# netFORUM Pro Reviews **Vendor:** Community Brands **Category:** [Professional Association Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/professional-association-management) **Average Rating:** 1.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 13 ## About netFORUM Pro netFORUM Pro provides membership management features, reporting and enhanced tools to allow associations to interact with member and member management. ## netFORUM Pro Reviews ### 1. Definitely showing its age and lacking functionality **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert A. | Project Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2023 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** Nothing at this time. There has been nothing but problems and broken promises. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** Does not work well in most modern browsers, several features are incomplete, do not work as expected or are lacking functions you would expect from a class leader today. The product is being sunsetted and all users are to be removed from the platform by June 2024. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Look carefully and make sure that the features you plan to use, function correctly and meet your needs. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** A single source for Contact management, event management and communications. ### 2. The View as a Developer **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John S. | Lead Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 04, 2020 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** When NetForum gets removed from a company I'm working with. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** I've run into this train wreck of a software application at a number of different associations. I just wanted to briefly touch on the experience as a developer, and just warn non-technical people from using this garbage. This tool was clearly authored somewhere in the middle 2000s. It uses XML-based SOAP API endpoints to facilitate authentication, which will double or triple your development costs because it is so old and non-conforming to the modern web. Given its age and lack of openness, I will guarantee there are security holes you could drive a truck through in this application. The documentation a developer would need to do these integrations is not available freely - they charge for it and it's hidden. It's grossly outdated and incomplete when you actually see what's going on. Further, the examples they provide are broken and you have basically just have to try random things to get it to work. Lastly, they've had significant downtime with the SSO gateway both clients I've worked with. I'm not sure who's fault it was but I can tell you in both situations it took OVER A DAY for systems to come back online. It effectively crippled the both organization's authentication infrastructure. Not to mention, the parent company of this organization has changed hands countless times - who really knows who's in charge of this madhouse. Stay far away from this system. If you need authentication, Okta and Auth0 are the gold standard - go with them. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Stay far away. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** It lets people log-in...sometimes. ### 3. A little cumbersome but a solid piece of software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** I have used the software for over a year and a half now, and I like that the user interface is clean and items are easy to see. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** What I don't like about it is that in the beginning it can be a bit cumbersome to locate all of the tools you need, for example you have to search for the individual, then if you want to see all of the contributions they've made, you have to click through 3 different screens to get there.. You will definitely have to be trained on this software. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** netFORUM has made consolidating and accessing our records a lot easier, although the software can be a bit cumbersome to locate all of the tools you need, and all of the information you require. ### 4. Used to manage 537 chapters + surveys, accounting, orders, etc. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Katherine R. | Chapter Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2017 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** All our information is in one place and easy to access **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** Upgrades and service paks are constant and staff support from Abila is lacking **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Database management ### 5. Antiquated and poor customer support **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 29, 2017 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** The only thing that is good about NetForum is that they offer APIs and the original developers can be contacted through Gravitate. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** Everything. The modules are slow. It's difficult to query. When they release new features/patches, it breaks something else. You can't easily set-up automated emails. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** There has to be something better on the market than this product. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Contains our membership ### 6. Not what I expected **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2017 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** It keeps all of our information in one place, as opposed to two or three different places in the past. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** A lot bugs. Once we figure out one, two more pop up. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Aligning our LMS and AMS together. ### 7. Needlessly Complicated **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Janene S. | Web Manager, Public Policy, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** We are a small association with roughly <300 members and use NetForum Pro for a few things: 1) as an association managment database, to house all of our member data; 2) as a CMS, for password protected pages on our website that are available only to our members; and 3) for integration with Higher Logic, where we house our online member community. NetForum Pro makes it easy to house a lot of information about members, such as committee assignments, and such, and you can, with some effort, generate a wide variety of reports. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** I don't like NetForum Pro outside of its role as a database for managing member data. NetForum Pro could not be easily integrated into our existing CMS (Drupal 6), so we had to build our members web pages in NetForum Pro, with site styling to match our primary website. Building out pages in NetForum is very cumbersome and not always intuitive. Same for the e-commerce pages. We can't integrate a single sign-on for our members only pages and separately, as an integration with Higher Logic where we house our online member community. And, there have been several times where site style, or other coding has been disrupted by new product roll outs. Finding a point of contact for technical support is confusing since Avectra became Abila. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** We have found netFORUM to be valuable as an AMS, but terrible as a CMS. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a nonprofit professional association, it is obviously crucial to be able to collect and analyze data for members and nonmembers, and NetForum allows us to do just that. It has also been useful for more complex event registration for our annual conferences. ### 8. Manage events, donations, committee info and more all in one spot **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 28, 2017 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** The functionality of the different portals is key. We manage our volunteer committees, events, speakers, membership, and more with Abila netForum. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** Their customer service is not the most responsive. It often takes days to weeks to get an issue resolved. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing data in one location. ### 9. I Would Not Recommend This Software **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** There is very little that I like about this software, but if I had to pick one feature I would say that it has very little "down time" and the CRM is a somewhat good database. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** It is going to take far more than this small paragraph to enumerate all the things I do not like about netforumPRO. But I'll take a stab at it, and be succinct! Right now we are having an error that is 100% a perfect example of the way this company operates. We have some automated email set up so that when someone registers for a webinar, we send them their GoToWebinar link. Well the automated emails have not been going out consistently--about half of the people who register are not receiving the email. We reported it to Abila, and their default reply is 'It is the IT Dept/Webmaster/Email Server of the receiver that's at fault--we can not reproduce the error." This despite the user community being FULL of other users who are also experiencing the same problem. So, we went in and tested ourselves--and of 6 registrations, 1 received the email and the other 5 did not. We sent them our test information. Not only are the emails not being automatically sent, the registrants are not going onto the registration report, so our reporting is also messed up. Yet if you go individual by individual of those who email us and say 'I didn't receive a link" they do show that they registered and paid if necessary. So the reporting is inaccurate, and the dataset default reports are useless. We are an association. We want to track our membership and see how our retention is going. There is no retention RATE report and you literally can not get it from any of the reports they have. We have to manually use the rate formula and pull one number at a time to try to figure it out ourselves. In summary, email doesn't work, support just blames others, reports don't work, accounting doesn't work, you can not search in CRM...it is a MESS!! **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Do not purchase this software-you will regret it. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am not sure this software solves any problems. I believe it creates problems and creates more manual work. Honestly we only use is as a database, and I believe Salesforce would be much better. ### 10. Fatally flawed **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Max M. | Director of Communications and Marketing, Health, Wellness and Fitness, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** There is nothing to like about NetForum Pro **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** Inability to buy product as a guest; too much is hard wired; doesn't understand how our ultimate customers want to use it; not mobile responsive; clunky and complicated to do simple tasks; limits on number of images that can be stored; website editor won't allow for uploading pdfs. This is tip of iceberg **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Do not buy. Or if you are seriously considering, insist on being able to view the posts on the community so that you can see what real users are concerned about and the many workarounds that are necessary. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We haven't been able to solve any business problems. We consistently need to come up with workarounds. ### 11. Difficult to navigate **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** It has lots of fields, and many of them are fairly customizable. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** It is incredibly difficult to use and navigate. I've been on it for several years and still don't understand how to use it. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Try to find a program that is more intuitive. The learning curve for this one is insane! **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's a good way to keep track of lots of info around the community we interact with. ### 12. It's been a rocky road. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Caitland O. | Communications & Commercial Services Director, Real Estate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** NetFORUM Pro has a lot of good attributes for a wide array of organizations. Designed for membership, it is a great tool for keeping track of membership renewals, subscriptions, events, and most important, a great communication tool. While I use Constant Contact for communication, I have to constantly reimport new members, and NetFORUM makes it seamless to reach out to our existing members without having to do all of that work. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** For all of it's great attributes, it's lacking in nearly almost every category. Sometimes it is harder to use NetFORUM than it is easy. While I love to use it for communication, it only tracks e-mails opened, not when or who actually opened the e-mail, rendering that initial feature pretty useless. I still cannot fathom why registrants cannot cancel their own events. The events calendar is extremely limited and even though they have a "site" for people to register, we built a brand new website/calendar to cover the existing one so instead of going to that site to register, we only allow our members access to the registration page instead of the calendar. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** If you are a real estate association, evaluate your other options. They all have weaknesses and strengths, but what is most important? **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We currently use it to invoice our members for their dues, create classes/events, manage MLS subscriptions, and it has worked OK, but certainly not without faults. It's a great tool to look up past members to find their involvement, when they were last a member and go off of that old log to build their new/reinstatement. ### 13. NetForum Pro **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2016 **What do you like best about netFORUM Pro?** There is not a great to like, certainly better than keeping records using a pencil and paper. **What do you dislike about netFORUM Pro?** I dislike that it is clunky and has not been updated since it was first developed. The list goes on and on. **Recommendations to others considering netFORUM Pro:** Think carefully. **What problems is netFORUM Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creates more problems than it solves. Though it is something of an improvement over pencil and paper. - [View netFORUM Pro pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/netforum-pro/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-14+18%3A26%3A17+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ad9dec10-a282-44bc-837a-607d15c73780&secure%5Btoken%5D=66b1a3582d371519d9fb87317652fbb7ff74966925be7082bb9f0d8a96004c41&format=llm_user) ## netFORUM Pro Features **Agentic AI - Professional Association Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Membership Management** - Member Self‑Service Portal - Member Database - Automated Dues & Renewals **Events & Committees** - Committee & Group Management - Event Management & Registration - Calendar & Scheduling Tools **Financial & Operational Tools** - Integration With Accounting Tools - Email Marketing & Automated Communications - Online Payments & Invoicing - Reporting & Analytics ## Top netFORUM Pro Alternatives - [Neon CRM](https://www.g2.com/products/neon-one-llc-neon-crm/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (416 reviews) - [iMIS](https://www.g2.com/products/imis/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (229 reviews) - [MemberPress](https://www.g2.com/products/memberpress/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (268 reviews)