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Modern and easy to use, most of the features you want, at a reasonable price for mid-sized nonprofit
June 22, 2021

Modern and easy to use, most of the features you want, at a reasonable price for mid-sized nonprofit

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with EveryAction

Our nonprofit client uses EveryAction primarily with members of their Digital team (email, SMS, digital fundraising, digital advocacy, data, technology), with some limited uses by members of the Development team (Dev Ops, Events).
  • Migration was fast (~2 months) and included few pain points/surprises.
  • Very pleasant, modern, easy to use interface for Admin/back end.
  • Pretty easy and good integration with our existing technology (Drupal, Google Analytics, etc.).
  • Ability to pull relevant reports/data is pretty straightforward and flexible.
  • Built in tool to merge duplicate contacts is fairly robust.
  • Data visualization tool in the backend is very limited; all reporting/analysis must be exported and completed in a separate system.
  • SMS is a new addition, so features are somewhat limited/still in development.
  • Tricky balance between ease of use and limited customization opportunities (EveryAction leans more toward ease of use, and so sacrifices customization opportunities).
  • Improved digital advocacy performance (one click action taking).
  • Negative impact on email performance (open rates).
  • Improved SMS acquisition (easy check box to sign up to receive text messaging).
  • Vastly improved ability to pull data for analysis compared to other tools at this price point.
  • Simplified integration of forms embedded in the website (Drupal).
We were on a tight timeline (~2 months) when EveryAction reps promised they could help migrate the client from Luminate to EveryAction, and they definitely delivered. There is a good amount of training videos in their documentation to help understand how the system works. There could be better documentation about how to structure/understand the difference between some of the data models (activist codes, contribution/origin source codes, etc.) and better documentation around migrating recurring gifts for different payment types (PayPal, credit card, EFT), etc.
Planned outages happen at very convenient times for the US (e.g. 3am EST on a Sunday), and there have been maybe 2-3 days in the past 18 months when an unplanned outage/error interrupted the service for a few hours. The EveryAction support team has handled the pandemic WFH situation pretty well and is typically responsive by email within a few hours for any questions.
Digital advocacy has improved for the client - more people are taking more action (although given the timing between Presidential administrations, it's a little hard to know what to attribute directly to EveryAction features). Digital fundraising has been consistent with the previous CRM, although we are more confident about the data from EveryAction reporting (than the previous CRM) and can analyze/make better improvements to our workflow. Email via EveryAction has been a pain point compared to the previous CRM, with issues related to DMARC, issues with open rates from some email service provider domains, and limited ways of understanding why a certain email had a high/low open rate or bounce rate. SMS has shown the most improvements compared to the previous tool - much higher acquisition rates, and much better conversion rates.

Do you think Bonterra Development + Digital delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Bonterra Development + Digital's feature set?

Yes

Did Bonterra Development + Digital live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Bonterra Development + Digital go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Bonterra Development + Digital again?

Yes

EveryAction had much better backend user interface and data management features compared to Blackbaud, and is easier to use, quicker to migrate, and cheaper than Salesforce. EveryAction lacks Salesforce's robust online community of users/online documentation. It's not as well known in some sectors of the nonprofit industry as Blackbaud, so it's a harder sell to IT/Dev Ops.
For the price point, it's easy to use and has enough of the features you probably need to do most of what you want via (at least) email, SMS, digital fundraising, digital advocacy, and online/in-person events management, all in one tool. If you have lots of customization needs/very special use cases for any of those features, you may need to step up to a more costly/robust system. If you only have a small number of features you need (just email and fundraising?), EveryAction is probably too robust for you. Overall, it's a good middle ground solution for mid-sized nonprofits.