Salsa Engage Software

Pros

The ease of programming registration forms, the flexibility of many design options, flawless integration with payment gateways

Cons

Still a few bugs that need to be worked out, but with an intelligent and responsive support team available, I know all my issues will be resolved.

Pros

The ability to create form letters and send them via email was much needed for our organization. Customer service is very helpful.

Cons

Salsa seems a little slow in adopting the latest features and some of the design elements could be more customizable.

I would recommend this solution over the other available nonprofit management enterprise solutions on the market. You get the most functionality for the money and they're constantly expanding the software's ability and support.

Pros

Almost all the digital marketing tools you'll need in one platform. Social media and email marketing, custom donation forms, drip campaigns, peer to peer software, event registration and donor segmentation. These are just the pros of the marketing side. The CRM, formerly DonorPro, includes robust reporting and tracking for all your needs from donation tracking to notes to event management, volunteer management and membership management. Truly and all inclusive system that is getting better and better all the time.

Cons

There have been some growing pains that have been mostly worked out in the transition to convert DonorPro into the Salsa platform. Communication between the CRM and the marketing software is still not entirely fluid, but it gets the job done effectively after you fully understand the system from training. The social media scheduling tool needs a little work to get on the hootsuite or sendible level, but again it still functions well for an all-inclusive solution for no extra money.

We have been using Salsa for more than 18 months and are happy with the product. There have been numerous updates and improvements in social media sharing and other pieces since we signed on with Salsa, and we are happy with those changes. Customer support has improved dramatically since we first signed on, and I feel like we hear back with solutions to our problems, though sometimes I wish they could update incorrect legislative district information more quickly so that folks could take action when an issue is "hot." We use Salsa for advocacy actions, events, P2P fundraising, and donations and I feel like it is a very comprehensive tool to take care of all of those pieces of our work. I would recommend Salsa to organizations looking for online tools to advance their work.

Pros

Easy to use for the staff person as well as for the end user
Social share feature works well
Customer service support is good
Great insights and reports

Cons

Isn't easily compatible with our offline database
Takes a while to update incorrect House and Senate district information when it's incorrect for constituents

We still use this software because we're already signed on and it does what we need. However, I have been very frustrated with it for some time.

Pros

Helps us do all of our engagement in one platform whereas we had multiple softwares before. Like the 'all in one' aspect of it. Good support team.

Cons

Many issues and lack of simple necessary functions. Email formatting issues, preview issues, viewer interface sorting issues, cumbersome editing, social media publishing is cumbersome. Overall, found many aggravating issues.

Really glad we switched! Perfect for our non-profit organization.

Pros

We have loved the functionality and ease of use of this software. We first tried a competitor and are grateful we made the switch. Once implemented it has been a great time saver.

Cons

There is always a learning curve, as this software has one as well, but the support staff is excellent and helps you through without nickle and diming you to death.

Tough to choose among the many products out there, but Salsa was one of just a few that stood out above the rest for our needs. On my first pass I didn't include them in my top 5 down select, mainly because I thought having separate CRM and Engage products would be problematic. However Software Advice recommended taking a look, and when we did they ended up edging the competition. I spoke to a reference customer who said that the two products work well together, and was especially impressed with the progress the Salsa team has made in improving the products over the last year.

Pros

Customer service and attentiveness have been great. Much more personal than some of the other big name products, where I felt like we were a number in their sales pipeline. Like the kick start process that Salsa has in place.

Cons

None yet. We've just started to use it. Separate CRM and Engage products are not ideal, but they pull it off well. Skill Labs learning videos are really good, though it can be annoying that they force you to go in a certain order for some modules.

Likes Best

It has better graphic interface for email newsletters than our previous service.

Likes Least

Some of the graphics are too cute/cartoonish--sort of insultingly so.

And I think their must be an easier way to pull up someone from the database than searching, but it isn't immediately obvious and I haven't dug into it.

Recommendations

Figure out how easy the data is to input and access (easy of complex search functions), how good the templates are and how easy to add and what the cost is. When we did this assessment, we were confident Salsa would work better for us than eTapestry, though we are still getting up to speed with Salsa.

Likes Best

Salsa helps me quickly draft and share email alerts and actions with our grassroots network.

Likes Least

The formatting of text and images in the emails and actions is a little wonky. I can't directly copy and paste from a document with existing formatting so it takes more time to reformat in Salsa.

Recommendations

Copy and paste into text edit software from Word documents to remove formatting, then add formatting in Salsa.

Likes Best

It makes donations entry easy and is a web based program.

Likes Least

Customer Service are not always helpful and will send you links of things to read which in most cases won't solve my problem instead of giving me direct step by step instructions on how to perform certain tasks. This product is not user friendly at all and very difficult to use specially on building queries and reports and on top of that, it has many limitations.

Recommendations

It might work for you, but you will need to test it to make sure it is the right fit. Ask or at least one month trial to have enough time for testing.

Likes Best

User friendly, easy to navigate, fairly easy to search, useful records such as donor files, etc. Like the groups and tags to be able to categorize our supporters.

Likes Least

Doesn't have basic functionality like spell check, font choices, etc

Recommendations

Think about what you use it for and what you would like to be able to do in the future.

Likes Best

Salsa makes it simple for nonprofits to run advocacy campaigns and engage their supporters. It is also a great way to send mass emails to supporters and keep donors informed through newsletters. The Salsa CRM makes it easy to segment supporters into relevant groups and then send them targeted emails based on their interests.

Likes Least

I'd like to see more templates for newsletters and petitions.

Recommendations

Salsa is made for nonprofits and does an excellent job helping nonprofit grow and engage their supporter base. It has a wide range of tools that can assist nonprofits.

Likes Best

As a full service product Salsa is an easier to use alternative to Salesforce (I used Salesforce for several years).

Likes Least

The administrative area is very hard on the eyes, sometimes buggy and poorly designed. The templating feature is draconian and lacks modern features like drag and drop. I encourage Salsa staff to sign up for a Mail Chimp demo and looks at how easy it is to create templates, on the fly, with no need to manipulate or import code. This applies to the donation page templates as well. Also, there aren't enough built in reports and building reports requires a degree in Salsa. It would be good if Salsa integrated with a greater number of merchants.

Recommendations

Your choices are limited if you are looking for a full package service - Salsa does the trick but it requires patience and commitment.

Likes Best

Great customer service and documentation, fairly straightforward interface

Likes Least

Restrictions on email design and very few templates available, inability to delete old image files

Recommendations

Test it out if you can, make a list of what you need from it and make sure you have a plan to integrate with your current data management software

Likes Best

Salsa provides us with most of the tools and products we need at a price affordable to small and mid-sized nonprofits. Their query and reporting tools are very robust and allow for detailed tracking of supporter actions.

Likes Least

It is fairly challenging to customize the look and feel of the donation and signup forms, and their out-of-the-box design is fairly clunky and not super modern. It would be nice if their developers were a little more receptive to working on customizations and improvements (as one-off projects outside of the monthly fee schedule).

Recommendations

Under the hood, this tool is very robust and will serve almost all of the major needs of an advocacy organization. If you are a small operation with no web designer looking for out-of-the-box modern design, however, this may not be the tool for you. But if you have your own IT or web folks who like to tinker, this is a veritable playground.

Likes Best

The ease of setting up and using advocacy actions, campaigns and petitions.

Customer support has a very fast response, which is appreciated.

The number of fields is great.

Likes Least

WYS is NOT WYG. The editor is so hard to use that our staff refuses to use it.

I would like to see more information easily exportable from a query, specifically state districts and ideally groups.
I have found the custom report generator clumsy to use.

Recommendations

You will need someone who knows html to set up templates and to help occasionally.

Likes Best

Salsa has provided great customer service -- whenever we have an issue, their tech support team gets on it ASAP and usually has everything resolved pretty quickly.

Likes Least

The system can be a little difficult to use in certain ways -- for instance, building donation pages can be buggy at times, as selecting social media functions causes the page you're working on to close, or when you're randomly forced to sign out and sign back in again because certain functions are no longer working in a single session (i.e. if you want to create two or more donation pages in a row, you need to log out and log back in before you build each new page or you won't be able to select the right template for the pages). These aren't MAJOR issues, but they are annoying when you're trying to bang out a lot of work. Another thing is that the STOREFRONT feature is sorely underdeveloped and could use a lot of work and additional functionality, such as the ability to calculate sales tax, built-in social media functionality, more dynamic product options (like the ability to charge different prices for different versions of the same store item, or the ability to select multiple product types on a single storefront item). You would need to get outside developers to build these features for you, if you really need them.

Recommendations

Salsa is best used for donations. If you have a large store and you're selling products, it probably wouldn't be the right software for your needs, given how limited the storefront functionality is.

Likes Best

Our non-profit aids other smaller non-profit organizations in outreach and advocacy efforts around a variety of issues. Salsa has been great for us because it so flexible and capable of many different types of outreach and advocacy. It has helped us with large scale campaigns and small scale, regular communication with supporters. We are even starting to use it for donor management. One really useful feature in Salsa is its ability to seemingly integrate into our webpage for advocacy actions, so folks can visit our page and take action without feeling like they're getting shuttled somewhere else where their contact information/identity may feel less secure. It is also fun to watch the action unfold and track response on the back end to evaluate the effectiveness of our campaign. The best part - if you run into a wall using the software, Salsa's support team is very quick to respond and amazingly helpful.

Likes Least

Salsa, at times, can seem very complicated to use, but that is because it is such a powerful, multifaceted tool. And, like I mentioned, when it gets complicated, Salsa's support team is right there to help. One wish for the software would be that web and email templates could be a little more easy to put together, more flexible and more polished. This may speak more to my lack of design code knowledge than of Salsa Software, but I feel like my final html email products aren't as shiny as some I've produced in html email specific software.

Recommendations

I am not sure if there is access before you sign up with Salsa, but it has been very helpful to me to watch the videos and use Salsa Commons. I've learned so much of what Salsa has to offer from the videos and discussion boards in Salsa Commons. Not only have I gained a better understanding of how to use the software, but I have also gleaned a lot of tips and and outreach and advocacy ideas. Often I've found it hard to know the right questions to ask when looking for software like this, and seeing how others are using the software and maybe issues they encounter helps me to frame how Salsa can work for our database, outreach and advocacy going forward.

Likes Best

It's slightly less expensive than other options...

Likes Least

It's not worth it... There are so many problems with both the software and the service. The software is completely unintuitive. Nothing makes logical sense. It seems to have been designed by field organizers for political campaigns, not by customer friendly coders in the IT world. The service is hardly better. It's very difficult to get a live person on the phone. It's easy to get someone via email, but then it takes a back & forth of 4-5 emails before they get to the question you want answered (the first answers are usually "have you read the online help manual?" or "can you send me a screenshot of what you're talking about?", and half the time the final answer is they can't solve the problem you have. Within just one month we started running repeatedly into limitations of what the software can do. And we're a very small non-profit that's hardly sophisticated.

Recommendations

Stay away from Salsa! But if you have to use it, budget in money for in-house IT support to use it and prepare yourself for dozens of hours to train that person to use their completely arcane system. Also beware of the bait and switch. We were promised all kinds of support in using it but once we started running into problems (right away) we were told we'd have to pay each month to get dedicated support access. Better to pay your own person less and have their loyalties be to you.

Likes Best

This product is very easy to use. Sending mass emails, creating and managing groups. Salsa is good at responding and following up fast to clients requests for support of any kind.

Likes Least

The queries get a little complicated, but not impossible.

Recommendations

I do not have any recommendation at this time. I think their experience and mine are different.