Robust and Complete System, Highly Complicated, Somewhat Outdated
January 14, 2025

Robust and Complete System, Highly Complicated, Somewhat Outdated

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Luminate Online
  • Luminate TeamRaiser

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Luminate Online

We recently left Blackbaud Luminate Online but had been using it for most online giving, sustaining donor management and processing, a large P2P event, and all digital marketing. We used the RELO connector to manage data flow mostly from Blackbaud Luminate Online into Raiser's Edge, but also could build email lists in Raiser's Edge that would easily upload into Blackbaud Luminate Online as the audience.

Pros

  • Most robust peer to peer capabilities that we've found in any software
  • Sustainer gift management and processing
  • Ease of creating email audiences via query in Raiser's Edge and linking to email blasts
  • System integration using RELO connector

Cons

  • It's just too complex for less experienced users to learn; our marketing team wanted something very simple to create and send emails
  • Our events team often had to utilize third party support to update our largest peer to peer platform each year because again the software is so complex and complicated
  • It's an old interface and not intuitive and it didn't seem that Blackbaud planned to refresh the whole product anytime soon
  • It allowed us great efficiency in managing our monthly donor program
  • The cost was inclusive of as many emails as we wanted to send
It's not appropriate for smaller organizations due to the investment needed in setting it up and learning the software.
The integration that you can have between Blackbaud Luminate Online and Raiser's Edge via the RELO connector was highly valuable. It isn't simple to set up however, this took expertise from the consultants. But once set up, it always worked very well. On the other hand, Classy has required us to use a third party software for data flow (we use ImportOMatic), and this is is manual rather than automated.

Do you think Blackbaud Luminate Online delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Blackbaud Luminate Online's feature set?

Yes

Did Blackbaud Luminate Online live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Blackbaud Luminate Online go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Blackbaud Luminate Online again?

No

It's really robust for all the things it was designed to do (online donation forms, email marketing, peer to peer event management, sustainer donations). But it's complexity and interface made it too challenging for our organization to continue using it and to continue justifying the cost.

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