Moving from ENS to SocietyPress
If your society is on Easynet Solutions (ENS, sometimes EasyNetSites) and you're looking for what comes next, you're in the right place. SocietyPress was built with you specifically in mind.
Why Societies Move
SocietyPress isn't an attack on ENS — ENS served a lot of societies for a lot of years. But the needs of local societies have changed, and the tools available to meet them have changed too. These are the three reasons we hear most often.
Cost
ENS bills annually at hundreds of dollars a year for every society, large or small. SocietyPress is free forever, and you own your hosting directly — typically $5–15 a month at a standard WordPress host. For a 200-member society, that's the difference between spending $600 a year on software and spending $120 a year on hosting.
Control
On ENS, your site lives on ENS's servers, in ENS's format. When you need to change something — a new field on the member form, a different newsletter layout, a custom event type — your options are limited to what ENS supports. On SocietyPress, your site is yours. Your data is yours. If you want to change something, you can.
Modernity
SocietyPress is built on current WordPress. That means mobile-friendly by default, responsive admin screens, modern payment processing (Stripe and PayPal out of the box), PWA support, real search, and all the usability that decades of web development have produced. Your members get a site that feels like 2026, not 2006.
What Comes Across
SocietyPress supports the standard ENS 73-field CSV export directly. Here's the honest breakdown of what transfers cleanly, what needs a bit of translation, and what simply doesn't exist on the other side.
Transfers cleanly
- Full name (prefix, first, preferred, middle, maiden, last, suffix)
- Membership status and join date
- Birth date
- Primary and seasonal addresses
- Phone, email, and website
- Email and directory privacy preferences
- Administrative notes
- ENS member record ID (preserved as your member number)
Needs a small translation
- Country — free-form text normalized to ISO codes
- Active flag — Yes/No converted to active/inactive/lapsed
- Joint members — you choose: keep combined, or split into two linked records
- Extra phone/email slots — moved into the member's notes
Doesn't come across
- ENS internal bookkeeping (login counts, file names, audit metadata)
- Member photos — filenames are in the CSV but the image files need a separate transfer
- Member passwords — members set a new one via "Forgot password" on first login
- Free-form skills/interests/education — combined into a single "About" note
A Realistic Timeline
Most societies complete a migration over a weekend — plus a calm follow-up week of verification. Here's what that looks like.
Export from ENS
Log into ENS admin, run the full member CSV export, and download the events calendar, newsletter PDFs, and library catalog if you have them. Sanity-check the member CSV opens cleanly in Excel or Numbers. About 30 minutes.
Install SocietyPress
Upload sp-installer.php to your new hosting
account, run the installer, and answer the setup wizard's
questions (society name, membership tiers, colors). About
45 minutes including the coffee break while WordPress
downloads.
Import members
Go to Members > Import, upload the ENS CSV, review the preview, and click Import. A 200-member society imports in about 30 seconds. A 2,000-member society takes about five minutes. Verify a handful of records look right.
Bring the rest
Events, library catalog, newsletter archive, photos, and records collections. Some of this is bulk import, some is drag-and-drop. Don't rush — members won't see the new site until you're ready.
Cut over
Point your domain at the new host. Email your members a heads-up a week ahead of time, and again the day of. Keep your ENS account active for at least 30 days as a safety net in case you need to re-export anything.
ENS-Specific Questions
Can I keep my current domain name?
Yes. Most societies keep their existing domain and simply point its DNS at the new host. Your domain registration is separate from ENS — you're not transferring the domain, just changing where it points. DNS changes take up to 48 hours to propagate fully.
What about member passwords?
Passwords don't (and shouldn't) migrate. They're hashed inside ENS's database and nobody — not ENS, not us — can read them. Every member sets a fresh password the first time they sign in, via the standard "Forgot password" link. This is a security feature, not a bug.
Can I run SocietyPress in parallel with ENS while I test?
Absolutely — this is the recommended approach. Set up SocietyPress on a subdomain or temporary URL, import your data, get everything looking right, then flip your main domain over when you're ready. Keep ENS running for at least 30 days after the cutover as insurance.
What if I get stuck mid-migration?
Every import step is reversible — Members > Import > Recent Imports has an "Undo this import" button that restores the previous state. If you hit something the undo won't fix, reach out through the community page and we'll help you work through it.
Ready to start?
The full step-by-step migration guide walks through every piece in detail — what to export, how to install, how to verify, what to tell your members. It's written for non-developers.