EveryAction

Pros

The performance! Views load fast. Reports update fast. Contacts and user records save automatically for 80% of the attributes you update. And the "Create a List" interface is so performant that I use it just to answer idle questions about the constitution of our database (which is not small). I've used Salesforce a fair amount with a similar sized database; often running reports, you would enter in all the parameters, run it, and then go make a sandwich. Five minutes later, maybe it had run. I never even THINK about how long something will take to run anymore. It's great.

Cons

Growing pains. EveryAction already does a lot, and their product team is expanding what it offers at a fine clip. As a result, features are often released with bugs and/or oversights that probably would have been caught in a more conservatively evolving platform. In a way, this is kind of a sneak Pro, because as long as you take new features with a few grains of salt, you benefit from a pretty agile development schedule. And most importantly, the bugs/oversights have always been functional; security, in my experience, has never been compromised in favor of progress.

Pros

Very easy to use and figure out system for the administrators and for the outside constituents. They have a robust reporting and infographics feature that helps you keep up on top of your goals and progress monetarily or with responses to forms/emails. The forms are very easy to build and use, with a clean look. The software has a lot of built in features which are great if your organization is politically active: makes lots of phone calls, uses a lot of volunteers, does a lot of canvassing. Additionally, the platform would be beneficial for a non-profit who wants to track their donations/fundraising and emailing easily in a system. The price is good for us since it is based on the number of contacts in your database, not the number of users.

Cons

As a membership organization who hosts a lot of events for our members, the systems are somewhat in place to meet our needs, but we need to do a lot of manual labor or pay extra fees to get the systems to work to fit all our needs. That being said, as the platform is seeking a broader audience of non-profits, they are starting to embed and automate the tasks we are currently doing manually or paying extra for.

Pros

At Resource Generation we appreciate how user friendly EveryAction is to navigate. Our full staff and many of our member leaders need to use the system to move their work forward, and that hasn't been possible with other systems. EveryAction also uses the language of in person and online organizing throughout its systems which is helpful from a functionality and user adoption standpoint. The values alignment also means the kinds of functions that are built prioritize justice frameworks, such as selecting preferred gender pronouns.

Cons

EveryAction is a newer database, and new functions that you might expect to already exist are being built all the time. One example is responses to online forms formerly going directly into a contact record as notes, which is now an optional function. So expect there to be some growing edges for the system. That said, the support team is good about acknowledging what is being built and communicating and mitigating the impacts for users where possible. This is primarily why I scored lower on "Features & Functionality".

Pros

The software is extremely user friendly, my non-technical staff find that setting up emails, petitions, advocacy campaigns, sign up forms, and fundraising forms is very easy to do. Every Action is constantly asking for user input and rolling out updates and new features that make the tools more robust and easy to use. The advocacy tools are robust and include integration with social media both for campaign targeting (through twitter) as well as to make it easier for constituents to share our campaigns. For the most part, tracking and reporting on email, advocacy, and fundraising results within the tool is easy to use and the reports are robust. Creating scheduled reports and analytic dashboards is easy and allows you to see almost every detail you'd want to know about how your campaigns are performing.

Cons

Functionality for surveying constituents is currently very limited, but this is something they are currently working to develop. Integration with other databases has been challenging for us as has duplicate management.

Pros

Its step-by-step functionality is great even for non-tech people; they seem to get it much quicker than others. And the VAN integration was the big selling point for most people -- never before has it been so easy to see if someone opened an email, came to an event, filled out a form, and got a survey response all in one place before. And while we don't use it as much as I'd like, the Advocacy Tool is truly great and something I haven't seen others do as well. And Customer Service is always responsive and helpful if it's something that already exists.

Cons

Everything that I would change about EveryAction are just additional tweaks to its existing functionality; I don't think there are any overarching/systemic flaws -- we would just be able to link back to survey questions, for example, whereas right now only activist codes are available, etc.