NGP VAN Reviews & Product Details

The CRM is a good product, and the filing system works as intended Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Used to a good company, but private equity is currently dialing up the enshitification levels to new highs. Products are good, but the contracts are way over priced and impossible to get out of if you lose an election, accounting tries but has been downsized so much that wait times get very long. Bugs that are shown to them are ignored and never fixed, payment portal is a vibe-coded mess, and support takes 10 days to answer basic questions. Avoid if possible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a great place for data storage. Uploads and exports are fairly easy. Search tool can make both simple fairly complicated easy. One can automate processes in coordination with digital tools to engage your audience. You can monitor response rates, tool or outreach effectiveness, send yourself progress to goal reports, and automated email and MMS text series. I like how accessible most of one's data is. The reporting tools and templates, the calendar, the digital tools available, the calling, canvassing, tools are all there so you can have a pretty good view of organizational goals and objectives. Setting the platform up as an end-user is pretty easy. Setting up the database as an administrator is pretty easy functionally. I think NGPVAN can provide more resources on ways to leverage the tool not just as a user but administrator. I use it very, very often. I'm on it more than my phone. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At a certain point though you will run into the limitations of CRMs. You can search for any type of data that NGPV has a tool or feature for but if you want to analyze your data at a more granular level, you will have to integrate NGPVAN with another database (RDBMS). The predictive dialer is really, really slow. The texting tool is limited. You can send mass texts out, but you can't really engage the targets of your texts. You can create keywords, and those keywords will trigger automated responses that you have to set up. It could be a little faster. Their training resources were pretty scarce at first and of low quality. For a while, external organizations had better resources than NGPVAN had on their website. I am happy to say, this is changing. NGPVAN now has tutorials, webinars, training, and a pretty exhaustive help center. I have learned a lot from their help center, and still use it today. I wish they had more higher-level trainings available to organizations. Their current resources define or tell you how to use a tool. What would be really helpful is training resources to help users leverage their tools. Maybe case studies of how organizations have used the tools or how they could use them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We use NGP VAN primarily within our political organization to efficiently manage donor information, streamline compliance with FEC filings, and track donor activity over time. It helps us quickly compile top-line donor statistics, ensuring our reporting is accurate and up-to-date for strategic decision-making and compliance purposes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NGP VAN is less appropriate for organizations that aren’t experienced with complex software contracts, as it has aggressive pricing strategies that can exceed the stated list price, auto-renewing contracts that can catch users off guard, and billing practices that often include unclear or non-transparent line items. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

All voters are available and their information is usually up to date. Basic functions like quick look up and simple lists and turfs usually work well. The best part for me is the customer support for my area. Katie and David do their best to assist promptly and thoroughly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

During advanced use there are many roadblocks to accomplish goals. Right now I am struggling to make sure that when lists are printed out for contacting voters, that canvassers can adequately note if the voter has never been contacted or is hostile or especially if they are threatening. Making sure this happens is time consuming and could be easily accomplished if the result of the contact was displayed as a note on the list. Right now, only notes are displayed on the list. Also, once a result is input, an answer to a survey question is purported to influence likely party so that when the voter contacted is a self-proclaimed MAGA Republican, they will stop showing up under likely party Strong Democrats. The program times out quickly and constantly having to reenter my log in information is a headache. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's great for accessing voters and compiling and outputting lists in various ways. Tools are easy to use and self-explanatory, or at least can be figured out with a few tries. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We experienced a problem when building and using Virtual Phone Bank: our goal was to add email addresses but the input form would not let the user advance to the next record if the email field was left blank, which was most of them. I could not find a workaround and calls to our state party VAN expert went unreturned. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I tell candidates that the cost of NGP VAN is justified by focusing on voters most likely to vote. I also use voter extracts to identify mail-in ballots received, including what party and which ones were cast. Extracts of petitions signed for various causes also help. Integration with such tools as Hustle (though this can be better) all add to the power. In the end, the benefit is contacting the most, best voters possible, and while not wasting resources on ones less likely to vote. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One might consider the web interface clumsy but the cost of educating thousands of activists on something new would be difficult. More features in Mini Van that emulate customization for paper sheets would be great. I like to have hints about a voter that can be used at a door. For example, did they sign a particular petition of note? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NGP VAN is great for organizations to strategize their field organization. I can easily upload lists as well as export them for mailing, canvasses, and voter contacts. The ease of connecting with texting API as well as Phone banking creation is great in one software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve is steep - mass email creation is clunky - updates on the backend were very late in the cycle, and ineffective for GOTV planning Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Works great for sending large number of emails. A great list with details is very comprehensive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are no people to talk to about support of the product. I would pay money to speak to a person to get technical support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While VAN has a lot of strong features, perhaps its strongest feature is its dominance/ubiquity in the progressive sphere. Practically, what this means is that virtually everyone who volunteers or joins your org has at least some level of familiarity with your CRM which makes onboarding and training far, far easier.

Also some of the new features have been amazing and VAN supports an org's ability to build out an extremely detailed infrastructure mapping out levels of engagement, automating contacts, etc in a way that's virtually unmatched in its field. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

VAN definitely has quirks, at times features can be deprecated or left to wither without support Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have access to everything I need to know about my user base at my fingertips at all time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It should be easier to track VBMs. A person should be able to press a single button and see three columns. One, the universe of people requesting a VBM; two the list of people who have returned their VBMs; three, an easy contact sheet of outstanding ballots. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.