I did a lot of research before choosing SilkStart and while the cost was a little more than the other comparable options, I felt that the customer service was extremely important and worth the extra cost. From the start, the people from SilkStart were very helpful and knowledgeable. Having never built a website and starting essentially from scratch, they helped guide me through the process and make important decisions on what to include in both the website content and database information captures, how to prioritize and tutorials on how to manage both the website and the database. We launched our site 5 months ago and we are so happy with the website. We are in the midst of registering for a big conference and the set up was easy for us to do. We were able to offer multi sessions within the conference as well as a variety of ticket options which has been extremely helpful. We had a few questions along the way, and after submitting a ticket, we had the questions answered within a couple of hours. SilkStart was a great choice for us!

Ease of use, many tutorials and FAQ to help problem solve, easy access to support with quick response time.

The cost was a little higher than that of others we compared.

SilkStart was not the least expensive of the alternatives we evaluated, but was also not the most expensive. On balance it delivered good value for money. Some other association management platforms may appear to be inexpensive, but to get the same functionality as SilikStart would have required bolting on additional 3rd party modules and probably some IT skills to enable them. In the end, they were of no better value. SilkStart kept it simple

Starting with the website, we found the available templates yielded clean and contemporary page designs that helped communicate professionalism to members. Integration of a dynamic member directory into the website gives small members an opportunity to showcase themselves and realize a mini website as part of the perks of joining the organization. With SilkStart, this was easy to do - even for people with limited experience on website publishing. SilkStart also streamlined the membership acquisition process by making it faster and easier for new members to join and for the organization to receive payment. A process that used to take days was reduced to minutes. Collecting member fees is usually a headache for organizations and can require significant resources to follow up with members to collect payment. With SilkStart, members receive reminders of their renewal and, if they do not pay on time, SilkStart can continue to send reminders and serve as a virtual collection agency. Many organizations hold events - either as their primary raison d'etre or as fundraisers. With SilkStart, we were easily able to set up events, ticket pricing tiers and create and send messages to promote them. For my client, integration with their QuickBooks system was important. SilkStart delivered.

It would have been nice to have a dashboard for administrators, to give them a quick overview of the organizations member status and activities. A member acquisition funnel (like a sales funnel) would be helpful, but is not currently available.

We have been working with SilkStart for over a year now. Through challenges and tribulations of launch and post-launch, training and expectations, SilkStart was very helpful and supportive of our needs. Though the answers were not always what I wanted to hear, they always conveyed with more than just a "yes" or "no" that helped me understand the bandwidth and capacity of the program and the developers.

Modules cover all the aspects of the business we need. The lay-out of the back-end is very clear and it is easy to understand how to navigation among the modules. When we had a problem with communications, they understood and developed a comprehensive group email program that is light years ahead of what it was when launched. They are good at explaining timelines, sprints and priorities.

Communications module still needs a lot of work. The templates are very glitchy, image library is difficult to use and cannot manage the images in any order. There's no easy way to send an event notice without creating it in group email module and building from scratch. The bandwidth of the developers, while improved, still seems limited and I'm not really sure where their priorities lie relative to our business functions and requirements.

One my major tasks in my first year of employment was to select a new platform for our ageing website and to find an AMS so that we could consolidate our various contacts. I researched a number of options and finally settled on SilkStart. Silkstart offers current technology (updates are frequently rolled out), fresh, modern looking templates and a robust contact/event management system. The pricing is comparable to other more popular software solutions without the burden of a contract. The staff have been fantastic, and the transition was very smooth. It was also important that we find a Candian solution to our needs. I would not hesitate to recommend SilkStart.

Cost effective, fresh templates. various design options with the use of the many widgets available.

Not really a con, but the SilkStart is targeting a segment of the not-for-profit market.

We're happy to be customers!

SilkStart provides a super simple interface for quickly managing your website and users. Our organization is completely driven by volunteers, so the simplicity of SilkStart has been a huge help to our small society. We were in a tough situation with our old website a few years ago and the SilkStart team was able to transition our site quickly and successfully.

It's very difficult to find something negative to say about SilkStart. We have only had a couple of small issues over the past few years and all of those were addressed perfectly with unbelievable turnaround.