Blackbaud Luminate Online Reviews & Product Details - Page 4

I'm not sure we use Luminate Online the same way that others use it, but I like that the software is totally custom to your needs. Luminate Online provides a lot of options as far as fundraising software goes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because the system is custom to our needs, I really don't like that everything seems to cost extra. Because we are a nonprofit, we are constantly looking for better ways to do things and with Luminate Online, all of the better ways cost money. There really isn't a beneficial way for cost-effective solutions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Luminate offers a lot of reliable tools to help your org's fundraising efforts. They're just really terribly out of date. Their services are pretty diverse and once you get through the learning curve (which is kinda high), you start to connect the dots in how to use them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's horribly outdated. Oh my god. When is the last time you used Netscape? I'm not talking about `navigator.appName`. I'm talking about the browser I used in elementary school. The forms they offer have "netscape fixes" within the HTML. It is pretty crazy how crappy these are. Many years ago these were acceptable, but now it looks and feels ancient. I'm surprised there aren't animated GIFs all over the page.

The ways you need to manipulate TeamRaisers (fundraising event pages) are incredibly frustrating. Here are the steps to make a change to the HTML:

Navigate to teamraiser section in portal.

Search perfect terms to find it (you may have well over 10,000 to search through). You cannot search for the ID which is extremely frustrating.

Click through manage, click through edit, click through page wrapper to identify which page wrapper it uses.

Repeat process for page wrapper section within user portal

Unpublish page wrapper to edit.

Find version, click edit, make change.

Go to publish section, click publish.

No quick changes. ugh.

Next, browser compatibility. Things like file uploads, click and drag features, open window, CSS styling of the luminate UI, ALL may or may not work based on which browser you're using. Mozilla is best for some tasks, internet explorer of all things is often best for a lot of the file upload features. Chrome will get me by for most of it, but when something just doesn't work, I have to open all my tabs in another browser and hope it will work there.

THE SYNTAX FOR THEIR S:TAG LANGUAGE. oh my god what is the ugliest language you can come up with? Did they do this on purpose? It is literally a bunch of colons and brackets. It is extremely messy and difficult to work with. I dread projects that use it. It is a joke to me. I've sent screenshots to my friends to show how ridiculous it is. Can you tell how I feel about it? If not, let me just say again, that it's the ugliest thing I've seen in a text editor.

I'm not sure if this review can include the CMS, so I won't get into it in detail. Just gonna say--don't use it if you don't have to. You will be much happier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I am currently interning and have found that convio’s luminate system has a great training program which has really helped me learn a lot and be able to work with my team to create a strong media presence. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The training sessions are pretty lengthy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how donation transaction pages, emails, and transaction history are all on one platform. It easy to navigate through the portal and see how everything intertwines with each other. It is also great that it is compatible with Raiser's Edge and it easy to output and input donor data information. You are able to pull donor giving reports. You are able to create and track emails. And you are able to create donation pages that work with your organization's website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The email platform is very finicky. It sometimes takes a long time to get a simple email created. While in mail chip it is easy to move text and picture block around, it is not that easy in Luminate. The options that are available for fonts are very little and making edits is very touchy as well. If you don't make separate tables for everything, it kind of all gets bundled together. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The modern look and capabilities. It is more advanced than our last system and allows us to do a lot of things at once. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The user interface is difficult to maneuver if you don’t know what you’re doing and there is a large learning curve. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Everything happens in real time - no need to wait for things to refresh. It's very straightforward and intuitive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Searching for things can be difficult - some search fields are very particular and require exact wording and correct spelling Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While this CRM has everything you need it to do, it does none of them well. It will do email, donation forms, landing pages, and advocacy tools. But it is overpriced and too complicated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike most things about Luminate. It has everything you need for a non-profit CRM, but it is more difficult to use then any other product on the market. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What don’t I love about this program. It allows our participants to register for our event, gives them a platform to raise funds on, i an able to send out mass emails to different groups, and pull reports! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is nothing that I don’t like about this program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I enjoy the email interface. It gets the job done and gives you some options for the customization of the emails. You can do A/B testing, send different messages based on constituents locations etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The reporting feature is very clunky. Trying to create a custom report with only the information you want can be difficult and in some instances impossible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Setting up and managing accounts is simple but also entering donations is easy too Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The finance part of it can be a little tricky Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.