Building the perfect marketing and selling platform takes time. It also requires a careful integration of several tools and services, all of which need to work seamlessly together to give you the best results.
But what if you could have an all-in-one solution that ties those tools together, making it easier on you to build the perfect sales funnel, integrate a membership area, and build an online course library?
It turns out you can. That solution is called Rainmaker. In today’s post, I’ll take a look at everything the platform has to offer and discuss whether or not it’s the right choice for your business.
What Is The Rainmaker Platform (& Honest Review)?
Rainmaker positions itself as an all-in-one solution for digital marketers and business owners who want to focus more on creating content, rather than the technical aspects of managing a website.
It’s a modified version of WordPress, with a much simpler interface. Rainmaker comes with a small number of high-quality themes which were built on top of the great Genesis framework.
Furthermore, Rainmaker takes care of the hosting, updates, and security, so your only task is coming up with compelling content for your target audience.
With Rainmaker you can:
- Manage all of your content from a single location, including posts, podcasts, and videos
- Create a members area
- Create and sell online courses
- Add discussion forums
- Design landing pages for your products and ebooks
- See the most important statistics to help you monitor your conversion rates
- Optimize your content for SEO
- Run email marketing campaigns
With the main features out of the way, let’s examine some of the most important ones more in-depth.
Getting Started With Rainmaker
If you thought installing WordPress was easy, then you will be pleasantly surprised by Rainmaker’s quick setup. Rainmaker offers a risk-free 14-day free trial and signing up requires entering your name, email address, and a password.
Just a few clicks and you can create a site from scratch.
You can choose between a credit card and PayPal as the payment options, and although you are required to enter the payment information, you will not be billed until the 14 days are up.
Once you’ve entered the details, you can select the username and the password for your website and log in to your dashboard.
You can go through the Quick Tour of the dashboard to get familiar with the interface, or you can jump straight in and explore all the features Rainmaker has to offer.
Managing Content
Rainmaker’s main selling point is the focus on the ease of publishing content. In that aspect, it does its job rather well. You can publish regular blog posts just as you can with a regular WordPress website. But where Rainmaker shines is the ability to add additional content such as podcast episodes and media files without having to rely on third-party services.
Adding a new page
Your podcast episodes will automatically appear in iTunes after you have created your podcast and you can even add your books, new courses and lessons, portfolio items, landing pages, and much more.
You have content options aplenty.
Membership Area
Right off the bat, Rainmaker gives you the option to create a membership site. You can create a free content library accessible to members only, which requires you to connect your site to an email service provider such as MailChimp or Aweber. You can also use their RainMail platform which is free for up to 1000 subscribers.
The platform will initially create a free members group as well as a free product, so all you need to do is edit the information and replace it with your own.
Alternatively, you can create a paid membership website with various member groups and charge for the access. For this, you will also need to set up your payment gateway. Currently, Rainmaker supports PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
Learning Management System
It comes equipped with an LMS.
Creating and selling online courses with Rainmaker is rather straightforward. Clicking on LMS in the content management section will allow you to quickly add a new course, a new module, or a new lesson.
It’s easy to create new courses.
You can even bulk-create the LMS items so that the entire course is generated for you and all you have to do is add content.
Email Campaigns
Rainmaker offers a range of tools to manage your email list straight from your dashboard. You can opt for their RainMail platform or connect your website with other email marketing service providers such as MailChimp, Aweber, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, InfusionSoft, and Sumome.
Once you’ve connected your provider or enabled RainMail, you can then send regular broadcast emails as well as autoresponders. Additionally, you can configure automation rules which allow you to better segment your list and send more targeted content.
Of course, you can build opt-in forms through the Form section in the Content management area and add opt-in forms to any of your widgets in the Design section.
Customization Options
When it comes to customization options, the platform comes with 30+ pre-installed themes, all of which are Genesis child themes.
You do have some control over the built-in themes.
The customization options are straightforward and pretty standard to what you’d typically find in a Genesis child theme. You can change the colors, upload your favicon and header image, and depending on your chosen theme, customize the background image or the front page widget areas.
Make small design tweaks as you see fit.
There is also an option to enter your custom CSS if you are familiar with it and want to add a little more flair to your website.
Other Notable Features
Is Rainmaker the right choice for your website? Before making your final decision, here are a few other points to keep in mind.
Ease of Use
In a nutshell, the platform is a simplified WordPress experience. You can tell by the look of the dashboard that the main parts of your website are readily available through the sidebar on the left which has been significantly reduced and divided into sections for content, design, conversion, results, and traffic.
The settings for each of these sections can be accessed through the cogwheel in the admin bar on the left, and you can add new content, and edit and manage existing content through the top bar.
The content editor looks very much the same as the one in WordPress, and the analytics section presents the most important stats without causing overwhelm like Google Analytics.
Another part where Rainmaker shines is the ease of creating A/B tests. The platform makes creating different variations of your pages a breeze so you should have no problems finding out which is the best version.
Built-in A/B testing makes improving content easier.
Pricing
Rainmaker offers a monthly payment plan for $145 or a yearly payment plan billed at $125/month.
Pros and Cons
At first glance, Rainmaker has a lot going for it. It truly does offer an all-in-one solution for anyone focused on digital marketing and selling courses or other digital products. The platform is easy to use, makes content creation a breeze, and best of all, it removes the need to ever deal with the technical aspects of managing a website.
However, the all-in-one solution does fall short in some areas. You cannot install any third-party plugins, and the customization options are rather limited if you come from a WordPress environment.
There is also no way to automatically pause and restart a subscription for your subscribers. Finally, you cannot set up an email address through Rainmaker, which means you will have to use a third-party service such as Google Apps or another email hosting solution.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, Rainmaker is an excellent choice for anyone who doesn’t want to spend too much time on the design and management of their website, but rather, wants to focus on producing content.
Given its pricing, it might be a little steep for those on a limited budget. Similarly, if you sell physical products, then at the moment, Rainmaker is not the platform for you. Another case where Rainmaker might fall short is if you absolutely must have complete control of your website’s appearance and files.
In any case, we highly recommend you take the platform for a spin and sign up for the 14-day free trial. That way, you will be able to fully experience all the features and determine whether or not Rainmaker is the right choice for you.
We hope you found our RainMaker platform review useful. You may want to see our comparison of other membership plugins for WordPress.
Mike Hale says
January 20, 2017 at 1:49 amThanks for the great review! I just wanted to point out that you can also use a custom theme as long it’s a Genesis theme, but there are a few restrictions and an approval process.