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Blackbaud Online Express

Blackbaud Online Express

Overview

What is Blackbaud Online Express?

With Blackbaud Online Express' online fundraising & donation software, users can create unlimited donation forms and send and track email communications. Plus, this simple, smart, cloud-based tool is integrated with the Fundraising and CRM solution, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®.Blackbaud Online…

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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Blackbaud Online Express?

With Blackbaud Online Express' online fundraising & donation software, users can create unlimited donation forms and send and track email communications. Plus, this simple, smart, cloud-based tool is integrated with the Fundraising and CRM solution, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®. Blackbaud…

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  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is Blackbaud Online Express?

With Blackbaud Online Express' online fundraising & donation software, users can create unlimited donation forms and send and track email communications. Plus, this simple, smart, cloud-based tool is integrated with the Fundraising and CRM solution, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®.

Blackbaud Online Express enables users to create and send mobile-responsive emails.

  • Reach constituents quickly with pre-designed, mobile-friendly email templates created specifically for nonprofits
  • Create appealing emails with a drag-and-drop editor, where users can add, remove, or revise content on the fly
  • Make sure a message creates an impact by targeting emails to distribution lists created in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
  • Track the progress of online initiatives with instant insight into how communications are performing
Blackbaud Online Express can be used to design online donation, event, and membership forms to help drive online participation.
  • Remove barriers to online engagement with step-by-step instructions to help create forms
  • Save time with pre-designed, mobile-friendly form templates created specifically for nonprofits
  • Add forms to existing website with HTML copy-and-paste
  • Keep an organization's online branding consistent with forms designed for the organization

Blackbaud Online Express Competitors

Blackbaud Online Express Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Boardable and DonorPerfect are common alternatives for Blackbaud Online Express.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of Blackbaud Online Express are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(43)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-13 of 13)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The product is used to process online donations. It does a good job but could be made better with more user and customization options.
  • Easy to use
  • Front facing interface is simple
  • Back end changes as simple
  • Needs more options
  • Processing can be cumbersome
  • Needs to not require batches for processing one gift
Overall, it’s a well designed and simple solutions for accepting online gifts. It has some challenges but its intergration with RE is a huge plus.
Linda Behrman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Online Express for creating online donation forms, processing online donations, creating and sending our e-newsletter communications to our constituents, managing signups for e-communications, and for tracking event participation and registrations. The program is very helpful in tracking the activity and clicks on our e-communications with our constituents. It makes combining information received through Online Express into our Raiser's Edge database very easily.
  • Online donation forms are easy to create and place within our existing website. The donations received are easily transferred into our Raiser's Edge database.
  • Creating email communications for our constituents is very simple to achieve in Online Express and the statistics provided are very helpful to see what our constituents are clicking on.
  • It would be helpful if there were a way to have constituents sign up for different email communications. They may sign up to receive communications but not select different types of communications based on their interests.
Blackbaud's Online Express is very well suited for small to medium non-profit organizations for tracking e-communications sign-ups and statistics. It is also perfect for creating and editing online donation forms to insert into existing websites so the web pages match the companies website rather than having an entirely different look. We use the program in collaboration with Raiser's Edge so I am not sure how appropriate it would be for an organization that is not using Raiser's Edge. It seamlessly integrates with Raiser's Edge.
November 30, 2021

Work smarter, not harder!

Taylor Sleem | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Online Express for online giving to our annual fund, as well as online giving to one of our booster clubs. Before using Blackbaud Online Express, we had to manually enter gifts from forms submitted in education management. Now they go straight to a queue in Raiser's Edge and online a small portion is now manual. We only use it for 100% tax-deductible donations, not events.
  • Ease of use
  • Appealing layout
  • Easy to tailor the look for the form
  • Charge debit cards automatically
  • Make the event module as easy to understand as possible
For 100% tax-deductible donations, I 9.5/10 recommend Blackbaud Online Express. The only thing is that it does not charge debit cards automatically, so I have to do it myself. Using Blackbaud Online Express forms for events gets more complicated. The way events work in Raiser's Edge in general is already complicated, so maybe it's more on Raiser's Edge than it is Blackbaud Online Express.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, our Public Affairs and Grants Management offices utilize Blackbaud Online Express. Philanthropic donors, strategic fund-raising efforts, and grant funding efforts are all managed via this platform. Revenue, expenditures, events, individuals, organizations, and funding sources are tracked daily. Quarterly reporting is easily accessible, user-friendly, and new users can be taught quickly.
  • Clear snapshots of funding sources, the success of grant applications, and revenue amounts are readily available.
  • A one-stop-shop for managing fund-raising strategies, including generated income and historical data.
  • Donor management, solicitations, and thank-you notifications live in this platform.
  • Multiple funding sources for the same project are sometimes tricky to manage, additional layers in reporting for these variances would be helpful.
Effective fund-raising efforts are best managed in BOE as historical data can be stored and retrieved like on-going donor management, tracking of periodic donor notifications/salutations, most funded projects, and greatest revenue sources are all visible. Detailed expenditures are not best managed in BOE, it's best used to view/report accumulative revenue and expenses.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Online Express to take donations and event ticket purchases directly from our web site.
  • Automatically matches the donor to a constituent in the database, if there is one, and gives you the opportunity to search if a match isn't found.
  • If gift is in honor or memory of someone, it matches the tribute in the database, if it already exists. If not, you are able to easily create a new one.
  • Transaction reports are easily accessible on the Blackbaud Merchant Services site.
  • It does have some "quirks." It can be a little tricky to process the batch until you have done it a few times.
  • I had a problem finding a constituent yesterday - he was purchasing a program ad for an event - that I knew was in the database. It turned out that he had been marked inactive, and so apparently wasn't included in the search results.
Works well for donations, ticket sales, and advertisements, for us, anyway. Wouldn't be great to sell merchandise. We sell custom Christmas cards, for example, and it's not capable, as far as I know, of adding sales tax to the transaction.
Lisa Tacker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Two Ten Footwear is using Online Express for donation forms, event registrations, and deliveries of blast emails. It is being used by our development and marketing departments.
  • Donations forms are easy to create and appeal and fund information is pulled directly from our Raiser's Edge database.
  • When creating event registrations, we are able to tie the event-form directly to the event in Raiser's Edge.
  • We are able to load email delivery metrics onto the individual records in Raiser's Edge when sending out blast emails. We can also segment our lists based on queries created in Raiser's Edge.
  • The product would benefit greatly if end users had more control over the design, look, and feel of blast emails.
  • It would be really helpful if we could load non-constituent lists into the database for blast emails.
If you only want to communicate with your current constituents and you are not concerned with rich graphics in your correspondence, Online express will certainly fit your needs. List segmenting is easy and getting information from the forms into Raiser's Edge is a fairly simple task. If you are looking to communicate with people that are not in your database or you are interested in graphic heavy emails, this may not be an ideal product to use.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Blackbaud Online Express for all event registrations. We set up custom registration forms using the software regularly and the information interfaces directly with Blackbaud’s Raiser's Edge and Merchant Services. We use Blackbaud for all credit card processing so it eliminates the need for an additional database or payment processor. The data collected can be automatically updated in Raiser's Edge reducing the time staff would manually enter the data.
  • Customizable
  • User-friendly
  • Intuitive
  • Not great for complex event registrations
  • Repetitive
  • Has some limitations
Online Express is great for single option events with or without different ticket price points. It is annoying that registrants have to enter all the contact information for each person. Users have complained about this. It is not good for events that have meal options or shirt selection, etc. adding the information through the back end is tricky. However it is still great that it has the ability to enter the data in to Raisers Edge.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use online express primarily in our department, development and Alumni Relations. I use two functions of online express, the email and event registration. Even though we use Push Pages in Core, Online Express has made my life easier since I can create my own mailing list by creating a query in raisers edge so I can communicate with a specific group of my alumni. The event registration is amazing because it allows me a lot more freedom on the setup, as well makes it easier to download the money.
  • Ease of use when creating emails and event pages
  • The ability to download the funds right away
  • More templates are always welcomed
  • When someone registers, I would like to be able for the name to be auto populated to our event page
Great when emailing a specific group, collecting donations and setting up event pages. When doing a mass email I would not recommend it because you do not want to create too many email lists.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Blackbaud Online Express is used by my clients' development and communications teams to engage donors and develop new fundraising sources via email marketing. Once potential donors interacted with the fundraising forms, the data provided by the Online Express dashboard gives the executive, operations, and finance teams actionable insights that they can use in their own job duties.
  • Simple form creation -- creating a new campaign is relatively painless.
  • Integrates with Raiser's Edge -- it's easy to keep constituent information up to date.
  • Access via Blackbaud's web portal, and to Citrix, is clumsy and slow.
  • User creation and management is also clumsy, slow, and error-prone.
  • Integration with Raiser's Edge is a pro, but it also can make using Online Express more complicated than necessary for users just looking for a simple email marketing tool.
Blackbaud Online Express is well-suited for small to medium not for profits. This is especially true of NFPs that currently use other Blackbaud products, namely Raiser's Edge (users of Financial Edge might derive some benefit as well). If the organization isn't currently using Raiser's Edge, the complexity left by the RE integration might make Online Express less attractive, or worse, it might draw the organization into using RE when otherwise they might not want/need to use it. Lastly, there are other products better suited to for-profit organizations, so Blackbaud Online Express shouldn't be considered by them.
Jenna Montgomery | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My non-profit uses Blackbaud Online Express to send donation request emails, membership renewals, and informational emails about upcoming events. Event emails work particularly well because we can use Blackbaud Online Express for tickets and registration as well. We basically use the software as our main tool for email marketing and communication. We no longer reply on Constant Contact for our email communication to members and donors.
  • The tool provides strong reporting regarding email engagement (who opened, clicked, etc).
  • The email tool is extremely easy to use...it requires little training and everyone in our office feels comfortable with it.
  • It integrates well with our database of donors and members, allowing us to better track past email engagement.
  • I find the interface to be a little confusing and awkward sometimes, especially at the beginning.
  • There is no merge field available for emailing.
  • A/B testing for emails is timely....there's no easy for testing the effectiveness of emails.
Blackbaud Online Express is best used for organizations that are looking for an email and event registration tool that is super easy to use and implement. It does not overwhelm you with complexity and tons of options that you will not need or use. It's software that can be used right out of the box.
February 08, 2019

Start emailing today

Adam Montgomery | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing team uses Blackbaud Online Express as our email marketing tool to get the word out about upcoming events and programs. We also use it for event registration because this feature integrates so well with the email marketing tool. The tool allows us to be more organized and strategic about how to email our members.
  • Sending emails is so easy and intuitive.
  • The ability to include event registration within email marketing is a huge plus.
  • The tool integrates very well with our database of members, allowing us to track and manage members who are engaging with our emails.
  • It does not have a lot of additional, more complex emailing options that may be a larger organization would desire. For example, there is not an easy way to do A/B testing with emails.
  • I wish that creating follow up emails for people who opened the original email was a little easier. There still does not seem to be an easy way to do this.
  • Merging fields in emails is not possible; at times it would be nice to have this feature.
Blackbaud Online Express is an emailing tool that is so easy and simple to use that our entire organization has been able to pick it up and get comfortable with it. It's designed to be simple so that it can be used directly out of the box. It's best used by a small to medium sized organization that does not need a lot of complex emailing features.
Karen Stuhlfeier, bCRE Associate | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Advancement department at a private K-12 school has been using Online Express for 4 years. It is a good product for us and does what we need it to do. We use it to process our online gifts and online event registrations and send emails with it.
  • The online donation and registration forms integrate easily with our school's website.
  • The transactions are easy to download.
  • The credit card fees we pay are low.
  • Blackbaud offers good support for this product.
  • The email function is easy enough for everyone in our department to use.
  • The donation and event registration forms are easy to set up.
  • I'd like more merge fields to be available in our email.
  • I'd like the event registration form to have the ability to have more than one event attached to it.
  • I'd like to be able to use participant attributes for just certain event units and not on all of the ones in the event.
I think that it's a terrific product if it does all that you need it for. You need to determine if your organization needs a more robust product -- and decide if you're willing to pay for that. OLX is a good product for the price.
Tom Andersen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a non-profit conservation organization. We use Online Express to informational and fundraising emails to our members and supporters. We use it for our statewide communications. We also have six centers in different locations around the state. Those centers use it to let local members know of events and programs. We also use it for membership renewals and to supplement our direct mail fundraising.
  • it provides quick and relatively comprehensive data about who opened, clicked and reacted to our emails.
  • It allows us to automatically record transactions made via email to Raiser's Edge. In other words, if someone makes a donation via Online Express, that information is recorded automatically in our data base.
  • We recently moved from Constant Contact for our emails to Online Express. Except for the couple of examples I previously gave of what Online Express does well, it underperforms Constant Contact in every way.
  • Its user interface is clunky and hard to manipulate; it seems as if it were designed when the Internet was in its infancy and not updated since.
  • It is extremely time consuming to randomize and divide email lists for split-testing.
  • With Constant Contact we could easily increase our open rates dramatically by simply re-sending our emails the next day to the people who had not opened them. It is extremely cumbersome to do that with Online Express.
  • Online and phone support is slow, wait times are long, and when you finally get a person to talk to or chat with, they often don't know how to solve your problem. And they are annoyingly cheerful about it! It's as if they don't realize that they weren't any help.
  • OE's online email signup form allows visitors to our website to sign up only for our one basic email list. Unfortunately we have six locations and need separate lists for each of those centers.
It is well suited to sending simple, mass emails. It seems as though the "donate" pages that it provides are simple and easy to use, and easy to modify.

It is not very good for split-testing emails to see which messages work best with which audiences.
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