Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
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HubSpot CRM
Score 8.5 out of 10
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HubSpot’s CRM enables growth-minded businesses to optimize their relationships with leads and customers. Through harnessing the power of carefully crafted sales, marketing, customer service, content management, and operations tools, the software aims to make it easy to unify team strategy and drive conversion. Additionally, the software allows users to connect with over 875 integration apps, APIs, and solutions partners to create a customizable user experience that suits the way teams work.…
Blackbaud is very robust but the user-friendly portion is weak. All the other CRMs look newer, easier to navigate, and actually a pleasant experience. Blackbaud is just not easy on the eyes. TOO MANY OPTIONS.
I think this product is well-suited for educational institutions, both at the private high school level and the higher education level. It covers a lot of ground in terms of recording information, and you have a lot of ability to tailor the software to your needs. I think there's some room for growth in terms of recording DEI information. Organizations who have very small staff may not want to consider this product because they might not have the time to take advantage of all the capabilities NXT has.
In my last position at a SAAS company, I used Salesforce and HATED IT. It was so clunky, and when I used HubSpot, it was like a breath of fresh air. Any company that does customer interactions and sales needs Hubspot. There is a TON of room for customization, which is AMAZING. I don't see anywhere that it wouldn't be a good fit.
Tracks history of gifts and makes it easy to see giving over time, also good at organizing and accessing complete constituent information around contact information, displaying gifts with date and designations, restrictions etc..
NXT provides easy access to analytics and reports to share for specific dates etc. to support decision making and planning
Display format and organization of analytical information is very intuitive and easy to navigate and helpful in developing reports for presentations.
Pricing - HubSpot offers a number of great features in the free version however the paid options can be pricey.
The free version could do with more options in some of the additional areas such as the marketing platform. Although there are some options included, they are very limited.
We have a lot invested in NXT and it suits our needs perfectly. There would be no reason for us to consider a needless conversion to a new solution. I do not believe there is any other product on the market that would be worth considering.
To be honest there are some barriers due to which we are unable to use Hubspot at it's full potentials. The region that we work in has some restrictions that don't allow us to make calls or text which leaves us to just Email to the client.
NXT seems easy to learn on a relatively deep level. There are glitches, like with everything, but it is usually easy to see where they are, most of time. I like that Development staff can choose what they want to see and where they want to see it, and it doesn’t affect my screen.
I think the usability is great. I am able to train a new agent with zero experience in our process with HubSpot in a day or less. They can be proficient in using HubSpot quickly, the way I've designed it to work, in less than a week. I am able to load new leads, set calling campaigns, and start prospecting quickly. I've even had to call customer service for help, and they were super helpful.
The only reason I cannot give a 10 is because like all web based products, internet connection is required and that is not something that can be counted on 100% of the time. When the internet connection is stable, I have had little to no issues using Raiser's Edge.
NXT itself is a pretty simple interface, and is great for front-line fundraisers to be able to look up info and run some simple "reports"/analysis. It's very quick and intuitive, but the back-end attached to it (RE 7.96) may have connectivity issues from time to time. NXT itself, though, is simple enough that issues are rare.
The support hat Blackbaud can be iffy at times. When they are busy they must hire on a large temporary worker pool to help support and often times they are not capable of answering the right questions and delaying the process for your solution to be complete. When it is not the busy time, most things get answered in a normal rate.
Because when I needed help HubSpot responded immediately and provided me with the information I needed which enabled me to realize that HubSpot was even more customizable and easier to use than I thought! And I already thought HubSpot was very user friendly and easy to use, and then Support showed me how to manipulate the settings, columns and the appearance of the tool.
When you get a good, knowledgeable person for in-person training, you can't beat it! Hands on, real time, questions answered on the spot. And they want to make sure you get what you needed before leaving. To also have dedicated time without other distractions is very important to the learning process in my opinion.
For the most part, the instructors who teach the online courses are very knowledgeable and personable. I will say that the instructor-led classes, which are the only actually helpful form of online training offered by Blackbaud, are likely prohibitively expensive for many, especially if you have multiple team members who need to be trained. One-off classes do not necessarily provide the best return on investment as you may not have selected the best class for the training that you're looking for, or you may sign up for a class that is taught by a poor instructor (which is rare) and you'll find yourself needing or wanting to take it again. The only other option is to sign a multi-year contract which is, again, expensive, and may be more than you need. There are definite gaps in some of the course offerings as Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is relatively new. Most of the classes also require a time commitment of one and a half to three hours, which could be more than your staff can spare.
Blackbaud was with us every step of the way during the migration of our data to the newer version of the software. They made it as easy as possible, and the huge task that it was was made much easier with their help.
If you've had any prior experience with cloud based marketing automation or group communication tools, you can do the implementation without paid outside support. Though getting to a SLA (service level agreement) would be best achieved with the help of a third party who can facilitate
There just is no system as robust and capable as Raiser's Edge NXT. It's ability to track anything you'd like, give you space to create custom fields (attributes) and utilize fields in different ways than intended give it the extra advatage that we hadn't seen in other products. It's got a vast network of plug ins that help automation features as well.
Salesforce requires a lot of in-depth knowledge both to implement and to manage. I found it to be quite clunky and there was an additional overhead for any marketing functionality, that wasn't up to par. Whilst Zoho had some good features, in practice the CRM was difficult to manage, customer support was non-existent, and like Salesforce, required 3rd party support agents in order make simple changes. comparison, HubSpot allows the user to make many changes themselves such as adding and mapping properties, and also has excellent customer service. Combined with a well-rounded offer in terms of marketing, analytics and a good CRM, HubSpot stands out as the clear winner.
Pricing really seems to be all over the place, and everything else you need is an extra add-on cost. The biggest issue is training. Options are limited unless you subscribe and pay for it across your contract.
New features are constantly being added to Raiser's Edge NXT that expand its capabilities. Features such as constituent mapping and easily accessible actions allow for more in-depth analysis of existing constituents. The future ability to manipulate soft-credits and customize reporting dashboards will make NXT even more attractive to our fundraisers and executives. It's great to see that the software is evolving.
Automation helps to save time so that we can reach out to more prospecting or save time that can be spent on more strategic sales tasks like deal management
Visibility/collaboration helps connect marketing and sales efforts vs them being siloed
Connection with salesforce helps us to get more out of our CRM spend as we have valuable data insights coming from Hubspot
