Ecanvasser Reviews

The placements of households on the map is fairly simple and the map view gives a very good quick visual overview of the campaign.

It only allows you to assign individuals and not households.

So easy, so comprehensive. No frills and very to the point with data management and what you get with your purchase. Customer service is top notch. Data management is incredibly simple. Nothing takes very long.

It could be simpler to select multiple people’s answers from a shared household. But it still works well.

If it were working properly, I like the fact that it's a paperless option for canvassing.

The app is slow, crashes (to the point where we've had multiple canvassers give up mid shift), the map shows houses in different areas of the street, often causing people to have to backtrack, you cannot filter results by "notes" so the ONLY way to find notes input is to click on each name one by one (no one has time to do this), there is no way to cut turf and assign it through the app, when you try to print a paper list, there is no way to filter by "uncanvassed" or otherwise, and then the paper list asks for age and job, instead of the important results such as issues, email, requests window sign, volunteer, etc. When asking ecanvasser for help, all they can tell us is it seems to be working fine on their end. We've sent videos of the issues to no avail. We are not software engineers, we are trying to run an effective field program and this app is holding us back to our detriment.

Generally user friendly and intuitive. Predictive text is good when searching for street names.

The app crashed occasionally and some data was lost. I would like to see street addresses ordered by number by default and for the app to retain this stetting unless changed. As it stands it's necessary to change this every time.
Also the app doesn't work unless the phone location/GPS. is on which is a big drain on the battery

Amazing customer support! Very responsive to concerns and happy to make modifications on the fly to support the development of the app.

The app is very different on Android and iPhone, which makes training volunteers a bit tough. While the functionality is all there, it is in different spots and sometimes harder to get to. Also the ability add new users from the app versus the website would be helpful

It was nice the amount of data that we were able to import. I liked how most of my data points were represented in the pre-defined data parameters.

The usability for non-tech -savvy users was really bad. Most users had a difficult time signing up. They either didn't get the invite email or text or when they did it went to spam. Also, the iOS version of the app had some additional functionality that wasn't readily apparent in the Android version. It was also very frustrating when the houses on the map did not appear in the correct location. This lead to a lot of going over the same territory more than once to find a house. The canvas part of the app didn't work very well on Android but seemed to be a usable feature on iOS. When using the canvass list on an iOS device it seemed to work better and be more accurate vs the Android version. I went as far as to also import the GPS coordinates of the houses to improve the accuracy of the maps but that didn't seem to help. I would have also liked a quicker turnaround on the customer support.

The concept is great and the fact that it eliminates the post-canvass data entry bottleneck is hugely valuable because canvassers can stay out as long as they want--or canvass over a number of days--without worrying about getting the data back to a data entry person on time.

Assigning new canvassers to a canvass was time consuming and painful. I spent the first half hour of most of our canvassing sessions getting people to respond to the email, download the app, and assigning them to a canvass. While the version canvassers use on their phones is relatively simply to use, there are some annoying glitches. For example, there's no way to record whether a person has moved--or to take the name of the person now living at the address. Meanwhile, using the web version was painful. The process of cutting turfs isn't very intuitive. There's also no way to know how many doors are in the turf until you cut it and save it. If there are too many, you can delete it and try again--but there's no way to modify it otherwise. It would also be good to have a fast way to process people via the web version who unexpectedly show up to canvass. Something else that could be clearer is the process for printing out paper turfs. Many older canvassers preferred to record their data on paper--and then enter them into their phones afterwards. But trying to dope out how to do this was maddening. The printouts also lacked relevant data points, forcing people to take handwritten notes.

I used this product with my local candidate for city council only to then use it for business development. Great way to indentify leads and track interactions! Very versatile

Still buggy, and needs some love to make it fast and easy to use.

How great it was to enter info on the phone app.

I didn't like how you divide the turfs between canvassers.

As a campaign manager I decided to give it a try. Although we cant pay for it due to the financial status of the race, we saw that it does provide a lot of advantages when it comes to organizing your team. The fact that you can assign your volunteers to a certain area and they could see the voter's location is pretty amazing.

Pricing is sometimes an issue especially for very small races with a very limited budget.

I can track numbers from my computer and it’s easy to explain to workers.

That I can’t track numbers from my phone unless I’m in the browser. I want to be able to track numbers from the browser.

That it helped you fund your location and speed up the input.

That if you are in street view and go to a different window that it didn't save your spot when you come back.

When you are running campaigns on a limited budget, often you have to do without. I recommend Ecanvasser to all small campaigns with limited budgets. It gets the job done, is effective, and doesn't force you to buy extra stuff you don't need.

It imports to NationBuilder; however, the fields it imports could be improved upon.

Ease of use, set your parameters and go.

Would have to reinstall frequently as the app would malfunction

It looked great and worked well from our laptops. It was customizable which we liked but it would often cause problems if someone didn't make it completely through the questions we created.

Couldn't sync with phones for canvassing. Our volunteers had a difficult time getting the app loaded and then trying to use it. We ended up having to do paper canvassing sheets and enter the data manually which is what we were trying to avoid.

Cost effective and relatively easy to set up.

Lots of bugs, limited features based on need

The cost. It is easy to add and remove members. The map on the app helps to navigate canvassing. The app is user friendly.

The walklist printout is completely different from the fields and cannot be modified as needed. The map cannot be printed out. I had to printout the names and addresses and load them on a different geolocation app to create a paper map.

Having undertaken a canvassing operation as a 501c3, we opted for ecanvasser. There was a learning curve, but the software has allowed us to do our canvassing with no paper and no data entry. In particular I like the star rating system, the ability to create a survey, and the real time updates on progress in the field.

I find the groups and teams layout somewhat annoying and more complicated than it needs to be. In particular I don't like that the user cannot limit their map view to a specific group at any one time. (eg it would be helpful to be able to pre-assign groups, but the more you assign, the more data canvassers have to sort through). The software is a battery eater too, so canvassers may need portable cell chargers.

I like the ability to rate voters, to organise my responses to their queries, to store information about them.

Originally, it wasn't as well set up for the peculiarities of elections in my country, but the system is regularly altered and improved.

The dashboard and the customisable print out options

Too cumbersome on data entry (googlesheets quicker and easier)

You have great customer service. Every time we have a question you are there to help and it's fast.
Everybody can use it. It's simple.

Sometimes the map is not completely accurate. Would be nice to have an option to upload a picture. Impossible to invite another user on your phone.

The ease of use. It is easy to flip back and forth between different books and different features.

I was not able to sort the data using other fields that I had collected. I was not able to merge results collected from Survey question and field input.

Great GPS and location information at your fingertips!

Switching views can be tricky until you learn the software

Very easy to use. I like all of the features.

Different on different phones. Had to figure that out