PatronManager CRM has helped us gain a more complete insight to our patron relationships, and is invaluable in recording details of our patrons, donors and members. We have used this information to grow our earned and contributed revenue. The tools provided by PatronManager have made several staff positions more productive, and more satisfied in their jobs.

We worked with Patron Technology to migrate 12 years of ticketing/membership/donation transactions to PatronManager CRM in 2015. The technical staff, many of whom have direct working experience in nonprofit arts organizations, understood our goals completely and tailored the application for our unique requirements. The support team is knowledgeable, responsive and dedicated to our success. The power of the Salesforce software platform is its flexibility, and we quickly learned how to create custom fields, build reports, and modify data entry screens to make the system a perfect fit for our staff and volunteers. PatronManager CRM extends the functionality typically available in these types of ticketing applications by supporting the installation of Salesforce apps and plug-ins. This was never possible using our previous ticketing software, and opened new doors of possibility for our organization. We now use PatronManager to sell about 30,000 tickets annually, for concerts, theater and movie screenings, about 70% of which is done online. We used features of the product extensively to manage a $1.5M capital campaign, including wealth screening and a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $120,000. Our membership has grown to over 1,700 members who receive special benefits such as discounts, presales and more -- all delivered through the software. We give a lot of credit for this success to PatronManager CRM and their talented employees for making it possible.

PatronManager CRM requires a training investment by the staff and leadership to get the most out of the product. This is true of any new system -- but there is a terrific reward to making that investment of time. We offer a small number of arts education programs, and we wish PatronManager CRM had more extensive capabilities for student registration built into the native product. The system is updated with enhancements frequently and we understand this is part of the product roadmap.

Increased sales. Online sales capabilities. Less human error in making reservations and a quick "checks and balances" with confirmation emails. No surprises at curtain of patrons being booked into the wrong night. Faster reservation making because there is no more handwriting. Much more accurate sales reporting. Sales that tie into our accounting figures.

We have seen our single tickets increase dramatically with online capabilities, which we didn't have until starting with PM. Support staff has been very responsive. Having the system has cleaned up a lot of previous human error as we took reservations on handwritten forms for the prior TWENTY NINE years. With VoIP phones and this cloud based ticketing system we have the ability to allow BO staff to work form home when needed - answering phones and making reservations as if they were sitting in the office.

Subscribers with flexible packages can not go online to make individual show reservations. That is very unfortunate for us with over 5,000 subscribers in non-traditional subscription packages. Reporting take a bit of time to get used to. We are still double checking each other's list pulls to be confident they are correct. I also find there are some traditionally standard BO operations that can't be done, which frustrates me. I don't think the system should dictate how we do business. I suggest you appoint or hire a systems administrator as your go to person on staff. They'll have a lot to learn, program and continue to maintain. Our Audience Services Manager dedicates, on average, 8 hours a week to system administration.

PatronManager consumes almost 20% of ticket income, provides very little benefit over a non-integrated solution, and treats you like a criminal for encountering problems with the service (which are plentiful). I wouldn't recommend to anyone except small organizations who *NEED* an integrated CRM/ticketing solution.

It's the most robust integrated crm/ticketing solution for businesses below a certain sales threshold; the best of a bad lot.

Any customizations bring hidden fees. The software is only marginally accessible for blind users. The customer care team openly despises their customers, and has months-long turnaround times on business-critical issues - the company has lost sales totaling in the five figure range due to PatronManager's frequent errors and the customer care team's lackadaisical response times. It's frequently impossible to reach anyone at the company (no employee has publicly available contact information, so prepare to work on PatronManager's schedule). The system is rigid and inflexible. New features with limited application arrive with alarming regularity (and require significant investments of employee time to comply with), while desired features are continually pushed back to some nebulous "future release."

It has facilitated significant growth in ticket sales and fundraising by making it possible for us to have a 360 degree view of everyone in our database.

Comprehensiveness: We now conduct all our business through PatronManager including ticket sales, marketing, development, education, and a national tour. This has been transformational for our ability to segment our audience and communicate in a truly personalized way with all our patrons and donors. Flexibility: The system is endlessly customizable. We now have custom objects that allow all touring processes from the first contact through the performance to live in one spot, including fees, workshops, lodging requirements, venue specs, etc. (all of which is able to be pulled into custom reports) Responsiveness: The PatronManager product development team is always listening to their customers and constantly making the product better. The flexibility of the Salesforce platform allows these updates to be seamless rather than disruptive to our daily use. Reporting: The flexibility of the reporting capabilities allow me to access everything from high level dashboards to deep dive data in minutes.

Due to PatronManager's fast growth, there have been times when tech support response times have been extended. However, when that has happened, PatronManager has always moved quickly to make necessary changes and communicated with customers openly about the challenges and the timeline.

Love that we can customize almost anything to meet our unique needs. Ease of reporting, either using pre-made reports that come built in, or by customizing our own for specific details. Features are constantly being added - a highlight of any month is reading through Release Notes! Because my department is so small, I have come to depend on PM to house institutional knowledge that would otherwise be lost if even one member of our team left the organization. Building and managing inventory could not be easier. Love that I can customize email templates - has made invoicing directly from PM so easy. Chatter makes communicating with our student staff a breeze, and I love that I am able to work from home using PatronManager when weather or school closings are an issue. Have wifi, will travel. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

There definitely has to be someone on staff who can be an admin that is well versed in most of the smaller troubleshooting issues, so that you're not constantly relying on PM Support. However, the online training and help modules are so robust, that this is not a problem. There is always help available, either online, or through the fantastic client services department that handles support requests.

Truly an integrated CRM system that allows us to see what our members and non-members are doing. All-volunteer organization has some unique processes, and we have been able to customize PatronManager to accommodate our show attendance invitation system, for example. Also, because it's cloud-based and, once set up, most user procedures are fairly straight-forward, we've been able to decentralize a number of data management tasks. Committees manage their own data, rather than one database administrator (also volunteer) needing to be responsible for all collection and reporting. We also like the ability to clone donation forms (non-complex ones) ourselves, to customize them for specific purposes.

Developing reports is more challenging than many of our members can handle technically, so that remains largely the purview of a very small number of people (1-2). Implementation was generally smooth, despite some (inevitable) resistance to change. If there are multiple people qualifying donations and ticket orders, that process needs to be actively managed. Without active management, qualification can get a back-log, which (appropriately) results in temporary dupes in the system.

Easier access to data about our patrons. We can now make better fact-based data decisions rather than relying upon hunch.

We took a long time (three years) in exploring ticketing/fundraising CRM options knowing that the shift in systems was going to be a major change for our organization. We are so glad that we chose Patron Manager and Salesforce. It is truly a system that will grow as our organization grows (and it is helping us in that growth!). We now have access to information and data in ways that were not possible with our previous systems. The support team has been very helpful in solving problems and guiding us in different directions as we test the limits of what we want to do. Our team is fired up to utilize Patron Manager and Salesforce and are eager to learn more.

Reporting can be a bit of a challenge as it requires some very specific thinking about how to find what you want to know. Even after using the product for several years, I still feel like I'm not fluent in reporting.

The team at PatronTechnology is knowledgeable, collaborative, and has even helped our IT department understand and use the salesforce.com platform in new ways. We implemented nearly four years ago now, and we have very much enjoyed continuing to grow with them. PM got us that much closer to a true 360-degree view of our patrons, donors, alumni, students, parents, listeners, employees, and volunteers. Plus, it's on the Salesforce platform which means it's secure, fast, and reliable, as well as scalable and configurable.

Honestly, there's not much to dislike. There are a few minor aspects that I wish were more configurable for our environment, but we have workarounds for them so not a large negative impact.

It lets us run our entire company in Salesforce, keeping all our data in one place!

This is an excellent, robust ticketing system that lets us run our entire company in Salesforce, the world's leading CRM. All our data are in one place!

PatronManager has a big impact on your Salesforce instance. It will be the signature feature governing how your CRM works. While sometimes you will find this to be good and helpful, at others you'll find it can complicate development of your own Salesforce customizations.

It's been ok because a lot of work has been doen but trusting the reports is tough for an accountant.

That it has the capability to work with Accounting seed.

That it is very easy to change a variable or miss a variable and get wrong information or numbers.

Overall this is a great program. The CRM aspect is important and of course useful, but the most impactful part of the program for our organization is reporting. We would not be able to effectively run our business without the many reporting options available in this program. We can compare sales year over year, create campaigns for marketing and development, and so on. All layers of the database including ticket sales and donations speak to each other so we can pull reports for almost anything. Not to mention, if I do not know how to do something the support team will assist me. My background is customer service and the Patron Manager team exceed my expectations. They are extremely helpful and knowledgeable. They are great teachers. I also like how this program is customizable. There are tons of additional applications (some paid, mostly free) that can be added to PatronManager. These additional applications are very helpful. I recently downloaded one that will allow me to manage our volunteer program. Its truly a lifesaver.

One con is the response time for support. We do have the ability to mark the urgency of a support request, and they will respond immediately for urgent requests, but it would be nice to get a quicker response for even non urgent matters. Sometimes the little issues are still a big deal.

Patron Manager stores all of our ticketing and donor data in a single database which allows us to create reports and mailing lists from a single source rather than pulling records from multiple excel spreadsheets. Their customer service and online help is world class, and keeps getting better each year with additional webinars and added content. Their process for keeping the database 'clean' is very helpful and avoids the duplication of records. The product is stable. Downtime is almost non-existent - we've had perhaps 3 incidents over 5 years of not being able to access the database and even then it was for a very short period of time with minor-to-no impact to operations.

The only 'negative' about the product was during our initial setup. The ease of data import was over-hyped. Templates were provided but the brunt of the work had to be done by us. This was five years ago and I'm going to guess they have found processes to make it easier for their customers to import data. All of this said, once they received the templates populated with our data the database was set up correctly.

Again, not only is it easy to use and nice to look at from a user perspective, but it also allows for remote access, which helps make it THE BEST ticketing software I've ever had the pleasure of using in all of my 10+ box office sales experience!

If you can send an email and/or use Facebook, you can master software platform of PatronManager! Not only are the functions laid out in an easy-to-use, organized fashion, but the visual aesthetic of the program itself makes it almost self-explanatory. And if you have any questions, simply visit the PatronManager Help tab, where you can find step-by-step how-to's on almost any PatronManager feature or "Submit a Support Request."

Although the "Reports" feature is quite robust, especially along with CRM Snapshot options, but the sorting "Fields" are not available for every report. (Work-arounds usually do the trick.)

It's not an intuitive product and require a lot of effort to use it and learn it.

there are some nice features that makes some set ups easy and quick. it's great database. The reporting is endless.

I have never seen such a bad customer service in my life. In many situations , I waited 2 months to get a response!!! usually it's weeks. I have complained many times, but the response was that we can pay for faster response time. Insane! This is my major problem with this product. There are also some limitations due to Salesforce features, like confirmation e-mails that have very complicated HTML coding.

It is fantastic

That it is a cloud-based CRM - it is wonderful to have our Ticket Sales, Donations History, and Marketing history all in one place. PatronManager has been able to help us do more and is very customize-able. CRM snapshots (easy way to run quick list like show me ticket buyers that came to X show but not bought tickets for Y show yet).

There is a learning curve in creating your own customized reports as the reporting structure is very robust. The payoff is worth the learning curve as you can create reports on just about anything. (There are canned reports and CRM Snapshots which are easy to use right off the bat.)

All information on donations, marketing, and ticketing is in one place! You can look at a person's PatronManager account and really see a snapshot of that patron's interactions with the Ballet...from their last ticket order to their recent meeting with the development team. So helpful, especially for our small staff!

Because the possibilities in Salesforce are so vast, things can be overwhelming upon first adoption for non-tech-minded people. The PM team helps you customize anything you want and the annual conferences in NYC are super helpful to see how other organizations and teams are using the Salesforce platform.

It is a great way to store all customer data in a comprehensive CRM.

The CRM function is a great tool. The program holds all customer data and is organized by contacts, households, etc. Users can easily search by any aspect of the customer account (name, email, phone, etc). The multiple reporting features are also very useful.

It is extremely frustrating that there is not an option to automatically connect online orders to an existing account. Instead, all orders must be qualified on the backend, which is an astoundingly time consuming and mundane process. For such a popular system, it is surprising that this issue persists. Additionally, the ticket sales function is not very user friendly and is extremely slow to complete. Each transaction requires multiple pages, and the web browser automatically reloads whenever a selection is changed. In addition, email addresses are required to make a sale, and the only way to get around this is very clunky and time consuming.

We've seen immediate increases of both ticket sales AND donation revenue.

Customization. If the software doesn't have what you need out of the box, they will build something custom for you (or you can build it yourself!) and they're always updating the software with new features to improve ease of use or give more powerful options.

You really do need an admin on the staff who will be in charge of maintaining the software from your side. That staff person should learn as much about the software as they can to troubleshoot minor problems in-house so you won't need their support system for small things.

Excellent support staff, in-depth training resources at your fingertips, robust reporting, and the ability to customize the system to meet your needs all adds up to a powerful CRM that I highly recommend.

It can be very daunting learning the reporting side of the system but once you have a firm grasp on the terminology and how reporting works, the system becomes very enjoyable to use.

The greatest thing is the flexibility to customize the software to suit your needs. This allows us to handle a number of different sales processes and keep looking for ways to improve how our organizations interactions with guests.

Also the customization, since it really requires someone to take ownership of the system and can make support tricky since every business does things differently

The Townsend Center for the Performing Arts is now in its second season with PatronManager. The system is built on the SalesForce Platform, which is the leading CRM and database platform used by most of the Fortune 500 companies. PatronManager is a comprehensive solution that uses the totally cloud-based platform from SalesForce. The ticketing product and the donor management product are built onto the platform and delivered to any type of device, desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, etc... There is no install process at all for your venue. The system is extremely flexible and powerful. You can write your own reports, build countless events, store limitless amounts of data, add fields, add workflow, add reports, etc. There are 3 versions of subscriptions, multiple ways to do discount codes, secured links, and private, timed portal access. The system does take a while to learn because it offers so much. In our old system, we had not received any type of update for over three years. SalesForce updates the platform once per quarter with major releases, then security updates when needed. On top of that, PatronManager updates the product with 4 to 6 releases per year. The product is evolving and improving at incredible speed with nearly 10 updates total per year. Once you get through the learning phase, the product will consolidate countless silos of data into one system and deliver it to you from every possible device. Plus, it is stored by a major corporation on highly secure systems. All in all, the system delivers incredible features and the price is great.

What we used to do in three databases and a couple of spreadsheets is now in one: ticket purchases, donations, volunteer experience, class registrations

The class registration "module" is the second or third app we've tried. It's good, but still not a seamless integration.

It is web accesible, and once you figure out with tech support how to get it integrated to the look and feel of your own website, it provides a good patron experience.

Getting the right report is pretty difficult. There are not enough standard reports that are useful for us and we have found that many reports we need require a call to tech support to ask them to make it. Tech support is more responsive on email than on phone.

It's an amazing tool that helps you out with managing funds that are generated from events. Whether fit's ticket sales, fundraisers or donations, you can always rely on the app. In fact, you get to enjoy remote access in case you happen to move around a lot.

Being a software that is all about donations, fundraising, ticket sales and anything that comes close to event revenue, I would really recommend it for it's reliability in boosting tickets sales and tracking every activity accordingly, accuracy and minimal human error, efficient booking and managing mails for campaigns or customer update. The tool is also customizable. You can customize it to best fit your needs and get the most out of it. So no need to worry about the diversity of the entertainment industry. In terms of fundraisers and donations, there's a feature that allows you to manage membership and non-membership engagements. You can track the amount of money made or raised over a given time and prepare reports for reference.

Initial data set-up can be a bit of work depending on the industry you are based.

Very robust and customize-able! Can configure the system to work with your specific operation and can do most of that yourself.

Takes too long for help desk to respond to questions/issues. Would like online chat to be able to get instant responses to quick questions.