Agile CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) software built to make the entire marketing and sales lifecycles more efficient, built around features like sales enablement, marketing automation, social suite, and web engagement.
$8.99
*per user per month
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Designed for large, complex organizations as well as federated and international nonprofits.
Blackbaud CRM is a great product, especially when fully optimized, implemented, and supported. Its many features often dwarf some of the smaller CRM offerings on the market. That said it is a complex product requiring a great deal of training in some situations and not all …
Agile CRM is well suited if an existing customer business process is defined or drafted thoroughly. Agile allowed automating workflows and marketing to improve lead management and suppress tedious tasks so users can focus on more important matters. However, Agile CRM costs can increase significantly if you want additional features and customizations. If you know what you're doing with CRMs and marketing automation or customer contracts and management then AgileCRM is worth a try.
It works well enough for fundraising purposes and donor tracking. I think it would be less appropriate for instances or industries where you don't need so many data points on someone. You are able to attach a lot of information to a record so if you don't need that info (simply need contact info for example) you might want a simpler system
Accessing in-depth data for a single constituent is easily done and customizable by user working with "tiles" on the home screen
Generating lists of possible prospects with specific similarities can be done with a few clicks and then stored for more research later
well designed relationship options allow for a a look at specific constituents and how they might relate to other constituents in the system leading to more effective prospecting
Screens can be easily customized by user or user group eliminating irrelevant data and presenting only truly relevant information
The email template building tool is inflexible although it is simple to use and looks nice if you can work within its parameters.
Customer Support is not committed to finding answers and providing the best solutions. Many times each support person has a different answer or fixing a bug will take up to 2 weeks to address. They do not seem to understand that they are an online marketing platform that requires solutions within hours (or maybe days) and not weeks.
At some point in mid-2021, the process for sending out emails to 10s of thousands of contacts stopped functioning as simply and effectively as it had in the past. My staff (which I use as test cases) was no longer receiving emails, even though it showed in the system that they had received it (and no, it wasn't in spam). The bandaids that they provided me would work for one or two mailings and then stop working again. I was regularly trying to get customer support to find my answers but they were never able to solve my problem. The basic functionality that I appreciated - sending out nicely formatted email newsletters - is now completely gone and the platform is useless for our needs.
The reporting tools are awful and poorly configured. Querying on groups of people is inconsistent and inaccurate. There is no segmentation feature that I found that was actually effective.
Certain aspects of Blackbaud are oddly non-customizable.
Blackbaud updates/support is slow and often ineffective - our organization switched to Microsoft 365, which is apparently incompatible with Blackbaud. Help/support recommended clunky workarounds that don't actually work, rather than proactively enhancing compatibility
There should be a flag in constituent search to show which people in the results list are deceased.
Query isn't very user friendly. It should be simple to locate the information that you want to pull, and add parameters to that information. Instead you have to write multiple queries to set parameters, then write a query that looks at those other queries. It's time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and the knowledge/proficiency is difficult to explain or transfer to new staff.
Blackbaud generally just feels like its technology is outdated. It wasn't built for the needs of a modern organization, and its developers have failed to make the necessary improvements over time to stay competitive.
There was a little bit of a learning curve and some bumps along the way to managing this platform, but AgileCRM appears to be responsive to any challenges that arise, which I consider to be of vital importance.
We've covered a lot, but mostly because we are happy with the system overall. There are a few kinks, and sometimes it takes a minute to figure out the right wording to pull a report or the best way to code a new category that we want to track. But Blackbaud is always there to help us, and once things are figured out - they are super simple to replicate. It wouldn't be worth it to switch to a new system and lose of all our information and time put in to mastering the system
Until the email issues are resolved I cannot recommend agile for any function. The email delivery rate has halved in the last six months and halved again in the last two with no resolution in sight. The customer service discussions start from zero information anytime suggesting agile are not writing notes or using a ticketing system to track customers' complaints. This results in our staff having to send emails manually and defeating the purpose of the system.
The training sessions are very helpful, because you have specialist that is available to answer any questions, guide you and coach you on how to dominate a certain feature of the platform. That being said,Whenever I have an issue that needs to be resolved, I can send email or call a support line. I usually use the support line.
The performance of AgileCRM has been acceptable to date. I'm pleased with the ability to modify leads in the system and search for them and add groups to campaigns.
The technical support of this software I liked a lot because whenever we need help to solve any problem or even to answer any questions about the software, Agile CRM's support was quick and efficient and guided us on the best solution to solve the problem. I admire and respect that a lot.
I have not personally had to reach out to Blackbaud CRM Support, because we have a central office that manages the Blackbaud CRM relationship. However, any time I've reached out to our support team, there is nothing they can't figure out by utilizing the support they receive from Blackbaud CRM. I've not had any issues that have gone unresolved, and they can always get things done in a timely fashion.
Each section of the AgileCRM platform has an instructional video that describes in detail all of the features of that section. I found this to be very instructional way to learn about each section. Whenever I had more questions, I could always schedule a conference call with a tutor..
Most of our issues were self-inflicted and related to BB's work. We did not "staff up" correctly, our data to be converted was not in great shape and we set some unreasonable goals. With BBs help we were able to clean our data and prep it for conversion and we adjusted the goals to be more achievable with the timeline we were given. We found the BB staff to be responsive and focused, especially when working on-site with us.
It was able to do most of the functions needed but was the most cost-effective to get us started. If you are a new company and looking to get started with a CRM start here for a year or two and when you have the money you can pay for one of the bigger players. This platform will give you all you need to be successful. We have been using it for 2 years and we profited more each year.
Blackbaud CRM is more robust and has better functionality. It is necessary for a bigger fundraising shop. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge and NXT worked well in smaller organizations with fewer users and fewer donors/prospects. RE was more affordable than CRM was for the smaller organization.
This products Starts with a free Limited version. You can upgradeTo an affordable paid version with minimal features. There's also an enterprise version which is what I have. It's much more expensive, however it allows me to access the full range of features available.
It may be me but I spent a disproportionate amount of time figuring out how to derive more ROI from Agile CRM. The functionality and facilities were there but I eventually gave up as it was taking too much time and attention.
Change is always expensive and painful, but CRM is worth the time and effort. One immediate benefit is improved transparency internally, especially for internal accounting, controls, and compliance departments.
Cloud hosting helps cut cost and demand on organization staff. Improves access and meets compliance on every level.
Ability to make global changes to recording donor phone communication makes it a one-stop resource for a well-run development team.
