We always wanted a VMS to recruit, screen, train and manage all our volunteers and Initlive has saved us hours of work. Best VMS so far.

We have been trying many different VMS for ages till we found Initlive, which has been very easy to use, with great UX and the best pricing product. It is the best one for scheduling and recruiting volunteers.

I have never encountered any flaws within the software except for sometimes we get some bugs within the mobile app.

All in all the app is great for organizing volunteers, especially in large numbers but for a smaller group of volunteers we found our current method of organizing volunteers on an excel spreadsheet worked just as well. We were hoping that we'd get more communication functionality from the app but think there is still room for improvement in that respect.

The back end website is user friendly. It is easy to upload an excel template of your volunteers or add people individually. If you are looking for a way to organize volunteers and schedule volunteers that's where the product shines most. You can build roles, assign individuals and set schedules easily. There is a good deal of customization in this area which is helpful. You are able to assign multiple event managers so they also have the "power" to make changes on the website and within the app once your event goes live as well.

Shifts are built by location rather than by role which wasn't logical for us because we pre-assign roles and the location isn't relevant. It would have been nice if there was more automatic assignment rather than manual when it came to putting volunteers into specific shifts once you had already assigned them a role. As a planner it was hard for me to not be able to test the app before the event went live. You see nothing in the app until it is live but at that point all your volunteers see what you are seeing and any changes being made get broadcast out. Day of we found communication via the app was limited. Only event managers can send messages to everyone or filter and send messages to specific groups. Individual volunteers can only send messages to their shift supervisor or the event managers. They weren't able to send even within their role assignment.

The mobile app was improved and now it is much more flexible and provides much more info

If you need to change any information related to your team shifts, it is really heavy to do - the rational is not intuitive.

Used the software project at the Marshes last year during the World Girls Juniors. We used the software application to acquire, register, and track around 100 volunteers for a 3 day international golf tournament.

The application handled a lot of the volunteer registration and shift scheduling well. It gave us a good idea of where we required additional volunteers. It assisted us in tracking volunteers shifts and determine when volunteers were late or did not show.

I found that because a lot of the volunteers were seniors who did not use current computer applications regularly, many were confused with initial emails that were sent to them. Also, because of the lack of computer application knowledge of the users, many of the volunteers did not register on-line by themselves but were entered onto the system by Initlive staff or team leads. I do not believe many of the team leads utilized the mobile on-line during the event. It was interesting to find out the many spouses had registered as volunteers but only used one email address. This became very confusing since the system was geared on the email address as and id and communication was through emails regarding shift assignments.

Choosing InitLive was our first step into a serious volunteer management system for our regional science tournament. We reviewed many competing platforms, and even though it was a bit pricey for our limited budget, we have been pleased with our choice. Every year the features get better.

One of the unique aspects of InitLive was its mobile device capability, which we hope will improve how we manage our tournaments. And hands-down, it has the most attractive user interface. It helps us put forward a professional image to our audience.

Every platform has it's limitations. Quite honestly, I don't think about this anymore. We have integrated InitLive into how we manage volunteers, and it is part of our normal processes.