Panorama Erfahrungen

Good Product for Mid-Sized Private Schools

Vorteile:

Product is easy to use and tech support is quick to respond with helpful information.

Nachteile:

This product is great and I really can’t think of anything I like least about it.

Fundamentally Sound

Kommentare: Panorama was originally our second choice because of the interface, but their robust platform passed our stringent IT security certification process. The functionality was great for both users and admins, with a few features that we would like to see improved such as automatic sales tax calculations based on shipping address for online orders. Customer support was top-notch before, during, and after our event. We weren't sure the platform would work as well as it did for a for-profit firm like ours since it's largely used by non-profits for fundraising, but there were no issues at all. Very reliable and mostly intuitive. They have ample documentation, help videos, and great support. We added premium support since it was our first time using it and I would recommend that for large events. Aside from the older looking web templates, and export-based reporting, I'd give Panorama an A- on their auction solution.

Vorteile:

Secure and stable platform, customer support, online auction capability, overall value

Nachteile:

Antiquated reporting, web templates are outdated, lack of truly responsive design for various devices, jumping between private/public auctions caused some confusion

Definitely not the best...but getting better at least

Kommentare: Long story short, while I wasn't impressed with Giftworks Cloud by any means it did get better. I wasn't pleased, however with my monthly price going up (they said this wouldn't happen). I can understand that when you roll out a new program it costs money, but when one of your "selling points" for your current customers to switch from old Giftworks to the new one was that our price wouldn't increase then that's a bit misleading? When I buy software or anything for that matter, I rely heavily on user reviews. I would not go back to Giftworks, I did find a donor management system that is more powerful, user-friendly and overall better in every way for HALF the price. Before you decide on Giftworks or the, even more, pricier systems, I would look into Little Green Light (LGL for short). LGL has turned my reporting around substantially. Writing acknowledgment letters is so much better now and it's so much easier to use. In closing, there are better options and there are worse options...Giftworks cloud seems to be "middle of the road" and hopefully will be getting better as they introduce more features.

Vorteile:

I do like that they decided to go with the cloud instead of their Giftworks Anywhere software. With Giftworks Anywhere you had to have Citrix Receiver which never seemed to work right. While I didn't have a very long time to check out the features of their new cloud database, (they only allowed me a week even tho I was already a longtime customer) I still wasn't able to check out all the features that I felt they needed before because they weren't enabled in the 1-week trial or they just weren't available.

Nachteile:

Giftworks was the first donor management system that I had ever used but I had constant problems with it (mainly Citrix I think, but at that time you needed to have Citrix installed to use Giftworks Anywhere). The reporting features were confusing and didn't report like I felt they should. For example, It took me several tries to finally come up with a decent list of monthly donors...you wouldn't think that should be too hard right? I never found an easy way to build a monthly donor list, but I ended up making a list of donors that had donated 10x or more the previous year... although it also gave me other donors on this list that didn't fit any of my criteria? The filtering was terrible and I would end up with partial data or too much like I just said.

High Quality Software

Vorteile:

I like how it is a one stop shop for Fundraising, Auction/Event Mangement, and CRM.

Nachteile:

There are a couple of features that are lacking: 1. There is no donor (user) portal login for them to personally manage their donations and 2.) There are limitations with making bulk changes to donor records.

Customer support

Vorteile:

I found it useful to track donations, but other than that I don't feel it is user friendly

Nachteile:

With getting a new computer, giftworks would give me an error. The first time I called they said they would send me an email, which I never got. I called again and started receiving emails with suggestions. I went two weeks without giftworks, because when I would log in it would lock up my computer. I asked the the person I was working with that she call me.She did NOT. She kept suggesting things that weren't working. I finally figured out it was time to unistall and reinstall, she then suggested that. Very frustrating experience.

Pananorama Fronstream GiftWorks

Kommentare: I can do the basics that I need to do (donation entry, donor managment, querying the data) but I find that some problems I report to the tech support team (they are great) don't get resolved.

Vorteile:

I appreciate the ease of use with FrontStream. The interface is easy to look at (colors, fonts). Data entry is easy as well.

Nachteile:

There are far too many bugs in the software that do not get resolved. I do not like that I cannot create more complex queries. I have to export the data and then import it into Microsoft Access to create reports for Board Members and Management. I would prefer dynamic, custom-formatted reports in Panorama's FrontStream GiftWorks program, where a click of a button or two would allow me to use an existing custom template.

Good, but missing features

Kommentare: It's good for what it is. But there are a few functions that could be added that would make it a more robust program that I would feel more loyal to :)

Vorteile:

Learning curve is decent. The ability to train someone to help add information after an event and have them put in accurate data is less than an hour.

Nachteile:

Missing functions... like the ability to multi-level queries is limited. I truly hate that the names of fields changes through the program is frustrating... in one area is a Donor Category, in another its simply Category. Please. Pick a name, stick with it!! And when selecting columns to show in a spreadsheet.... there is NO LIST ANYWHERE! Please, help out people and provide documentation that lists all the columns and a short description!!! Would also love to have the option to pull cumulative data!

Kommentare: The Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore, actually the one and only RMH in the State of Maryland, is hosting its first 5K event next month. This is the first time we have used fundraising software for an event. We researched a couple of different software packages prior to choosing FirstGiving. Based on the feedback we received from our event participants, the software has been very easy to use, which is very important to our Charity. We wanted to choose software that people would be willing and able to set up on their own. Our success and experience with FirstGiving has been great! One of the criteria in selecting fundraising software for our Charity was support; what type of support would be offered and at what level? Well, we are pleased to pass along that FirstGiving has EXCEEDED every expectation in terms of support and response to our questions! From day one to now (one month prior to our event) Nick and Camille in the Support Center have not only answered every question I called or emailed about, but they did so quickly and kindly. There was never a time when I was apprehensive about contacting them. One of the key aspects to a successful event is support and making sure that everyone involved with the event has a good experience. For our 5K, the capability of online registration and online fundraising was the key to raising key dollars to benefit the care of the Ronald McDonald House families. We are so excited about our 5K and looking forward to Race Day on April 15th. We would strongly recommend using FirstGiving as fundraising software; we are totally hooked and will continue to branch out and use this software in helping our Ronald McDonald House raise support in the future! Thank you FirstGiving, but a BIG THANKS to Nick and Camille for doing such a great job everyday in helping people and organizations like the Ronald McDonald House produce successful events!

This is product does not work as designed.

Kommentare: We recieved no benefits from this product and put a dent into our budget.

Vorteile:

There is absolutely nothing I can say that is good about the product. It has so many "bug fixes" it does not work as described. It is clunky at best. For 6 weeks we have tried to use this product and get things accomplished and we can't get anything completed, their support is at best mediocre. We had high hopes that this product would assist us in raising money forour foundation. All it has done is cripple us.

Nachteile:

Everything. The cloud based version is not ready to be used. It leaves so much to be desired. Support is at best poor. They take forever to get back to you. Thier fixes is let me correct that because you can't, it is a bug.

We wanted to move to the Cloud version but the feature we needed membership was available

Kommentare: We used the desktop version for 7 years to manage donors, donations, memberships, classes and events

Vorteile:

Nothing, we wanted to move to the version but the features we needed were never converted. We asked numerous times when membership would be available and never heard back.

Nachteile:

Didn't convert the features were needed to the new version and no one could give us any idea when the features would be available. We converted to NeonCRM

Do Not Upgrade or Buy This Product

Vorteile:

Before being forced to upgrade to the cloud the software worked very well for our organization. We have been a customer for over 10 years.

Nachteile:

I can't print mailing labels for a standard Avery 5160. I was told in March it would be fixed by the end of April and it is now September and not fixed. Items were not transferred from Giftworks Anywhere correctly. The smartlists are a disaster and not helpful. I have entered new donors and only half the information is saved so I have to go back and enter it again. I can only edit one thing without it freezing up and I have to log out and back in after every edit. The "find a constituent" search area does not always show that the person is in the database, which has resulted in double entries. The notes tab is gone.

Jumpstart - Artez

Kommentare: Random errors seemed to be fairly frequent requiring a lot of help from the support team, who were not always quick to reply or able to fix the issue.

Vorteile:

Improvements to the peer-to-peer event pages made the site appear much less dated. These should be expanded to simple donation forms and non P2P events.

Nachteile:

Frequent issue logging in, searching for a constituent was often difficult (can't search by email address for example, even though it's an available field), reporting not very customizable, can't manually push out receipts for monthly donors when they request them,

Unhappy user

Kommentare: We were using Giftworks Anywhere, but after pressure from sales switched to the cloud based app. They assured me the functionality would be the same or improved. This was BS. I wish now we had stayed with Anywhere...at least that was functional. Customer service is terrible. I've been trying to get their help since February and they haven't solved anything. It's going to be a real pain to switch software, but I'm out of options.

Vorteile:

I like the interface and the tools. Would be great if things worked properly.

Nachteile:

Smartlists are non-functional. They just issued a bug fix and now I'm getting duplicate entries! They take forever to load. You can't run a report from a smartlist or make a graph like before. You have to export it as an excel file or pdf, it doesn't give you an option for portrait or landscape, or show dollar amount TOTALS!

Online Auction review

Vorteile:

Ease of use and fluidity from year to year. Ability to move information over to new years.

Nachteile:

Mobile interface. Customer service is difficult to get in touch with in many instances but I’ve seen a recent improvement

Great software, but needs some fine tuning

Kommentare: The overall experience has been positive and does help us keep track of our donor database and donor amounts, which will help us create a capital campaign and other fund-raising opportunities.

Vorteile:

I like the setup and ease of entry of donor information and tracking how much donors give.

Nachteile:

Not very intuitive to use and creating thank you letters is not the easiest process. User documentation and support could be better.

Panorama

Kommentare: They are always a pleasure to work with and answer questions as quickly as they can.

Vorteile:

It's easy to re-create events for success with proper templates. They also have some great videos for support.

Nachteile:

There are some pieces that you just can't do in terms of high-level coding for website ease but I know this is an area they are working on.

We have been using Bidding For Good for many years and it just keeps getting better!

Vorteile:

It's easy to use both as an administrator and for the bidder. I like the reports that can be generated. Also, the neat and clean look of the auction itself.

Nachteile:

The payment processing has changed, but we are getting used to the new process. Staff at Bidding For Good has been very helpful.

Good Value!

Kommentare: Straightforward and uncomplicated but has a lot of really great layer of information. It's the little things that make it easier to use, such as emailing a data pull directly and volunteer hour tracking, that make this a good product. My only real complaint was the fact that it wasn't cloud-based...until NOW.

Miracle Ride Review

Vorteile:

What I like most is the help I received from [SENSITIVE CONTENT] from Technical Support.

Nachteile:

I am not IT, so I struggled to set up our website. However, [SENSITIVE CONTENT] from Technical Support helped me and she was fantastic. For example, I mistakenly set up the site as a "Donation" site and [SENSITIVE CONTENT] informed me that I was having problems because I needed to set up the Miracle Ride as a "Peer to Peer" website. She helped me with creating the new platform and it was much easier.

Inexpensive alternative for donor managment

Vorteile:

Inexpensive, not complicated, importing and exporting is easy

Nachteile:

Runs slow with large merge mailings, need to separate and/or pull into word

Not up to snuff with the real workplace

Kommentare: Giftworks is a clunky interface to use and not inuitive at all. Customer service is questionable as well. There have been unexplained datase errors and a mponthly need to contact support for problems related to their "Fixes". Now that Windows 10 is out, if I could give customer support a negative grade I would. I was told to do a clean install of Windows 10, etc. and reinstall Giftworks.
Things worked fine for one day, then Giftworks would not respond. Cutomer Service does not care about the end user. One comment I got from the rep I was dealing with was that our server was the issue not Giftworks. Our server at the time was new. Customer Service did not want to admit, that their software was weak. Avoid Giftworks if possible.

Exceptional Services

Kommentare: Effective, courteous and well explained, excellent customer service.

Vorteile:

The software has many options that pre emmett problems.

Nachteile:

Gaging the donation amounts with analysis of effectiveness of campaign.

Nonprofit

Kommentare: Over good

Vorteile:

I like the look and the overall concept

Nachteile:

That I couldn’t have a button for sponsorship That I couldn’t stop the early bird shirt order without erasing all the data

The Best Software for Online Auction Management

Vorteile:

Panorama is easy to use, and the copy feature is the best.

Nachteile:

The way photos are uploaded for the online auction is a bit tedious as you have to do it one by one, rather than uploading a batch at a time.

Easy to use. A convenient way to make a donation.

Vorteile:

This product is easy to use, and provides me with a safe, secure and trackable way to make a donation.

Nachteile:

I did not like the additional charge to the nonprofit, but I did like the fact that I could elect to pay the fee instead of having the organization I was donating to pay the fee..