Blackbaud Online Express vs. FrontStream Panorama

For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.

Incentivized

I am sure that FrontStream Panorama is well suited to process online donations. It did do that for us. But, that is about all it did. None of this information was ever successfully implemented to be pushed to Salesforce, which led to me manually entering a year's worth of data for our online gifts. I would not recommend this platform if your organization uses Salesforce to manage donor data.

Incentivized

• Automatically matches the donor to a constituent in the database, if there is one, and gives you the opportunity to search if a match isn't found.
• If gift is in honor or memory of someone, it matches the tribute in the database, if it already exists. If not, you are able to easily create a new one.
• Transaction reports are easily accessible on the Blackbaud Merchant Services site.

Incentivized

• In the past they have supported this event well. The product functioned as advertised until this year.

• Access via Blackbaud's web portal, and to Citrix, is clumsy and slow.
• User creation and management is also clumsy, slow, and error-prone.
• Integration with Raiser's Edge is a pro, but it also can make using Online Express more complicated than necessary for users just looking for a simple email marketing tool.

Incentivized

• To begin, the customer service at FrontStream Panorama is virtually nonexistent. After our implementation and connection to Salesforce we were having a lot of major issues. Unfortunately, it felt like our account manager and the general customer service at FrontStream Panorama did not care. It came to the point where our Chief of Development had to reach out to a higher executive in the company because 6 months into switching to their platform nothing was functional and no one was making any attempt to solve the problem.
• That leads me to my next point in that the Salesforce connection does not work. They spent close to a year "trying" to figure out why none of our data was being pushed from FrontStream Panorama to Salesforce and they continuously blamed Salesforce despite them assuring us that there were no issues on their end and despite it working seamlessly with our new platform. I don't believe they have the capacity to support these issues.
• For our Gala, we decided to use their Bidding for Good platform as an add-on to selling tickets for the event. Come the day of, the platform did not work. We were not able to sign in our guest electronically or collect their credit card information. Luckily I had paper copies of our guest list and table arrangements because if not it would have been a total disaster. It was so bad that we ended up getting a 100% refund.
• Lastly, when we switched over to FrontStream Panorama one of the key selling points was how you could customize almost everything in your page. However, it is almost impossible to do so unless you have a great understanding of code. This was not mentioned at all and led to a lot of frustration on behalf of our small team.

Incentivized

Customer service for all of Blackbaud's products has really lacked over the years. They are starting to get better in the last year but it can very frustrating. The online knowledge base community is the best resource for information. At times it can take hours for a customer sect even rep to help with questions or problems which is not at all ideal in this industry.

Incentivized

They do not seem to care about the problems of their customers. They do not return phone calls. They do not provide the updates on their support page that they promised. They have had two weeks to repair the basic functionality of their system and they have been unable to do so. This is a complete failure as far as I am concerned.

Blackbaud's Online Express is MUCH easier to use than NetCommunity. Having the ability to "drop" donation forms directly into our existing website is a big improvement over NetCommunity's web pages. Only wish Online Express offered the ability to track constituents sign up for different email communications rather than just one option.

Incentivized

Originally they provided a reliable product. I am not sure what has happened to their service.

• Regardless of project or initiative, all fund-raising efforts are managed in one place for the entire organization.
• Donor management is concise, thorough, and systematic - no individual or organization is overlooked.
• Snapshot reporting of successful grant applications and fund-raising are readily available.

Incentivized

• Saves staff time
• Increases donor participation

Incentivized