1. Home
  2. Nonprofit Fundraising Software
  3. Blackbaud Luminate Online Reviews
  4. User Review of Blackbaud Luminate Online
Solid for CRM
Updated July 07, 2017

Solid for CRM

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

Modules Used

  • Luminate Online

Overall Satisfaction with Luminate

We use Luminate Online (LO) for our CRM program. It is used for online fundraising, email marketing, advocacy actions, and less often for events. Two departments (communications and development) within our non-profit use the service; as well as our outside consulting firm. It allows us to manage our CRM database and communicate with constituents.
  • Customized donation pages.
  • Email marketing.
  • Advocacy actions (communications to Congress).
  • Mobile friendly event pages are not available currently, from what I understand.
  • Multi-language support.
  • Customer service could use improvement.
Salsa was the previous CRM platform. We migrated from Salsa about 5 years ago as we prefer Luminate. EveryAction is a newcomer which appears to be competitive to Luminate Online, but we haven't reviewed their features yet. In any case, we have a strong preference to work with a company focused on the non-profit sector, versus more traditional or generic online marketing and payment processing providers, as non-profit focused companies know our business model and are more likely to support our values.
Luminiate Online (LO) is very well suited for mass emails, tailored and targeted groups of constituents segmented by donation level or other characteristics. LO is also suited for personalization of those emails (i.e. inserting the name or location of the constituent inside the email). LO is not suited for on one one communications.

Using Luminate

5 - Our non profit marketing, development and communications teams use the system daily.
2 - We don't have enough support in my opinion (nd Luminate does not offer great support either); our team doesn't quite have the skills to
fix bugs and implement solutions so we often outsource to a vendor.
  • Fundraising emails
  • Surveys
  • Action alerts
  • We have used it to ask our email list to share a graphic to social media.
  • Embedding video or other dynamic content into donation pages
  • End of year fundraising progress meters
  • Not sure
  • Not sure
  • Not sure
We don't love it, to be honest. I find the service difficult to use and the support is lacking. However the pain of migrating to a new CMS might just keep us with Luminate for now.
  • Buggy forms have lost us donations so that is a negative impact
  • On the other hand, using daisy chain donation asks following an action has bumped up donation amounts

Evaluating Luminate and Competitors

Yes - Salsa was replaced prior to me joining the org so I don't know why the switch was made
  • Product Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
I am guessing at these factors because I wasn't part of the selection process. My org adopted Luminate in 2012 and I joined the org in 2013.
I would look at usability (ease of using the software), price (Luminate charges extra for so many things!), and deliverability of emails.

Luminate Implementation

Neutral rating is based on the fact that I was not involved in implementation.
  • Vendor implemented
  • I was not part of the implementation process.

Luminate Training

Luminate Support

Because while issues might get a response or
resolution, it's slow and impersonal.
ProsCons
None
Slow Resolution
Poor followup
Problems left unsolved
Difficult to get immediate help
No - We pay so much already that we don't want to pay more.
Yes - Nope.
I can't think of one.

Using Luminate

For all the reasons previously stated.
ProsCons
None
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Feel nervous using
Lots to learn
  • Simple donation forms
  • Surveys
  • Simple emails
  • Action alerts
  • Targeted emails
  • PageBuilder pages