PatronManager vs. Raiser's Edge

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PatronManager
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
PatronManager is a nonprofit CRM that handles ticketing, subscriptions, fundraising and email marketing built on the Salesforce platform, from the company of the same name in Pittsburgh.N/A
Raiser's Edge
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Pricing
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Considered Both Products
PatronManager
Chose PatronManager
Raiser's Edge is the Ferrari of CRM software - it's beautiful and there are so many great features for all levels of giving, however, unless you are at a huge organization, this is a little too much. I loved using Little Green Light for its intuitive user friendly platform, but …
Raiser's Edge

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Small Businesses
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
Bloomerang
Bloomerang
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
Blackbaud CRM
Blackbaud CRM
Score 7.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(2 ratings)
7.0
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
6.2
(27 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(19 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.9
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
PatronManagerRaiser's Edge
Likelihood to Recommend
Patron Technology
PatronManager is probably best for a larger organization with a dedicated technology expert because a lot of the features require someone to understand the back end a little bit more, especially when you need help (and a lot of the webinars or feature releases are way over the average person's head!). Data mining becomes frustrating because the reporting features are very backwards. PatronManager is very user friendly on the ticketing center and its easy to train new employees on this side.
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Blackbaud
Raisers Edge is outstanding for storing and reporting on constituent data and communications. There are many options for creating methods of tracking by different information included and also for creating personalized tracking methods.
Raisers Edge is not very well suited for an organization that also has a gift shop and visitors center. Allowing membership admission and item sales is not practical.
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Pros
Patron Technology
  • Building custom reports is intuitive and user friendly.
  • Integration with third party apps such as MailChimp is seamless and functional.
  • Support requests are handled quickly, and the annual user conference offers special training and in-person demos.
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Blackbaud
  • Raiser's Edge is good in allowing detailed categorizations for donations - Funds/Campaigns/Appeals/Packages
  • Raiser's Edge has good query functioning and is helpful in pulling lists and segments of constituents and donations
  • The variety of detail across sections (Gifts/Bios/Actions) is helpful for recording and archiving constituent information
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Cons
Patron Technology
  • Reporting features are difficult to use.
  • Built for orgs that have IT management, challenging at a small shop.
  • Not easily customizable.
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Blackbaud
  • Data posting to Financial Edge (FE) is limited and complicated to understand (took us time to adjust). The posting report does not have enough info: Appeal, campaign and who posted to FE. In genereral, RE/FE integration is not explained by Blackbaud properly, we had to figure out everything on the go.
  • Volunteer module is a bit cumbersome; some fields have duplicate fields in the event module; the identical information ends up being recorded in two different places.
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Likelihood to Renew
Patron Technology
No answers on this topic
Blackbaud
There are many CRM tools on the market however Raisers Edge especially with NXT offers everything you need in one database. It’s a little pricey however Blackbaud support is super helpful and they offer so many tools and add ins.
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Usability
Patron Technology
No answers on this topic
Blackbaud
it does lots of things well (prospect tracking and event management), some things FANTASTIC (gift records and donations and relationships). It is rigid enough for the database administrator to maintain good clean data, but flexible enought for customization across organizations so specific data can be kept as needed for YOUR specific organization needs.
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Reliability and Availability
Patron Technology
No answers on this topic
Blackbaud
Since the software is expensive to use, only so many people are able to active users at once. There are times when I may have to wait or ask another user to log out so that I may log in.
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Support Rating
Patron Technology
No answers on this topic
Blackbaud
For most users, only chat support is available. There is a phone number, but it is very labor-intensive to get someone on the phone, and the chat does not include an easy way to screen share. Those sessions need to be scheduled in advance and almost begged for; the chat line always has a long wait time, and sometimes it seems their support personnel is chatting with more than one client at a time.
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Implementation Rating
Patron Technology
No answers on this topic
Blackbaud
It's critically important to consider where you are taking your fundraising efforts and strategy, and to collaborate closely with other departments who will also use RE. I would strongly recommend that you investigate best practices -both from Blackbaud (theory) and with other organizations (practice) - to create a user manual and guide for RE within your organization
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Alternatives Considered
Patron Technology
The PatronManager user experience is far superior, and custom report-building is the easiest I have ever seen on a CRM platform. Pricing is also competitive, and customer service + support far exceeds other platforms I have used in the past.
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Blackbaud
Salesforce has a more modern feel and I felt that it was easier to perform functions beyond the basics, such as running reports for analysis, on Salesforce. But The Raisers Edge already existed at my company and given that I only needed it for basic functions and did not need much training to do those, I decided to use The Raisers Edge.
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Return on Investment
Patron Technology
  • PatronManager has saved us a lot of money compared to former ticketing software (Vendini).
  • PatronManager has less ticketing fees associated, enabling audiences to up their purchase with an add-on donation that we get to keep.
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Blackbaud
  • It takes longer than necessary to do things so that makes it cost more staff time to complete the work we need. One example is with online gifts since you can't import these into a batch we have to manually add all of the online gifts which is time consuming.
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ScreenShots