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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ETO Software (legacy)

    Score7.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    ETO Software is a legacy case management solution supported by Social Solutions, acquired by Bonterra, and later sold as Bonterra ETO. The application is not the company's current case management solution.N/A
    Pricing
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Free Trial
    No
    Free/Freemium Version
    No
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    Yes
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequired
    Additional Details—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    A high degree of customization, poor performance, and design. I did not select ETO (predates my time here), so I can't speak to that.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We had an internally developed database. ETO, by far, is a more stable environment to work in. I was not involved in the decision to select SS.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We originally built our program around SharePoint and were dissatisfied by the lack of transparency it provided. We then moved to ETO, primarily because it was the cheapest of the other solutions that we looked at. Now, we are realizing that we are not getting any real value …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    When we made our decision several years ago Social Solutions had just acquired Apricot. At that time it was recommended to use ETO based off our revenue stream. However, it seems like Social Solutions has put in a lot more time and effort into Apricot over ETO and it seems more …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    To be quite honest, ETO was selected prior to my arrival at my job. I believe it was selected because of its notoriety for serving non-profits specifically.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    Some comparable options for us were Apricot and Salesforce. Apricot didn't have the capacity to stretch to as many different programs and clients as we had. Salesforce was similar: it is better suited for tracking individual donors instead of the vast network of clients and …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    HIFIS, Bit focus
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    There are other, tailored solutions by private developers that were not available on this list. The major one is HIFIS, developed by the Government of Canada to track shelter use. What we didn't like about it is the inability of individual organizations to customize their own …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We prefer ETO.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We had primarily been using Access and Excel for tracking in many of our programs prior to ETO, with the exception of a few programs that used specific programs required or provided by funders. Access and Excel have so many limitations--I don't think I need to detail them here. …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We have been using ETO for a while. I haven't come across another reporting system quite as robust as ETO. For this reason, we are continuing with ETO.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    ETO had the flexibility we were looking for.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We found ETO to much more user friendly and much easier to customize for our needs in house.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    My organization recently went through a process of analyzing other databases on the market. These databases include Salesforce and Apricot, another Social Solutions project. ETO is far more robust than these other products as they do not include the reporting capability that …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We started with ETO because of a colleague's previous use.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We have not evaluated any other current products, as we have been using ETO for 7 years.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    Many similar products have a very high price point of entry. The financial investment is greater with other options that I've looked at in the last few years. ETO is additionally more customizable to your organization's unique needs. However, the customer service at Social …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    None
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    The back end customizable features. We like having ownership of our report building, and overall usability.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    I've use ClientTrack in the past and while the UI is currently nicer than ETO the reporting isn't as robust.
    ChildPlus is another software that is geared toward Head Start programs and is slick and easy. The reporting is also not as good as ETO but the data entry side is very …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We are currently only using the core ETO system functionality.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    Given the diversity of the services we offer and the vastly different service goals/models of those programs, ETO is the only program we've found that offers us the flexibility we need in both data entry and reporting. Also, many of our funding requirements change annually …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    No other software package we've researched can match ETO's reporting capabilities. All other software packages, however, have better interfaces, are browser-neutral, and are mobile-friendly. We selected Social Solutions ETO because it was the best software package we could …
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    We have not used other products. The only other program we were using was Excel.
    Incentivized
    Chose ETO Software (legacy)
    Salesforce is currently being used as a requirement of a few grants that we currently have. G*Stars is another popular Workforce Development software that several of our Workforce Development Agencies are using. Preferably for us, we use Social Solutions ETO. I believe all …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Small Businesses
    Bonterra Apricot
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Bonterra Apricot
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (44 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    1.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    1.0
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.0
    (5 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.1
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ETO Software (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    ETO Social Solutions should be avoided until they start caring about the problems generated by their software. In regards specifically to the ARMS suite utilized by the entire state of California, until the ETO software learns how to speak with SOMS, and unless it can be customized by knowledgeable people who consult with front-line users. It is not appropriate to provide the state legislature with bad data. I have 6 years of experience with it and I have multiple sources of agreement from fellow users throughout the state.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • ETO's customization allows for the use of so many different and unique applications.
    • The ability to build extremely customized reports also allows us to get very detail oriented results or very broad building wide stats.
    • The additional added features such as workflow, referrals, and ETO Engage are useful in their own way and add more ways to better track and record data while simplifying some end-user processes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • The user interface is not intuitive and exceptionally difficult for non-tech savvy people to learn.
    • The system is not as customizable as we were led to believe at the initial purchase.
    • The system does not interface well with other systems. Organizationally we are moving towards data integration, and we will likely replace ETO because of this limitation.
    • Considering the limitations of the system, the cost is quite high. We've seen only marginal benefits of this system over pen and paper, and the ROI is not promising.
    • The initial build process was very frustrating. We didn't understand what the developer was billing us for. Something like simple touchpoint forms was billed for more hours than it would seem to require.
    • A system like this should be both fully mobile compatible and have offline functionality.
    • We would benefit from more nuanced security settings.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Social Solutions has been great for our organization. It has allowed us to not only report on data, but to dive into it to see trends and give snapshots of the current status of our neighbors. Social Solutions has been helpful in getting us to see additional ways we can use our data and ways that it is easier for front line staff to use this tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    As a technically savvy person with experience learning new database software systems I find ETO relatively straightforward now that I've been trained in it's use. However, many of our staff are less technically savvy and the learning curve for ETO can be grueling for many, who require frequent troubleshooting and support from me. Additionally, there are small quality of life improvements that would increase usability even for me - such as allowing multiple tabs to be open simultaneously or being able to use the browser's "back" and "forward" buttons.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Routine maintenance is announced with plenty of lead time, and the few times I've been unable to log in to the system properly a simple refresh was all that was required to fix.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    Mostly really strong now, although I understand that for some years before switching their hosting service to AWS performance was a real issue with ETO and we had frequent problems with pages timing out or other glitches stemming from performance issues. With AWS that is mostly a thing of the past, although it is still a major issue with the reporting tool which is unable to run reports on the entire database due to performance limitations, instead requiring admins to define universes prior to running queries.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    We love the first tier customer support folks! They're friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable within the scope of their position. The experiences we've had with their supervisors have also been mostly good and again they seem to be doing what they can within the scope of their positions. This is what prevents me from selecting 1. Unfortunately, none of these wonderful folks can offer real solutions when things are actually broken. They verify there's a problem and send it to the black hole called "the developers". After that, we don't hear anything useful and we figure out how to live with/work around the problem ourselves. (Requests for updates typically get "still with the developer" responses.) This is highly frustrating given that most of our issues are basic system issues (functionality that worked then broke after an update by Social Solutions, servers not syncing, report universes not flattening automatically, etc.). All we want is for the system to work as designed and to be fixed in a timely fashion when it doesn't. Apparently, that's too much to ask. (And no, we don't expect it to happen instantly, programming and quality control checks obviously take time.)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    Really good trainer and exhaustive curriculum covered, but ETO is a complex enough system that you don't *really* know how to use it until you've been in the trenches for a few weeks. For instance, I took a Report Writing training and emerged with some fluency in the reports interface and a vague understanding of the process, but immediately encountered a legion of instance-specific idiosyncrasies that would have been totally impossible to address in a webinar training for a dozen folks from different orgs working in different instances.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Hard to say, as I was not with the agency at the time. However, based on our use of the software ~5years later I can say that there were no catastrophic design choices made during implementation that have become unduly burdensome as we've scaled up.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    When we made our decision several years ago Social Solutions had just acquired Apricot. At that time it was recommended to use ETO based off our revenue stream. However, it seems like Social Solutions has put in a lot more time and effort into Apricot over ETO and it seems more modern and user friendly. I think it is worth a second look once our contract expires
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    The core product scales well, and we've grown quite a bit as an agency during our use of ETO. However, there are some real pain points particularly around creating new programs and managing report universes that require extensive offline checklist resources and a full-spectrum understanding of how changing settings in one part of ETO can have downstream impact in other areas. This can introduce a "chilling" effect on proposed changes to the system, where there is strong incentive to leave things as-is to avoid unforeseen consequences.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • I would say that at this point the overall ROI has been negative as we aren't getting much more out of our data by the switch we made to ETO, but the cost is much higher. I anticipate that will change as we get better at using ETO.
    • Most users that have switched to ETO in our organization prefer it to what they were using before and some are more appreciative of the value they can get from the data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    ETO Software (legacy) Screenshots

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