
ClubExpress has the best support I have ever experienced. Their support engineers are pleasant and understand the ClubExpress system. There is seldom a long telephone hold. This may be because of their 990 page very complete and searchable User/Admin Manual, which is frequently updated.
The sales team understands our needs and recommends solutions based on how others use their system. The development team helped us create an attractive user-friendly website.
They are the only Association Management system that I know of that interfaces with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online
The opportunity to open a free trial account. Call the ClubExpress sales team and they will explain how the trial account works. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I cannot think of anything and we have been using ClubExpress for over a year. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The customer service at CE is second to none. Sending an emailed question and getting a response back within an hour (and sometimes just minutes), is almost unheard of from AMS companies. It also helps that they are local for us (CST). I also like that they are always rolling out improvements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
As with any AMS, it isn't perfect. I wish the membership card was not an extra expense (one time fee). I wish there was a search bar. Obviously, when you are looking for an improvement and are told that it isn't available, it's frustrating, but understandable as CE is a product that is tailored to meet the needs of multiple organizations, not just your own. We use CE's merchant account and I wish we were able to issue refund directly back to the credit card. Sometimes, finding the correct export/report for an event that will have all the info you are looking for is daunting. But, over all, there really isn't that much that I don't like within CE. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ClubExpress was reasonably priced with lots of features to support my club including the public facing website, protected club member only pages, password protected directory, event calendar, and more. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Perhaps that the site design is a bit dated and could be modernized. Some of the public site features were a little challenging to work with. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
This system makes membership management and accounting much better than conventional spreadsheets and documents. A very well done club management software set. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Very usable overall and easy to use but is limited when using an iPad for administrative functions, editing and some other functions. A laptop or Pc desktop always works better! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Easy event calendering.
Email/newsletter capabilities.
Ad hoc and survey information gathering. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
No easy method to update contact information from CE to another DB like Quickbooks. There is an "interface" but little capability to match CE members to Quickbooks contacts.
Pages are still too cumbersome to adjust and too often require HTML skills to complete properly. Especially table-like pages of information.
Non-exposed DB for knowledeged queries (could easily be accomplished with stored procedures). i.e. member counts by year and accounting for expirations, etc. New ad hoc reporting is a good start but the "filtering" is still too restrictive.
Have to add members to groups/committees one at a time rather than selecting multiples at a time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The instant technical support. In this day and age, it is increasingly difficult to find tech support that one can pickup the telephone and speak to a live person in the US and that that service is included at no additional cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
While the support is free, they don't always respond timely when a resolution has to be escalated to the programing team. Users are left hanging for long periods of time without updates to their support issues. I submit that if a ticketing solution with time limits and reminders to respond to the user were to be implemented, it would be of tremendous help here. Also QuickBooks online implementations is still buggy. They need to work on that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ClubExpress is first and foremost a great value for what you pay for it. It's incredibly functional and has so many features that our organization needs. Additionally, the ClubExpress team is constantly updating the platform with new features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes the ClubExpress servers are slow to load. For example, updating certain things on the website or creating a forum can take a couple of hours to be visible to the public rather than showing up instantly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We are a teaching computer club. Our members use the Event Calendar to register for classes. They join and renew their memberships, pay using their credit card, and we can track their transactions and payments all through Club Express. One of the major drawbacks for us was the ability to maintain a wait list when a class was full. We are told that is now coming in the next round of updates. That's one of the things we like best about Club Express. They are always innovating and adding functions that we need or help us run our club. There's not much it doesn't do for us, and with the new additions, it virtually runs our entire organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The downside of Club Express has been our ability to get certain reports in our preferred format. But that downside my have gone away recently with the introduction of custom reports module. We will be using that in the future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The customer service. They've been so helpful in all phases of the relationship, from first inquiry, understanding the product and purchase options, to setting up our website and migrating data from the old one, and now to launching the new website. BUT, BEST OF ALL is that they provide assistance to all users. That will reduce the burden of our tiny, all-volunteer administrative team (4 people) having to provide answers to up to 250 users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The administrator interface is not as slick as platforms like Squarespace or Wordpress, but the features and functionality more than make up for that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The range of features is impressive. ClubExpress provides a member management system that is on par with expensive customized systems at a scalable, affordable cost for organizations. From membership renewals, to communications, to website management, ClubExpress handles it all. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I haven't found anything yet. I have used multiple membership management systems developed specifically for large national nonprofits. Those customized systems specific to a single organization can make sense for a large enough organization, but they don't for smaller ones. ClubExpress provides a platform that gives independent nonprofits the features that the large national organizations have at a very affordable price. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The membership management system is super helpful! It made the task of soliciting membership renewals much easier. It is great to have a platform for our regional association as well as our chapters that can coordinate memberships, event registration, surveys, voting, document library, photo albums, donations, and communications to our membership. The support manual and videos are helpful in navigating the control panel and the ClubExpress staff are super helpful and quick to respond if any issues arise. They are also continuously working on creating new features for ClubExpress and improving on old ones. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The website management tools are my least favorite. They are somewhat clunky and even though you don't need to know HTML to use, the tools are sometimes difficult for someone who is less tech oriented. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Club Express is a single platform for addressing multiple requirements.
It is really priced well compared to other options we reviewed.
Web site management is great for both public pages and member-only pages.
Membership management is top-notch.
Communication tools are awesome.
The Calendar and event Planning tools are very nice too.
Excellent support and a vast array of video training are available.
Human support. although not instant) is very good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Menus for administration are a bit less intuitive than they could be.
Video is great for overall training but...
...A searchable knowledge base of HOW TO articles would make finding individual solutions easier.
Club Express support used to answer immediately, now I need to leave a message and wait for a return call.
While calendars are very nice in general, you cannot subscribe to calendars to show them on your personal google calendar or other calendars.
We need a webcam solution so still images can be updated every few minutes rather than streaming video.
- We have bandwidth limitations where our cameras are used and images won't update due to a caching issue with modern browsers. The user needs to manually clear their browser cache to see updated images. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Tons of functionality for our organization, everything clearly documented, and great unlimited tech support. We have integrated our event and class registrations to accept credit card payments, installed a membership system with multiple member types, added a store for t-shirts and other items, integrated donations, and built a customized website with no coding other than tweaking a little HTML. The pricing model was very appealing, charging only for actual members while allowing a larger non-member email list. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There isn't much to dislike. There is no direct API access to the database which would be useful but hasn't been a new handicap. The latest release added an optional custom reporting module that compensates for an API to a large degree. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
1. The software is straightforward to use, even for users without technical skills.
2. Pre-designed websites are professional-looking and attractive. You can get your web site up and running quickly.
3. ClubExpress customer service is outstanding. They are very responsive and helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are a few screens our group would like to customize, but we recognize that there are tradeoffs one. Just make when using a product that is designed to be used by many groups. We’ve always been able to find a workaround. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Having never done any html or website building, but some previous basic coding experience (15 years ago), the website building end is very simple and easy to use. Not only is it easy to make pages, but it's easy to make they consistent, professional looking, and interactive: very easy to add pictures, video, documents, etc. The front end is easy to use and look good.
Where the system really shines is the back-end. You have ways of recording and signing up for work/volunteering, register for free events for automated email reminders, register and collect payments for NRA training courses, easily send out mass emails all the way to individual members and create email lists, online new member registration, all the automated emails, and online and automated renewals. As the Club secretary, this does a lot of the work for me and organizes the work I have to do. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Only "dislike" was our initial set-up; we got the high plan, but still had to do a lot of work initially. However, given the system, it's better for Clubs to pay for the higher end service plan--but not the most expensive plan. Either way you have to work on the system and use it to "figure it out," but ClubExpress makes it very simple and intuitive to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like the one-in-all features. You've got a membership database that links to events and also links to a non member database and let's get excited about the financial connection with QuickBooks. It makes my job as a single staff for a medium sized association much more efficient and productive! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The widgets for the newsletter and some templates are not powerful or creative enough. This part is a bit behind the times, but they are developing new things and upgrading parts as fast as they can. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We have been using CE for 5 years and it has transformed how we do business. Our membership has increased by 50 percent and we do everything possible on the CE platform. We extensively use the email Photo and Calendar/Event modules. As webmaster I especially like the security options and that I can delegate certain pages and functions and not worry about some other part of the website being messed with. To top it off the documentation and support are stellar. I have never in my 35 years of messing with computers have I worked with a more responsive software provider. They are the best. Don't look any further for a club oriented software solution. CE has it all. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I would have to think hard to find any real dislikes. CE has implemented more and more ease of use features over the years and I expect that thay will continue to improve the product in the future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The integration to manage member data and renewals, calendar events, the website, and email communication has significantly reduced the administrative time of our volunteers. ClubExpress's functionality is well thought out, mostly intuitive, and easy to use. Their contextual help and manual are detailed and up-to-date. Phone support has been fabulous. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We had a few challenges in the set-up stage, but CE worked through them with us. Photo management could use improvement for sharing images and being able to submit photos for events, competitions, and reviews. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We choose Club Express because it met most of our needs. As a small cottage owners’ association, we don’t have a big budget for website maintenance, membership renewal and marketing activities. We had almost given up, thinking we would need to have a custom solution which would have been cost prohibitive. While CE isn’t the fanciest platform, and the user interface isn’t the best, it delivered all of the things we had been lacking, without too much headache getting migrated from our old website and getting up and running. I am a digital marketing professional by day, and I’ve seen lots of platform demos and used many technology solutions as a system administrator. I think CE offers a good compromise for any organization with an ongoing need for membership management. It’s a website platform, member database, offers a way to collect donations and a way to sell other intangible “products” like additional services, event tickets, and more. We especially liked the fact that CE offers a user portal where member info is self managed. Keeping member info up to date and ensuring we were communicating with our members about their renewal status and other services we offer was very very time consuming. Now that we are on CE we are able to do it all - in a fraction of the time. My one piece of advice for anyone new to CE: take time in the beginning to properly understand how it works, and take the time to properly configure many of the automations this platform offers. It will be automatic, but you have to set it up first. If you don’t take time in the beginning to do these things, then you will feel disappointment. Especially if you aren’t tech savvy, please understand that technology is only as good as the effort you put in. Once you do, you’re golden! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Main thing I dislike is the administrative user interface. It is not intuitive and even for a digital marketing pro like me was really difficult to navigate without reading the guide. Seems sort of outdated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I really like the flexibility of the online app and it works great for multiple applications, wether you're a Ski club with 10 members of a Chess club with 200 members, this will work great on all fronts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It does take time to learn, it's not as easy and user friendly. There's definitely a learning curve but they have amazing support when you get stuck. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ClubExpress has allowed our association to have a singular location for every facet of our work. It provides a place for us to connect with our members and keep them updated on news and events. Registrations for events, membership renewals, and all payment transactions go through the same portal. And, customer support has been outstanding. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
To be honest nothing big comes to mind as an answer to this question. I sometimes feel inadequate to make big changes to the main website but that is more a user deficit and not the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ClubExpress gives us the ability to have no-technical club members manage their own areas of the website without coding or special skills. Most clubs need this ability. We have kept it for many years now. Also, the pricing model of cents per month per registered club member is so cost effective. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Some programmers will tell me they dislike that its template and user friendly, which means they don't get to tinker with code. (too bad). A club is run by its members and we shouldn't need an IT degree. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I love that it’s a multiple use program for different people in the organization. So for instance the membership Guy and whoever else is in membership team can know immediately if someone signed up and past,The Calendar feature is very good especially to have people notified, to have the website of the event in bedded into the calendar, and then you can register yourself or other members. Another feature I like is the ability to except photos directly into the program while we are still in our meeting. I believe the program is very feature to rich. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
This is difficult to say as I’ve only been stopped a couple times and when I was stumped I called Club Express and talk to their friendly customer service people and how do I answer within a couple minutes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The integration of calendar, accounts, website and communications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Website:
- The website and it's features are still in 2005-2006.
- As admins you have hardly any control over website design and customization. Simple aspects like custom URLs, URL aliases are not available. There is no sandbox/test environment to test your changes and the preview feature doesn't really do it's job.
- The site keeps adding extra line breaks, blank paragraphs, and divs.
- It is almost impossible to search images and documents. That search features needs a serious update.
- Instead of custom pages, it is better to let users create their own content types and manage pages.
- There is no documentation on what are the image size recommendations, also if you can add your custom JavaScript, if JQuery works on the site and how to inject it.
in one sentence - give admins more power.
Emails
- OMG, writing an email from the editor is a major test of patience. We are NOT in 1990s. Please please update that.
- You can't create custom user lists. It's always all or none.
- Creating lists is not an easy task in the system.
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