Salsa Engage

The "favorite child" of the Salsa family

Comments: I wish that the Salsa family would update the CRM platform to match the workflow, UX, and ease of use to its sister product Engage, which is extremely well-designed. I love working on the Engage platform and hope to see more updates as time allows.

Pros:

This is the better of the Salsa products. It offers a "mini CRM" that, while less comprehensive than its sister software Salsa CRM, offers enough functionality to feel like a CRM; additionally, its connectivity to the CRM platform makes it an extremely useful, multi-layered marketing tool that offers solid email, content, and social capabilities, in addition to good fundraising tools.

Cons:

The only flaw would be with their P2P program which doesn't offer very extensive coverage on personal progress bars, public-facing donor info, or easy-to-navigate user capabilities. Additionally, I wish Salsa Engage would offer a link to some sort of ticketing software in order to make our events flow better.

Salsa is a GREAT Option for Non Profits with a Budget

Comments: very positive. they listen to feedback on how to make the system better and investing money into developing it. will work with you to resolves road blocks you might have and create work arounds if needed.

Pros:

customer service is an asset! You can get someone on the phone to answer your questions and also a quick response via email. they do a good job investing in updating the system to bring more functions to it. for the price points a great tool that non profits can use for a variety of functions, eblasts peer to peer, donation pages

Cons:

wish they had a live instant chat option for questions and also more monthly trainings and how other non profits are using the system to spark networking and be a resource in the industry

Designed to make Life difficult

Comments: We have been using it for two years and have done several events and countless email blasts and the learning curve is still way too steep. We frequently have requests for simple things like linking directly to the ticket sales page and we have to wait a year for implementation because the process is in a widget. We will be switching to something more user friendly.

Pros:

It was not as expensive as some of the other professional suites.

Cons:

This is the most non intuitive program i have ever used. It can do what you need but it is not going to be easy to get there and will take days if you have to go back and forth with the help center. They don't appear to be super compatible with safari. They open helpful windows and the close function will be off screen. Nothing is more frustrating then trying to get something done and have a pop obscure your window and you can't close it. I stopped to write this review because thats where I am and it has happened more then once this year. The help documents on-line frequently do not match the program or the information is obtuse. They will give an instruction but not how to reach the page where the function is buried and the screen shot will look nothing like the current program. Do you assume its outdated or spend an hour looking for the secret portal...It will not be where you logically thing it should be. There query system for generating and outputting mailing lists is cumbersome and takes several steps to achieve what seems like a simple task. If you need to know who was added to your database this year you have to select several pulldowns before you can select the date. If you output the wrong way it will delete the first digit of any zip code that starts with zero. The design engine for email blasts is clunky and leaves too much space between elements that can't be adjusted. It makes for some awkward spacing and alignment.

More Apple, Less PC: Incredibly Robust software, yet needs ease of use

Pros:

The vast amount of robust capabilities built into the software platform, always finding new ways of accomplishing tasks and eventually easier ways of doing them.

Cons:

It has more of a Microsoft/tech geek feel to the GUI and application's use, rather than the Apple business model for ease-of-use right out of the box, that most non-profit volunteers/activists are accustomed to using for getting a task done quickly — the obvious metaphor to me the difference between the mechanic who wants to get under the hood of his new car and tweak and modify like a hot rod, compared to the average person who wants to drive a Honda off the lot, to get from A-to-B effortlessly and reliably without much thought because they have bigger jobs to do than figure out the mode of transporation, that the car is just a tool and you shouldn't have to take multiple mechanic classes to figure out how to drive it. Albeit, Mailchimp is a different platform for smaller email tasks for small groups, yet their ease-of-use GUI model helps the lay person get done quickly and with less confusion. Our IT personnel love the Salsa platform which is all that really needs to be said, yet the people who have to use it on a daily basis compare it to a flight cockpit of endless switches and tabs. For a premiere email database platform that Salsa is, I'm still waiting for emails I send to be fully-responsive and readable on the smallest smartphone. Just not there yet. Mentioned that at the last Salsa training event in San Francisco last fall, which we were told is coming... Still love the software platform. Even though the FAQs leave you wanting and confused with laborious hoops to jump through for answers to problems that mostly don't seem to work, sending a ticket to Salsa gets a quick, friendly response, a great answer and usually a screen capture of what precisely to do in a succinct manner, which should populate the FAQ area instead and the answer model to use. And one last thought, as with the SF training event mentioned here, and the last Salsa conference in Virginia, it was an obvious sea of Apple laptops and iPads across the board at all events, all tables. So, the clientele around DC and elsewhere, the core target demographic for your software that traveled to the conference, prefer out of-the-box, ease-of-use products to get the job done, quickly.

User friendly effective tool

Comments: We have been using Salsa for more than 18 months and are happy with the product. There have been numerous updates and improvements in social media sharing and other pieces since we signed on with Salsa, and we are happy with those changes. Customer support has improved dramatically since we first signed on, and I feel like we hear back with solutions to our problems, though sometimes I wish they could update incorrect legislative district information more quickly so that folks could take action when an issue is "hot." We use Salsa for advocacy actions, events, P2P fundraising, and donations and I feel like it is a very comprehensive tool to take care of all of those pieces of our work. I would recommend Salsa to organizations looking for online tools to advance their work.

Pros:

Easy to use for the staff person as well as for the end user Social share feature works well Customer service support is good Great insights and reports

Cons:

Isn't easily compatible with our offline database Takes a while to update incorrect House and Senate district information when it's incorrect for constituents