AllProWebTools vs. Higher Logic Thrive

It works very well for my cooking business.

Higher Logic works very well for our business purposes. We can very easily create new communities when we need to (and this is often!). Our association isn't as concerned with driving engagement, but the tools Higher Logic provides allows us to take a closer look at the engagement level of our committee members when needed

Incentivized

• The CRM holds all of my contacts and it is already integrated with all of my other tools.
• The Email Management system is already integrated with all of my other tools. This means that I do not have to download CSVs and upload them to a separate email program everytime I want to send out an email blast.
• I can take payments in the same system that has my email marketing and CRM. This means that I can create tags and send different email campaigns depending on if I have received payment or not.
• The website hosting means that I can use the same software to update my blog and gallery of food pictures.
• I can sell tickets to my cooking classes from the same software that manages everything else that I do in my business.
• I use the task manager that is built in to remind me of things I need to do. I really like that it is tied into my CRM so I can tag tasks to specific clients.
• The built in timecard system allows me to "clock in" to whatever client that I am working on so that my time and hourly rate are automatically calculated for me. My invoices are sent automatically on the first of each month.

• Higher Logic product managers are probably some of the best in the industry. They know their products and aren't pushy in trying to sell them to you. Don't get me wrong, they do try to sell you a product, but they understand that not everyone who is tasked with learning more is also a decision maker. That doesn't stop them from being professional and thorough in their demonstrations or explanation of fees.
• Their technical support is top notch. Not only do they work to resolve issues, they also work with you to help you with non-issues. Our initial redesign was done by an agency that worked with HL directly to set up the new site. When I was tasked with a mini-redesign this year, HL technical support offered me a lot of insight on how to best do this using just my skills and HL.
• They offer training on their platforms to ensure your success as an administrator. There is no cost and you can either go to their onsite two days "boot camp" or you can access a plethora of training videos and webinars through their online users' community.

Incentivized

• QuickBooks Integration
• More email templates
• They do not have an app

• Reporting is copious but you cannot build your own reports so you may have lots of information in several different reports and have to pick and choose across several to combine manually. Exporting functionality is there but there are some reports that are only a screen shot and you cannot export them.

They are a great company that offer great products - primarily their community. As they continue to grow and expand their offerings, I believe they will increase the number of products that offer and in turn grow their client base. We use their community, activity synch, and volunteer manager currently.

The software is not that simple to use when you have to get volunteers involved in the content assembly process. The content management system that is native to Higher Logic could improve to make the task of training volunteers far easier. Given its simplicity, it is hard for the system to rival more developed websites that use advanced CMS software.

Incentivized

Higher Logic's support is sub-par at best. It can be difficult to get in contact with anyone from the support team, and when you do, it seems as if they don't want to talk to you and don't even have the answers to your questions. Within the past few months, we've contacted them twice and both times have been very disappointing. The first time was to let them know there was an inconsistency between the analytics report and the heat map. They basically said that they already knew about the problem but didn't have any set plans to fix it because they were working on other "more important" things. The second time was for a conference call to go over some additional features that we wanted to implement. And the lady we spoke with seemed very disgusted to have to speak with us and then rushed us off the phone because she had another call.

Incentivized

I used to use Microsoft Excel to organize my business - but it got pretty crazy pretty fast.

We are just in the early stages of looking into HubSpot Service Hub to determine if it will be a viable replacement for Higher Logic Community. We have other uses for the ServiceHub so there is an appeal to have it be a "one stop shop" for us. The big question however is how it will stack up to Higher Logic for the online communities. Candidly, while Higher Logic may be tough to beat in this area, it is something we will be looking closely at in the next 12 months.

Incentivized

• It just makes it easier for me to track what is going on in my business.
• I like having everything in one place, instead of a bunch of different programs.

• Understanding preferences-- Higher Logic helps us tap in to how our members want to hear from us.
• Data collection-- Since we started using Higher Logic the amount of data we get from our members has increased greatly.
• Consolidation of tools-- Higher Logic replaced 2 or 3 additional SAAS options being utilized by us. This helped save money!

Incentivized