Blackbaud Altru vs. CharityEngine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blackbaud Altru
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Designed for General Admissions OrganizationsN/A
CharityEngine
Score 4.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
CharityEngine is designed to simplify the complex world of online fundraising for nonprofits, as a nonprofit CRM. Integrated tools for donations, emails, and other elements of fundraising feed data into a central view to make it easier to know and care for donors. The solution boasts secure, payment-ready forms to give users complete control of donors' information.N/A
Pricing
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$350-$700
per month
Professional
$700-$1,500
per month
Enterprise
Call for Customized Pricing
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAltru’s pricing information is catalogued below, as supplied by the software provider or retrieved from publicly accessible pricing materials. Altru is priced as an annual subscription. This includes hosting, unlimited users, access to unparalleled product support – everything you expect from a complete cloud solution.Pricing starts based on our core offering and your projected contact and email volume.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Small Businesses
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.1 out of 10
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.1 out of 10
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(11 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Blackbaud AltruCharityEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
Blackbaud
Well suited for smaller organizations that want to centralize many systems. Smaller organizations will have less constituents to manage and fewer events (our organization has 100,000+ constituents, daily programs/events, and a large donor base). Many areas within Altru are not updated to be functional for 2020. Because of this, we do not use the merchandising feature, the volunteer portal, or marketing communications. It does a little bit of everything "okay enough" to be better than having separate systems. It's restrictive in many areas, but being able to do SO much in one database outweighs the negatives! It is 100% necessary to have a data manager who spends all of their time in Altru doing data cleanup, researching and writing policies and procedures, training new users, keeping staff up-to-date on new processes, creating queries and running reports, creating workarounds for "unfixable" issues within the database.
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CharityEngine
CharityEngine has the POTENTIAL to be a good CRM, but both unresponsiveness to the more complex problems go unresolved for months at a time. Employee turnover is huge, which is likely because upper management is doing nothing to solve the internal problems. I would NOT recommend this CRM at this point. While CharityEngine does allow reasonably robust storage and querying of data if you plan to send emails through your CRM, look elsewhere. CharityEngine's framework is clunky and counter-intuitive, in addition to frequently just not working at all.
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Pros
Blackbaud
  • Ticketing and tracking many different types of admission sales including group, facility rental, individual tickets, and class registration.
  • Membership management, including membership card mailing, recurring memberships, and renewal reminders.
  • Being an all-encompassing database rather than forcing you to use multiple databases.
  • Great customer service and client support, including ongoing updates to better the system.
  • Has a merchandise inventory management system.
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CharityEngine
  • Allows users to create unique queries to generate targeted data.
  • Allows the entry of addresses from all around the world, not just US addresses.
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Cons
Blackbaud
  • Query system not user-friendly for management with limited database background.
  • Limited company-to-user support outside of an online community of users. No long term account managers for program.
  • No email analysis tools for eblasts.
  • Limited merchandise capabiity for shop use, though the program does allow third party programs to work with it.
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CharityEngine
No answers on this topic
Usability
Blackbaud
No answers on this topic
CharityEngine
There are a lot of frustrating things about the general usage of CharityEngine. It syncs with a nine-digit zip code database, but doesn't automatically populate exportable fields with this data - it must be manually requested for each record. Buttons that allow a user to quickly move to a specific area of the data in a customer record frequently stop working after updates; are found by users and reported, and then take a month or longer to be fixed. A clunky and counter-intuitive "creative" database frequently fails completely and is always slow.
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Support Rating
Blackbaud
They are always available and very knowledgable. Many times I am able to come up with a solution before they've finished troubleshooting just by having talked through it with them. I really appreciate the Chat feature to answer simple questions in a timely fashion. The training I received was top notch and very detailed.
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CharityEngine
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Blackbaud
We switched from Raisers Edge in 2012 due to the need to have all processes in one database. Group Sales/Rentals had to use a separate database for their sales than the Members and Donors department. We also could not sell tickets for events and programs in one space. Being able to have all of these in one database is why we chose Altru.
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CharityEngine
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Blackbaud
  • It has become very tedious to account for registrants in each session of a class or camp, because you have to "sell" them into each session in order to have an accurate class roster.
  • It is very easy to process payment and entry fees to our Museum and programs.
  • It is easy to retrieve accurate information and records of patrons.
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CharityEngine
  • CharityEngine has allowed our organization to grow in the past few years, but it has not kept up with industry trends and avoids making changes and updates requested by users.
  • Our overall business objectives cannot be met with CharityEngine alone. We must export data and use other applications to generate the data we need.
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ScreenShots

Blackbaud Altru Screenshots

Screenshot of Constituent Record: Get a true 360-degree view of each constituent's activity.Screenshot of Daily Sales:  Improve sales speed and visitor experience with a smart POSScreenshot of Group Sales:  Keep group sales orders organized and manageableScreenshot of KPIs:  Measure and monitor organizational performanceScreenshot of Membership Dashboard:  Improve membership acquisition and retentionScreenshot of Organizational Calendar:  Effectively manage events, programs, spaces, supplies and equipment

CharityEngine Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-Channel Digital MarketingScreenshot of Custom Forms