Salsa CRM Software

Not much. It was too clunky and complex for us to learn and use.

Please note, you should not be using my LinkedIn profile because the main LI profile is for a company I'm working with not for my non-profit. Using a LI profile simply doesn't work for people who have multiple roles at different organizations.

Pros

On the surface SALSA looked to have everything we needed in a modern user interface. Email program. It was relatively easy to create

Cons

Salsa, as it currently exists, is an integration of three separate solutions. The CRM and the Engage products actually use separate databases that need to sync with each other.

The fundraising module was a completely different and much older interface.

The support was friendly and knowledgeable but with no experienced IT/CRM person on staff Salsa was simple too complex to learn and remember, especially since we used it only one per month.

We decided to cancel our contract and move to something simpler and more manageable for us. Salsa management declined to return the unused portion of our contract. I don't believe would have been a great sacrifice to return to our non-profit. But they chose not to.

Similarly, the merchant services account we had to sign with Salsa was for a three-year period, even though our contract with Salsa was only annually. We're now paying a cancellation fee for that service.

I'm certain that Salsa probably works well for larger organizations, but it was simply too complex for our small team.

We didn't find many benefits to this program, only disadvantages. We changed to a different CRM for our non profit.

Pros

Admittedly, Salsa is a robust program with lots of options and capabilities. The queries were details and you could typically find the information that you needed for a report.

Cons

The program was clunky and not user friendly at all. It was not intuitive and it took a great deal of time to figure out how to make it do what you wanted. Ultimately, we changed to another program.

Easy to set up.

Pros

Very easy to get set up. We were getting on the platform after using only excel sheets. Canned reports are also helpful.

Cons

I think it would be great if there was a user group or community of users available to exchange ideas.

This is night and day vs. the software we used to use. I think we're only using half the features we probably should be using, so we can grow into this.

Pros

I love that I can customize so much. This software has ALL the features I was looking for and then some

Cons

Because it has so much functionality, there is a learning curve, just like any CRM. Just plan for time to learn the software and take it in stages.

Pros

The program is easy to use. I like the browser interface versus the desk top version as it is more modern and you can work off site.

Accuracy of information. Able to research donors to determine how often they give, amount of gift, etc. Most important support from Salsa staff.

Pros

Salsa is much better than our previous experience with another vendor who will remain un-named. Generating reports is easy and the database is easy to work with.

Most important to us is the support provided by Salsa. I am able to reach them during business hours and they spend the time needed to solve any issues. They are clearly customer oriented. Many others I researched charged extra for this level of service. With Salsa it is included.

Cons

Does not link to other email providers. It would be nice to be able to use Constant Contact or another email provider and have it link directly to the program. Engage is nice, but is some cases not as easy to use as are the other email service providers.

Having said that we are very satisfied with our use of Salsa overall and have no plans to go looking for anyone else.

An updated, easy to use database system.

Pros

I like the ease of the software. It is very intuitive which makes navigating easier. Most questions can be answered by using the online help, but if a phone call is necessary the staff is very easy to work with.

Cons

Our database system prior to conversion was subpar. I new the conversion would take work on both parts (salsa conversion team and my own). There was little to be done about some data, however one request made was only partially completed. I requested additional work to be done on it and was told that the system went live and there was nothing they could do about it. I don't there is an easy way of fixing it without starting from scratch with an excel spreadsheet.

Pros

It can do practically anything you want it to. We chose it over others in part because of the event management functions. Also because of the Salsa Engage

Cons

The learning curve - but this would be the case with any new software. It takes time to learn - you have to build in time to learn the software incrementally over a period of many months.

It is too early to tell.

Pros

The intersections of email, word processing, data entry, and other functions appear to be easy to use. But remember, I am VERY new to this and haven't tried any difficult functions, and haven't created anything in Engage, so cannot really comment on that part yet.

Cons

It is not totally clear to me what the Engage vs CRM functions are as yet. The conversion process from Raiser's Edge to this is glitchy and we had to track down pieces of information in Raiser's Edge that were not converted. For example if there was no date of death for a donor or spouse, the fact that they are deceased was not converted automatically. The training path was not clearly laid out. It would be helpful to have a flow chart of critical training and the order in which it would be best to receive that. For us linear thinkers, it feels like the training options came at us from different directions and we became confused on what to do next.

At this time, we haven't been using Salsa CRM long enough to record any marked benefit. We're still in the problem-solving phase of post-conversion. As the Development Director, I did receive an immense benefit from sifting through the 2.5 million data fields from our conversion templates, however. I now have intimate knowledge of our constituents and our data that I didn't have before. It's given me a better view of our donor base which has allowed for the placement of fundraising strategies. If CRM and Engage would ever interphase properly, Salsa could probably make my life a lot easier. But right now, it makes it more difficult.

Pros

Customer service is awesome. I appreciate that I can call and get help instead of wading through hours of online instruction videos. Everyone I've encountered has been helpful and knowledgeable. I appreciate the ability to categorize constituents into groups. It's proven very helpful on directing messaging to appropriate constituents.

Cons

Frequently used items, such as notes and address and phone edits, aren't where one would think they would be. When learning the system, it causes a lot of frustration trying to find things. Also, there are lots of drop down menus without explanations on how each category affects the larger picture. For example, under "Edit Address," there is place to check is the address is "Home," "Business," or "Primary." (You can check more than one.) Then across from that, there's a drop down menu titled "Reason." No explanation of what this category means. The choices are "All Correspondence," "Bad Address," "Non-Solicitations Only," "Primary Address," or "Solicitations Only." How does this relate to the "Preferred Contact" drop down found under "Constituent Information" which also features "Solicitations Only" and "Non-Solicitations Only"? Isn't that overkill? What's the logic behind that? It would be nice if there was a printed user's guide. Sure, there's all sorts of information online to sift through, but who has time to watch videos? Give me a searchable .PDF with general instructions that include an overview of the drop down menu choices and their best uses. Finally, conversion is NOT easy. You get what you pay for. We paid for the basic conversion, and I had to manually process over 2.5 million data fields from our previous software to Salsa's templates. It took me 6 weeks. We're still waiting for Salsa CRM and Engage to interphase properly 2 months later.

Ease of use, lower cost.

Pros

The ease of use is what I like most about the SalsaLabs software. The software is very, very intuitive.

Cons

I've experienced a few glitches with the software. The upside is I called customer service and the problems were addressed immediately.

Pros

I like that the CRM and Engage work so well together making my work easier - It integrates everything.

Cons

There are some functionalities, mostly around events, that I want that Salsa doesn't have- particularly the fact that there's no way to jump to a ticket purchase page without going through the event page..

Pros

It is really intuitive once you get the hang of it. it also has many more feature than i will be able to use for a long time. I really feel that my organization can grow in to this software.

Cons

It's really hard to get all of my data transferred to the CRM. Also, salsa engage and donor pro need to be better merged into one system. it is really confusing to navigate at first.

Pros

The data base management and report generating are both well designed. It makes it easy to keep leads up-to-date

Cons

The templates for mailings leave a little bit to be desired. They are not very customizable and the end product does not usually match what is in the design stage.

Pros

I selected this software because of how user friendly it is as well and the donor engagement platform. Communicating with our donors across many methods is made so easy with the Salsa CRM. The pricing was very fair and competitive with the market.

Pros

It is very easy to use. The Engage platform is intuitive and includes some helpful tools such as A/B testing and valuable insights.

Cons

There are a few features missing in my opinion. The ability to add discount codes to events and receive email notifications of contributions would be most helpful.

Much easier to use than our old software.

Pros

Ease of use and understanding. It has all the categories and applications that we need in a donor software system.

Cons

We haven't found anything yet! We are working on the conversion and I hope that goes well..

Pros

Is super easy to learn how to use. Great registration pages for events that promote individual fundraising.

Cons

Not many options for social media marketing. I wish it allowed for more cross promotion across different social platforms.

Pros

The software is somewhat easy to use - after you play with it a while, you can usually figure it out.

Cons

I have been told our platform looks cheap and almost to the point where people are unsure whether it's "legitimate".
It does not have all the capabilities that Donor Pro's peer-to-peer software had so we are unhappy that it feels like we are getting less for our money this year. (e.g. participants were unable to track off-line donations)

Confidence in a state of the art system that can do so much of what we want, providing extremely useful information about our constituent base and fundraising activities.

Pros

The many things we can do with it. I feel like it could take us years to fully tap the potential of the CRM and Engage.

Cons

Figuring out the best way to have the software work with our equipment not as straightforward as I thought it would be.