Essential Operating Tool

Pros

Salsa CRM has been essential in making sure that our organization has run smoothly since inception. The product allows us to grow into new features as we grow as an org.

Cons

Reporting and corresponding can be tedious at times but improvements to both have been made over time.

Overall, a useful product

As my review title states: overall, a useful product, but it's definitely got room for macro design improvements.

Pros

There are unlimited capabilities with the software. Salsa CRM offers everything you could possibly desire in a CRM designed for a nonprofit. In fact, there's so much functionality, that after six months of having used the software, I still feel like I'm only 25% of the way there with fully knowing it inside and out. Constituent profiles are clean and easy-to-navigate, and they help unearth stats that can ultimately help you recapture lapsed donors and sustain their commitment to the org. Additionally, customer support is always there to help you navigate the software should you ever get lost.

Cons

The training is not exactly exciting or something an audio-visual-hands-on combo type of learner with ADD is going to find very useful. I think it's unfortunate that the product vocabulary has to be all "startup-y." I'm still trying to understand the reporting systems. I've also been faced with buggy moments that typically require restarting the software which causes delays in getting work done.

SALSA is THE best!

Ive been with SALSA now for several years. In the beginning I kept trying to make it Network for Good - which I left because they were so non-responsive, but they do have good interfaces and options, and their donation processing is a breeze. But the reality is, that I left NFG because I couldnt get what I wanted. From my first day with SALSA, though, the team behind the product stood out and they jumped through hoops and turned somersaults to make me happy and get me the training I needed. I even got a call from the President of the company to talk about what I was experiencing and to make sure I was getting what I needed. I cant imagine any other company with a the customer comes first culture that reaches all the way to the top. No matter what I come up with that I want to do, I find that theres a way to do it in SALSA (except around the donations!). I would recommend this product to anyone and everyone without reservations!

Pros

Since 2003 we have purchased, leased, been granted and explored too many databases to count. Until we finally found our home with SALSA. The team is constantly upgrading and adding features, the customer support is absolutely unparalleled, and their dedication to the end-user is obvious in the features they have and those that they've added over the years we've been with them. Every software CRM has issues. One of the things that sets SALSA apart from all of the others is their customer service team. They go the extra mile and then they just keep going even further to work with you, fix any issue you're having, suggest new features to the development team based on your needs....they are just the absolute best.

Cons

I'm not as fond of their donation processing partner. For example, if a donor wants to increase their giving amount you have to cancel their old donation and they have to go in and create a whole new donation. Some of their training material leaves a lot out, but the responsiveness of their support team more than makes up for that.

Great customer service, but conversion is a time-consuming pain.

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.

Salsa gets it done, but only if you have the staff to make it work

My team used Salsa for a 1-year campaign to raise money to build a home in Nepal for trafficking victims. We successfully raised $467,000 in 10 months! Hands down, we COULD NOT have done it without Salsa. Because it had everything in one (emails, analytics, segmenting, Peer 2 Peer campaigns, donation pages, event pages, and much more) it was much easier to keep track of everything we needed to keep track of.

Pros

*I didn't realize it at the time, but I really like how easily I could create queries/segments of donors. It has a "If/Then" approach with clicks of a button that is a lot easier than another CRM I use (eTapestry by Blackbaud). *Their email system worked well for our purposes. We had templates that we used throughout the campaign that looked good and were easy to fill in our information. It sent the emails we told it to send without a problem. *The event feature was helpful. We had lots of people sign up on the events page that was relatively easy to create. *I definitely like like analytics features. (This is probably my favorite feature.) It is really nice to see who opened emails, click rates, donation totals/types, etc... It is especially neat that we could send emails to people based on what emails they have opened or clicked on. *Branded donation pages was a must have for us and we got that so it's a big plus with Salsa.

Cons

*The emails were mostly good, but sometimes editing the templates was frustrating. You can't delete certain aspects (like a table or a line) in the email and if you're not careful and press "backspace" at the wrong time, the system will think that you've clicked the "Back" shortcut key and it will take you out of the email...unless you've saved recently, your email is gone. So, save OFTEN. *The Peer2Peer pages were good but had a few glitches. It was difficult to import off-site giving and link to a person's Ambassador page. I had to go through Customer Support to remove re-imbursed donations that were given via the P2P pages. It is really difficult to format the P2P pages - oftentimes, a page that was perfect would later start showing random signs: $ & % | and stuff... *We had some difficulties with people getting charged more than once when they clicked the button too many times. Not sure if that's Salsa's fault or the users'. *We had some issues with security warnings when donors when to the donation page. This was a frustrating thing that popped up often but never really got resolved. *While the event feature was nice, it didn't work so well for people inviting guests. I'm not sure what went wrong, but we had a lot of people who were unable to register guests for some reason, even though we had clicked the box to allow it. This lead to a small logistical headache at the event itself. *I didn't know they required 60 days notice to cancel the subscription. I had to jump through a TON of hoops to get our account canceled when our campaign was over because I only gave 30 days notice. Luckily they eventually caved and allowed us to go on good terms, but it took a lot of phone calls, emails, and polite convincing...okay, not always polite toward the end...