TrustRadius Insights for Blackbaud Online Express are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Ease of Use: Users have found the platform to be highly customizable, exceptionally user-friendly, and intuitively designed, resulting in a seamless experience for navigation and utilization. For example, they can easily create donation forms within their existing website.
Comprehensive Fundraising Solution: Reviewers appreciate that the platform offers a wide range of features for managing fundraising activities comprehensively. This includes donor management, solicitations, thank-you notifications, detailed insights into funding sources and revenue amounts, making it a valuable tool for strategic planning.
Seamless Integration with Raiser's Edge: Some users highlighted the simple process of integrating the platform with Raiser's Edge to ensure up-to-date constituent information and streamline operations such as event registrations.
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.
Pros
Ease of use
Appealing layout
Easy to tailor the look for the form
Cons
Charge debit cards automatically
Make the event module as easy to understand as possible
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
Multiple funding sources for the same project are sometimes tricky to manage, additional layers in reporting for these variances would be helpful.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Director in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)
We use Blackbaud Online Express to take donations and event ticket purchases directly from our web site.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
Customizable
User-friendly
Intuitive
Cons
Not great for complex event registrations
Repetitive
Has some limitations
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
Ease of use when creating emails and event pages
The ability to download the funds right away
Cons
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
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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 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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
