I Built a Free Membership Application Form Generator (Because WildApricot Charges $69/Month)

As a volunteer HOA treasurer, you know the pain. Every year, new homeowners fill out membership applications. You need a professional form, you need to collect it, and you need to archive it.

So you sign up for WildApricot. It looks great. You configure your membership types. You create your application form.

Then you see the price: $69/month. For an application form.

For an HOA that collects maybe 10-20 applications per year? That's $828 a year. For a form.

I closed the tab. Opened a text editor. Built something better that afternoon.

The Problem

Services like WildApricot, MemberSpot, and Memberful follow the same playbook:

1. Let you set up your membership site for free (engaging, addictive)
2. Put your membership data on their platform (lock-in begins)
3. Demand $29–69/month for basic features like application forms (rage quit)
4. Make it hard to export your data (more lock-in)

It's a subscription trap disguised as a membership management tool. And it preys on volunteer treasurers, HOA board members, and club managers who just need to collect applications a few times a year — and can't justify recurring fees.

What I Built

Membership Application Form Generator — a completely free, zero-signup, browser-based membership application form builder.

• No account. Open the page, fill in the form, download the PDF.
• No watermark. Clean, professional application forms instantly.
• No payment. Ever. Not a "freemium" model, not a trial, just free.
• No data collection. Everything runs in your browser. Applicant data never touches a server.
• Works offline. Once loaded, the page works without internet.

Features

• Standard Application Mode — Individual membership forms with applicant details, contact info, and agreement checkboxes
• Family Application Mode — Collect information for entire households in one form
• Instant PDF Export — Download print-ready PDF application forms in seconds
• Live Preview — See your application form update in real-time as you fill it in
• Professional Design — Clean, formal layout that looks official — no design skills needed
• Privacy First — 100% client-side processing. Your applicant data never leaves your browser.

Why It Matters

HOA treasurers, club managers, association boards — we're all volunteers doing our best with limited budgets. A membership application form shouldn't be a cash grab. It should be a utility — like a calculator or a ruler.

The fact that this exists at all is kind of wild. You can fill out a professional membership application form, download it as a PDF, and never pay a cent. No upsell. No "upgrade to premium." Just... done.

The Tech

• Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS — no framework needed
• PDF Generation: pdf-lib (browser-based, no server required)
• Hosting: Static files on nginx, Python simple HTTP server
• Deploy: One rsync, done

The whole thing is under 400 lines of code. That's it.

Open Source

It's all on GitHub — fork it, improve it, run it yourself. If you're a volunteer treasurer who's ever been frustrated by paywalled utilities, go build something better. It's faster than you think.

Try it: tools.jackgreen.top/company-has/

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Built because someone should have done this already. Now it exists.