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.

Good, but needs fine tuning

Overall I have enjoyed setting up and implementing Salsa. My biggest complaint (other than the alphebetical order issue) is that the person inputting the data should have more of an understanding as to the inner working and fields available in Salsa. There are many fields that I have (and still am) currently modifying/getting rid of because the fields already existed in the system so I am moving the data. All someoned needed to request was to use the existing field to upload against but I was never told or given the option. I can see the issue possibly being from me not seeing the fields but in my mind, you all are the experts and are helping implement the system the best way possible.

Pros

The options in the reporting system are great and I find it superior to most query/reporting tools.

Cons

The fact that NOTHING is in alphabetical order. Why and how this has happened is ridiculous.

Disjointed, kludgy, unintuitive, overly-complex, and outdated on the CRM side

We gave it our best shot. We spent days and days trying to import people - without ever really succeeding. I worked for DAYS trying to master the reporting interface. Which looks (and probably is????) extremely and outlandishly powerful. The only trouble is - its SOOOO powerful (and complicated), nobody even uses it. I finally contacted the company to ask if there were any training videos on it - and they (literally) told me that virtually nobody writes their own report definitions. "Most of their customers hire consultants to do that," they said. When I finally DID succeed in writing a couple that worked, they seemed somewhat surprised. Lots of little things just didn't seem to make sense. For example, even -- if I was logged in, and two hours pass, it logs me out, providing the log-in credentials to log back in again - which is fairly common. But if one tries to put in credentials on that page and log back in, it says, in tiny print on an otherwise-white screen upper left, "Forbidden." The one thing NOT to do to a customer who has just paid $4500 for a year's worth of use of a software platform is log him out - and when he tries to use the log-in page to log back in again, tell him it's forbidden.

Pros

Salsa Engage is a new product. If they had built a CRM from the ground up, incorporating Salsa CRM components, I have a hunch it would have been better. Salsa Engage, for its part, allows one to do online forms, email groups (in a matter of speaking), and some social media integration. (But wow - they didn't.) It will indeed do those automated sequence emails (though not dependably; and strangely, when I informed their customer service that the 'drip' sequence wasn't always working, they literally said, "Yes, if

Cons

For the CRM side (Salsa CRM), they just bought an off-the-shelf product from another vendor. (DonorPro.) It's a dated interface. (Like - 1965 maybe?) (I jest. But not by much.) Then they tried to figure out a way to cobble it together with their [better] efforts in Salsa Engage. The trouble is, if a person doesn't buy access to Salsa CRM, there really is ZERO CRM. For example, one can generate a group email, of sorts, from directly in Salsa Engage. But there's really no way to jot down a mailing address with a phone number in Salsa Engage, solely. (It only accepts contacts with emails.) The whole thing seemd Kludgy, actually.

User friendly

Better constituent tracking.

Pros

Copying previous emails makes it very easy to create new ones. Once you learn the functions, it is simple and straight forward to create emails.

Cons

It would save time if brand colors could be saved to a palette for fonts and background colors in emails so that it isn't necessary to type them in each time I create a new row or title. I have repeatedly found that the text adds a return prior to completely filling a line. I have removed formatting, and it doesn't change this problem.

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.