Muster is a Must-have

We began using Muster in its early days as a tool for us to build a grassroots advocacy organization. Before Muster, we used MailChimp, which is great for sending email, but it doesn't provide the key functionality of calling your list to specific, political action and then tracking the outcomes. Muster was absolutely critical to our success when, last year, our city council passed the final vote to begin building rapid transit infrastructure for our city. Now, as our organization grows and matures, Muster's features allow us to keep our supporters engaged and keep our officials on the right track.

Pros

Muster is great for the following reasons:
Excellent underlying data that makes segmentation and targeting your list simple.
The team is fantastic at supporting their product.
Sending quick updates is easy.

Cons

Muster could be better if:
More integrations
Greater ability to customize emails
Organization-facing mobile apps for managing lists, signups, calls to action.

We needed a simple and straightforward 'contact your legislator' tool. We got that and more.

We increased our grassroots lobbying presence from practically non-existent to one of the most active groups in the state of Iowa. We also grew our activist network 4-fold, with the help of a lot of online ads that drove new activists to the action page.

Pros

It's very simple, you can begin using it almost immediately after signing up, and you can track and monitor every email/letter/phone call you produce. We signed up thinking we would only use the email action tool to get members of our organization more involved in grassroots lobbying. Instead, we used every tool available and grew our activist network 4-fold (with the help of a lot of online advertising to drive people to the action page).

Cons

When you create a new email action for users to click on and contact their lawmakers you can edit the landing page (which describes the purpose of the action and some talking points) but not the form letter. So if you want to freshen up a form letter you have to create a new email action. This was just a minor inconvenience.

Enables Advocacy Engagement with Members at a Reasonable Rate

A positive experience. It's less expensive than some of the other options out there and it gave us what we needed to increase advocacy engagement with our members.

Pros

It gives us the ability to engage with our members making it easy for them to contact state representatives and officials about issues important to our industry. The interface was simple and not too complicated as well.

Cons

It has limits. There's a need to recreate the campaign when you want to resend. In some cases, there's also an issue with proper district borders as it pulls from map coordinates and they can sometimes be slightly off. For example, I'm right on the border with another district so it didn't display my own district properly. This isn't a common problem but it does happen sometimes and they're working on it.

Happy we made the switch to Muster

We have been very satisfied with Muster and are glad we made the switch from our previous vendor where everything was a la carte and the customer service was non-existent. Muster has been very attentive to our needs and the software itself is great. We've recommended Muster to several other non-profit organizations in our area because of our good experience with it.

Pros

We like how easy it is to use and that the price includes everything -- each feature is not a la carte.

Cons

When we first subscribed there were some kinks to be worked out particularly around loading lists, but those have been addressed.

Fits this niche calls to action better than anything else; support it top-notch

We use Muster primarily to get our members to contact their legislators when its in session -- e-mails for the most part. The ability to target not only by district, but specific *committees* is extremely helpful. (We'd rather not bombard every senator and rep with messages if we can help it.) It's still fairly new, so there are features that aren't yet implemented... emphasis on "yet." Just about everything we've suggested is already planned (and might even be released by the time you read this). And that goes to the question of customer support. We once had to wait about 15 minutes for an e-mailed support question and that's the longest we've ever waited. That kind of fast response is typical. That's something to keep in mind. If you're curious about a feature, ASK. Don't just rely on these reviews; the Muster folks are incredibly responsive. Bottom line: Highly recommended.

Pros

Great back-end database of legislators. Fine-tuned targeting. Clear instructions; great interface.

Cons

Lack of some customization options for messages (e.g., direct HTML editing).

Muster Makes our online Advocacy Possible

Our organization has worked with Muster since its startup and they continue to adapt to customer needs. I have worked with other e-advocacy firms and nobody compares to Muster's attentive customer service! They would probably answer my call for help at 2 a.m.! They are reasonably priced and easy to use. I like that they provide for contact with local elected officials as well as federal and state because they are so grassroots oriented.

Pros

-easy to use; reasonably priced; outstanding customer service; local contacts

Cons

Almost anything I have recommended to improve the product has been implemented. Muster appreciates the advice of the practitioners!

Muster: Best Bang for Your Buck

Pros

I love that Muster is so affordable! It makes advocacy software accessible to smaller organizations.

Cons

In 2019, the committees list in Muster broke and hasn't been fixed the last time I checked. This used to be a huge time saver for me, so I hope it resolves soon.

Great tool for association advocacy communication

As an association executive director, I've been using Muster a little over two years with great success. It is a very affordable alternative to other similar resources in the marketplace and the customer service is outstanding. I recommend any association that needs advocacy communications, especially on a budget (an who isn't?) give them a try.

Pros

Price and ease of use

Cons

Inability to easily replicate archived campaigns (repurposing content older than a year)

Great way to connect your contacts with their elected officials

Working with Muster has changed my organization's approach to advocacy efforts. We can now offer our contacts an efficient and effective way to reach their elected officials. The software is easy to use on our end and also easy for our contact list to use. We have seen our advocacy list grow at an impressive and consistent rate since integrating Muster into our website. The Muster team also provides excellent customer service. They are quick to respond if an issue or question should arise. They are also willing to listen to our needs and figure out ways to integrate new ideas that can help our advocacy efforts grow into their software updates. Highly recommended.

We've had a great experience with Muster and the Muster Team!

Pros

We love that the Muster Team is always listening to our feedback and trying to accommodate our needs, even if they are only specific to our organization. We really like that capability of out of constituency contact. We typically ask our members to contact committees, which means they may not necessarily be constituents of those legislators. Other advocacy software companies don't allow that, but we're happy Muster does.

Cons

The extra fee for tracking phone calls. For our needs, we'd really prefer just to have Muster provide the phone numbers of legislators to our members for those who'd rather make phone calls vs. email or Twitter.

Excellent grassroots mobilization platform

I've used several voter/grassroots mobilization platforms, but couldn't be happier to have moved my association to Muster in the past year. The user interface is clean and intuitive. The email blasts and action alerts are easy to compose, and our members find them appealing and user-friendly. Muster's customer service is also phenomenal - they quickly respond to help requests and are always open to software development suggestions to continue to improve the platform. GREAT software.

Muster has helped our organization engage with our members

Since we've started using Muster, we've had much better response from our members when we send Action Alerts or ask them to engage with their legislators. It is helping us with our adv