v1.0.19 Released

Everything your society needs.
Nothing it doesn't.

The only open-source membership platform purposefully built for genealogical and historical societies. Manage members, events, and family trees in one place.

14 Feature Modules
21 Page Builder Widgets
5 Child Themes Included
Download Now Installation Guide

Built for Preservationists

SocietyPress was created to solve the specific problems of local history groups. Stop wrestling with generic plugins and start using tools designed for your mission.

Members & Dues

Track individuals and organizations, manage tiers, automate renewals, and export rosters.

Event Engine

Publish meetings, workshops, and conferences with categories, locations, and date ranges.

Publications

Distribute newsletters, journals, and research bulletins to members via the page builder.

Genealogy

Genealogical record collections, GENRECORD and GEDCOM import/export, surname research databases, and member privacy controls.

Fundraising

Track donations, run campaigns, and generate contribution reports for your board and donors.

Site Settings

Customize colors, fonts, and branding from a visual design panel. No code required.

Core Feature

Comprehensive Member Management

Move beyond spreadsheets. Track active memberships, automate renewal reminders via email, and export custom rosters for your print journal. The system handles grace periods and tiered membership levels automatically.

  • Automated renewal email sequences
  • Print-ready PDF roster generation
  • Family & individual membership tiers
  • Individual & organizational member types
  • CSV import with smart duplicate detection
Did you know? SocietyPress supports both individual and organizational members in the same database. Organizations are auto-detected during CSV import based on the name field, so migrating from your existing spreadsheet takes minutes, not hours.
SocietyPress member management interface showing a list of members with names, emails, phone numbers, plans, and statuses
Core Feature
SocietyPress event management showing upcoming meetings, workshops, cemetery walks, and book sales with categories, locations, and registration counts

Event Engine & Calendar

Your society runs on events — monthly meetings, guest lectures, cemetery walks, research workshops. SocietyPress gives you a purpose-built event system with categories, date ranges, locations, and a public-facing calendar your members can actually find.

  • Event categories with color coding
  • Multi-day and recurring event support
  • Location details with map-ready addresses
  • Admin list table with bulk management
Built for real societies Most event plugins are designed for conferences or ticketed shows. SocietyPress events are designed for the way genealogical societies actually work — recurring monthly meetings, free public lectures, and members-only workshops.
Specialized Tool

Genealogical Records & Research Tools

Publish your society's transcribed record collections — cemetery indexes, census extractions, marriage registers, obituary abstracts — and make them searchable by the public or members only. Members can register the surnames they're researching so visiting researchers can find connections.

  • GENRECORD 1.0 import & export — the new open standard for sharing genealogical source records between societies, archives, and software. SocietyPress is the first platform to support it natively.
  • GEDCOM 5.5 and 7.0 import & export for family tree data
  • Flexible record collections with custom fields per type
  • Full-text search across all collections
  • Public surname research database with county, state, and date range
  • Members-only directory with per-field privacy controls
Two Standards, One Platform GENRECORD handles source records — the cemetery transcriptions, marriage indexes, and census extracts that societies spend years creating. GEDCOM handles family trees — individuals, families, relationships. SocietyPress supports both, so your society's data is portable no matter what form it takes.
SocietyPress record collections showing cemetery indexes, census transcriptions, military records, church records, and naturalization records with record counts and export buttons
Built-In Tool
SocietyPress page builder showing a hero slider widget with overlay text controls, image selection, and slide configuration

Page Builder & Design System

Every page on your site is built with a drag-and-drop widget system that doesn't require any coding knowledge. Add text blocks, image galleries, event listings, member directories, and more — all from the admin panel. Your site's colors, fonts, and sizing are controlled from a centralized design panel with live preview.

  • 21 widget types (text, image, events, directory, and more)
  • 7 color pickers for full palette control
  • Font, size, and width controls per section
  • Live preview iframe — see changes before publishing
No themes to buy, no code to write Your society's administrator controls the entire look and feel of the site from one settings page. Change your primary color, update your font, adjust content width — it all updates instantly across every page.

Always Free & Open Source

I built SocietyPress because I was watching small historical societies struggling to pay hundreds of dollars a year for SaaS platforms that were overkill for their needs. Our history belongs to everyone, and the tools to preserve it should be accessible.

This project is released under the GPLv2 license. It is free to download, free to modify, and free to use forever. There are no hidden fees or "Pro" versions.

If this software helps your organization, please consider supporting continued development.

Support the Project

Ready to modernize your society?

Get started today with our comprehensive documentation. Download the software and follow our step-by-step self-installation guide.

Download Free v1.0.19 View Installation Guide