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NationBuilder

Score7.7 out of 10

11 Reviews and Ratings

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What is NationBuilder?

NationBuilder is a content management software offering from NationBuilder.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about NationBuilder.
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Apalling customer suppotr

Louise TomlinView profile
Secretary in Professional Services at Sustainable Energy Now (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The customer service has been appalling regarding resolving an issue we have had trouble shooting renewal emails going out to members in the incorrect frequency despite the website saying it would go out at 21 days notice it was going out to members who had been expired for years or months. The other issue memberships were not overriding i.e. when a member was a student membership but renewed with a full membership it keeps sending the reminder to them they are expiring student membership. When this was raised with customer service/tech support, the person, named 'Sebastian' did not resolve the issue, ignored our queries, and would focus on writing rude emails regarding something else. Instead of helping to fix the problem, but said it was our problem to resolve! The appropriate response from customer service/tech support would be to listen to the customer, find the issue(s), and then fix it for us while providing us information and training to prevent the issue from re-occurring. This situation is forcing us to change providers. As a Not for Profit with no tech employees, we require NationBuilder to provide appropriate customer service. This should be expected of any provider.

Pros

  • finding potential duplicate accounts that need manual merging

Cons

  • customer service
  • tech support

Most Important Features

  • tech support for a not for profit with members

Return on Investment

  • irritating members with false renewal emails
  • lack of of assistance in fixing issues

NationBuilder: very useful if it has the features your org needs

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use NationBuilder as our CRM to host our website and accept donations. Our entire team uses it largely on a daily basis. We also use it to log contacts with donors and partners.

Pros

  • Store contact information
  • Process online donations securely and accurately

Cons

  • There is no grants management capability
  • It's hard to track which communications a particular user has interacted with.

Most Important Features

  • CRM
  • Website host
  • Donation processing

Return on Investment

  • I'm not sure

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Lightning Platform (formerly Salesforce App Cloud)

Other Software Used

Mailchimp, Fluxx Grantseeker

A great way to build a community

Incentivized
Roy HarmonView profile
Social Media Liaison in Marketing at Chumney & Associates (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • NationBuilder is great for fundraising. You can send an email blast and see how much money it raised. You can publish a petition and have it lead to a donate page. With the higher level plans you can easily allow new members to join and pay for membership through your site.
  • Petitions, surveys, and other forms of engagement. NationBuilder provides a number of ways to interact with supporters. It's very easy to set up a survey or petition, and you're able to capture the data of participants.
  • Social sharing. NationBuilder makes it simple for supporters to share your pages, petitions, blog posts, etc., by providing share links on every page. They also allow you to edit the default text for sharing.

Cons

  • NationBuilder lacks the ability to create a message board.
  • NationBuilder needs to add threaded comments so you can respond to people who comment on your page.
  • NationBuilder needs to make it easier to offer tiered memberships.

Return on Investment

  • We've raised a lot of money through emails, petitions, and donations.
  • We've increased our membership.
  • We've improved our ability to mobilize membership.

Alternatives Considered

i-360 and Voter Gravity

Despite its limitations, NationBuilder is still the best all-around package for organizations that want to connect with and grow their audience

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Professional Services (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Provides an excellent framework for quickly building scaleable websites that are easy to edit
  • The low learning curve for managing a people database, segmenting groups, and targeting influencers based on intelligent insights
  • Scales well as your organization grows

Cons

  • WYSIWYG editor is basic without the ability to customize and add custom fields. This is especially evident when compared to WordPress
  • Donation functionality does not support fingerprint payments
  • Email templates are difficult to customize compared to Constant Contact and MailChimp

Return on Investment

  • The NationBuilder ecosystem is a well-connected, supportive bunch and it has been great to be a part of that
  • Most inquiring clients are already aware of NationBuilder's benefits and know what they want to accomplish. This saves time during the on-boarding process
  • NationBuilder's sales team is undereducated about the platform and I have received feedback from clients that they are sharks/difficult to work with. This is a big problem and I have lost business from it

Alternatives Considered

WordPress

Other Software Used

Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Final Cut Pro X, AWS Cloud9, WordPress, Bidsketch

NationBuilder Review

Verified User
Partner in Marketing (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Great platform for managing website, social media, and donations in a single dashboard.
  • Some particularly helpful features includes turf maps for walking door to door.
  • I really appreciate the included voter files.

Cons

  • Some of the native integrations are limited.
  • Advanced plugin support, similar to Wordpress, would make this a very powerful competitor.
  • Admin navigation and functionality is not the most intuitive.

Return on Investment

  • NationBuilder is very affordable, making it easy to provide a return.
  • We see a great ROI based on the simple fact that so much data can be accessed and analyzed from a single platform.

Alternatives Considered

webElect

Other Software Used

Mad Mimi, Emma, Screaming Frog SEO Spider