AEC is a complex piece of subscription software that does quite a lot out of the box, however the developers need to be very clear that there is no support if you don't pay for it.

You can categorize subscription plans into groups, you can restrict subscriptions so that a user must be in a specific state in order to purchase a plan, and the most powerful feature in my mind Micro Integrations - allows you to interact with other software in your Joomla installation when someone purchases a plan, when a plan is nearing expiration, or when it expires.

The major concern I have with the program is it's support model.

The software is free.

Support for the software will cost you money. The Basic Membership Plan is currently $160+ USD a year, though it's available in 3 month increments for $45 as well.

There is a forum where you can commiserate with other forum members who are looking for help, however there is no active presence on the forum by any support staff (last post from a support person was currently 24 days ago - and that was not an answer to a question).

The forum is virtually worthless - as the hundreds of unanswered posts will confirm. It does not appear you can even use the forum for posting bug reports, since it does not appear to be monitored.

Paid support may be better (must be better?) but why the antagonistic, hostage-support model?

I believe that customers would be much happier with the program if it honestly represented itself as a commercial application - though when you read through the other reviews here the developer stands firm by the position that he does not sell software - however he clearly sells support.

There are video tutorials - oh, but did I forget to say you can't view them unless you pay for support.

There is online documentation - however it's out of date and incomplete, leaving out virtually all of the advanced features of the current release.

There is a Quickstart guide and some good contextual help, however I did find this statement in the guide rather comical:

"[we have] A support forum that you can use to find problems that have been discussed before, or to ask new questions. We normally answer within 6 hours."

I will likely pay for support simply because I think that AEC is currently very close to what I need, however I am also going to review other commercial solutions since it's obvious that AEC will not be able to support my needs without me paying for support - like I would have to do with any other commercial application - and the costs are not trivial.

I have been using JUGA for 11 months now on a membership website, and had my first need for support this week when I upgraded to the newest version on my test site.

A change in the way JUGA looked at external links meant my on-site, external links were no longer visible on my menus.

The JUGA staff quickly and professionally isolated my problem and provided a fix that allowed me to upgrade my production site quickly and painlessly.

JUGA has met all of my requirements for group access control on a membership site for the last year - and I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with the Dioscouri developers.

I have recently purchased another Dioscouri module - in a large part because of the success I've had with JUGA doing what it claims in an easy to understand and implement manner.

A great module, from a great company.

So far so good with the beta 1.1.0 (patch 1) version!

I have this integrated with vBulletin and Moodle. Both are working great in test environments and will move to production on the beta by next weekend if we don't run into any show stoppers.

The installation was painless. The "upgrade version" button in the component control panel made the installation of the first patch even less painless.

Top quality work and I'm off to make a donation now.

I've installed this in three different sites so far, and each have their own specific application needs, look and feel.

Sobi2 has been just the ticket for each one!

Easy to extend and customize, the template parser allows you to build your own views from scratch if you need to - however the default presentation makes it easy to get online fast and still have a professional site.

I tied the last implementation to JUGA and AEC for subscription access control for adding entries and unpublishing entries on subscription expiration.

Perfect!

Support from the author and his community forum is outstanding!

Even though this is not 100% Joomla 1.5 compliant, it's a keeper!