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Great for associations on a tight budget - but still has lots of features
Submitted Oct. 23, 2014
I have now been involved in two reviews of our CRM system and we selected CIVICRM both times. The reason being is that for us CIVICRM provides the most VALUE. It does not have as many of the features that can be found in high end CRM packages, but for us it does everything we need. It links to the CMS Drupal, which means that it offers membership & events self service as well as the ability to personalise the front end website. On the back end it allows us to manage our membership signup/renewals, event registrations and also our mass mailing. As it is open source it also benefits from being constantly updated by an active community of developers, so I am confident that it will only get better from this point. One of the major down sides to it being open source however is that both CIVICRM and Drupal require "Major Updates" every few years, which may require an investment to update. That said though, the initial investment is quite low. For about £15,000 we had a new website redesign, CMS implementation and CRM implementation. This is about half of nearly every other quote that we received. We were previously on ACT, but the self-service element of the new website has meant that our team of 5 has had a significant reduction in administration and this has meant so much more time in developing our service offering and marketing efforts (which has had a huge increase on the bottom line) . I would strongly recommend this AMS, but I should also balance this review with some negatives. * The reporting side of CIVICRM is not great * The more customisations that are implemented, the more that it breaks * The mailing feature is perfect on a budget, but isn't as strong as 3rd party software (mailchimp, dot mailer and the like) * It doesn't have any modules for exams / CPD (not a requirement for us) I hope this review helps people, for a basic membership package I truly believe CIVICRM is the best solution for the price of implementation. It won't be for everyone, but I would recommend that every association evaluates CIVICRM for it's own needs.
