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    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

    Zendesk Suite

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AZendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.

    $69

    per month per agent

    Pricing
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Suite Team
    $69
    per month per agent
    Suite Growth
    $115
    per month per agent
    Suite Professional
    $149
    per month per agent
    Suite Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredOptional
    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.20% discount available with annual pricing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Considered Both Products
    Blackbaud
    No answer on this topic
    Zendesk
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    57%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    87%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    50%
    Delivers good value for the price
    3 Answers
    85%
    Delivers good value for the price
    108 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    131 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    94 Answers
    Features
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Blackbaud Luminate Online and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Blackbaud Luminate Online
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.6
    187 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.1186 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.9127 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.8131 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3186 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings9.0185 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Blackbaud Luminate Online and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Blackbaud Luminate Online
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.5
    169 Ratings
    6% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.5163 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.5156 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Blackbaud Luminate Online and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Blackbaud Luminate Online
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.4
    182 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings9.1150 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.076 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.4119 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings9.2178 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.4138 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Small Businesses
    Bonterra Network for Good
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    GiveSmart by Momentive
    Score7.5 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Kindsight iWave
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    3.7
    (87 ratings)
    8.7
    (225 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    10.0
    (43 ratings)
    Usability
    2.1
    (28 ratings)
    8.6
    (98 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (14 ratings)
    Performance
    9.2
    (9 ratings)
    9.1
    (11 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (32 ratings)
    5.5
    (31 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (14 ratings)
    6.4
    (10 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    3.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (19 ratings)
    Configurability
    6.6
    (9 ratings)
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.8
    (11 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Blackbaud Luminate OnlineZendesk Suite
    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
    Zendesk
    Zendesk is good for small teams where work is not passed along to internal teams or situations where escalations lead to further customer interactions and no further oversight is needed. It is weak as a product for larger and medium-sized companies, where processes are in place that are not aligned with its workflow, as it is a very rigid tool.
    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
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    Zendesk
    • Merging of the tickets with similar issues, it is easy to avoid confusion
    • Al global team somehow gets connected with different ways like Slack, with the Zendesk Suite which is so easier to highlight & the issue quickly
    • The best thing is that this tool gives you to send the message via chat-, email, call through the one single platform
    • Now AI has been added so it works good
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Zendesk
    • Is there a way for AEs and CSMs to be informed in a weekly summary of all their accounts and any tickets? Example: Disney submitted a ticket on XYZ. Google has an urgent issue on X still unresolved.
    • Is there a way for CSMs or AEs to have a Dashboard that's specific to their accounts instead of seeing all the tickets in the queue that are not relevant to them?
    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
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    Zendesk
    Zendesk is an amazing tool for communicating with your customers easily. The communication tickets from sellers to us or from us to sellers are stored, and there are statuses used to make communication easy. We have internal conversations between departments, linked with useful software such as Zingtree, Talkdesk, and Webs.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Zendesk
    Pros: The agent interface is sleek, contemporary, and relatively easy to learn compared to many other enterprise tools. For common tasks, admins are given point-and-click options- adding fields, modifying workflows, constructing macros. The knowledge base (Guide) editor is easy to use for non-developers. Drawbacks: Once you move past the initial things - complex automations, reporting/analytics in Explore, and/or customizations integrating the API, it requires much more advanced training to use successfully. Navigating between the different modules (Support, Explore, Chat, Guide) can feel very disconnected; often you are reminded that it really is a "suite" of products brought together -not really one unified platform. If you're using multiple brands managing simultaneous support tickets, or heavily customizing workflows to meet your brand, you may run into a bit of struggle with usability. So: it's a lot more user friendly than the palaces (Salesforce Service Cloud, ServiceNow), but is not used as quickly or with as much streamlined flow as a product made for a small shop. So if you are looking for a great balance, this is a good option if you are a net new organization or an organization on their way to scaling from 15 - 50 employee. Expect some elbow grease from the admin team once learning, adapting, and working efficiently once you move past the basics with your support tickets and initial customizations.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Zendesk
    In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
    Read full review
    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
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    Zendesk
    There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
    Read full review
    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
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    Zendesk
    We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
    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
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    Zendesk
    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
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    Zendesk
    Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
    Read full review
    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
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    Zendesk
    I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

    The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
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    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
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    Zendesk
    At the time of evaluation, Dynamics had extremely limited knowledge and support capabilities. The UI is clunky, and reporting requires a deep understanding of the underlying data structure. Ongoing maintenance was costly and didn't provide a positive ROI in any sense of the term.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Zendesk
    WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Zendesk
    • More than anything, provided a boost to our perceived professionalism. The portal is a massive improvement on email only support.
    • Workflow optimization via macros and automations has enhanced response times and raise our 'first call resolution' metric.
    • Speaking of metrics; having them at all! Before Zendesk Suite we were email only so had no insight into agent and vendor performance.
    Incentivized
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    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.

    Zendesk Suite Screenshots

    Screenshot of the Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations