NationBuilder Reviews
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41 Reviews
- Industry: Insurance
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Makes leading a movement possible
Reviewed on 2019/03/29
It's a great experience overall. The one thing that I wanted to add is that when I did have to call...
It's a great experience overall. The one thing that I wanted to add is that when I did have to call their tech support line with a problem, they were able to resolve everything quickly and easily.
Pros
I used this in a political campaign that was separate from my day job. I love how this combines everything that I needed to run and win in one package. I not only gave me what I needed as the campaign's IT guy, it provided every single person involved with what they needed.
Cons
The biggest con (if you even want to call it one) is that NationBuilder is so finely-tuned towards political campaigns that it doesn't work well with things are unrelated to that. (Yes, I know that's not much of a con but that really is the only drawback that I could think of.)
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Review!
Reviewed on 2021/05/04
Working with NationBuilder was fine - it was neither revolutionary nor deeply frustrating, it was...
Working with NationBuilder was fine - it was neither revolutionary nor deeply frustrating, it was overall fine. I neither loved it nor hated it, but can only recommend it for large nonprofits.
Pros
By far the best feature of NationBuilder is that it is so widely used -- this means that any question you have as already been asked by someone else and a step-by-step help doc is likely an easy search away. It was really easy to get questions answered and problems solved in this way.
Cons
This software is more powerful than a tiny nonprofit like my own needs. It's also very, very expensive. The "newsfeed" type feature showing people who subscribed/unsubscribed/interacted in social media was strange and useless.
- Industry: Telecommunications
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Great concept, but execution needs work
Reviewed on 2017/08/26
Pros
*Powerful CRM for non-profits and political organizations
*Fantastic integration with social media.
*CRM is great at identifying prospective supporters among multiple mediums such as social network, email, and webpage
*Strong integrated communications tool that allows you to respond to engagements with your organization across multiple tools and automatically record your interactions within the individual user CRM profiles
*CRM has a good clean up tool that helps you merge fragmented prospect information into one complete profile if it was not done automatically already by this tool.
*Financial tool to track donation progress for your organization
Cons
*Overall tool feels restrictive and lacks some basic features
*UI is inefficient and not friendly to use and is intuitive only to people already in the development industry who may find this cumbersome. Menus in menus in menus.
*Support is mostly paid and seen as a key business driver for the organization other than development requests. This is a curious business decision considering the tools complexity and target market and likely leads to low retention rate among organizations who trial it. They are focused on tier 1 customers.
*Support for Events is very elementary. The tool is useful on small events only when tickets are involved, unless you want to use pen and paper check in's. There is no app support for check ins, no scannable tickets, and checking in requires a computer and many many clicks per person.
*Very restrictive HTML support that blocks external integrations and embedding on your web page. This seems to have been a business decision to encourage paid development in their business model.
*No native discussion/forum support is a key missed opportunity for engagement with the CRM. They have a work around with suggestion box but its sub standard and would make encouraging debate difficult as its not the core of its design.
*Email campaign support is very elementary and difficult to use and test. Support for external tools such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact is very limited. Mailchimp contact sync is availabe and thats all.
*Financial tool is missed opportunity due to lack of integration features with payment processors to import transactions and link them to people within CRM
*Membership tool is poorly designed and makes managing paid membership difficult as a fundraising option within this tool without manual input.
- Industry: Environmental Services
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Nationbuilder is a dream come true for our business
Reviewed on 2019/10/02
This was so easy to use. We hired one of their recommended deveopers, they built the website and...
This was so easy to use. We hired one of their recommended deveopers, they built the website and truly it was flawless.
Pros
Customer Service is ALWAYS there to help you. Everything is easy to understand, of course there is a bit of a learning curve, the software is flawless.
Cons
Really it's hard to think of anything that doesn't work for us other than the pricing will be high for us as we grow.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Not a great donor database
Reviewed on 2020/01/03
Nation Builder has been an easy way for us to manage our website, send out communications, and...
Nation Builder has been an easy way for us to manage our website, send out communications, and store donor information. We do not have an IT person, and with NB we really haven't needed one, as it's easy to fix any problems that come up.
Pros
I like having my website, email and donor info integrated into one place. It is an easy system to learn and the video tutorials are helpful, so it's easy to bring new members onto the team.
Cons
It isn't a superior product for any of its functions, particularly the donor database functionality. It is hard to get relevant info out of it to properly steward donors.
Alternatives Considered
Salesforce Sales CloudReasons for Switching to NationBuilder
Economical- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10
Nice Ideas That Make a Mess
Reviewed on 2021/05/07
Individual reps we worked with were nice enough, but there's a weird culture around their [SENSITIVE...
Individual reps we worked with were nice enough, but there's a weird culture around their [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] -- emails inviting us to his talks often sounded like invitations to church. Ultimately, between the odd culture and the mess of the social profiles, we ended up switching to a different software.
Pros
All of the core features of a CRM are there and functional, and I especially like that you can identify profiles as either people or organizations, a great feature when tracking contacts for partnerships and coalitions. There's a low learning curve for using the most basic elements of contact files and lists.
Cons
NationBuilder has a social feature to pull in any contact that interacts with you on social media. This is a nice idea in theory, but ended up creating a massive mess in the database, with thousands of duplicate contacts and/or contacts with no real contact information beyond the social media handle. This may be effective for a larger team with staff capacity to comb through information like this, but for a small nonprofit it was just too much.
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Too Early To Tell
Reviewed on 2017/09/15
I have been using NationBuilder for a charity that I volunteer for now for about 8 months. At first...
I have been using NationBuilder for a charity that I volunteer for now for about 8 months. At first I hated it because it seemed like it was very constricting but then I grew to like it. It includes a lot of features for organizations or groups who need a tool that includes everything in one place. It includes an email tool, your website, a crm and even social media measurement data for records. The reporting features and ways to pull people by tags can get sticky but overall I think they offer the future of what people need with this solution.
Pros
Everything is in one solution at one low price. You can have all of your donors, volunteers and staff all in one database and have it manage your website and communications at the same time.
Cons
Knowing what to do with the data can be tricky and sticky. Also training your staff on how to use NB is hard - there's a big learning curve and many don't know that there are unlimited uses for the system.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Super easy setup and great technical advice from their support team.
Reviewed on 2018/08/01
Better output and super targeted outreach.
Better output and super targeted outreach.
Pros
I had my entire campaign and organizations tech on one platform rather than 4 different systems. NationBuilder's free trainings helped my organizers be succesful in using the system which helped me knock on more doors, make more phone calls and secure more donations.
Cons
The product hasnt been updated in a few years. Could use a face lift and some enhancements with the main functions.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Does its job
Reviewed on 2018/08/03
Pros
We've had nation builder for a while now, the pros of the software are that it's got a lot of interesting features in it that can be manipulated with a bit of learning. Pages can be set up with simple widgets and accessibility for any information already captured.
Cons
The software itself is nice to have but we've been having issues in terms of integration. Some of the stuff on nation builder is unique and for us, it has been a challenge converting that information into something useful while maintaining our database. We've had times when our pages would crash and other times where things just didn't seem to pan out.
- Industry: Hospital & Health Care
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 4.0 /10
NationBuilder review
Reviewed on 2019/01/29
Pros
The search feature allows you to slice and dice your data in many ways.
Cons
Syncing with other platforms that it was supposed to sync seamlessly with turned into a major problem.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
NationBuilder is outstanding
Reviewed on 2018/11/07
We were looking for an all-inclusive solution for our CRM and CMS needs at an affordable price. We...
We were looking for an all-inclusive solution for our CRM and CMS needs at an affordable price. We looked at literally 200 solutions and decided that none were perfect but NationBuilder provided the best solution. We have been very happy with the choice and have been a customer for over 4 years.
Pros
We were looking for a fully featured, integrated CRM and CMS system that was easy to get up and running at a price that a very small non-profit organization could afford. We found that NationBuider has with very powerful tools to help drive our success. In addition, the customer support is outstanding...from the videos to the very accessible support team, they go way above and beyond the norm to make sure you are well taken care of.
Cons
Like any software, there are constant updates to comply with new regulations and requirements. Although NationBuilder does a good job of explaining the changes, it still requires work to keep up.
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
Excellent CRM choice for multi-tiered political organizations.
Reviewed on 2015/08/05
The LPNC selected NationBuilder as our CRM of choice in mid-2013 and have been using it for two...
The LPNC selected NationBuilder as our CRM of choice in mid-2013 and have been using it for two years now.
NationBuilder enables you to integrate your website, Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn account, and Meetup.com accounts'and e-mail and phone communications'for both incoming and outgoing communications'and, of course, record a history of these interactions. It also handles donation tracking, voter history, and relationships between your supporters'and can produce pertinent voter or contributor lists upon demand.
It is also possible to design a constellation of 'nations' and define what data to share between them. So, for example, the NC state Libertarian Party nation and the Wake County Libertarian Party nation share all contact information (e.g., phone and e-mail data) for individuals who reside in both databases, but not contact or donor history (except to identify who has contributed). Sharing is also possible with campaign nations (e.g. for particular candidates or issues).
Generally, functionality in NationBuilder for any particular activity is adequate or better. For example, you can send out an e-mail blast from NationBuilder to a list just as easily as in, say, MailChimp. MailChimp'being focused on e-mail management'affords you some useful analytics and other customization bells and whistles that the more utilitarian e-mail management NationBuilder lacks (e.g., MailChimp automatically provides you a breakdown of how often folks on your list have responded to your e-mail blasts, breaking the list down into five segments'those data are in NationBuilder but you would have to work at retrieving them). But on the other hand, the integration with the data NationBuilder provides enables you to perform tricks you cannot match with MailChimp (e.g., variables in the text of your e-mail message keyed to the last time someone voted or contributed or retweeted an LPNC tweet).
NationBuilder is an excellent CRM choice for multi-tiered political organizations that need to share data.
- Industry: Government Relations
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Easy to Get Started
Reviewed on 2022/01/10
I have used NationBuilder for over 10 years, on several campaigns. The product is highly reliable...
I have used NationBuilder for over 10 years, on several campaigns. The product is highly reliable and the user support is great.
Pros
For someone just beginning a campaign or just moving to a voter relations management platform, NationBuilder is a great way to start. The system has many, many features; but you don't need to use all of them right away. In addition, if you start with a small number of records (people in your data base) NationBuilder is quite inexpensive!
Cons
If I want to canvass door-to-door recording data on my phone, I'd need to link my NationBuilder data to a third party app. Otherwise, NationBuilder has all the features I need!
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
Inflexible and poor data management do not make up for ease of use. And it's buggy, too.
Reviewed on 2015/12/31
I expected so much more, but am terribly disappointed in NationBuilder. I cannot recommend it. I've...
I expected so much more, but am terribly disappointed in NationBuilder. I cannot recommend it. I've used both FileMaker and CiviCRM for customer relationship management and WordPress as a content management system, and they are all better than NationBuilder. I run a nonprofit with a few thousand donating members and a list of about 23,000.
Here are problems with it as a CRM. It cannot handle household donations. It cannot export selected fields from a data set. It cannot be operated with keyboard shortcuts, requiring time-consuming mouse clicks for many tedious functions that ought to be simple. It does not have a mobile interface for the CRM. (For that manner, nor does it for the CMS, although it does have good mobile interface for end users.)
Its orientation for political campaigns makes it cumbersome to use for a nonprofit. I don't care what 'election cycle' or FEC code a donation was made in and I don't want that data cluttering up valuable screen space.
I would like to search for all donors in a certain town, and if there are ten, see a screen that shows me all ten of them with just the pertinent data: name, contact info, and the most recent donations. NB can't do that. You can get a list of donations in a city (and the name attached) or you can get a list of donors (maybe 2-3 to a screen), but that's it.
As a content management system, it fares better, but it's no better than WordPress, which provides the ability to edit its pages on a mobile platform, something NationBuilder can't do.
I'm in month 6 of an 18-month contract, and I hope I'm not burning bridges with them too badly because I want to work with them to make it better, and if it is, I'll come back here and update my review, hopefully with great news.
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 2.0 /10
Great idea, but not fleshed out enough.
Reviewed on 2016/11/24
NationBuilder has a lot going for it, but not enough to make me stay with them. I used their...
NationBuilder has a lot going for it, but not enough to make me stay with them. I used their software for a short time recently and found the interface to be cumbersome and frustrating. The customer support is minimal - you get one rep for all needs (financial, tech, content, marketing, etc...). The introductory price point is really nice and makes me want to go with them, but with so many gaps in the software, I just couldn't do it. Up until recently (don't know if they've changed it), The email marketing section still required quite a bit of code! I can't see how that's friendly to anyone. Finding where you want to go is difficult with the navigation system they created. One of the huge pluses that I wish I could have stayed for, was the tagging system for all contacts. Pre-defined categories of labels can be applied to individuals or entire lists of people, and then used to create entirely new smart lists that can be emailed and communicated with. Sadly, it still is just not worth the headache of the rest of the software.
Pros
Great concept, some of the system is built out really well (tagging contacts, web templates, integration of all services into a single database)
Cons
Way too incomplete. System is in serious need of a user experience upgrade - badly. It was extremely frustrating to figure out and some of the services required code-knowledge.
- Industry: Political Organization
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Communicate with all your members easily
Reviewed on 2022/02/08
NationBuilder has helped every time I needed to know how to do something. I am very happy with the...
NationBuilder has helped every time I needed to know how to do something. I am very happy with the product.
Pros
It is so easy to edit and update. Every time I need to create new information or change the Menu, it was no problem. The website always supported our club.
Cons
After a couple of years there were so many pages that it is a little tricky to find a specific page to update.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Monthly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 1.0 /10
Appalling Customer Service
Reviewed on 2022/03/03
The customer service has been appalling regarding resolving an issue we have had trouble shooting...
The customer service has been appalling regarding resolving an issue we have had trouble shooting renewal emails going out to members in the incorrect frequency despite the website saying it would go out at 21 days notice it was going out to members who had been expired for years or months. The other issue memberships were not overriding i.e. when a member was a student membership but renewed with a full membership it keeps sending the reminder to them they are expiring student membership. When this was raised with customer service / tech support, the person, named [SENSITIVE CONTENT] did not resolve the issue, ignored our queries and would focus on writing rude emails regarding something else. Instsead of helping to fix the problem, but said it was our problem to resolve! The appropriate response from customer service / tech support would be to listen to the customer, find the issue(s), and then fix it for us while providing us information and training to prevent the issue from re-occuring. This situation is forcing us to change providers. As a Not for Profit with no tech employees, we require NationBuilder to provide appropriate customer service. This should be expected of any provider.
Pros
i like its ability to identify potential duplicate members to merge.
Cons
customer support and tech support has been terrible in resolving an issue. Has not been resolving the issue at all, just making rude emails about something else other than our issue.
- Industry: Performing Arts
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Massive array of features
Reviewed on 2021/06/07
Really awesome. Has hugely simplified my marketing efforts and keeping track of my network.
Really awesome. Has hugely simplified my marketing efforts and keeping track of my network.
Pros
NationBuilder is a one stop shop for CRM, Website and outreach needs. The customer support is incredibly diligent, you can tell that folks there care.
Cons
The UX is a bit of a mixed bag. They paper over the problems with supremely good customer support but there are definitely times I'd rather I'd been able to work out how to do the thing myself.
Alternatives Considered
Bonterra Development + Digital- Industry: Music
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
NationBuilder: The Most Affordable & Complete Political Tools
Reviewed on 2018/12/12
Amazing experience!
Amazing experience!
Pros
I love NationBuilder. It is a comprehensive political tools. You do not have a website? Within clicks you have one with NationBuilder. I love the contact management features, the mapping tools, the street and household views, the mass emailing tools, the contact log features. In short, I love everything with NationBuilder. Oh, I forgot to mentioned their outstanding dedicated customer support.
Cons
My only regret with NationBuilder is that the tools is getting more and more expensive to use. Their is also no free account available for small campaigns or candidates with limited budgets.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 2.0 /10
NationBuilder Review
Reviewed on 2019/01/10
Pros
This software allows our very small non-profit organization to host our website and send email communications to our members and supporters.
Cons
We use NationBuilder to host our website for a very small non-profit organization, for which I am the Communications Chair. Granted, I have limited experience designing websites, but I have worked with several other web hosting services that provide MUCH more intuitive tools for both website and email design. The software is clunky, difficult to learn how to use, and does not produce very graphically appealing emails.
Response from NationBuilder
Thank you for your honest feedback! I recently wrote a blog post with some tips for designing emails - https://nationbuilder.com/how_do_i_create_a_newsletter_style_email_without_using_code - and you can join me Wednesdays for NationBuilder Live at 10am Pacific time - https://nationbuilder.com/live where we will go over it step by step! Email us at [email protected] anytime if you have questions.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Easy choice for campaigners & non-profits
Reviewed on 2018/11/07
Pros
Tons of features, and a huge community to help.
Cons
A bit complex and takes some learning to figure it all out. But there are resources available to help.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
A robust software capable of handing huge projects
Reviewed on 2019/07/10
NationBuilder is helping us cultivate a nationwide grassroots movement that we wouldn't be able to...
NationBuilder is helping us cultivate a nationwide grassroots movement that we wouldn't be able to accomplish otherwise.
Pros
NationBuilder has the capability to perform many functions. I am constantly discovering new functions and way to use it. One of our favorite features is tags, which allow us to mark contacts and easily sort them together out of thousands.
Cons
Editing the website hosted through our NationBuilder site is a pain to edit. I wish the process was smoother.
- Industry: Internet
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
A CMS meets CRM, Nationbuilder is very intuitive with many powerful features!
Reviewed on 2018/05/20
This is the best CMS / CRM for all types of political projects.
This is the best CMS / CRM for all types of political projects.
Pros
- The features (albeit tailored to political campaigns) are very comprehensive and well thought out.
- For non-technical admins, it's very easy to create pages, add new content, and add new prospects or supporters to the CRM.
Cons
- Some seemingly simple things (like changing font types or colors) must be done within the CSS file (i.e. it can require technical knowledge).
- Tutorial section is a bit cumbersome to navigate.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
CRM
Reviewed on 2018/08/30
Pros
Great tool to engage customers but also fantastic CRM to increase customer interaction with my business.
Cons
Hard to complain about a great tool, but it has so much functionality it is hard to know if you are using its full potential
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Monthly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
NationBuilder Offers the Most Basic Set of Email Functionality
Reviewed on 2021/07/06
Overall, Nationbuilder provides the basic features and functionality that a nonprofit would need to...
Overall, Nationbuilder provides the basic features and functionality that a nonprofit would need to do the basics, but if you're looking for a campaign management program, it's not going to work for you.
Pros
I've been using Nationbuilder for the past two years managing the email list for my nonprofit. It is easy to organize many different groups in our area using this software and its user interface is clean and easy to adapt to.
Cons
I come from the B2B world and am used to a lot of the features in Pardot, Marketo, or Hubspot so I find many of the limitations of this software a bit frustrating - no true automation or notifications to track engagement, no ability to organize contacts by engagement. I also found it limiting to not have some built in email templates to work with.