Cvent Onsite Solutions vs. GiveSmart

As mentioned in the first question, I think CVENT Onsite is best to use when the group is over 400 people. Anything under that we can manage by pre-printing. But when it's over 400 and you have a quick registration timeline, onsite solutions are your only option (in my opinion).

Incentivized

GiveSmart definitely works for large in-person ticketed events which also involve auctions, paddle raises, and more. The workflow is relatively easy for guests, and especially for volunteers. We especially like how quickly you can add paddle raise donations to specific people's paddle numbers because it allows us to track in real time. The seating functionality has some odd quirks, but overall it works. We opted not to use it for our main donation capture organization-wide because it doesn't look as professional, nor is it as customizable, as some other options on the market.

Incentivized

• Allows a quick check-in process in the app rather than dealing with pesky paper badges
• Provides a digital itinerary for attendees rather than having to print them out individually
• Offers attendee tracking to better tailor future events

Incentivized

• GiveSmart is a very easy-to-use platform that provides robust instruction on use but is so user-friendly that the instructions are mostly not necessary. I find it easy to update, change, and create all aspects of our page. For example, I first used GiveSmart without any instruction from a manager. She instructed me to look around and see what was going on. I was able to navigate the site effectively, and only found a few pieces for which I needed more instruction.
• GiveSmart offers a well-made item section. Our gala has a silent auction made up of more than 170 items, and GiveSmart makes it easy to upload those items in bulk or add them individually. It offers every field I would want to have for an item and provides a comprehensive and adjustable front-facing-view for donors that is easy to manipulate.
• GiveSmart's main page creator is easy to navigate and create the site you want. They provide helpful details like sizing for images and the ability to create buttons and links and different sections as our needs dictate. It's easy to adjust the colors and design to reflect our branding.

Incentivized

• Pricing. If we can get lower pricing, we can use for more events.
• Buying our own on-site kits vs having Cvent team needing to be onsite.

Incentivized

• The distribution reports do not separate what campaign the transactions were for.
• Revenue reports do not clearly state the CC fees for each transaction, which requires manual calculations.
• We could not change the item a transaction was billed to if it was wrong. For example, if a donor made a restricted donation but was labeled unrestricted, we were told there was no way to correct it, so we had to keep track of those changes on the side.

Incentivized

For the most part, we are very satisfied with GiveSmart. There are some additional functions we'd like to see it have and GiveSmart has been responsive in the past to add new features that nonprofits are looking for. Their support teams and account representatives are very friendly and helpful. The ease of their system allows a competent person to enter the data and create campaigns without having to have much technical knowledge.

Incentivized

Cvent Onsite Solutions is very user friendly and easy for those who are not very tech savvy. My first time using On-Arrival went very smoothly while onsite for a program due to the prior training that was provided by Cvent Onsite Solutions in our OSS training. Overall, it allows for tech integrations to be utilized easily.

For the most part, GiveSmart serves our organization's needs for creating fundraising forms. It is especially useful for our peer-to-peer fundraising and event planning and registration efforts. The dashboard is relatively intuitive, and there have been improvements in creating forms and managing campaigns since shifting from Mobile Cause to GiveSmart Fundraise.

Incentivized

We never experienced any issues with outages, the system being down, etc. It's extremely reliable. That's very important when you're dealing with financial and personal information! We want to make it easy for people to give, and it's great that we've never had to worry about service issues making that more challenging/

Incentivized

We haven't had any issue regarding performance or reliability with GiveSmart. We don't integrate it with any other software so that issue isn't relevant. The pages load quickly and reports are completed almost as soon as you hit the "run" button. Overall, the system works as designed and is pretty quick when people use it.

Incentivized

The person onsite can be hit or miss. We have had a few really wonderful support technicians that came prepared, were helpful, and jumped in where needed. We have had others that sat back, didn't offer advice or best practices tips, and were not pleasant to work with. It's very hit or miss.

Incentivized

When I did have to reach out for support it was not always easy to get ahold of anyone to help. There were also times when I did get help where I struggled to understand and be understood. Not a language barrier, but more of a not understanding what my problem was. I am not sure if it was a problem on my end or on theirs, maybe both, lol

Incentivized

GiveSmart provides great training videos on their system. Not everything is covered with their videos but their support staff are very friendly and knowledgeable. I would have given them a ten but not everything is covered in their videos and sometimes you have to find the right word to search for in able to find the right training video.

Incentivized

We just made the change using the band-aid approach. In other words, we just went for it and taught the users how to do it at our first event and went from there. 90-95% of people haven't used a mobile bidding software so most everyone was on the same stage of knowledge so implementing it was easy as people didn't have to re-learn anything.

Incentivized

My organization also uses the Cvent Event Management platform. We did try using another platform called "STAR" which had very limited offerings compared to the Cvent Onsite Solutions. STAR did not have a user-friendly layout nor was it easy to digitally manage our events. Maybe the STAR platform works better on a smaller scale, but we are a large organization so it simply wasn't efficient for us

Incentivized

We used DonorPerfect and Handbid in the past and they lacked all the features we needed and their customer support was insufficient. The user experience on these platforms was always a challenge. GiveSmart is more streamlined and we have had better customer support when we run into issues.

Incentivized

For what GiveSmart is designed to do, the software works excellently. We haven't found something GiveSmart cannot do when it is used as designed. However, when GiveSmart is tried to be used as a total CRM, it doesn't do that but that is okay as it wasn't designed to be a total CRM but rather a mobile bidding software.

Incentivized

• It allows our organization to lower overtime pay to employees who needed to stay at the registration area
• Allows us to allocate our resources to other functions that bring in revenue
• Pre-conference time usually wasted on pre-packing is now freed up to focus on more important functions within our organization

Incentivized

• Our donors always want an easy method to donate before, during, and after our event—GiveSmart definitely gives them that flexibility.
• Retaining the information that GiveSmart allows us is important, especially when we compile statistics and reports based on what was processed through our GiveSmart event site.

Incentivized