The face-off: Salesforce vs. Bloomerang. Salesforce is the undisputed leader among customer relationship management software for businesses. Even though Salesforce makes their product available for nonprofits at deeply discounted rates, you may end up paying more to implement and use it than you would investing in a true donor database. Luckily, Bloomerang’s cloud-based donor management software provides nonprofits with the features they will actually use on a single platform that is intuitive and easy-to-use for everyone — making Bloomerang an ideal alternative to Salesforce.
Compare for yourself:
Salesforce vs. Bloomerang
Salesforce
- Not built for nonprofits
- No support included
- Third-party implementation/customization required
- Third-party email software required
- Pledge tool functions more like an invoice system
- Software Advice reviews
- TrustRadius reviews
- G2 Crowd reviews
Bloomerang
- Modern, friendly user-interface for nonprofits
- Free email/chat support included
- All features come standard
- 5,000 emails per month for up to 1,000 records
- Pledge feature built by fundraisers for fundraisers
- Software Advice reviews
- TrustRadius reviews
- G2 Crowd reviews
Salesforce Pricing and Fees
How much does Salesforce cost? Here’s the breakdown — see for yourself why “free” doesn’t always mean free.
Their nonprofit CRM plus support success pack is billed monthly at $72. This particular package includes basic donor database functionality for managing fundraising and nonprofit constituent relationships. Seems like a good deal, right? What you don’t see are the additional costs that even substantial research may not shine a good light on. Even the smallest nonprofits quickly realize that they will need to incorporate an array of third-party vendors to facilitate even the basics: online donations, event registrations, wealth screening, mass email, payment processing. All of these not only require separate apps, but they also each have additional costs that can add up to over $5,000, plus implementation costs (which could be between $7,000 and $30,000).
With Bloomerang you get the full suite of donor database features you’ve come to expect, including email marketing, online giving, event registration, constituent giving summaries, robust reporting, and etc. — with no costly training or support needed. Not to mention that getting up and running with Bloomerang is a breeze. Our customer implementation team is ready to efficiently and affordably get you up and running in no time. With Bloomerang, you can access the full functionality of our platform starting at just $19/month. When it comes to your operating budget, that’s just a drop in the bucket (even for growing organizations).
Click here to learn more about Bloomerang’s pricing and packages and see how our built-in functionality gives you exactly what you need in a donor database without costly add-ons.
Salesforce vs. Bloomerang: See the difference for yourself
Salesforce Dashboard
Bloomerang Dashboard
Salesforce Constituent Summary
Bloomerang Constituent Summary
Learn more about our world-class customer support.
No matter what fundraising software you purchase, the best software is always going to be the one you are comfortable using. Because of this, Bloomerang is committed to ensuring that every customer has free access to chat and email with our knowledgeable and helpful Customer Support Team. A few years ago, one of our wonderful customers described our Customer Support Team as “both helpful and human,” and our team has taken that motto to heart. We guarantee that any time you work with our team, you will always be working with a real human employed by Bloomerang who will keep working for you until your questions are answered.
You don’t just have to take our word for it though. See what some of our current nonprofit customers have to say.
“The best part, though, is the support team. They are quick to respond and provide setup advice that is tailored to the client. I’ve never had an unanswered question.”
“Even better, their support is second to none. Any question is addressed thoughtfully and quickly. And, every single person I have interacted with has been friendly.”
“Bloomerang’s support features are unmatched among peer service providers. I advise all of my clients to use the chat support feature; the support representatives are prompt and knowledgeable.”
Still not convinced? Hear from one nonprofit leader who made the switch.
Common Salesforce Customer Complaints
“We were using Common Ground by Convio, which was a platform UI for Salesforce,” said Ron Marullo, Executive Director at Texas Humane Heroes.
“We didn’t like the offered products and Salesforce, though highly customizable, was just too complicated for our users. Most functions were just not being used and it ended up being more of a contact/address book than a true donor management system for our development team.”
We take pride in the claim that no training is required to use Bloomerang.
Our customers use Bloomerang to manage their entire constituent ecosystem, including donors, volunteers, sponsors, grantees and more. Real-time retention and engagement metrics come standard, and our knowledgeable, local support team is here to help you every step of the way.
See more customer success stories here >>
Don’t just take our word for it
We have US and Canadian non-profits and were using Salesforce SNSP. We wanted a user-friendly system where we could accept funds in both currencies, with EXCELLENT support – Salesforce had none and the lack of it crippled us at key times – and you had to know object oriented programming to customize it. The amount of time we were losing through Salesforce was astronomical. Unless you have a Salesforce administrator on your team (highly paid, highly specialized, which most small organizations can not afford) it’s a time boondoggle. I am cross training another staffer on Bloomerang and it’s easy to teach.
Laurie McConnell, Systems Wrangler & Community Outreach, Pacific Wild
See what else Laurie has to say about their switch from Salesforce and experience with Bloomerang.