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Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued) vs. Blackbaud Luminate Online

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AWith Blackbaud Online Express' was a fundraising and donation form solution, where users could create unlimited donation forms. The tool has been discontinued, and is no longer available.N/A

    Blackbaud Luminate Online

    Score6.7 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Luminate Online aims to help non-profits engage more effectively with supporters and raise more money by enabling integrated campaigns for digital, social and mobile channels. According to the vendor, Luminate Online helps non-profits: Better understand online supporters Make the right ask at the right time Launch creative fundraising campaigns Automated campaigns stimulate engagement and action through targeted welcome messages with personalized…N/A
    Pricing
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
    Additional DetailsLuminate Online is priced based on the number of email addresses on file, modules used and service plan. Our peer to peer offering, TeamRaiser, has a transactional, shared success pricing model.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Blackbaud
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    57%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    50%
    Delivers good value for the price
    3 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    80%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    4 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Small Businesses
    Bonterra Network for Good
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Bonterra Network for Good
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    GiveSmart by Momentive
    Score7.5 out of 10
    GiveSmart by Momentive
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Kindsight iWave
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Kindsight iWave
    Score8.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (13 ratings)
    3.7
    (87 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    2.1
    (28 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.9
    (5 ratings)
    5.0
    (32 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (14 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    3.0
    (4 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.6
    (9 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.8
    (11 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Blackbaud Online Express (discontinued)Blackbaud Luminate Online
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    Blackbaud Luminate Online is an excellent solution for online giving, providing a wealth of tools for producing donation forms. It also is outstanding for peer-to-peer fundraising, such as event-based efforts like walks, cycling tours, and so forth. The Email module is outstanding if you need an internal solution for communicating with your donors and supporters. It provides a wealth of tools for crafting emails, and for reporting on the results.
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Online donation forms are easy to create and place within our existing website. The donations received are easily transferred into our Raiser's Edge database.
    • Creating email communications for our constituents is very simple to achieve in Online Express and the statistics provided are very helpful to see what our constituents are clicking on.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    • House Donor Information. Easy report pulling. Queries and lists.
    • I like how everything is housed on one platform. Webpages, emails and donor profiles. User friendly.
    • It works nicely with other blackbaud products such as Raiser's Edge. Easy importing and exporting options.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • It does have some "quirks." It can be a little tricky to process the batch until you have done it a few times.
    • I had a problem finding a constituent yesterday - he was purchasing a program ad for an event - that I knew was in the database. It turned out that he had been marked inactive, and so apparently wasn't included in the search results.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    • Reporting needs some work, this is being worked on in their new BETA program.
    • The eCommerce module needs some work. It would be great to have more ability to customize parts of it without having to rewrite the code.
    • The Events module could use some improvements as well.
    • The Personal Fundraising module needs a lot of work. It really cannot work as needed right now. We started using TeamRaiser to handle this, but it could be great.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    We’ve decided to leave Luminate and are moving to a system that better caters to our and our users needs. Luminate has proven difficult to use and has limited abilities when it comes to data management, events, and peer-to-peer functionality. Reporting is also very complicated and requires a great deal of time to utilize properly.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    You have to be very tech savvy to use Luminate to its fullest potential. You can get buy with the training, but there is a steep learning curve and you almost need 6 months to 1 year of in-person training to really be able to anything substantial. The online training lessons are not going to cut it while learning this program.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    It's a very rare occurrence if the system isn't available when I want it. I can easily log in from home after hours if need be, and the security is enforced, but simple when you're legit! They are very good about sending email reminders and updates when system maintenance will be performed, and it's always during middle of the night hours when you likely wouldn't be using it anyways
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    Pages load fast and 98% of the reports do run in a matter of secons/minutes. There is this one report I have that can take hours to run, but this is due to the amount of transactions being requested for one of our biggest online fundraising events (Transaction report)
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Customer service for all of Blackbaud's products has really lacked over the years. They are starting to get better in the last year but it can very frustrating. The online knowledge base community is the best resource for information. At times it can take hours for a customer sect even rep to help with questions or problems which is not at all ideal in this industry.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    Support staff are usually incredibly helpful and responsive. There are several ways to contact them (chat, logging a ticket, phone) which makes it easy to get help when you need it. Once in a while I get a support staff member who isn't quite as helpful, which is why I gave it a 9 instead of a 10, but that is rare and if I follow up with someone else, I get what I need.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    Initial training was great and the instructor was very patient and helpful during the set up process. Blackbaud has a variety on online self-paced classes that supplement the training you receive. The only downfall is after training is complete. I've found the support for Luminate to be a tad lackluster. We often encounter issues that aren't on Luminate's development road map and have had a series of cases be opened.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    When I used the training, I had actually been using Luminate Online but figured it might help me learn to use the tools more effectively. And it did. The sessions were helpful and even as a current user I felt like I learned how to use the tools more effectively.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    Implementation of Luminate itself was rather smooth, but the process involved for TeamRaiser was very difficult. Even after implementation we relied on support to help with various aspects of TeamRaiser from page design to reporting and front end user issues. The support offered for issues with Luminate was very good, but again TeamRaiser support was lacking.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Blackbaud Online Express is mainly used strictly because of its integration with Raiser's Edge. If a client uses Salesforce for constituent/lead management, other products can offer more flexibility in designing donation forms, email templates, etc. However, they all have their own negatives in Salesforce integration -- that is a whole other can of worms. While the Raiser's Edge integration of Online Express isn't perfect, it is relatively painless compared to the competition's Salesforce integration. Also, for NFP's, Blackbaud's NFP focused business model is a plus.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    The only other product I have used for this type of fundraising work is NetCommunity and it hasn't been as scalable or versatile. It doesn't really offer the peer to peer fundraising of Luminate or the constituent management, web page development and considered donation forms. NetCommunity didn't even come close which is why we replaced it with Luminate.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Blackbaud
    Luminate Online is a great scalable product as it provides various price points dependent on your quantity of email addresses. This allows both small and large organizations to utilize the product, which has strong email capabilities. It also means smaller organizations aren't forced to pay astronomical fees in order to have access to a quality product.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Regardless of project or initiative, all fund-raising efforts are managed in one place for the entire organization.
    • Donor management is concise, thorough, and systematic - no individual or organization is overlooked.
    • Snapshot reporting of successful grant applications and fund-raising are readily available.
    Incentivized
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    Blackbaud
    • We've increased our online giving +200% although this is due in part to our focus on the channel and not entirely on the product.
    • We've been able to increase employee efficiency by selecting email lists per message within Luminate Online. With our prior solution we needed to request data be pulled from our database for event email.
    • We've really done a great job of growing our online tribute and memorial giving through the use of custom links and the pre-populated information has really helped with the back end processing.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Blackbaud Luminate Online Screenshots

    Screenshot of Email Overview DashboardScreenshot of Luminate allows you to enable multiple types of giving - from recurring to matching and everything between.Screenshot of Luminate enables you to reach out to supporters in multiple waysScreenshot of Luminate Peer to Peer fundraising with DIY events, also enables your supporters to fundraising on their behalf.