[bgardner]

We are thinking about purchasing NetSolutions. Can someone give me a brief list of pros and cons?

Also, are there any additional hidden/other fees besides the amount stated in the maintenance contract? For ex: processing fees charged by credit card companies?

[Cygnet]

First of all - are you sure its NetSolutions and not NetCommunity. Lots of people use these interchangeably and they are NOT the same. Very different costs and very different results.

I notice you are a membership-based organization... NetSolutions is much more limited in what it can offer your online members and your Museum members. And yes - there will definetly be fees charged by any online merchant to handle the online transactions. You also need to find out if you have a limit on the number of outgoing email transactions.

[nisaac]

Brintha, we used net solutions for a year or so. It is a good entry way into doing online donations and event registration (I don't have the membership module.) We paid a set price for the year. The only other costs would be associated with processing fees. It is a basic link between your online donation pages and RE. Downloading transactions is pretty easy. There are maintenance fees in the following years. Hope this helps.

[Lynda Frank]

We've used NetSolutions for three years or so. It does a great job handling donations and online registrations. The interface is a "Wizard" and it limits what your final result will be. BUT, it is easy and reliable. Once batched, online registrations flow directly into the events module! What a time-saver. We are able to separate the donations to our C-3 and C-4 by using different IATS accounts. We're also able to take tribute/memorial donations, which are surprisingly common. The credit card transaction processing fee is not onerous. Limited as it is, NetSolutions does give us an online donation presence and one more delivery method for donors to use to give gifts.

We also use it to send emails to our constituents. Email pricing depends upon the number of messages you send.


I would MUCH rather have NetSolutions, but the difference in cost is enormous!

[ruby_mak]

I found that NetSolutions is much too restricting in terms of personalizing your webpages or e-mails... if you are a small organization and not know too much about HTML or Internet marketing it might be a good product to start with but if you are a big organization, I would suggest at looking at other products.

For example, with NetMail you can send e-mails out to a maximum of 15000 constituents per month (which is included in the fee)... if you accidentally went over this number (and not Blackbaud know beforehand), they would charge you a 'penalty' for going over the limit... if you want to increase this limit per month, then I think it is a few thousands dollars a year to do so. While it is easy to use if you only send out text e-mails, if you start adding images, you would need to look into doing it in HTML format.. I find that there are e-mail marketing companies out that give a better result, easier to use and cost much less!

[EVE]

How do you handle unsubscribe and bounce back emails? How do you mark the records in Raiser’s Edge if someone wants to unsubscribe form one E-newsletter and continue to receive other emails? Thanks!

[ruby_mak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVE

How do you handle unsubscribe and bounce back emails? How do you mark the records in Raiser’s Edge if someone wants to unsubscribe form one E-newsletter and continue to receive other emails? Thanks!

In NetSolutions, there is a 'Download Transactions' screen where you would download all donations/constituent/Change of address, etc information and in that screen there is a E-mail Opt-Outs and Undeliverable E-mail part. In terms of someone who wants to unsubscribe from one newsletter but not another, I don't think NetSolutions give you that option to let your constituent choose (just one of the many many many constraints when using NetSolutions)

I have not use NetMail to send e-mails to our constituent (we are currently using Constant Contact instead as they are much cheaper, easier to use and more effective) but I assume that is where people who want to opt-out will appear.

[EVE]

How do you deal with bounce backs in RE? How are the records updated?

[ruby_mak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVE

How do you deal with bounce backs in RE? How are the records updated?

With NetSolutions, I think it's an automatic process after you download the emails that have opted out. I think it automatically go into the constituent record and selects the 'requests no e-mail' checkbox on Bio 1 (I may be wrong).

In terms of our own in-house procedures, for e-mails that are invalid, we delete it completely from the consiituent record. With e-mails that optout of marketing materials, we select 'Request no e-mail' so that whenever we pull a list of donors for an e-mail campaign, we would not the pull the ones who request no e-mail.