Blackthorn Events Reviews & Product Details

I like that Blackthorn Events integrates with Salesforce and utilizes the event wizard portion. The integration with Salesforce is scalable across our entire footprint, which is five states and 25 account managers. It helps us stay organized and utilize existing information like phone numbers and email addresses to maintain contacts. We use it as an iframe on our WordPress-based website, which means we no longer have to post events to multiple websites. We set them up in Salesforce, and they feed automatically to the iframe. The initial setup was very easy, with a very thorough onboarding session. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes Blackthorn Events is unable to match contacts with existing contacts in Salesforce due to alternate email addresses or nicknames, which causes duplicate records. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that Blackthorn Events is highly customizable to our needs. It integrates well with Zoom, which is important for our webinars. The fact that it is Salesforce native has been a huge plus, allowing us to automate the attendee verification process that we previously had to do manually. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It requires a fair bit of training for event creators on staff. The event creation process could be more intuitive. There are a fair number of steps when creating an event, and for infrequent event creators, it can be hard to remember everything that is required. They are already working on improving this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like most about Blackthorn Events is how seamlessly it integrates with Salesforce, allowing organizations to manage the entire event lifecycle within a single platform. The ability to handle registrations, payments, communications, and reporting all in one place significantly improves efficiency and data visibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One area I find challenging with Blackthorn Events is the learning curve, especially when configuring more advanced features like complex event templates or custom workflows. It can take time to fully understand all the available options and how they interact within Salesforce Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I appreciate the sheer flexibility of the custom registration process in Blackthorn Events. Being able to use visibility groups and conditional logic to tailor the experience for different types of members within the same event is a huge advantage. The 2026 release of the drag and drop event page designer has finally given us the ability to make high-end branded pages without needing to write custom CSS every single time, allowing us to maintain a professional look while our operations team handles the heavy lifting of data mapping behind the scenes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My biggest frustration is the stability of the package during updates. It feels like almost every time a new version is released, something small like a specific field mapping or a custom setting breaks or resets. Because there are so many moving parts, custom settings, and literal hundreds of fields to manage, it's incredibly easy to miss a minor configuration change that ends up causing registration issues for our users. I also find the event builder UI to be quite dense. If you aren't a Salesforce admin, the save and new process and the complex navigation can be very overwhelming for the average staff member. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that this works right inside our Salesforce system without needing extra apps. When we host a private showcase for Hit and Fit Gems, all the guest sign-ups and ticket payments go straight into our database. We even use the text messaging feature to send our buyers a quick reminder the day before the event. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Even though they say "no tricky integrations," getting the event registration page to match our exact brand colors took some trial and error. Also, setting up the automated text messages can be a little confusing at first if you aren't super familiar with how Salesforce rules work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the Salesforce native architecture of Blackthorn Events incredibly valuable. Unlike other tools that communicate with Salesforce through a messy API, Blackthorn is seamlessly integrated with Salesforce, allowing me to use standard flows and automation to trigger specific actions based on event behavior. I've set up automated thank you emails and task assignments for our sales team that activate the moment an attendee is checked in. The Zoom integration is also quite robust, syncing actual engagement data, which is crucial for our reporting. Plus, the Blackthorn mobile app for check-ins has been a game changer in reducing wait times at events. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If I'm being critical, the user interface for the back end event creation still feels a bit legacy Salesforce in some areas. It's a very powerful tool, but that power comes with a steep learning curve. There are a lot of required fields, related lists, and specific steps you have to follow to get an event live and properly mapped. For our staff members who only create an event once every few months, it's easy for them to forget a step which leads to us having to do a lot of internal troubleshooting. I know the team at Blackthorn is rolling out the new Events Planner UI to simplify this, but currently, still requires a fair bit of power user knowledge to navigate without making mistakes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like the visibility groups feature in Blackthorn Events. It's a massive win for us because it allows us to show different ticket types or event sessions to specific groups of people. For example, we can display an exclusive VIP executive dinner session only to our top-tier clients while keeping it hidden from the general public. This level of personalization makes our events feel much more tailored and exclusive without having to create multiple separate registration pages. Also, the new intelligence layer has been great for handling quick tasks like ticket transfers through a simple chat-style command instead of clicking through numerous Salesforce screens, which is a huge time saver. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My biggest gripe has always been the lack of a truly robust native drag and drop email builder. While they have basic transactional emails, we still find ourselves needing to jump into Marketing Cloud or Pardot to get the high-end branded outreach we want. I've heard they're working on improving this in the new web-based planet interface, but for now, the email styling inside Salesforce still feels a bit behind the times. Also, the initial setup can be quite daunting. If you aren't comfortable with Salesforce permission sets and page layouts, you're going to have a hard time getting this off the ground without a consultant. The setup was a heavy lift, to be honest. You can't just turn it on and expect it to work with your specific Salesforce configuration. Had to spend a few weeks in a sandbox environment mapping our customer fields and testing the automation flows for our wait lists. Their support documentation is very thorough. But it definitely requires a Salesforce admin who knows what they're doing. It's not plug and play. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find Blackthorn Events very useful for hosting both paid fundraisers and unpaid community education or legal events. It allows me to keep all of our attendee information in one place within Salesforce, which makes tracking deliverables much easier. I really like the ease of setting up events. I value the ability to store custom form information, set limits on event attendance, and create multiple types of event tickets. The setup process was quite easy, and I found the lots of documentation and the implementation team to be great. The documentation page was infinitely helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Salesforce is very obtuse in many ways, and some of what Blackthorn Events does is dictated by the limits of Salesforce it seems. It is quite expensive and we use it on somewhat of a small scale. The set-up road map they have created I found a bit useless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

For our organization, the integration with Salesforce makes all the difference. It allows us to see an individual's activity with coming to events and compare that to membership and other activities within our organization -- all in one place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We haven't seen one. Anytime there is a feature that we want, we reach out to the support team and we can find what we need. It's that ease of use and ease of implementation that set this product apart. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that Blackthorn Events centralizes financial data, event data, and customer data into one system. The built-in payment processing and automated tracking of transactions really reduce manual errors and improve efficiency. With these features, I can clearly see all transactions without needing to check each invoice individually. Its integration with Salesforce and other financial platforms enhances my ability to maintain financial records effortlessly, making it a very valuable tool for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There could be more improvement in the financial modeling and detailed accounting controls, tax customization and integration with specialized accounting software. The enhancement in reporting could be done like cost allocation and margin analysis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.