader strategy, design, and development process.
Explore custom association websitesOne service, two configurations
Every Essentials site uses the same managed WordPress foundation, with Cantata’s custom theme and custom plugin on top. Moving from Essentials to Plus later is a setting on our end, not a rebuild.
The public website, built and cared for.
- A managed WordPress website on your own domain
- Cantata’s custom theme and custom plugin
- Hosting, SSL, and backups included
- Unlimited content updates, made by you in admin mode or by us
- Forms, directories, news, and site-wide search
Best forAssociations whose website exists to inform: who you are, why to join, what is coming up, how to reach you.
Everything in Essentials, with the events and membership modules switched on.
- Enter each event once. Listings build themselves from it, archive on their own once the date passes, and carry the markup search engines use to show dates and locations
- Members sign in on your own website, and the pages you mark as member-only are served only to signed-in members
- The site holds no payment details. Dues, renewals, and payments keep running wherever they run today
- Running an AMS already? It keeps the roster and the renewals, and we can mount its member area at your own address
Best forAssociations with a real calendar to keep straight, members who need somewhere to sign in, or both.
Already running an AMS? Keep it.
Joining, renewing, dues, and member records belong in the system built for them, and Essentials leaves them there. Most association platforms let us place their member area at your own address as a configuration job, and a few need a different approach. You can look yours up before we ever speak.
What Essentials costs
Two numbers: a flat monthly fee that covers everything ongoing, and a one-time cost to build the site, quoted in writing before anything starts.
One flat fee that stays flat. Essentials Plus, with the events and membership modules, is $179 a month and includes everything listed here.
- Unlimited content updates. As many as your year requires, at no cost per change.
- Admin mode on your own site. Edit in place, or send the change through the built-in request tool.
- Fast turnaround. Your own edits are live within minutes. Requests are usually done the same day.
- Hosting and care. Hosting, SSL, and backups, with no separate bill and nothing for you to renew.
A design path plus $40 per page. Content you already have makes the build cheaper, not pricier.
- Refresh the look you have. From $600.
- Tailor one of our design directions. From $1,500.
- Full custom design. From $4,000.
- Spread the cost. Commit to one to three years and earn a credit of 10 to 30 percent against the build. The balance can be financed into your monthly fee at 8 percent APR. Month to month is fine too.
Content updates are unlimited. Here is where the line sits.
A content update changes or extends what your site already has: wording, photos, dates, documents, events, news, new pages of the same kind. Those are unlimited and included. Support requests and new project work, meaning new features and new design work, are billed separately at $140 an hour in 15-minute increments, so a fifteen-minute job costs fifteen minutes.
Fair questions, straight answers
Is AI writing our content?
Does Essentials replace our AMS or member portal?
Can we move over from our current WordPress site?
What happens if we leave, or outgrow it?
Our budget is tiny. Can this still work?
Tell us about your association.
Describe your organization and the job its website has to do. You will get a straight answer about whether Essentials fits, including when the answer is no. No pressure, no pitch deck.
Your member area, at your own address
Almost every association platform already runs a member area. Rather than rebuild it, we point it at a subdomain of your website, so members stay on your address and your records never leave your AMS.
Members cross over to your AMS. Nothing about them ever crosses back to us.
We point a subdomain at your AMS
One DNS record turns your platform's member area into members.yourassociation.org. Your AMS provider issues the certificate.
We brand it and place the link
Member Login sits in your main navigation, styled to match the rest of the site. Members never feel handed off to a stranger.
Your AMS keeps doing its job
Logins, renewals, dues, and member records stay exactly where they already live. Nothing to migrate, nothing kept in two places.
Your member data never reaches us. No member records, no passwords, and no payment details on our side, so there is nothing of yours for anyone to take from us.
GrowthZone
ChamberMaster
MemberZone
MemberClicks
MemberLeap
Rhythm
iMIS
Fonteva
Nimble AMS
Protech
Novi AMS
ClubExpress
YourMembership
MemberSuiteDon't see yours? Most member platforms work this way. Tell us what you run and we'll confirm before you commit to anything, and if yours needs a different approach, we'll say so up front. Ask about your system →