Blackbaud eTapestry vs. Salsa CRM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blackbaud eTapestry
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
Blackbaud eTapestry is a donor management solution that helps growing nonprofits build a stable foundation for success, beat fundraising goals, and catalyze growth. eTapestry boasts more than 6,000 nonprofits and institutions as users, who manage and track fundraising performance, engage new supporters, and maximize existing donor relationships with the software.
$115
per month Usage based per constituent record
Salsa CRM
Score 6.3 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Salsa CRM (Formerly DonorPro CRM) is a donor and constituent management system that helps nonprofits build donor profiles, track every interaction, cultivate major gifts, and report on all development activities. The platform includes mobile-ready digital marketing tools for email, social, and online donation forms. Additional features include donor cultivation, donation processing of all gift types, direct mail, built in word processing, mail merge, powerful query tool,…N/A
Pricing
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Considered Both Products
Blackbaud eTapestry
Chose Blackbaud eTapestry
Blackbaud eTapestry is the most customizable out of the other databases I have worked with, however, a solution like Bloomerang is easier for inexperienced database users.
Chose Blackbaud eTapestry
Every system I've seen is cheaper and more intuitive than eTapestry. As soon as I could switch away from eTapestry, I did, and I will never use it again.
Salsa CRM
Chose Salsa CRM
We chose Salsa CRM prior to Bloomerang coming into existence. We chose Salsa CRM over the two products (eTapestry wasn't part of Blackbaud at the time) due to costs, ease of use, and fitting into the needs we had within our own agency. We are happy with our choice and aren't …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Communications and Marketing
Comparison of Communications and Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Blackbaud eTapestry
5.0
1 Ratings
1% above category average
Salsa CRM
-
Ratings
Constituent engagement and marketing6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Social listening4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Digital advocacy enablement5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Analytics
Comparison of Reporting and Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Blackbaud eTapestry
7.5
1 Ratings
21% above category average
Salsa CRM
-
Ratings
Reporting and data visualization8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Wealth screening7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Fundraising and Events
Comparison of Fundraising and Events features of Product A and Product B
Blackbaud eTapestry
5.0
1 Ratings
14% above category average
Salsa CRM
-
Ratings
Online donation options6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Text and phone donations4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Volunteer shift management5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Security and Platform
Comparison of Security and Platform features of Product A and Product B
Blackbaud eTapestry
7.7
1 Ratings
20% above category average
Salsa CRM
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile access7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrations7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
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
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(89 ratings)
3.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(27 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(27 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
4.8
(15 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.5
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Blackbaud eTapestrySalsa CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
Blackbaud
As we are a small Foundation with only one Administrative Assistant, eTapestry is perfect for me to keep all of our CRM. Once I got used to how it worked, I found it to be user friendly. If I have any problems, I can either try to find the answer for myself in the extensive library, chat to support or email our Customer Service Representative with questions. I cannot fault either the Support team or Customer Service Representatives I have dealt with over the years as all of them have been knowledgeable and extremely helpful. I would prefer to have better options within the Email section as the templates are very basic. There is another option to use an eTapestry partner, but there are additional costs involved in that. The email templates are OK to use if you wish to send quick information to your database.
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Bonterra
Well suited for sending mass emails or emails to certain groups, sending automated emails, collecting donations, and peer-to-peer communication. They have a good support team. I'm still figuring out how to best manage supporters, it's not as intuitive as I would like. I used to just manage all donor information on Google Sheets, and I still prefer Google Sheets.
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Pros
Blackbaud
  • Report Scheduling is great. Reports can be scheduled daily (even on specific days of the week), weekly, or monthly) and auto-emailed.
  • Reports can be displayed on the screen, downloaded, or emailed in CSV, excel, or pdf and can have columns pre-sorted in your preferred order.
  • Online donations are automatically added to the donor's account and automatically create an account for a new donor.
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Bonterra
  • User-Friendly. As a user, it is an intuitive product. When you are working, it is easy to navigate.
  • Fundraising Pages: Salsa Engage allows you to easily and quickly make fundraising pages that can be pushed out to your community of donors.
  • CRM: Easy to manage the constituents. When someone signs up for our fundraising pages, the software captures the demographics and either matches up to the existing donor or creates a new constituent.
  • Salsa CRM listens to their customers and works well with the user base. Most ideas are listened to and can see that requests are pushed out in updates.
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Cons
Blackbaud
  • When I started using eTapestry, you had to pay for courses to learn how to do more complicated things in the database. These courses were fairly expensive and our small organization couldn't afford that. I had to figure a lot out on my own or using the tech folks in chat or the odd free thing. Not sure if the courses are still costly or not.
  • It is not particularly user friendly--for example, you would think the drag and drop email template would be pretty straightforward but it is not! And there aren't built in instructions to help as you try to use things.
  • Figuring out how to organize queries and reports and communications in folders in order to find things again has been challenging. It is possible to search on keywords, which is very helpful. But finding something in a list of queries that is not alphabetical isn't particularly easy.
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Bonterra
  • When we started with Salsa, not every option was available online, some were desktop specific. As it has been some time since I worked with Salsa these have probably been resolved.
  • The ability to communicate between Salsa CRM and other Salsa software options. Sometimes the crossover was not as efficient as was needed.
  • Tagging and setting up rules for particular donors was somewhat confusing - meaning, therefore, that the amount of training needed to implement the software was somewhat intensive.
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Likelihood to Renew
Blackbaud
We do not always get positive solutions from Etapestry. There are a lot of resources and solutions that you can read about and reach out to. I participate in Community Forums and trainings to see what we can be doing differently.
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Bonterra
It suits all of our needs.
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Usability
Blackbaud
eTapestry was the first donor database I had ever used and always found it to be much easier to use and administer than the databases I was used to (patient care and payroll databases). The rare times I can't figure out how to do something, I just hope on the chat and someone from the team pleasantly walks me through the process. If it's something that database is incapable of doing, they encourage me to log my suggestion in the idea bank so it can be considered for enhancements. On top of that, the regular training provided allows you to continue building your skills within the database
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Bonterra
You do not have to be a tech-savvy person to be able to use the CRM. Reporting is easy to do.
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Reliability and Availability
Blackbaud
I have never had an issue accessing eTapestry. It does occasionally go down for maintenance. When that happens, they give you a lot of notice and generally schedule maintenance for hours between midnight and 6am so that business won't be disrupted.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Performance
Blackbaud
The product does what it is supposed to, although there are downsides. There are positive and negatives for every product. This is less expensive alternative for a small organization tracking minimum information.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Blackbaud
My favorite feature is the Live Chat. If we get stuck, we can get immediate help, download the chat and save it for later so if we need help again we have it on file. The Knowledge Database is also extremely helpful.
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Bonterra
Their tech support is very good and I am very pleased with it. They speak in non-techie lingo for my non-techie staff just as easily as they speak techie to me (a techie). I appreciate their quick turn around in time to answer our questions and the follow up to make sure their answer(s) helped.
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In-Person Training
Blackbaud
In person training is always helpful for a new product however I think that the online tutorials would do just fine.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Blackbaud
The online tutorials were easy to follow and explained in detail steps. I was able to put together an organization SOP for best practices in case I was not in the office or no longer there.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Blackbaud
I was not there for the implementation of this platform. Unfortunately I am unable to just skip this question as it requires a response, which needs to be fifty characters, so here we are. At thirty four, I need to add a few more words to satisfy this requirement. Done.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Blackbaud
We have researched 2-3 other donor platforms and we just aren't at a place to change, although we are very tempted. eTapestry is getting us by for now and we don't look forward to the day when we have to change platforms and have to change things for our monthly donors. We worry about attrition if our donors have to change platforms.
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Bonterra
I have reviewed Salsa Engage and perhaps after our transition has taken place it might be a viable option versus using Constant Contact for internal and external correspondence.
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Scalability
Blackbaud
The product allows us flexibility and scalability for our team.
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Bonterra
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Blackbaud
  • Increased our capacity to fundraise.
  • Allowed more opportunity to know our donors (tracking and data collection).
  • Limited users - due to steep learning curve - as such less of our development staff know how to use the system to its fullest potential.
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Bonterra
  • Has helped increase our donor retention as we are able to track all communications with donors ensuring that they remain connected.
  • The improved emailing (with fewer bounce rate) has helped increase our website and donation page visibility.
  • We've sold more tickets to our fundraising events with an improved event management system.
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ScreenShots

Blackbaud eTapestry Screenshots

Screenshot of Constituent profiles in eTapestry are customizable and provide a complete view of supporters and their interactions with other oganizations from a single screen.Screenshot of The eTapestry home screen can be customized to surface whatever is important to the organization—progress towards goals, campaign performance, recent gifts, top supporters, upcoming events, and key performance indicators that provide a clear view of fundraising performance.Screenshot of eTapestry comes with out-of-the box reports that can help segment the supporter-base and develop strategies for engagement and outreach.

Salsa CRM Screenshots

Screenshot of Development DashboardScreenshot of Donor Detail Report showing donation historyScreenshot of Donor Cultivation for Major GiftsScreenshot of Mail Merge and Direct Mail FundraisingScreenshot of Donor Profile with unlimited custom fields