Luminate Online - The sky's the limit!
Updated May 31, 2018

Luminate Online - The sky's the limit!

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

Modules Used

  • Luminate Online
  • Luminate TeamRaiser

Overall Satisfaction with Luminate

We use Luminate Online for our online communications and fundraising. All of our email lists and emails live in Luminate Online, and we set up all of our online donation forms through Luminate Online. We use it just within our Development Department, and it provides a one-stop solution for the majority of our online endeavors.
  • Luminate Online is a comprehensive program that lets you manage email lists, sell event tickets, collect survey information and host donation pages all in one.
  • Luminate Online has a direct connector to our Raiser's Edge database, which is a huge help to ensure that our data matches within both systems and saves time with data entry.
  • Luminate Online is very customizable.
  • One issue we came across is that the event module is not very functional for what we need to sell event tickets. There is no way to ask for each registrant's name, and there is no way to send notification emails when someone registers for an event. These are 2 things that are absolutely necessary for us so we are not able to use Luminate Online for our events, and I am disappointed such a robust system is missing such key functionality.
  • Luminate Online can be a bit cumbersome to navigate. I feel you need someone with deep technical and coding skills to truly utilize Luminate Online to its fullest potential.
  • While the connector to the Raiser's Edge database is great, there is still a lot of work to be done to make sure it functions well.
I would highly recommend Luminate if you have the technical staff available to manage the system. I consider myself pretty technically savvy and can work my way around the system, but there are still many things I need support help to figure out. No one on our team has been able to figure out TeamRaiser, despite multiple trainings and hours on the phone. If you have staff that knows coding, there are no bounds to what Luminate can do.

Using Luminate

We are moving to Engaging Networks. Luminate is just too cumbersome and difficult to use.

Using Luminate

You have to be very tech savvy to use Luminate to its fullest potential. You can get buy with the training, but there is a steep learning curve and you almost need 6 months to 1 year of in-person training to really be able to anything substantial. The online training lessons are not going to cut it while learning this program.
ProsCons
Feel confident using
Do not like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Not well integrated
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • The email function is fairly robust and easy to use.
  • Reporting is mostly easy to use, with a few glitches. It is very comprehensive and there is a lot of data you can pull.
  • TeamRaiser is absolutely horrible. You need a full time coder on staff to be able to even begin to build anything in it.
  • The donation pages are ok, but still very cumbersome and not that easy to update.

Luminate Reliability

Luminate is a robust tool that works best for large organizations. It has the capabilities to handle large lists, as well as perform just about any email or donation options you would like.