I am investigating CRM options for an International Non-Profit organisation that organises a quadrennial sports event that has circa 20-30,000 contacts with both individuals and organisations. We have recently settled on the platform for our website which is a hosted solution providing registration processing and some social networking, however we still need a way to manage relationships with our contacts.
We do have technical expertise amongst our members but no dedicated technical staff.
We need a CRM product for the following:
- Basic contact management
- Donation tracking
- Tracking of activities and events
- Integrated online donations (multi-currency)
- Email advocacy & newsletters (CSS based)
The solution should be:
- Non-proprietary (we want to avoid vendor lock-in)
- Low or no cost
- Established (we want to avoid the bleeding edge)
- Expandable at low/no cost (we may need more users at the time of the 4-yearly event)
- Published, fully documented and useful open APIs
- Well designed UI for non-technical users
- Hosted SAAS but can be bought in-house without additional fees
- Browser-based
- Multi-language support (EN, FR, GE minimum)
- Well documented for both end-users and admin
- Developers/Consultants available if required.
So far. my shortlist is as follows - are there any other suggestions/comparisons/reviews of these available and or pros/cons you can add?
CiviCRM, Salesforce.com, Mpower Open, SugarCRM
CiviCRM
Pro: Free, reasonable user-base
Con: Setup is difficult, UI poor, needs tech resources to get the best from it, works best if using Drupal
Salesforce.com
Pro: Free for 10 users, well established, many resources available, feature rich, SAAS & offline facility, powerful free APIs available
Con: $$$ after 10 users, SAAS only (for NPO)
MPower Open
Pro: Free, mature product, designed for NPO
Con: OS licence has catch, newly OS, requires .NET/SQL Server required, no SAAS option, fat client, small user-base
SugarCRM
Pro: Free, LAMP stack, GPL, feature rich, good user-base
Con: Sales orientated (rather than relationships)
Regards
Paul