Bonterra ETO

Formerly ETO by Social Solutions

A high degree of customization, poor performance, and design. I did not select ETO (predates my time here), so I can't speak to that.

We found ETO to much more user friendly and much easier to customize for our needs in house.

We had an internally developed database. ETO, by far, is a more stable environment to work in. I was not involved in the decision to select SS.

We originally built our program around SharePoint and were dissatisfied by the lack of transparency it provided. We then moved to ETO, primarily because it was the cheapest of the other solutions that we looked at. Now, we are realizing that we are not getting any real value from our ETO system, so we will likely be investing in a more sophisticated system.

When we made our decision several years ago Social Solutions had just acquired Apricot. At that time it was recommended to use ETO based off our revenue stream. However, it seems like Social Solutions has put in a lot more time and effort into Apricot over ETO and it seems more modern and user friendly. I think it is worth a second look once our contract expires.

None

To be quite honest, ETO was selected prior to my arrival at my job. I believe it was selected because of its notoriety for serving non-profits specifically.

Some comparable options for us were Apricot and Salesforce. Apricot didn't have the capacity to stretch to as many different programs and clients as we had. Salesforce was similar: it is better suited for tracking individual donors instead of the vast network of clients and programs we have. ETO is able to mold to dozens of unique programs as well.

HIFIS, Bit focus

There are other, tailored solutions by private developers that were not available on this list. The major one is HIFIS, developed by the Government of Canada to track shelter use. What we didn't like about it is the inability of individual organizations to customize their own forms and reports. The developers have to do this.

Microsoft Access goes out of date, and then Microsoft no longer supports it. Also, if the person who set it up didn't set it up properly, there's a lot of issues later.

Microsoft Dynamics is a viable alternative to ETO software. it is VERY cheap for non-profits, is highly customizable, looks great, and is mobile friendly. We have not checked too far into it, but the biggest concern is that it is set up by the organization, and there is no support for it like with ETO. If something goes wrong, you're holding the ball. Need to employ someone who can deal with glitches/IT problems.

MS SharePoint - too clunky for case management and reporting.

We prefer ETO.

We had primarily been using Access and Excel for tracking in many of our programs prior to ETO, with the exception of a few programs that used specific programs required or provided by funders. Access and Excel have so many limitations--I don't think I need to detail them here. The specific programs required or provided by funders were, well, too specific and only addressed the needs of the one program. Client Track is very expensive and the feedback we got from others is that it is not well-supported so you have to invest a lot in terms of technical skills to be effective with it. Case Worthy wasn't very flexible. Salesforce didn't seem to have the social sector in mind in its original design so can be cumbersome. It tries to be everything, is expensive and can take a lot of resources to support.

We have been using ETO for a while. I haven't come across another reporting system quite as robust as ETO. For this reason, we are continuing with ETO.

ETO had the flexibility we were looking for.

My organization recently went through a process of analyzing other databases on the market. These databases include Salesforce and Apricot, another Social Solutions project. ETO is far more robust than these other products as they do not include the reporting capability that ETO has. Also, we have many years of historical data in ETO.

We started with ETO because of a colleague's previous use.

We have not evaluated any other current products, as we have been using ETO for 7 years.

Many similar products have a very high price point of entry. The financial investment is greater with other options that I've looked at in the last few years. ETO is additionally more customizable to your organization's unique needs. However, the customer service at Social Solutions can sometimes be lacking in basic areas of account management and billing.

The back end customizable features. We like having ownership of our report building, and overall usability.

I've use ClientTrack in the past and while the UI is currently nicer than ETO the reporting isn't as robust.
ChildPlus is another software that is geared toward Head Start programs and is slick and easy. The reporting is also not as good as ETO but the data entry side is very good for its intended purpose.

Given the diversity of the services we offer and the vastly different service goals/models of those programs, ETO is the only program we've found that offers us the flexibility we need in both data entry and reporting. Also, many of our funding requirements change annually and/or on short notice. As a result, it is essential we can build and update our own reports, as we often, we lack both the funding and time to wait for these reports to be commissioned.

No other software package we've researched can match ETO's reporting capabilities. All other software packages, however, have better interfaces, are browser-neutral, and are mobile-friendly. We selected Social Solutions ETO because it was the best software package we could find at the time. Over the past 7 years, competitors have quickly caught up and passed ETO in many areas.

We have not used other products. The only other program we were using was Excel.

Salesforce is currently being used as a requirement of a few grants that we currently have. G*Stars is another popular Workforce Development software that several of our Workforce Development Agencies are using. Preferably for us, we use Social Solutions ETO. I believe all data tracking software's have their pros and cons. Currently, ETO is providing what is needs for data tracking for our area at the college.