Bloomerang vs. WildApricot by Personify

If you are a small organization just getting started, Bloomerang can be a good fit. It is simple and straightforward for development staff who maybe aren’t super savvy with data management or analysis in spreadsheets. In the sales demo they will try to upsell a lot of extras that are ultimately not necessary unless your stuff is very unfamiliar with database software. The base price of the software is something like $300 per year, as long as you mix all of the training and phone support add-ons they initially present you with.

Incentivized

Wild Apricot is well-suited for medium-size membership organizations with technically competent staff members. The cost of the platform (which is increasing) makes justification/ROI difficult for small organizations of non-profit associations with limited or sporadic income. The system is effective for organizations with 1200 or more active member and where the organization needs a website with a basic store. Wild Apricot will not satisfy organizations that are accustomed to robust e-commerce platforms or that operate with complicated workflows and/or complicated membership options or requirements.

• Reporting: Once I understood the logic behind Bloomerang's reporting tools, I could not believe I'd ever worked a different way. Some of our funders request very complicated reports and getting the relevant data out of Bloomerang is SO much easier than it was with our previous CRM tools.
• Website integration: I love the tracking functionality that Bloomerang offers, as well as how easy it is to integrate event ticket, volunteer, and other forms into our existing website.
• Intuitive design: I've introduced total novices to Bloomerang and been very impressed with how quickly they've been able to figure out all the top level navigation as well as deeper functionality.

Incentivized

• Controls registration through a linked series of events in the new member acceptance process: background check, orientation, and evaluation.
• Provides access to data through the export of membership, invoice, and payment tables for use with Excel, to respond to requests for queries and reporting.
• Generates renewal invoices en masse for email distribution.

Incentivized

• Some of the searches did not bring up the expected results. It would be good to see the logic be a little more "fuzzy".
• More pre-set reports would be helpful for small organizations who do not understand the logic behind how to get the results they are seeking.
• An ability to just page through donor records would be nice. Sometimes you just want to browse the data to get inspired.

Incentivized

• They could have more interactivity for the contacts (vs members) designation
• Easier way to customize required fields for registration

Incentivized

#1 - I am very happy with the product and support so far.
#2 - With significant data migration costs, I wouldn't even consider another option for at least 3 years no matter how much better it might be.

Incentivized

Data and settings are very customizable to fit the needs of our organization. We are able to not only keep track of donations, but also other interactions we may have with a constituent. Support is extremely helpful when issues arise.

Incentivized

Any time i had a problem or question it has been easy to find an answer or tutorial. When I cannot find an answer, it is easy to email or live chat with support and they resolve my problems very quickly.

We left DonorPerfect for Bloomerang. I had come from an organization that used Raisers Edge and there was no way I was going to stay with DP. RE is great for larger organizations with staff dedicated to the database, but we were a much smaller organization and needed to have something we could all use easily. We demoed Salsa and Neon and liked them both, but Bloomerang had better integration features and seemed to be the most user-friendly.

Incentivized

When compared to iMIS, Wild Apricot is an order of magnitude easier to implement and use. It is also a tool that can be administered without a considerable amount of outside support and expense. Wild Apricot is also a more fully integrated system that does not require complicated module licensing and the associated costs. iMIS is also much more expense than Wild Apricot Ultimate Membership Pro (UMP) is a WordPress plugin solution for managing association memberships. Since this is an add-on software, the cost is a small faction of the expense associated with Wild Apricot. The feature set of Wild Apricot is more extensive than the capabilities of of UMP, however, Wild Apricot is easier to use and understand that UMP. Being a hosted solution, Wild Apricot is also much more stable and predictable.

• Because my organization has been using Bloomerang for only one year, we haven't yet studied what impact it has had on our ROI. We have, however, noted that we are able to more efficiently and more rapidly communicate with constituents now than we were able to before we had Bloomerang. We can quickly and efficiently generate acknowledgements and tax receipts - and do so - better than we ever did before.

Incentivized

• Staffing expenses have been kept flat through significant membership growth.
• Operating costs for WildApricot are reasonable, considering the functionality available.
• Managing membership renewals effectively means that we get our revenue into the bank within a predictable, reasonable time.

Incentivized