Ecanvasser

Good product

Vorteile:

The product is easy to use and the amount of data at your finger tips is great!

Nachteile:

At times the product can be buggy. It froze a couple of times but was still worth the money.

Ecanvasser has been an incredibly useful tool for running campaigns effectively and efficiently.

Vorteile:

Ecanvasser gives you powerful visuals of your voter universe, always ensuring that at any moment, you know exactly how you are doing and how much work you have left to do. Planning campaigns has never been easy because Ecanvasser puts all of the data points you need right at your fingertips.

Nachteile:

I wish there was a better way of keeping campaign information cycle to cycle and some more useful export options. Information from previously completed campaigns can be extremely valuable and could be better incorporated into the software.

Key functionalities for campaigns are missing

Kommentare: I only use ECanvasser because of the data modeling that comes with more expensive services like i360, Voter Gravity, etc. However, I know a number of consultants that absolutely hate ECanvasser, too, and just feel stuck with it. I haven't found a suitable replacement yet, but when I do, I'll never use ECanvasser again unless significant changes are made.

Vorteile:

It's web-based, and the the app is fairly useful for canvassers in the field. The thing I like the most is that it sells the service of data storage and manipulation; it does not sell me datasets that are being statistically modeled by people I don't know.

Nachteile:

The thing I absolutely, completely, utterly hate is data appending and voter matching. Nearly every other software I've used allows me to append data to voter records matching through VoterIDs, which are unique identifiers for voters and suitable for purposes of appending. It adds hours to data matching and outputs, especially for GOTV purposes. It's just simply ridiculous that cannot be done. I've asked, and the question has just been blown off. The customer support is also horrible. My database and app functionality went down on a weekend before election day once. It took me two days to hear back from someone because of the "weekend." They're selling political software, but it's more like they could care less about the value that political software provides to political campaigns. They approach customer service like software engineers, and it's horrible.

Excellent Product and Support

Vorteile:

This has made it so easy for us to track and get value from our canvassing efforts. It's been easy to train end users on how to use the app, even if they aren't really tech savvy. There have been great strides forward in stability and speed, and the customer service is top notch.

Nachteile:

The interface could be a bit more intuitive, but generally it's easy to use. Getting your data set up exactly as you want it can take a little time, but once you do, it's smooth sailing.

Good for selct usage, may not cover all campaign needs

Kommentare: I used it for a basic field campaign in a situation where VAN wasn't available. It served a limited purpose for sending out canvass teams, but overall there was too much difficulty keeping the data in Ecanvasser in sync with other data coming in from other sources. As things got busier, it ended up being less work to use paper lists and do manual entry into another system than it was to keep the program updated.

Vorteile:

It was a pretty easy initial setup, getting lists loaded and assigning turfs to canvassers. The staff is very responsive as well, I always got quick answers from them whenever I reached out.

Nachteile:

It does the job as a mobile canvassing device, but that's very rarely the only database function occurring on a campaign. It isn't set up for easy desktop list management, manual data entry, custom list exports, etc., and as such is limited in usefulness. It does what it says it will, but at this point can't really be used as a primary database for a full scale campaign. It needs some changes to its desktop functionality, or an easy interface with another program that adds that capacity. Right now it's only useful for one piece, which you can't really connect to everything else in a campaign that relies on an adaptive database.