Super easy to use, brilliant features, easy reporting, great pricing structure, incredible support team.

There are only a few integrations and no open API, although I know this will change in the future.

With Beacon we’ve simplified our entire process for handling donations. Beacon automates everything - from taking donations via an easy to build & integrate 'drag and drop' donation form builder (that's easily associated with the leading payment portals - Stripe, PayPal etc) to acknowledging donors / staff immediately via custom notification templates. The admin heavy task of a Gift Aid submission has been cut dramatically with a built-in Gift Aid tracker. Reports are submitted directly to HMRC from with the Beacon portal without any spreadsheet in sight.

Chapel & York has been advising and assisting charities for over 20 years. We've had experience using multiple Donation Processing CRMs, and Beacon is by far the easiest CRM to use for any type of staff skill level. The navigation is simple and straight forward and the flexibility of the system can suit as bespoke need.

The excellent customer support team means that any small con is quickly dealt with. Beacon developers are constantly approving the system and actively set out to listen to users recommendations when rolling out updates and improvements.

- We like that the platform was built specifically for non-profits and with smaller teams in mind - Beacon is customisable and is super easy to build and great for a team with limited resources - With Beacon being an innovative and agile product we've been able to build the product around what we need so it's fit for purpose, rather than trying to make something that already exists fit to our needs.

- With the product being so new there have been some teething problems and barriers where critical functionalities are not yet built, such as integration to gmail and calendar.

We have the ability now to record a lot more donor information. We can now tag our donors to learn more about their journey and what interests they have. We could not manage without it now, I really don't know how we coped before Beacon it has just made life much easier and accessible.

We started using Beacon nearly 12 months ago and it has been a complete game changer for our medium sized charity. It can do so much that our previous CRM could never have done. It is very intuative and easy to navigate which is a real positive, it is like one of the team! It works out much cheaper than other CRMs we looked at because we have a small team of users. We can take payments through an embedded form on our website which is then recorded directly into Beacon, something we had to do manually previously saving so much time and resource. Event ticketing is a new feature which is also really useful. The Beacon support is so good, they are always on hand to answer queries and help with any problems.

Beacon does not have an auto address fill function so our analytics for demographic are not very precise. However if you need something that Beacon does not currently provide then just ask their support team. This particular problem will be short lived as Beacon are now working on an automated system for inputting addresses so this should be up and running very soon. We have also had some teething problems with duplicate records but I believe this would be a problem for every CRM and after a bit of training and input from the support team this is much improved over time.

This is an excellent product from a fantastic company with unparalleled user experience.

The software is extremely user-friendly; my colleagues found it very easy to take over and populate. It's very easy to edit, giving a fantastic degree of flexibility (something we need due to the nature of our beneficiaries). However, the absolute best thing so far has been the fantastic and personal customer service.

It would be great if it had a ticketing function.

Beacon has transformed our productiveness as a small charity with a 2-person team. We love working with the BEACON Team.

Very easy to use. Also the support team helped to tailor it's functionality to encompass our specific needs for stock counts.

Waiting for functionality with Outlook for diary reminders.

Beacon has been revolutionary for our small charity. It has helped us reach more people easily and more effectively. It has also been a solid platform to track and trace our performance all in the same place rather than switching between programmes like we were doing before. It has saved staff time, has boosted our campaigns resulting in increased donations, and has continued to deliver excellent customer service since the day we switched. I'm so grateful I am able to use this product and I will continue to recommend this to others asking for high-quality CRM platforms.

The most impactful feature has been the extremely high quality of customer service within the entire Beacon team! Unlike other CRM's, this software is very easy to learn so when I had a problem it was always a very specific issue and, due to my background not being IT, sometimes I didn't know how to even ask what I was looking for. Each and every time I was supported by the Beacon team and found a solution to the problem.

I genuinely have no cons about Beacon. When I had a problem, there was always a solution and when I made suggestions to the team they listened and improved the product to suit our charity's needs.

Excellent - it helped us to create robust impact monitoring systems in a way that required very little input beyond initial set up and can be quickly adapted where required. It's also exceptionally straightforward to explain to staff and volunteers with limited training!

The software is very intuitive and malleable meaning you can make it fit the requirements you have and the team are there to facilitate that wherever possible - customer service is second to none.

We're a charity so my biggest disappointment is that we can't get the software free! But you get what you pay for!

From the first call Beacon are different. No pressure sales people, not complex requirements interviews, just good software with human support by people who know the product and understand the sector. Having used the market leading platforms in the past, this is a fraction of the cost and a far better product,

This is a ground up re think of software for the third sector. Gone are the laborious and expensive setups, gone are the complex endless menus and table of data and settings. Beacon provides clean, simple and highly customisable functionality across a range of functions from CRM to donation management all seamlessly integrated. Brilliantly simple. Certainly the stand out platform in the third sector.

For us this platform is more geared towards online donations, donor management and reporting rather than a CRM as such, it has the functionality integrated in, but there are better pure CRMs out there if you just need that function, which if you are in the third sector, it’s unlikely you just need that.

First rate - a really collaborative approach that has allowed us the functionality we need and the time saving value that we required. From start to finish the team have been on hand to advice about the obvious and problem solve the more unusual problems. Brilliant Customer Experience.

The software is intuitive and easy to demonstrate for others and use. We use the system in a slightly different way to other Charities - the Beacon Team has always been on hand to help us with the slightly more modified system that we have developed.

We use the system in a slightly different way to other Charities - for example we collect members as "organisations" that has at times meant the system has been a little trickier to apply to what we need. But, help has always been on hand.

It's truly helping us drive our membership growth, improve our volunteer management and fundraising activities. The free read only licences are also improving transparency and reporting whilst reducing the time we spend writing and analysing reports

It's helping us drive our charity forward at pace, by being simple to use with great back up we spending our time managing things that matter not our software. Also the team at Beacon have a great understanding of our sector, and continually look to add value. Genuinely a business that sees opportunities not problems.

None - The few we highlight get solved quickly

One of the best things is that you are always talking with people who really understand the system and seem to genuinely love their product! Beacon are a pleasure to work with and we would definitely recommend them.

We are a small charity (ten part time staff) and started using Beacon 6 months ago. It's been a really good experience! We don't have a lot of inhouse IT support and were a bit nervous about moving to a new system. The staff at Beacon were really helpful. They took the time to understand what we needed and helped us to make decisions about what would work best for us. The set up process took a few weeks and went really smoothly. The database is easy to use and the webchat support responds in a couple of minutes if you need help. It does everything we need it to do and has saved us a lot of data entry time by integrating with JustGiving and our website. They are also frequently adding new functions, so even if it doesn't do quite what you want now it may do soon.

No major cons for us so far. It is easy for users to batch update and change large amounts of data so it's important that users are careful with these features!

We have limited staff and Beacon helps us use them in the most productive manner.

The product is easy to use and is very powerful in analysing any aspect of your customers data. It has forms that you can integrate into your website so that new members can join and are set up as paying members with no staff involvement. The gift aid integration is seamless and saves hours every month. There are integrations with popular payments, mailing and accounting platforms. New fields can be created on the fly and integrated into screens very easily. The integration with Excel both for exports and imports is very good. Help always seems to be available, usually in less than 10 minutes. In summary a winner.

The integration with existing standing order payments is clunky but can be managed.

We were looking for a simple to use, inexpensive package that would manage all our contacts, donations, grant applications, event ticketing, and campaigns. Beacon has almost everything we want 'out of the box' with the advantage of being so easy to add fields or modify existing ones. The support is also very good - extremely responsive. We have uploaded our core contacts data, integrated with Mailchimp and added grant application management with no need for any paid support from Beacon. We have yet to tackle integration with donations (including GiftAid and payment processing) which is the next major phase.

Very easy to add your own objects and fields or customise existing objects and fields. Intuitive user interface and great support when needed. Out of the box it comes with all the features you need for a small charity. Built in integrations to Mailchimp and Xero and others

No 'undo' facility. Especially a problem when doing a build data upload when you can fairly easily make an error in the dedup settings (say) and create/overwrite existing data. I'd like to be able to test the upload before committing it. When updating a record, sometimes it happens immediately on entering a new field value, sometimes you have a confirm / save button. More consistency in this area would be good. The charts are fairly basic, perhaps an interface to a external charting package would be good.

Enhanced ability to segment our data and create bespoke messaging and analytics. A MUCH greater understanding of our audience.

Customization Intuitive and easy to use Close relationship with founders Quick responses and help Clean layout

Genuinely can't think of anything that I dislike about the platform.

We found the Beacon team to be very approachable and knowledgeable. They really took the time to fully understand our requirements and delivered a really professional service throughout the development, migration and implementation process. The Beacon CRM allows us to automate so many of our system processes and save considerable staff time while still delivering our reporting requirements. We cannot recommend the Beacon CRM product & team highly enough!

It's flexibility, ease of customisation and ability to integrate with other products. As a charity but also an infrastructure organisation supporting other charities (as well as offering membership) we had quite complex requirements for a CRM. We'd found that many CRMs couldn't meet all our requirements and we needed to update and streamline our processes to become more efficient in staff time. Because Beacon is so customisable it could do everything that we needed it to do; manage membership; report on our work, outcomes and payments; as well as manage our marketing and communications. The interface is very pleasant to use and navigating the system is very intuitive - even for users not confident with IT.

We haven't found anything we don't like!

Excellent experience. Greatly adding to our efficiency as we automate more processes.

Easy to use once basics are grasped and is backed up by brilliant customer service. So many features, so versatile, so easy to customise. The more I find out about it, the more efficient we are able to make our business processes

It would just be lovely to have forms that allowed donations to be made to different fundraisers for the same event. Then we could do away with third party giving platforms and their fees, the need for double checking etc and just deal with Beacon

Excellent care and customer service, as well as a very good piece of software.

The flexibility / customisability. We were able to create records and fields entirely to meet our needs as an organisation, and were able to customise existing fields to reflect our language. The User Guide and Help Chat facilities, both of which were used extensively during testing phase, are both excellent.

Nothing really - it is a very good CRM tool. I was involved in the project during the purchase process and for much of the implementation, so did not get to use it day to day, but I know that the team who are now doing so are looking forward to using it.

As the only fullt time member of staff in the UK I have a lot to contend with and Beacon has made my life so much easier. Training was slotted in when suited me (even though poor [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was in Australia so not always the best timing for him). Ongoing support has been brilliant - and very patient with me.

There is so much automation on here that is free my time up to concentrate on fundraising. Our CRM is updated in real time rather than wait for me to input manually.

There isn't anything at all that I can think of

Beacon has enabled us to upgrade our antiquated CRM with relative ease, changed over to new billing systems, switched to Beacon forms for checkout and signup process and integrated the whole lot with Xero accounting. Awesome.

Easy to use, fast, reliable and flexible. AMAZING customer support, not overly complicated to achieve what you want to achieve (I am sure this is hard to get right).

I would like automated data exports so I can pick them up in 3rd party reporting tools. It's not that the Beacon reports aren't good but we are already using other tools.

Excellent - the support and response times have exceeded expectations

The almost infinite customisation possibilities it offers - most CRMs are fairly rigid and limiting in their functionality - we conducted in-depth research on several market-leading charity CRM's before deciding on Beacon and I'm happy with the choice we made

There's nothing to dislike - all depends on your data capabilities but the Beacon team have held our hands throughout the whole set-up and migration process. It took a little longer to fully transfer than anticipated, but I think that's par for the course with these things and is worth taking time over to get right

The hands-on support from CSRs is fantastic, I have full peace of mind that our data is secure and if I do have any issues I can contact Beacon very easily.

We really enjoy the ease of use approach, every task we carry out is done seamlessly and efficiently. We have a clear view of how many active fundraisers we have and keep track of all communication in one place automatically with the Gmail integration. This service has saved a lot of admin time and also helped us raise more funds through the donation form for our website which captures the information and thanks the donor instantly.

There isn't anything that we like least about this software.

This system is far more user friendly than our last system and saves a lot of time when entering data.

I like the ease in which the product can be navigated.

There are times when names are entered into the system with slightly different spellings and the system doesn't always pick up a common denominator to merge them

It has been excellent. It is allowing us to build up our database and is easy to use. Great value for money.

The integrations are great and save so much admin time. The flexibility and personalisation features are also very useful. Plus the customer service is great, always friendly and helpful.

Its still fairly new so there are some things it doesn't do but the team are excellent at taking ideas on-board and implementing them.

We've been most impressed by Beacon's willingness to explain and support. It's still early days but so-far so-good.

I love the interface and how the views are so clear. The tools are so user-friendly and well-thought-through. The integrated donation forms (using Stripe and GoCardless) and sign-up forms are excellent. I like how Beacon is always trying to improve their product and listen to customers like us. Support is top-notch.

Very little to mention... I feel that this product will only improve over time. Some integrations are still under-development. We occasionally get duplicate records, but normally through human error.