RENXT Downgrade Question

I am a consultant and I think I'm about to sign a new client who is going to be converting the other way, from eTap to RE NXT.  From what I can see, the pricing between the two is not so dramatically different.  They hate how what RE calls querying works in eTap.  Since BB owns both products, BB's attitude is that the two products are not comparable:  eTap is their entry-level system for really small, grassroots type organizations, RE is their product for small and medium sized to pretty big organizations.  RE is the flagship product, so it gets more attention. The biggest feedback I can give you, however, is that even if the software price is cheaper it will likely cost you more money to move to eTap in 2021:  conversions are expensive and take huge amounts of time.  While BB has a package conversion to convert from eTap to RE, I doubt they have a canned conversion package from RE to eTap because that's not what orgs normally do or BB wants to encourage.  So you'll probably have to pay for a custom conversion.  You'll have to pay for and spend hours and hours taking training classes.  You'll have to spend hours and hours redeveloping all your policies and procedures for every single task you use the database for.  If you want to do it right, you'll need to hire a consultant.  There's no way in converting from RE to eTap that you'll save money in 2021 in my experience. The experts say plan to spend 1-3 times more on services to convert to a product that the cost of the product.  Even if you say, "we'll do all the work ourselves," you're talking about hundreds of hours of time -- while there might not be direct costs to a third-party for that time, there is certainly a cost to that time, time you're not spending doing other things, like raising money.  If eTap is the best long-term solution for you, and you have the money and time in 2021 to make that transition, so be it:  I'm not trying to talk you out of moving to eTap.  I would just highly caution you against making the move to save money in year 1.  I know things are tough right now for a lot of organizations and I admire your efforts to help your organization save money, I'd just be very careful suggesting this as a possible short-term cost-savings move.  My 25 years of experience doing conversions tells me it will end up costing you for more instead.  Perhaps there are other ways to save money on RE instead?  And talk to your account executive:  hopefully BB realizes many organizations are struggling right now and perhaps they will do something to help.  Good luck, and let's hope 2021 is better for everyone.

My previous organization used eTap and my current one has RE/NXT. NXT has a similar user interface as eTap, so as far as a basic user is concerned, they're comparable. because it's older, of course eTap is much more complete than NXT as far batch gift entry and reporting. It's been a couple years since I've done much work in eTap, but I believe they are very different when it comes to custom fields, querying and reporting. NXT is still very limited in its capabilities compared to eTap or RE. Though I greatly miss eTap's dynamic merge queries, report scheduling and Outlook integration, RE is far more robust in custom fields and reporting. Also for gifts, I believe eTap is also still one "level" short from having Campaign/Fund/Appeal/Package, so you'll have to figure out recoding all your gifts, among plenty of other changes that will take a great deal of time. I agree with Bill, in that this would have be what's best for your in the VERY long-term. I'm not sure of your database size either, but I'm sure the projection is to grow your base so you'd eventually "outgrow" eTap and need RE or something else larger again later. Hope that helps - and good luck!