Bonterra Salsa vs. DonorPerfect

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

I love that I can integrate with Donor Search to learn about a person's past giving history to learn more about their interests. DonorPerfect also lets us upload a photo of our donors so we can easily identify them when they visit us or Attend a function. I wish the photo upload offered a larger image and multiple images, some donors send me pics of their visits and pets and it would be great to also store those right in their DP account.

• 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

• Reports are clean and fairly simple to pull, as long as you're trained in how to use the filters. Especially coming from experience using a database where we had to write codes to pull reports, Donor perfect's report system is incredibly simple.
• DonorPerfect is SO user-friendly and simple to find the information you need. I believe anyone can easily learn how to use it.
• It's so simple to customize your DonorPerfect system. Screen Designer is one of my favorite parts. I have no background in databases, but I can create fields, calculations, set alerts for our philanthropy officers when certain gifts come in, and customize how the screens look. You can make so many adjustments in your DonorPerfect system to meet the needs of your organization.
• The staff listen to your needs! The community allows you to make a suggestion for how DonorPerfect can be improved. If your idea gets enough votes, they make it happen. The support team is also probably the best I've ever seen. Each person is so knowledgeable, personable, and helpful.

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

• DonorPerfect lacks good reporting functionality. Our staff often have to export data to CSV or use other reporting tools so we end up with a lot of data outside
• DonorPerfect doesn't really do a good job of tracking the full donor relationship. It needs to have better CRM functionality. Our donor relations staff often resort to third party tools to track these things.
• DonorPerfect has an API for integrations but it is very poorly implemented and slow.
• We have a lot of security concerns about DonorPerfect. These stem from our experiences using their API and observing how it is implemented, but also through our conversations directly with the company. They refused to provide security compliance details during a routine vendor risk audit from a reputable security audit vendor that we engaged to evaluate all of our vendors.

Incentivized

It suits all of our needs.

Incentivized

It is by far the most cost-effective

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The software is very easy to use and to figure out. Someone using it for the first time would be able to navigate through it easily.

Incentivized

It's always up when we need it. There are some errors that happen and are not reproducible and cannot be resolved. But [they are] very few and none that cause disruption for the organization.

Incentivized

DonorPerfect is as reliable as your internet connection. It is a cloud based application and therefore you cannot pinpoint where the bottleneck is should you have one. But for the most part the app runs quickly.

Incentivized

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

Support is so easy. We use chat most often - as we can get someone quickly. The support folks know the product and get answers quickly. If they need to escalate an issue, they do so quickly. The training is great and easily accessible. You can take classes over and over until you completely understand concepts

I was able to utilize the support team to train me in areas where I could not figure out how to use the application.

Incentivized

didn't get all of our questions answered in the first go 'round

Incentivized

DonorPerfect provides an extremely easy to use importing tool and the support team was awesome. You don't have to do it in house; for a reasonable fee you can get it done by them.

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

Although DonorSnap was less expensive, it did not provide the same ease of use. I purchased DonorSnap because of the price and very quickly realized I made a mistake. We used it less than 6 months before I converted to DonorPerfect. Not all donor management systems are the same... you get what you pay for!

Incentivized

[There have been] only two outages since we have started using it and they were extremely information proactive. This should scale easily based on your internet connection.

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

• I can't imagine doing my job on a daily basis without DonorPerfect, so the ROI is tremendous for me and my organization. Not only does it store our records and data succinctly, it is a one-stop shop for staying organized and on-task with the personal Dashboard feature, recording data (no matter how obscure), and generating reports.
• DonorPerfect is a huge time-saver for me, as it allows me to schedule tasks for myself and set specific reminders related to donors that populate on my daily Dashboard. I don't have to leave DonorPerfect, open up a calendar program, and duplicate my entry of data or tasks or reminders. I can do it all within each donor's record without leaving DonorPerfect or having to navigate elsewhere on my PC.