Verified User in Religious Institutions
UR
Verified User in Religious Institutions
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"It works but might not be your best solution"
3/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

It has many features including things like auto-login when donors click on a link. It's relatively easy to use. and was a stable platform. It did allow us to increase our online donation results. It has some good tools for reporting on email campaigns and their results, who donated to what projects based on the emails we sent them. They were able to work with our existing payment gateways which made setting up payments easy and did not cause us to incur any other fees with implantation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Integration with our internal systems was not great. It was sometimes difficult to get data out of the system and EFT recurring payments were inconsistent. The email creation tools are there but by and large they are more for people with some type of HTML background. We replaced their email functionality with ActOn and it is a much better "non-technical" platform for email generation/deployment.

We switched out to a software package that more completely integrates in with our internal software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
UN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Outdated aspects and an overcomplicated UI"
0/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

There’s probably more power under the hood than I’m aware of. I wouldn’t know because our org has our roles pretty well locked down and our consultants have pretty well taken over the global stylesheets and templates and make it difficult to work within the environment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

- The UI of the site is hard to sort through. Buttons are inconsistently or oddly labeled and often not in a predictable location. The design looks outdated and patched together: the teal-and-bright-green of the front page icons doesn't cohere with the bright blue logo, the dull navy navbar and the various color tints used throughout the site.

- Many of the features used for template development are outdated/unnecessary in modern web / email design (body tag attributes? in 2017?).

- The WYSIWYG editor used for text formatting in emails and web page builders is *several dozen versions* behind. Code appropriate to modern browsers is best done by hand, which makes it much less useful for non-coder users and means I have to go behind them and clean up their WYSIWYG code.

- According to our production manager, pulling reports and updating lists is a painful experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
IN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Quick time to market but difficult to build enterprise data solution around it."
2/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

The Luminate platform does allow you to get a donation form up and running very quickly. Platform manages credit card transactions and is a single solution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Getting data back out from the platform is very difficult. Although there are published APIs they don't seem to work well and it's difficult to get support. Although it may work well for a single entity, trying to get transactional data out to subsidiaries or different departments was extremely difficult. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
UN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Great CRM with Easy Customization "
4/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Luminate Online is a good tool for organizations that want to be able to customize the information they can see and query about their contacts/donors. It is easy to navigate and there are a lot of helpful resources if needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

One negative about this system is in regards to creating reports. It comes with standard reports but we often need to create our own in order to be able to pull all the needed fields. For example there is a standard report of donations and households but we also need it to pull fields from contacts so we made our own. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
UN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Our organization is transitioning to a different tool"
2/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Luminate Online meets very basic needs. They are able to accommodate some particular things to our organization, like including premiums on our donation forms or the ability to schedule to unpublish and redirect a donation form. I like that they have chat support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

So many things. Support is lacking. It is so complex to build in their system- for example, just creating a stationary needs to be done in a very specific complicated way. They rolled out a tweet your rep tool that needs so much work and fixing to be even usable. There are lots of little things that annoy me, too- like how it logs you out all the time, or how the WYZYWG breaks everything, or how you can only upload one image at a time. Their surveys are completely non-mobile responsive and require the most gigantic headache to build. Advocacy: there is no click to call and lots of delivery failures. Social sharing is not integrated. I could go on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness
AH
Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"A bit antiquated "
1/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

The multiple options. It has a lot to offer but some of the options have additional steps that waste time. For instance, a survey let's everyone view results at the bottom violating people's privacy. You have to create a page and then embed it there to make that disappear. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

It's not intuitive compared to other new, more up to date programs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
UN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Fantastic Website Management"
4/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Complete ease of use. You don't need to understand coding to easily use Luminate to manage your websites both for front end and back end interface. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Honestly there isn't anything I have disliked yet about the system. Sometimes creating reports can be more difficult than usual but it's typically easy enough to navigate through. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Research
AR
Verified User in Research
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Good capabilities but not for an average nonprofit user"
2/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

The possibilities are endless - but you have to know how to code and the platform is very sophisticated. While most desired capabilities can be achieved, you have to have an expert on hand to do the work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

It is way too complicated for an average nonprofit communications user. The events module is useless for ticketed events where you have to gather guest names - basic functionality that should be there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
AN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Not great, not horrible"
1/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Their customer support is actually pretty good and always easy to get in touch with. Their support agents are always friendly and courteous. Their API is helpful in configuring their donations forms above and beyond what their standard form can do, its also rather straightforward and easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Its rather expensive for what it is. I'm not a fan of how their email system is set up, it seems rather dated and clunky. Their CMS is decent and you can do a lot with it, but its rather expensive for what you get out of if. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
UN
Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"It has great potential"
3/5
What do you like best about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

The products and features are great for any organization that needs a tool that solves more than one problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Blackbaud Luminate Online?

It's archaic and needs to be modernized to meet today's demands of digital marketers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.