TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Blackbaud Luminate Online vs. Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Blackbaud Luminate Online

    Score6.8 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Luminate Online aims to help non-profits engage more effectively with supporters and raise more money by enabling integrated campaigns for digital, social and mobile channels. According to the vendor, Luminate Online helps non-profits: Better understand online supporters Make the right ask at the right time Launch creative fundraising campaigns Automated campaigns stimulate engagement and action through targeted welcome messages with personalized…N/A

    Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AAcuity Scheduling is an appointment management platform developed by the company of the same name in New York and acquired by Squarespace in 2019.

    $14

    per month

    Pricing
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Emerging
    $14
    per month
    Growing
    $23
    per month
    Powerhouse
    $45
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsLuminate Online is priced based on the number of email addresses on file, modules used and service plan. Our peer to peer offering, TeamRaiser, has a transactional, shared success pricing model.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Considered Both Products
    Blackbaud
    No answer on this topic
    Squarespace
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    57%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    26 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    50%
    Delivers good value for the price
    3 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    26 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    27 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Small Businesses
    Bonterra Network for Good
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Square Appointments
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    GiveSmart by Momentive
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Chili Piper
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Kindsight iWave
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Doodle
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Likelihood to Recommend
    3.7
    (87 ratings)
    9.3
    (48 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    9.3
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    2.1
    (28 ratings)
    9.5
    (9 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.2
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (32 ratings)
    9.7
    (16 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    3.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    6.6
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.8
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineAcuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Blackbaud
    Blackbaud Luminate Online is an excellent solution for online giving, providing a wealth of tools for producing donation forms. It also is outstanding for peer-to-peer fundraising, such as event-based efforts like walks, cycling tours, and so forth. The Email module is outstanding if you need an internal solution for communicating with your donors and supporters. It provides a wealth of tools for crafting emails, and for reporting on the results.
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    I think any business can benefit from Acuity Scheduling. In my experience, however, and maybe I just haven’t found the correct settings yet, it’s been difficult to manage 4 business schedules with multiple employees and varying hours that change day-to-day and week-to-week. So I definitely would recommend it to more simple business models with set hours, as it seems like it would have all the functions one might need. I still would recommend to more complex businesses like mine as well, but also include discussion of some of the potential drawbacks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Blackbaud
    • House Donor Information. Easy report pulling. Queries and lists.
    • I like how everything is housed on one platform. Webpages, emails and donor profiles. User friendly.
    • It works nicely with other blackbaud products such as Raiser's Edge. Easy importing and exporting options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Clicking on the link opens up my calendar, which has an uncluttered look, making it easy for my prospects and clients to review their options and make their choice.
    • I am able to customize my schedule, the types of appointments I want to offer, and even decide how many appointments I want in a day. There are so many details that I can customize.
    • I can customize how my calendar and emails look for my prospects and clients so that I come across professional and coordinated. I want the look of my business, website, etc. to have a polished, cohesive, and interesting presence.
    • I love that there is a workshop/class/series option for my workshops. My attendees reserve their place and pay upfront. I can duplicate these events or add future dates. It's wonderful. This saves us a lot of time and is so convenient.
    • I haven't had any trouble with my scheduler. It works flawlessly, so I don't have to take time out of my day to fix, troubleshoot or call customer service.
    • I love that I can add questions for my prospects to answer right away before booking a call. This means 3 fewer steps for me. 1. They answer these questions without an email from me. 2. They make their reservation and get a follow-up email, right away. 3. I customized the follow-up email with more details and actions to take to prepare for our call.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Blackbaud
    • Reporting needs some work, this is being worked on in their new BETA program.
    • The eCommerce module needs some work. It would be great to have more ability to customize parts of it without having to rewrite the code.
    • The Events module could use some improvements as well.
    • The Personal Fundraising module needs a lot of work. It really cannot work as needed right now. We started using TeamRaiser to handle this, but it could be great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Administrator interface is tricky to use. It is not easy to add new types of meetings or edit the settings on the current types of meetings we have
    • I'd like to see them send out more reminder emails leading up to the meeting scheduled to reduce the number of no-shows and reschedules
    • Make it easier to customize the confirmation emails-- easier ability to add videos and customizable text
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Blackbaud
    We’ve decided to leave Luminate and are moving to a system that better caters to our and our users needs. Luminate has proven difficult to use and has limited abilities when it comes to data management, events, and peer-to-peer functionality. Reporting is also very complicated and requires a great deal of time to utilize properly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    Acuity Scheduling has been very reliable. If you don't believe me, check out their status page here. They do a pretty decent job maintaining their app. To be fair, it's a pretty simple tool so they shouldn't run into too many hiccups given it doesn't feature near as many options as other applications on the market run.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    It is very easy to use once you get to know the program but with years of working with the program I am still finding new things that I had wished I knew about earlier. I feel like aspects of the website become hidden that would help productivity a lot if I knew they existed beforehand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    Every time I had a question on how to do something or had any issues with Acuity Scheduling, mainly in the very beginning, when I was learning the platform, customer service was excellent. They were prompt to respond, friendly, and very helpful until I had the right solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    In the case of Schedulicity, the system was awesome (very easy to set up and had some nice features) but did not offer the functionality and flexibility that AcuityScheduling does. In the case of SimplyBook.me, they offer lots of functionality but the interface is extremely complex and you pay a la carte for features so you're going to pay exponentially more for the same set of features as compared to AcuityScheduling. Their customer service was also lacking, in my opinion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Blackbaud
    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
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Blackbaud
    • We've increased our online giving +200% although this is due in part to our focus on the channel and not entirely on the product.
    • We've been able to increase employee efficiency by selecting email lists per message within Luminate Online. With our prior solution we needed to request data be pulled from our database for event email.
    • We've really done a great job of growing our online tribute and memorial giving through the use of custom links and the pre-populated information has really helped with the back end processing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Squarespace
    • Minimizing no shows
    • Giving me back time by taking tasks off my mind/to-do list to focus on bigger more important things
    • Payment management (it helps me make sure I receive my payments/recurring payments and follow up with clients if a payment has failed)
    • Honestly just saving me from scheduling nightmares and headaches
    • Timezones! It does it for you! (I work internationally)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Blackbaud Luminate Online Screenshots

    Screenshot of Email Overview DashboardScreenshot of Luminate allows you to enable multiple types of giving - from recurring to matching and everything between.Screenshot of Luminate enables you to reach out to supporters in multiple waysScreenshot of Luminate Peer to Peer fundraising with DIY events, also enables your supporters to fundraising on their behalf.