Luminate vs. Classy

Paige Cregon

Hello Everyone,

My team is currently investigating resources to enhance our online presence via an improved donation page and email capabilities.

We currently use Online Express in combination with Constant Contact and will entertain the idea of MailChimp in combination with a new software system, if necessa. Classy seems to appeal to the team as it is visually impressive, being offered by a great sales and marketing company and seems fairly intuitive. We meet with Luminate tomorrow and anticipate it is software that is more email-focused than Classy.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback with regard to these two companies and any others we might want to look at.

Thanks very much,

Paige Cregon

Joanne Felci 2

Hi Paige,

We were all ready to leap to Classy about a year ago.


It is very user friendly, great for donors, if you do peer-to-peer that is its bread and butter


The reason we didn't go to it was because the majority of our donor base is sustaining donors and Classy does not have a way to put an end date on a sustaining gifts (most of our gifts are year long commitments, though many people renew)


Good luck with your conversations!

Joanne

Lisa Slawinski

Paige Cregon:

Hello Everyone,

My team is currently investigating resources to enhance our online presence via an improved donation page and email capabilities.

We currently use Online Express in combination with Constant Contact and will entertain the idea of MailChimp in combination with a new software system, if necessa. Classy seems to appeal to the team as it is visually impressive, being offered by a great sales and marketing company and seems fairly intuitive. We meet with Luminate tomorrow and anticipate it is software that is more email-focused than Classy.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback with regard to these two companies and any others we might want to look at.

Thanks very much,

Paige Cregon

Hi Paige,


I've been on many a Classy webinar and the software seems good, but we didn't know about Classy before purchasing Luminate. As I've worked in Luminate now for about 1.5 years, I'm still learning the ins and outs, but know it's a robust system. We, like Joanne, need a system to process our sustaining donor gifts. It definitely is a great email system but with creativity drawbacks. I struggle using it but know there's nothing else out there that will help us track donations, emails and surveys. I often compare it to the Comcast Corp vs, Verizon cable debate; Blackbaud holds the market on robust systems. If we decide not to renew our contract, we are faced with learning a whole new system with it's typical band-aids, etc.


My suggestion to you is if you are looking for a good email tool that has decent donor management software, go with Classy. If your org wants (or has) a sustaining donor program, Luminate with BBMS is a good combination of credit card processor and donor/communication software with a boat load of reporting that a data geek like me could get lost in for days!


Lisa

M OConnell

When we looked at Classy vs Luminate (LO) sometime in early 2016, we had concluded that Classy fits all our criteria but we never pulled the trigger; I think it was primarily having to do with its cost compared with LO at the time. We had priced it out to being almost 3x more expensive than LO. And we were already using LO and heavily customizing the Donation forms to do Microsite / Fundraising things.


At the time we were reviewing this, we had dedicated development team members that were trying to build a p2p site on Drupal7; and we weren't doing much for micrositing at the time. BUT, like all nonprofits, that whole paradigm had shifted over the past two years and now are re-considering it for ourselves!