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A Solid product for not for profits, but if you don't use Raiser's Edge, look elsewhere
July 03, 2019

A Solid product for not for profits, but if you don't use Raiser's Edge, look elsewhere

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

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Online Express

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.
  • The development team spends less time verifying constituent info for marketing campaigns, since Blackbaud Online Express is integrated with Raiser's Edge, leaving them more time to focus on personalized appeals and grant opportunities.
  • New staff is generally brought up to speed on the platform more quickly than with comparable products.
Blackbaud Online Express is mainly used strictly because of its integration with Raiser's Edge. If a client uses Salesforce for constituent/lead management, other products can offer more flexibility in designing donation forms, email templates, etc. However, they all have their own negatives in Salesforce integration -- that is a whole other can of worms. While the Raiser's Edge integration of Online Express isn't perfect, it is relatively painless compared to the competition's Salesforce integration. Also, for NFP's, Blackbaud's NFP focused business model is a plus.
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.