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Infor Birst vs. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Infor Birst

    Score6.5 out of 10
    N/AInfor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools, and an open client interface.N/A

    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)

    Score7.4 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Microsoft for Nonprofit was a bundle of nonprofit-specific applications, advanced training benefits, and technical support that is no longer available.

    $0

    per month per instance

    Pricing
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Standard Plan
    Free
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—With the $0 solution, Fundraising and Engagement, organizations receive access to a multitude of solutions, including: Fundraising and Engagement Fundraising performance dashboard LinkedIn Sales Navigator Program Impact Dashboard Constituent Marketing Journeys Volunteer Management Volunteer Engagement Manage volunteers template Volunteer center template Fundraising and Engagement includes all the features and capabilities above and requires prerequisite licenses.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Infor
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Would buy again
    10 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    10 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    75%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.4
    77 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports7.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.159 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.0
    78 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis8.078 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities7.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages6.127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration7.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.0
    75 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.067 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning7.28 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling9.066 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    6.9
    72 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.072 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.058 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics5.833 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.3
    72 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.070 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model8.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.069 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    5.0
    54 Ratings
    43% below category average
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application3.034 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Communications and Marketing
    Comparison of Communications and Marketing features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    7.1
    4 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Constituent engagement and marketing00 Ratings7.14 Ratings
    Reporting and Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting and Analytics features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    6.8
    5 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Reporting and data visualization00 Ratings6.85 Ratings
    Wealth screening00 Ratings6.83 Ratings
    Fundraising and Events
    Comparison of Fundraising and Events features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    7.9
    2 Ratings
    33% above category average
    Online donation options00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    Volunteer shift management00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    Security and Platform
    Comparison of Security and Platform features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    7.3
    4 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Role-based user permissions00 Ratings7.64 Ratings
    Mobile access00 Ratings6.94 Ratings
    Integrations00 Ratings7.44 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Agentforce 360 for Nonprofits
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Zendesk Explore
    Score8.1 out of 10
    DonorPerfect
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    Ellucian CRM Advance
    Score5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.5
    (99 ratings)
    7.2
    (11 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (35 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (19 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.3
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    6.0
    (24 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    7.6
    (76 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Infor
    Infor Birst OEM and embedded analytics are well suited for advanced analytics and business intelligence. It has flexible deployment features and a lot of configuration ability with low code - no coding ability. Ability to ingest data from multiple live data sources. Source data from multiple sources can be segregated into multiple sections based on business criteria. Easily searchable business terms (metadata) across all enterprise analytic content.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit is well suited for non-profit settings requiring one coordinated and one-stop-shop for electronic file management, especially of Microsoft file types such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel sheets, and PowerPoint presentations. Some scenarios where it is less appropriate are for those who need to transfer or share files across different platforms outside of the Microsoft Suite of products.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Infor
    • End-to-end solution, from raw source data, ETL, warehousing and reporting, Birst is able to do everything we need in one package instead of needing to develop and maintain multiple technologies
    • Intuitive report development. The drag and drop creation of reports is simple. More complicated queries are easy to generate.
    • Very user-friendly and interactive. A lot of nice features are available both for developers and end users to streamline the process of preparing and consuming data
    • Rich API which allows us to programmatically interact with Birst
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Providing a basic framework for nonprofit organizations who've been limping along or have capped out with their current platforms to consider switching to amplify and multiply their capabilities, reach, and impact
    • Increasing the accessibility for both citizen developers and tech teams to extend a platform, so long as there are clear parameters (business use case) and thoughtful design and architecture planning
    • Sharing some core infrastructure that accelerates the use of important tools to further the mission of nonprofit organizations
    Read full review
    Cons
    Infor
    • Birst prices are fairly expensive. License plus cost of users can add up pretty quickly
    • Depending on the size of data, rendering of reports can take a little bit. Need faster processing of data
    • Takes a little time to understand how to build reports, not the most intuitive UI
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • The system is ridiculously hard to implement, requiring too many tiers of Microsoft cloud services to be enabled.
    • The technical aspects of the product are far too complex for anyone with standard cloud-based app training to implement.
    • The non-profit "qualification" system is poorly designed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Infor
    We have been able to overcome any of the drawbacks we've found with Birst easily and it has fulfilled almost all of our analytic needs to date. Having seen their roadmap it would be highly unlikely we would move away from this platform any time soon. You simply can't beat the functionality that Birst provides for the price and the things I see coming out of the company solidify that our decision to choose Birst was the best possible choice. We have never regretted the decision.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It's been very helpful at a very discounted price, especially in data analysis and visualization with Power BI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Infor
    I would like to see additional usability put into the ETL scripting. Recently, Birst added a nice function reference inline to formula creation which has kept me from having to return to documentation so much. The same in ETL would be very beneficial. The interface problems related to the Flex framework are being addressed in a rewrite to HTML 5, but for now they are still a hindrance to a higher usability rating.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Infor
    We frequently experience -103 errors due to us using the Live Connect functionality, which does not seem to handle even minor interruptions in connectivity, and treats all future connection attempts or data requests as errors, even if the issue does not exist any longer
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Infor
    Everything runs very fast and smoothly. The only process that I wish was faster would be processing the data after uploading new data or making changes to the existing data model. It can take 15-20 minutes (roughly) to upload and process new data once you start getting into 10's of millions of rows. Given my experience with how long it takes me to pull the same data using SQL Server Management Studio, I don't think Birst is unreasonably slow - but for me to give a higher rating, I would want it to be unreasonably fast
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Infor
    • Poor turnaround time
    • Low response rate when the problem at hand are large
    • Lack of infrastructural knowledge when it comes to scaling solutions
    • Lack of inter team work noticed
    • Most of the tickets are open for a long period of time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    In-Person Training
    Infor
    I have attended two different training sessions. The first one was my initial training on the system. It was well paced, clear and concise. If there were questions that were not able to be answered by the instructor, he took down the question and actually followed up and provided us a response quickly. The second session was specific to the dashboard and report design components. This training was very good though there were some attendants who had little or no experience and their questions slowed the class.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Infor
    Although I found the online resources helpful, a lack of appropriate examples for certain tasks key to report creation and advanced modeling make the online training/documentation less than perfect. For an inexperienced BI professional, the online training would not enable a streamlined launch of the product.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Infor
    Have clean data! Birst flexibility allows - Start small, then introduce functionality and complexity along the way. If you try to present all the functionality [bells and whistles] and wow them, but bad data is uncovered, the end user blames the new application and turns away.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Infor
    Birst was better than Domo for our needs because we could get in and tinker with it. Our impression of Domo was that it had a lot of connectors and ready to go reports, but it made too many assumptions about applications we use. We customize too much to use a "ready to go" solution like that. When we looked at Tableau, we liked its visualization capabilities, but it wasn't going to help us do the extractions, ETL, and warehousing of data. It may have come some distance since then.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Other solutions may have a head start in terms of features, but MC4N is catching up quickly. Easy integration with the entire Microsoft tech stack including Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, Power BI saves costs over time. Microsoft’s Power Platform also allows for easy and rapid low code extensibility. Finally, the Common Data Model enables interoperability with other products and oAppSource apps.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Infor
    we can see that loading a lot of data can cause a noticable slow down in performance. Birst support indicated that they don't really consider anything less than 30 seconds to be an issue, but that is not the case for our customers, so we have had to change some of implementation to address this
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Infor
    • Being a manufacturing company we tend to lag behind technologically. But having all the data for different ERP systems in one place has been an eye opener for the executives. It has lessened the need to convert some legacy ERP systems.
    • Having such a simple reporting tool is a great asset to some of our sites that have traditionally had trouble gathering data from AS400 systems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Attempting to deploy Microsoft Cloud for Non-profits had a negative impact on our donor relations staff, the technical team tasked to deploy it, and upper management who watched the deployment fail.
    • Overall, this product is too dependent on too many Microsoft Cloud services to really deploy with any sort of clear expectation to management of what the "hidden" costs would be.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Infor Birst Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit (discontinued) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Likelihood to donate, which allows users to increase donor giving by understanding and engage with a constituent community based on its propensity to give.