Bloomerang

"Excellent for Most Non-Profits"

Opmerkingen: At a prior non-profit, I switched them from Raiser's Edge (desktop) to Bloomerang. I gained a ton of features and saved quite a bit. The conversion was painless. I've only had to contact support a few times and they have always been extremely helpful.
In my current role, I set them up with Bloomerang as their first database.
I have also recommended it on multiple occasions.

Pluspunten: Bloomerang is intuitive and easy to use.
Creating and reporting with custom field has never been easier and really allows you to customize it to your needs rather than using a standard field for something else.
The ability to create embedded forms is a lifesaver.
The integrated email capabilities save me from having to purchase another solution like Constant Contact. Plus, these interactions are automatically recorded in the donor/prospects data file.
The integrated DonorSearch option is convenient, useful and cost-effective.

Minpunten: If my organization ran a ton of events, I'm not sure this would be my optimal solution.
Currently, there is only one level of access - so I can't let a Board Member in to look around because any accidental changes they make would be permanent. I know that Bloomerang is working on this though.

"Very Happy"

Opmerkingen: My experience with Bloomerang has been very positive.

Pluspunten: I feel Bloomerang is a good donor management software and works very great the the size of our organization. It is easy to navigate and the customer support is timely and helpful. They are continuously improving the software.

Minpunten: My biggest negative is not really the software but my ability to keep up with the changes/improvements. For example we have the system for several years and built a lot of our emails using templates that were donor concentric at that time. When you need an email you just copy them and adjust the content for the new email. What I found during the pandemic is the current new templates give a fresh look. I had time to rebuild some of this communication.

"Limited Options and Poor Customer Support"

Pluspunten: We sought this vendor because of its simple platform and reduced cost.

Minpunten: There are so many negative experiences, it's hard to identify what I liked least. 1. Revolving door customer support. Sales was very attentive, but after we purchased, we had difficulty getting ahold of our customer support. At one point she said she only worked 2 days a week, and then she called from a noisy street. Customer support didn't know about integrations with other products or setting the platform for automation, so it took weeks to allow her to put me in contact with engineering. He answered in a helpful email that took 5 minutes. Constant Contact support is much better than this - it doesn't matter to me who I get on the phone if they are knowledgeable and nice. Other platforms definitely have their support personnel better trained to answer questions. 2. Inadequate documentation for support - Videos, no Texts. As is common I think for startup companies, Bloomerang filmed short videos, but neglected proper text documentation. Our donation director would watch videos, then have trouble finding appropriate parts if she had any questions. Good tutorial documentation has text (that can be searched) and also screenshots to help people know what to do. 3. Poor default donation forms - the donation forms were ugly and not what someone would expect for a donation software. We had to go with MailChimp anyway and so there was the added cost. Bloomerang is definitely not a good option for emailing your list (others have mentioned). 4. Poor search of the donation database. If you wanted to select a list by a certain demographic - like donors of a certain amount or from a different state and some other feature and then email them, then Bloomerang couldn't do it. Although they will take some customization of the donor entry, we often found that adding different client details couldn't be searched. What is the point of adding more details if you can't find them later? We had used another platform with better search capabilities. 5. They do not search for duplicates or common typographical errors. As a result, you may be charged for a much higher number of people that are not truly in your database. Other mail lists like Constant Contact search for duplicates and also make corrections in email addresses (like a missed period between gmail and com). Nothing like that in Bloomerang. 6. They do not stand by their product. There is no customer satisfaction guarantee. Although we stated a desire to cancel the product entirely after the first year and asked the rep not to process our direct deposit, she did it anyway. Bloomerang told me that their policy is not to refund any money even though we will not be using their product at all. I was not contesting the 1 year that we already paid into, what I didn't want to do was pay for the future year because we would not use it because it had so many missing needs. Just using an integration with Mail Chimp would serve us better than Bloomerang. The communication piece with Bloomerang is extremely weak.

"Love it!!!"

Opmerkingen: I switched to Bloomerang after being with another database system for a little more than a year. I have never looked back and have recommended Bloomerang to so many other nonprofits in my area. I have never had a problem that couldn't be figured out or worked around.

Pluspunten: The clean look, ease of use and ever-updating features are wonderful. The additional trainings on many topics related to non-profits are a bonus. I love that I never have to encounter the word "query" when running reports! I also appreciate that many features are automatically included so I don't feel "nickel and dimed" every time I need to integrate new features.

Minpunten: I wish there was an easy "shopping cart" feature that would integrate with my website so I could easily sell tickets to events without having to manually each purchase.

"Bloomerang for Small Shops"

Opmerkingen: In a word, great. We really appreciate their graduated approach for pricing. They have a set rate for certain number of records and don't raise the price until the organization increases its donor numbers, thus same price until organization is better able to pay for increased services. They seem to be open to customer feedback about additional features that would improve the product as they do make upgrades.

Pluspunten: Moving from FileMaker Pro to Bloomerang.

Minpunten: We just figured out that their server can't handle a HUGE increase in users as what we experienced with Giving Tuesday related to the COVID-19 pandemic.