JS

Jennifer S.

Internet Presence Manager

Political Organization

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

7/4/2016

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"CiviCRM for web sites"

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

I love that I can create forms for people to sign up (like to volunteer for an organization), can have both free and paid events, can do mass email without extra costs, and can even do memberships (free and paid). If you have an organization where you have employees/volunteers contacting people, you can even keep track of all of that on their record; This allows the next person to know who spoke with them last, what was discussed, if you missed them and left a message, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

Sometimes upgrading can be difficult and you end up having to start with a fresh database and import in all your SQL. I also run into issues sometimes and find it difficult to get support for it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

I highly recommend this product. It is free to use, although you might need a web designer to help you get it set up and ready to be used. I use it with Drupal, but you can also use it with other CMS systems like WordPress. Once set up, your only costs would be the web server where it is hosted and when you occasionally need a webmaster to make changes, do updates, etc. This could mean savings of hundreds - or thousands - a year when compared to paid services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use it for a number of tasks:

For non-profits and political groups, we collect volunteer information, take online donations, have sign-ups for lawn signs and to endorse the candidate, have sign-ups for free and paid events, and send out bulk email. The ability to do events is great, as you can set up your fundraisers on there and then take money via Paypal, Authorize.net, etc. Many non-profits do their membership programs through CiviCRM as well.

For businesses, it's often times used for paid events, memberships, and bulk email. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MF

Markus J.P. F.

Membership and Communications Coordinator

International Affairs

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

9/17/2015

"Excellent open-source alternative for both small and larger organizations"

4.5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

The combination of a user friendly interface with complete customizability is unrivalled. The community is very supportive and there is a growing network of very competent developers to engage when needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

With the wide range of organizations using the product, there is always a considerable risk that development focuses in areas that are not of use to your particular organization. This also means that while it provides a broad range of functionality, it is often not able to compete with other specialized products in each and every area (but you of course often have the possibility to integrate the CRM with external service providers) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

Just because it is open source does not mean it is free - neither to develop nor to deploy.

On the deployment side, ensure that you factor in enough working hours to set it up (or employ one of the many competent consultants specializing in this) as well as maintain it.

On the development side, it is crucial that you join the membership program - fees are low, and apart from supporting the development you gain a range of benefits. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

A successful integration between CRM and CMS, as well as LMS, has been possible relatively painlessly without a too large investment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JM

Joe M.

President

Internet

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/9/2015

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"CiviCRM is great for non-profits, associations, and advocacy groups"

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is a robust, mature, stable product for non-profits of all sizes, with a predictable release cycle for new features. It is very feature rich especially in the areas of fundraising/development, event registrations, memberships, grant administration, online petitions, phone surveys, and bulk email. There is an extensive library of extensions that can be installed like WordPress plugins from inside CiviCRM, and it integrates with major accounting packages like QuickBooks. And it works great with WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! There is a strong eco-system of providers who can customize the product since it is open source. It works well in multi-lingual and non-English installations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

With all the power and flexibility of a system built for enterprise needs, it can be a bit complex to configure when first starting out. Thankfully there is a convenient checklist and sensible defaults. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

Get a good consultant to help with implementation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

JMA Consulting has helped migrate $100M annual giving to CiviCRM as well as consolidated the use of EventBrite, Constant Contact, and a third party donation portal for a charity with a single staff person.

CiviCRM provides a full suite of functionality for membership associations and advocacy campaigns. JMA Consulting has special expertise in integrating it with accounting systems; and developing extensions for grants administration, email delivery through MailChimp's Mandrill service, and integration with the phone system for robo-calls, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

PH

Phil H.

Corrosion Engineer

Utilities

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

8/6/2015

"CRM for Camp Cooinda Inc. for a decade"

4.5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

Open-source, low cost, community focused. There is nothing else that comes close to providing such a well developed solution for community, not-for-profit organisations like ours. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

Wish I had more time to implement more of the features and polish up our use of this system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

Ensure you select a hosting environment/provider that can fulfill all the requirements specified by CiviCRM. It's advisable to opt for a host that specializes in CiviCRM to ensure they will consistently meet its needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have been using CiviCRM as our CRM for a decade but are only now modernizing our processes to online applications for our summer camps. CiviCRM has come a long way in the time we have been using it and is well matched to our needs, including a lot of capability that we have not implemented yet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NP

Nathan P.

President, Account Executive

Design

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/4/2015

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"The cost benefit of using CiviCRM becomes very apparent for large organizations."

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is built from the ground up for nonprofits. It handles fundraising, event management, case management, marketing automation and advocacy campaigns effortlessly, right out of the box.

This is all great but perhaps the best feature of all is that it integrates tightly with your website if you're using WordPress or Drupal as your website CMS platform. There are some great integration tools for front end elements. In WordPress there is an integration available for Gravity Forms and in Drupal there is an integration for Webforms.

Because CiviCRM is open source and has a pretty well documented API it is relatively easy for a developer to integrate it with many other software tools. This makes it a real winner for organizations who need to customize a solution to meet their specific needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is not a SAAS solution and it does require some assistance to setup. However, on average, an organization with 100 users would save around $490,000 over 5 years compared to a similar solution from Salesforce so that initial setup cost is pretty quickly offset by the fact that there are no ongoing licensing costs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

Spend the time to interview and find the right implementation partner. Ask to speak with their clients to learn how they work with their clients. Geographic proximity isn't necessarily a good reason to pick a partner to help you with your CiviCRM implementation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

We implemented the CiviCRM Case tool to manage a member onboarding workflow. With a little customization we automated it to handle the client interactions. This used to take 2 people full time to handle so we were able to save about $130,000 per year through this process improvement. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

EH

Erik H.

Co-founder

Management Consulting

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/16/2015

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"CiviCRM good choice for NGO that wants to move!"

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

It is a functionally rich CRM with endless possibilities for website integration. It is open source (no license fee) and has a vivid and supportive community. It will suit small and large NGO' s and is especially helpful in fundraising, event management, membership management and mailing. There are a growing number of extensions to enrich the functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

It can be a bit complex at first, because of all the possibilities. Thankfully there is a lot of documentation around and good partners to give you a little push. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

Always remember that CiviCRM is a great instrument to support your ambitions...so make sure you know you are ambitiions before you look at the instrument! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

We support a growing number of European NGO's with CiviCRM. Most of them are either fundraising, membership organizations, voluntary consulting organisation, political parties and community networks. They run efficient processes supported by CiviCRM which saves them money and allows them to focuys the limited number of resources they have in their core business! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CM

CARLOS M.

Web Developer

Computer Software

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/4/2015

"CiviCRM"

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

I always recommend CiviCRM to any friends or colleague that work for non-profit organization since it is the best Constituent Relationship Management system available that allow them to build campaign, events registration, contact creation and management with multiple form for fundraising and memberships, contribution etc, Also allow any organization to a robust form of communication with unique features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

the only thing I dislike is the limitation regarding manual submision xml since it is time consuming and the permission so far are not very fine-grained. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

plan, analyze, and check if meet the requirement for your organization or company Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

one of the business problem that I have solve in CiviCRM is the ability to create a new custom events template that meet the requirement of the organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JC

Jeanne C.

Sr. Project Manager

Internet

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/10/2015

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"CiviCRM is a good free option for what it does"

3.5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

CiviCRM is great for non-profits who want to have a CRM for gathering donations, event tracking, and memberships. It does all these things out of the box with some configuration through the interface. It is open-source which does mean there is no ongoing subscription fee which is also attractive for non-profits. It also integrates well with Drupal so there is interactivity with their website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

Anytime you want to use CiviCRM outside of how it works, it requires a PHP developer and can be a real pain. This is probably true of every CRM product and organizations need to understand that. The reporting is a bit lacking and it can be complicated to do queries. Also, being open-source you may not get the quality support that you would with a paid product, although the CiviCRM community forums are fairly responsive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering CiviCRM:

I think CiviCRM is good at what it does and should be reviewed to make sure your business can fit with the way it works. Customizing it can be difficult. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is CiviCRM solving and how is that benefiting you?

Typically I recommend CiviCRM for non-profits that need a CRM with integration with Drupal. It is a way for non-profits to collect and track information about their users, from what events they have attended, if they are a member, and how much they have donated. It is geared towards non-profits as opposed to other CRMs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JT

John T.

Director of Interactive Media

Sports

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/5/2015

"Tremendous Functionality"

5/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

Open Source, Integration with Drupal and out-of-box functionality all perfect for associations and nonprofits. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

UX could be more consistent (e.g. example some changes, like adding/removing tags, do not require require form submission while others, like adding to group, do. Can be confusing until you learn CiviCRM's quirks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AN

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/3/2015

"Great for non-profits"

4/5

What do you like best about CiviCRM?

It's dynamic and easily integrated with your website. Truly capable of measuring multiple forms of engagement. A nice community around it as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about CiviCRM?

Definitely needed to outsource actually configuring and customizing the platform, so did have costs associated with it in that respect (as well as maintaining updates and backups). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.