Certain Event Automation Software vs. Virtuous CRM

Certain is great for easy-to-use registration sites. It collects all information and user can upload reports easily. It's great to copy the event if you are doing an annual one where the information doesn't drastically change. I love being able to create the link in under an hour and send it out to all attendees. I can also send one large email out to all participants

Incentivized

I think it's great for organizations that simply need to manage their donor base in a user-friendly way. If you treat all of your donors the same and do not do much segmented communication, Virtuous is great for you! if you do need segmentation, they need to improve their email marketing software. Also, if you plan to use other tools, they really lack any kind of integration, which is not ideal.

Incentivized

• Easy to use and create
• Easy to pull reports once event has been sent to attendees
• Great way to gather a lot of information

Incentivized

• User-friendly CRM.
• Knowledgable support staff.
• Allows for email marketing on a mass level.

Incentivized

• Dashboards: It's quite important for leadership to get a visual of what their event registrants look like (with graphs, for example). Now, Certain does not present a feature to create dashboards, so we have to export their reports and create our dashboards ourselves.
• UX when setting up an event: Now this can be quite complex, as it's not as easy to use or intuitive. Many different tabs with many different sub-items can present a confusing experience for newcomers when building an event.

Incentivized

• Virtuous only keeps track of contacts on forms for a given period of time, not the lifetime of when the form was deployed.
• Virtuous Customer Support can sometimes lag, and you end up waiting days for a response to your inquiry or issue.
• Virtuous reporting, while very detailed and segmented, can sometimes be a little overwhelming, and the terminology does not always translate to what you are looking to accomplish with your reporting outcomes.

Incentivized

It does take a little time to understand the dynamics and mechanics of how the Virtuous CRM platform works, as it offers extensive capabilities for donor tracking and record management. Another reason is that the terminology can be a bit confusing, making it hard to know where to navigate for the information you need.

Incentivized

Sympla or Eventbrite are great for smaller events that don't require a lot of information from your audience or extensive communication from your event owner. They are better suited for those events, since they are easy and quick to set up. Certain comes in for your tradeshows or recurring events, since it presents a calendar view of your field marketing events, as well as full form customization, automation of email sequences, reporting, etc. It's more complex to use, so you might as well hand it over to people who are well used to setting up events.

Incentivized

Virtuous is one of the premier donor management and fundraising platforms. It has more capabilities than DonorDock and DonorPerfect, but it is not as clunky as Raiser’s Edge. It is similar to Bonterra, which used to be called Salsa Labs, but it definitely has more automations and features that nonprofits would appreciate and utilize.

Incentivized

• Certain helps to deliver a great customer experience, since it facilitates automatic email delivery and your company can keep them connected well before or well after an event.
• Certain presents a wide variety of reports, which perfectly addresses any request for visibility coming from your organization.
• Certain's configuration settings are quite complex, so our newcomers are not comfortable using the software at first.
• In case you need a more visual representation of your audience, Certain, unfortunately, does not generate dashboards.

Incentivized

• Virtuous has allowed our clients to keep a detailed record of donor and constituent giving history and engagement with the organization.
• Reporting features have enabled us to see which digital and traditional marketing campaigns are resonating with donors and which need evaluation.
• Automated workflows allow donors to go through a series of touchpoints without having to manually send them through or keep tabs on reminders when they interact or are on the verge of lapsing.

Incentivized