Blackbaud Luminate Online vs. Mailchimp

I feel the way Luminate handles donor information is very organized and full. I am a database/reports person so I love how easy it is to find and process information. Some portals don't allow that much information into donor's profiles but Luminate provides a lot of room for history and bio information that is great for reports.

Incentivized

Mailchimp is excellent for a company/user that is wanting to quickly and easily set up email campaigns all on their own, even if they have little prior experience doing so - and especially if they are on a budget. The email templates allow the emails to look professional without having to hire an outside designer or coder and the user interface makes it easy to understand the application without being the most tech-savvy person in the world. Mailchimp would be a less suited for a company/user that was sending out complex emails that require a lot of data and variable logic connected to them. It also wouldn't be so much suited for a company/user that is expecting to have any custom-made requirements or a dedicated account representative that is on standby to take questions/requests.

Incentivized

• The donation forms are easy to set up to start collecting donations instantly.
• Getting an e-mail out the door is fairly straightforward.
• The TeamRaiser module is great for fundraising for big events with multiple registration levels and allowing participants to fundraise on your behalf.
• Constituent management is fairly easy.

Incentivized

• Easy form building gets you up and running quickly.
• Segmentation of contacts allows for grouping of contacts for email blasts.
• Drag 'n drop email builders can create industry standard emails that look great.
• Embed codes for websites which can be easily copy and pasted onto websites for instant usage.

Incentivized

• Email management is limited. Constituents are only able to have a primary email address and a secondary address which is only mailed to when using the CC function. Sending to the correct and preferred email address is difficult to discern and effective use in Luminate requires extensive data cleanup.
• Reports are not as user-friendly as in other programs. It has occurred multiple times where users are unsure how to get specific fields to pull in reports.
• TeamRaiser is a challenging addition to Luminate. Campaigns within it require extensive work and management.

Incentivized

• Not a fan of some of the font choices, it would be nice to have more.
• How campaigns are organized I would like to see this organized differently so older campaigns are easier to find if you need to refer back to an old one.
• It would be nice if the reporting gave a little more info on if your email performance with not just open rates but clicks, etc.

Incentivized

While there are some limitations it is working for us. We just renewed and likely will again in the future. You have to invest a lot of money and time to get it set up and so the decision to switch to another vendor would need to be a big one. If costs continue to rise or performance declines relative to peers we would absolutely consider switching but for now, as long as it's one of the frontrunners and the cost is appropriate, we will continue.

Incentivized

We've had Mailchimp for about ten years, I want to say. I started with the company about four years ago, and I don't see us ever diverting to another source. It's easy for us to use, and we have all our clients already built into the database. I imagine we'll use them for as long as we have the company.

Incentivized

You have to be very tech savvy to use Luminate to its fullest potential. You can get buy with the training, but there is a steep learning curve and you almost need 6 months to 1 year of in-person training to really be able to anything substantial. The online training lessons are not going to cut it while learning this program.

Incentivized

The user experience, the design, and the simple-to-follow instructions make MailChimp one of the easiest email solutions. The drag-and-drop builder makes it quick to set up, and if you do know some code, there are options to do a bit more customizations.

Incentivized

It's a very rare occurrence if the system isn't available when I want it. I can easily log in from home after hours if need be, and the security is enforced, but simple when you're legit! They are very good about sending email reminders and updates when system maintenance will be performed, and it's always during middle of the night hours when you likely wouldn't be using it anyways

Incentivized

I have, in the 4+ years that I've used Mailchimp, never seen an issue that restricted the use of their software/tools. I don't know of a single time when they're system crashed or went down. I could be wrong, but I honestly haven't experienced any issues with outages, errors or unplanned downtime

Incentivized

Pages load fast and 98% of the reports do run in a matter of secons/minutes. There is this one report I have that can take hours to run, but this is due to the amount of transactions being requested for one of our biggest online fundraising events (Transaction report)

Incentivized

I haven't noticed any slow speeds from Mailchimp or their tools. I think the landing pages load quickly and look nice. The email reports and editing operates smoothly and doesn't take time to load. Additionally, when I use Mailchimp in conjunction with Zapier + Hubspot I don't notice any drag between any of these tools

Incentivized

Support staff are usually incredibly helpful and responsive. There are several ways to contact them (chat, logging a ticket, phone) which makes it easy to get help when you need it. Once in a while I get a support staff member who isn't quite as helpful, which is why I gave it a 9 instead of a 10, but that is rare and if I follow up with someone else, I get what I need.

Incentivized

Website tools were easy to use and understand so a novice can easily meet or exceed their client's expectations! Loved that we were able to totally customize so that the e-mail we created conveyed our client's overall messaging consistent with their branding! Client love that we can provide turnkey services to support their sales and marketing teams!

Incentivized

Initial training was great and the instructor was very patient and helpful during the set up process. Blackbaud has a variety on online self-paced classes that supplement the training you receive. The only downfall is after training is complete. I've found the support for Luminate to be a tad lackluster. We often encounter issues that aren't on Luminate's development road map and have had a series of cases be opened.

Incentivized

When I used the training, I had actually been using Luminate Online but figured it might help me learn to use the tools more effectively. And it did. The sessions were helpful and even as a current user I felt like I learned how to use the tools more effectively.

Incentivized

Implementation of Luminate itself was rather smooth, but the process involved for TeamRaiser was very difficult. Even after implementation we relied on support to help with various aspects of TeamRaiser from page design to reporting and front end user issues. The support offered for issues with Luminate was very good, but again TeamRaiser support was lacking.

Incentivized

It's pretty easy to get up and running! There's a slight learning curve on a few things, but once you find where everything is located, you can import your list and send your first email. It really makes our clients feel great to see how quickly they can get that first email out.

Incentivized

The only other product I have used for this type of fundraising work is NetCommunity and it hasn't been as scalable or versatile. It doesn't really offer the peer to peer fundraising of Luminate or the constituent management, web page development and considered donation forms. NetCommunity didn't even come close which is why we replaced it with Luminate.

Incentivized

Mailchimp is pretty comparable to other email marketing software I have used, but I had a better experience designing templates and emails using Campaign Monitor compared to Mailchimp. Mailchimp always seemed to have small little glitches with the design, and my emails never looked exactly like they did when I designed them.

Incentivized

Luminate Online is a great scalable product as it provides various price points dependent on your quantity of email addresses. This allows both small and large organizations to utilize the product, which has strong email capabilities. It also means smaller organizations aren't forced to pay astronomical fees in order to have access to a quality product.

Incentivized

Mailchimp over the years I've used it has grown in leaps and bounds. They have added so many additional features than were previously available. They are truly an all-in-one marketing platform now. If you're a small operation and just want to add email to your marketing efforts, they're there for you. If you're a larger operation and want to start sending postcard advertisements, they can do that. If you'd good with that and want to kick up your marketing by going social, you can do that on their platform. They are truly able to be as small as you need, but also get quite large in whatever it is you'd like to do through their system.

Incentivized

• There's no denying that as a long term Convio client (now Luminate Online) that we have significantly grown our NPO with these tools. And our ROI is in the positive range.
• The negative impact has been the cost of related services we must engage to configure and maintain and deploy many areas of Luminate Online with a small staff. There is just too much "specialized," insider-work-around knowledge to make it a stand-alone product without large additional costs to use the product to it's full potential.
• This product used to set the trends and now it holds us back from being able to take advantage of the trends in many ways. An integrated system can become a limitation in this current social web environment. Staff coming in from outside the Luminate/Convio environment often complain about the system because they are used to the "ease-of-use" of many of today's offerings in the marketplace.

• It imports coded templates and sends follow-up emails based on clicks, opens, etc.
• It's an effective email marketing tool with a friendly interface that educates and assists customers.
• It has social media management, landing page creation, inbound marketing, and CRM integrations.