We use Raiser's Edge.  Our membership area has shown interest in Convio so they can provide e-transactions, e-publications, a members-only web page, etc.  My reaction?  HOLD THE BUS!  We already have a third-party vendor we deal with for e-mail, and keep the maintenance caught up between that system and RE is a nightmare.  I am looking to ease complexity, not add to it, although Convio does allegedly integrate with RE.

Has anyone compared NetCommunity and Convio, and then made a decison to purchase either of them?  I would love to hear your feedback about why you purchased the sytem you did, and are you happy with the decision you made?

Hi Ann,

 Although my organization uses Convio, I haven't had any experience with NetCommunity.  There have been a number of posts about Convio that you can search for in forums, but I found this one that relates to your questions.

http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/5828/21299.aspx#21299.

jwant

We made this comparison adn decided to go with Net Community. We had been using Convio for three years when we made our decision. We are satisfied with our decision. No system is perfect. You need all the facts to make a good decision. Some of the reasons we decided to go with BBNC are:

1) support - Blackbaud had a proven record giving us excellent support on RE, FE and TRE.
2) ability to create our own parts and change our website at any time. This works out very well for us. We can make changes without paying for new setups/designs
3) reporting - We can report from RE as data is downloaded into RE from BBNC. We also have some online reports and dashboard functionality.
4) integration with RE - the Convio tool to incorporate BBNC data was an export/import tool. It was fraught with issues such as cleaning up duplicates create by the process
5) unified platform - we had already made a big investment with Blackbaud. We've found that maintaining as few vendors as possible cut down on the "not my fault" syndrome - one vendor blaming the other. We also have one point of contact for issues and the applications all present a unified frontend.

 I suggest you compile a detailed list of the functionality you need. Have both vendors show you how their product meets your needs. Make sure Convio shows you the connector all the way through to the import of data into RE. Ask them what happens if you add attributes or other fields in RE. Do you have to pay to have your connector changed?

 Good luck on your decision.