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The AMS landscape is evolving rapidly. With the ever-changing nature of technology, older comments can sometimes provide a skewed view to the person seeking feedback. Archived reviews are more than 60 months old, and aren't counted towards the average five star ratings or percent recommended.
Our client needed a system to allow chapters to access their info inside the parent system and this was the only option we could find. However, what was promised does not work and the entire platform is confusing and not user friendly. It does not even automatically invoice members like every other AMS in the world. We are now trying to work within two AMS systems which is far from ideal. Extremely disappointed and would not recommend.
The i4a platform is very confusing. Everything seems to be hard to find, or take more effort than it should. Even simple updates to a member record requires clicking on multiple screens. The platform moves very slowly too.
We have been wanting to move to an AMS for a few years now from what we currently use in Access database. We never got to the point where we used I4A totally. We were importing data and when we got to the point to customize the fields and forms and export the data in forms became too difficult. Their selection of authorized web designers are limited, although they do give you a project manager during the process. But the on-on-one training is watching videos and the project manager is really there to answer questions from the videos.
We have been with i4a for 12 years and due to limited staff time we haven't been able to take advantage of some upgrades that are available to the system. We are planning on changing to a system that can better meet our needs. Currently with i4a we found that one needs to know more about code to troubleshoot web page and and email challenges. Even with their WYSIWYG set up, that isn't always the case. Also customer support is limited. We have a pre-pay plan for a couple hours per month of support. If we don't use it we lose it. And if you go over one month you need to pay extra.
I4A is a very low cost AMS solution. We have had it in place for approximately 10 years. The customer service staff is generally responsive, but doesn't seem interested in trying to make your life easier. We use it for a hybrid trade/individual membership, and one of the most frustrating things is when an individual transfers to a new organization - their activity and financial records get left behind with their old record, while a new, clean record is created.
We've been with i4a for several years and do see that they are trying to compete but it feels as though they are always playing catch-up with other players in the market. I've always thought that we got a decent product for the price that we are paying but after doing some shopping around, I'm not 100% certain of that any more.
We got with I4A in 2009 I believe. Not sure what others are paying, but we are still in under our original deal of $2000/yr + $95/mo hosting. Our staff has had a large number of challenges with I4A but far and away most serious is the event registration. If you are considering them today, I really encourage you to put them through the paces carefully and strenuously regarding this aspect. We have an organization-based membership model and it has always seemed to me like I4A is built for an individual-based membership. It can handle organization-based, but it struggles.
We've used i4a for a number of years. While the product generally works, i4a seems to offload too much onto its users. The administrative back-end of the system is poorly designed with no real sense of workflow even for areas where workflows should be pretty easy to define (e.g., new member application processing). New releases tend to be buggy. Some of the bugs are big and obvious. This has made us question whether i4a has a sufficiently rigorous pre-release testing process in place.
