Item: Kintone
Rating: 9
Author: Jennifer Robinson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our team needed a program database to track student data alongside donor data. We needed to be able to build custom connections to give us dynamic board reports and to answer questions about the organizational needs in real-time.

Pros and Cons

Customer Service is Responsive and Agile
Creates customized databases without a huge investment of time, energy and money
Gives small companies access to unique database setups that match specific needs and can change over time

Requires some understanding of database infrastructure
Allows for the possibility of big mistakes if the right settings and permissions aren't engaged.

Return on Investment

Our data is more visible for all users now and is updated more frequently
This platform allows us to have quick answers for our donors and to better support the needs of our students
Eventually, this will allow for international collaboration between our staff and school and the US office

Support Rating

The team has given us time whenever we need it and is quick to answer questions. We continue to meet and learn together and I don't feel left alone to sort out answers that might take a lot of time to find. I appreciate the willingness to walk through problems together in a way that enables me to fix future issues unassisted.

Product Configurability

We haven't found anything else out there that was able to walk the fine line we needed with our program database. We needed information about students, donors, campaign communications, and specific donations and this platform were customizable to make that happen. We are still building on our initial data, but already it has improved the way that we work as a team and provide customer service to our donors.

Alternatives Considered

Neon CRM, Kindful and a Bloomerang product

We currently use Kindful for donor management more than we're using Kintone, but we may eventually merge the two together. We needed Kintone to allow us to track data related to our programs in our school and how that connected with our donors. Eventually, Kintone may be the space to host all that we need, but not quite yet. Neon seemed like they needed a lot of time on the front end to build something that might've worked, but wouldn't have been very changeable once it was created.

Key Insights

Do you think Kintone delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Kintone's feature set?

Yes

Did Kintone live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Kintone go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Kintone again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Kindful, a Bloomerang product, QuickBooks Online

Likelihood to Recommend

Kintone has been great for our organization as we needed something much smaller than existing database platforms like SalesForce, but still big enough to be too complicated to exist in Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs. We love that we can add on to our existing data when we're ready to invest in keeping up with communications data, special donations, and other campaign-specific needs over time.

Building What We Needed With So Much Support

Overall Satisfaction with Kintone