All CiviCRM Reviews
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Jonathan
Verified reviewer
Internet, 2-10 employees
Used less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
Reviewed May 2016
Our go-to for Associations and others
CiviCRM integrates CRM functions for associations, affiliation groups and others as an add-on for the top GPL content management systems WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. We have been installing and hosting CiviCRM for several years and it has become a standard part of our toolbox. It is especially strong on event registration and membership management. CiviMail does an excellent job with bounce and subscription management, but it's not as user friendly as a service like MailChimp or Constant Contact for HTML mail composition. CiviContribute handles payments for memberships, donations and events. CiviCase brings case management into to application and CiviVolunteer helps you keep track of the eager beavers who want to help your cause. We have used CiviCRM for projects ranging from an international arts group to our son's Boy Scout troop. We have used it for camping registrations and conference registrations for thousands of users. The real gem, as in any CRM tool are the reporting tools. You can pull membership, attendance or other reports in minutes. Think of a data related question and get an answer quickly and simply.
PROSExcellent event registration and membership management at a price that can't be equaled. Best of all, it works in and with our client's websites.
CONSIt's not an intuitive tool. You need to learn the logic of CiviCRM to get things done. It's not hard, but I wouldn't give it to a client without a few explanations and probably training.
Brian
Libraries, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed October 2022
serves its purpose
Overall, it's done what we've needed it to do, reliably, for a long time.
PROSWe've used CiviCRM for years to handle all of our even registrations. While it may not be the slickest thing out there, it's been very capable of taking on this task.
CONSThis may or may not be a con for some, but it's been largely unchanged for years. The consistency makes it pretty easy to use, but it's probably aging a bit.
Reasons for switching to CiviCRM
Need something with better/more options that fit our specific needs.
Anonymous
2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed January 2024
Very flexible, free, but unfortunately also buggy
It's a tradeoff between being free and customizable and stability & security. If you just need something simple to get up and running this is probably not the best tool for you. If you need something very customizable and you have the technological knowledge to customize and maintain it or you can pay somebody to do it for you it is a nice tool. For most small companies it is probably overkill.
PROSIt's very flexible and integrates well with CMS systems (which is also a security issue). We've created multiple extensions for CiviCRM and made a lot of custom adjustments which is relatively easy to do. It's free and OpenSource and offers a lot of features. The CiviCRM volunteers/engineers I had contact with were very friendly and helpful, but given you don't pay for it you also can't expect and will not get enterprise support. It has a good API to retrieve and update data.
CONSIt's buggy. After every update there are things that break. We have a customer that has a lot of data (~1 million contacts) stored in CiviCRM and updates are always a nightmare which is why we only do it once per year. It takes me a couple of days to actually update the system and fix all of the bugs that occur during the upgrade and after the upgrade. The update takes a couple of hours and it never runs through without issues. With smaller instances the update usually works better and is done in a couple of minutes. You will need to to be a software engineer to maintain CiviCRM because you will need to be able to go into the code and analyze and fix issues yourself. I've also contributed back a fix to the CiviCRM core. There are few automated tests that catch bugs so old features get broken with updates on a regular basis without anybody noticing. That it integrates with CMSes is a nice feature but it is also a major concern. If you run it behind your website it means your customer data stored in CiviCRM can get stolen if your website is hacked. This is not an uncommon thing to happen to Wordpress and Drupal sites. Also because of the bugs as I said we avoid updating more often than once a year so we also don't get security fixes. This is why we moved our CiviCRM away from the website to a separate server that is not accessible to the internet.
Youssef
Religious Institutions, 501-1,000 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed October 2020
Great potential and features
The flexibility of this platform is truly amazing. You can customise it to your exact needs and the range of features is unbeaten. Most powerful CRM I have come across.
CONSThe user interface is what lets this platform down. It is not responsive and although a developer has made a mobile app, it is too late to the game and does not properly give you the power of CiviCRM in your mobile. Considering most people now will want to access these platforms from phones, this is what makes CiviCRM unfortunately not really future proof.
Reason for choosing CiviCRM
Civicrm was compatible with our server, was free to use and more powerful with its portfolio of features and customisability.
Shirley
Environmental Services, 1 employee
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed July 2017
High functionality at low costs
Very functional so long as you don't need something new
PROSCost -- our volunteer run organization could afford it (we pay for hosting which includes administrator and user coaching) Highly functional and generally very easy to use Very flexible with extensions that are much more advanced than found in cost-comparable products -- membership, events, etc. Very good API Ability to fully get all data out of it
CONSImport of large quantities of data using supplied import procedures is painful at best. That said, a person who understands the database can bypass the worst of it -- however, we could do this, and the closest competing product priced itself out of our reach by an excessive import fee. While existing reports are easy to use, creating truly new ones is nearly impossible (need to create a new extension) Sadly lacking documentation on creating extensions
Richard
Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used weekly for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed September 2020
A great option for a CRM if you have the staff to maintain the software
Overall, CiviCRM is a great choice for those organizations that have the qualified staff to maintain the backend intricacies along with those who can perform the customizations and those to enter the data.
PROSI liked that it was open source and maintained by volunteers. It was fairly easy to add to our Wordpress website and very flexible as far as customizations and shaping it to match our processes.
CONSIt was hard to upgrade if too many releases went by since you were supposed to do one at a time. I almost had a database disaster during one of the updates and lost a couple days to recover the data. Since that point, we had to just run with the last working version. Also, it doesn't integrate with QuickBooks Online, so there was double bookkeeping involved.
Kitty
Verified reviewer
Public Relations and Communications, 501-1,000 employees
Used more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
4
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed October 2019
Pretty fantastic for doing the essentials
It's not a terrible software to have and allows you to carry out ticketing and patron service management at a fundamental level. Wouldn't recommend it at the higher tiered levels of with theatres/spaces that are more complex and demand more.
PROSWhile it is not the most integrated system, Civi's platform allows for the essential patron ticketing needs. The following being the strongest aspects: -Easily accessible patron accounts - Format is very fundamental in account management and ticketing management - Allows for seamless EOD reporting and comp lists
CONSHere are the biggest drawbacks that I have seen with this ticketing software: -It cannot retrieve events/reservations once deleted. The recovery process of anything really is very difficult with regards to patron and account management. - Very difficult to change seating arrangements once reservation is secured. - Can be cumbersome with the website interface and do not allow for intuitive browsing.
Rusty
1 employee
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed April 2017
We have continued to use more features over time
Good program
PROSFlexibility. It can do almost anything for non computer people, that flexibility can also be a disability
CONSIt can be complicated. It has such flexibility that it can be daunting . Consultants can help but are costly.
Armando
Verified reviewer
Computer Software, 11-50 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed December 2021
On-the-go solution to manage elections campaign and manage data responses.
CiviCRM allowed me to manage as many as possible thanks to the registration forms, follow up with the CRM and customize your preferences. With the Reports module I was able to obtain voting statistics and focus on undecided voters. An agile solution of multiple applications. Connected to my Joomla Portal.
CONSI had problems connecting to my big data server to process the collected information together with other databases. Specifically Kafka.
Alex
Religious Institutions
Used more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
1
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed July 2016
A versatile but clunky CRM software
CiviCRM is extremely versatile and customizable. We use it to produce letters to donors and large mailing lists for various functions. If you have a fair amount of technical web knowledge, you can integrate your database with other online software like MailChimp. It is also FREE!
CONSCiviCRM is pretty clunky and not pleasing to the eye. While you can segment your database in almost any way with the search features, it's often nearly impossible to know which version of the search interface you should use: Advanced Search? Search Builder? Full-text Search???????