Bloomerang CRM vs. Bonterra Salsa

I can't speak to Bloomerang's functionality for a very large organization, but for a small-to-midsize non-profit, I don't know what else you'd need! Need to register volunteers, or sell tickets, or generate e- or print communications, or pull donor data? Bloomerang does it. Bloomerang is my third CRM tool in my current organization and it is vastly superior in almost every way to the others that came before.

Incentivized

As I mentioned before, I was the decision maker for Salsa CRM. I worked in software prior to moving to nonprofit. I reviewed several software platforms. Salsa CRM was the most intuitive and met my needs as a whole.

Incentivized

• Website integration for online donations is awesome! It makes it so much easier to raise money online. We've tripled the amount of money we raise online, mainly because of this and the ability to send emails through the system.
• Emails are tracked directly in a donor's record, so we can see instantly their engagement with our content.
• Integration with DonorSearch is awesome and seems to be improving often.
• They listen to their customers' needs. If enough customers request a feature, they'll get it for us. We feel like the development of this software is always happening and it's a partnership, rather than a transaction.

Incentivized

• Managing donations - Salsa helps keep track of the donations coming in whether they are a one-time donation or a series of donations.
• Automatic email series (set it up once and it will run without you once you initiate the trigger point.)
• This software also allows you to set up roles within the company for controlling access to things like donations and data entry.

Incentivized

• Some of the searches did not bring up the expected results. It would be good to see the logic be a little more "fuzzy".
• More pre-set reports would be helpful for small organizations who do not understand the logic behind how to get the results they are seeking.
• An ability to just page through donor records would be nice. Sometimes you just want to browse the data to get inspired.

Incentivized

• With the constant updates comes challenges. Often times, with an update comes several small bugs that Salsa has to work to fix.
• I believe their customer support works from home so it is challenging to get a concrete answer on the first phone call. It often takes several follow ups.
• The implementation was a bit rocky but customer service worked with us a lot and we got through it! We were moving from google drive and several other platforms for ticket sales, emails, etc. so we didn't have any experience with this. It eventually all worked out and the Salsa team really stepped up to accommodate our needs.

Incentivized

#1 - I am very happy with the product and support so far.
#2 - With significant data migration costs, I wouldn't even consider another option for at least 3 years no matter how much better it might be.

Incentivized

It suits all of our needs.

Incentivized

Data and settings are very customizable to fit the needs of our organization. We are able to not only keep track of donations, but also other interactions we may have with a constituent. Support is extremely helpful when issues arise.

Incentivized

You do not have to be a tech-savvy person to be able to use the CRM. Reporting is easy to do.

Incentivized

Any time i had a problem or question it has been easy to find an answer or tutorial. When I cannot find an answer, it is easy to email or live chat with support and they resolve my problems very quickly.

Their tech support is very good and I am very pleased with it. They speak in non-techie lingo for my non-techie staff just as easily as they speak techie to me (a techie). I appreciate their quick turn around in time to answer our questions and the follow up to make sure their answer(s) helped.

Incentivized

Salesforce is infinitely customizable, but Bloomerang is pretty straightforward and works out of the box. It is simple enough that folks who are not familiar with the robust features of something like Salesforce can hit the ground running. Even as it is simple it is powerful as far as showing visuals that can help fundraising staff more clearly understand where the organization is and what donors they can next target for upcoming campaigns.

Incentivized

Classy is about the same cost per month. Classy was really good at peer-to-peer and crowdfunding. Salsa encompasses many more facets of a nonprofit. With Classy, we also had to have an email company and manage our supporters in a different program. Now, we do all three of those things together. Although Mailchimp is pretty straight forward and nice to use, I prefer the email capabilities of Salsa. I think this is because Mailchimp didn't have direct access to all the donor information and we had to use Zapier to communicate between our donor information and Mailchimp. Now, Salsa has some clever tools that allow you to both automate and manually send out emails.

Incentivized

• Because my organization has been using Bloomerang for only one year, we haven't yet studied what impact it has had on our ROI. We have, however, noted that we are able to more efficiently and more rapidly communicate with constituents now than we were able to before we had Bloomerang. We can quickly and efficiently generate acknowledgements and tax receipts - and do so - better than we ever did before.

Incentivized

• Upon using Salsa, our financial records are much easier to review and compare over time
• Salsa allows Foundation staff to quickly look up donor records and identify what steps need to be taken to cultivate and steward them better

Incentivized