Neon CRM Reviews

Summary: When we first started with Neon the staff and development was super responsive to feedback and we regularly saw things we had mentioned in subsequent updates. Now when we submit issues we just get temporary work-arounds with no indication of an upcoming solution. The occasional "this is a known issue that will be addressed in a future update" is always nice to see. I imagine staff is a bit burned out but they hide it well.
I think NeonCRM is still a good fit for our organization and realize part of the issue is just growing pains, so look forward to using the system for many years to come.

Positive: We were very excited to see an update of the membership forms and hope it will help simplify things on the front end for our older users. The reduced clunky-ness of that form as well as the emails (which still need fine tuning) is very encouraging for the future front and backend usability of the product. We don't use many of the additional resources of the NeonOne family but appreciate the integration opportunities should we come to need them in future.

Negative: Can't manage entirety of store product information from one screen (detail, inventory, etc), nor can you link a product to a user as writer/publisher, nor can you track when inventory is added.
Material tracking doesn't have a report that includes notes so that must be tracked separately.
The tribute donation tracking, reporting, and account connection could use improvement.

Summary: I am very much satisfied with the software and offers great value to the users be it features or customer support, it is absolutely great.

Positive: 1. It allows user to create beautiful dashboards.
2. it has very beautiful and colourful User Interface and is very user friendly.
3.Customer service is very responsive and helpful and they are always ready to help the users.
4. Neon CRM is very customisable unlike other CRM applications.
5. It's very much affordable.

Negative: 1. The option for auction is still missing in this software which is very useful for the organisations.
2. Mass emailing option is not that great and is a cumbersome process in Neon CRM and needs improvement.

Summary: Neon CRM is still evolving. The product is outstanding so far and getting better and better all the time. That evolution requires some patience but the system that is already there meets 90% or more of our needs. Reporting and segmenting our audience is outstanding, the note fields and custom fields are meeting most of our special circumstances. Overall, we are impressed on a weekly basis at the things we can do with Neon CRM that our old system would have given up the ghost if we'd attempted.

Positive: The support and training team is outstanding!

Neon brought our organization into this decade (possibly this century) with a great collection of fields, tools, and especially reports that put everyone on the same page.

* Reports are amazing.
* Support is insanely amazing.
* Customizable user permissions mean fundraising and donor relationships are available to our boards & committees without running the risk that someone can accidentally hose the system (which may have happened in our previous database).
* The widgets and dashboards are customizable to the user so I can see what I need to know at a glance and other team members can do the same for their own needs.
* I could go on and on. Call Neon, they'll put you in touch. I love talking about this CRM.

Negative: * I'm glad we assigned one person to focus on onboarding for our company (me!) because you need someone who can really focus on learning "how Neon thinks"
* Some features should be there, in our opinion, but aren't (ex: the Workflow/automations don't have anything related to email audiences or campaigns as a trigger, for example).
* I wish more fields were available to search for reports. We've had several instances where we needed to run more than one report or do quite a lot of editing on an exported file to get the information we need.

Summary: Overall, it was very good! I like that NEON offers so many options, so we are able to consolidate a lot of our data into this program. It has helped to streamline our processes and save our staff members time.

Positive: My organization uses this platform to record data on donors, donations, volunteers, customers, and more. It has been very helpful for us to be able to organize our contacts and reach out to specific targeted groups. We had so much data still on paper files, and we are finally able to move away from this!

Negative: The messaging feature to send out emails to your contacts list is nice. We were able to send out unlimited email campaigns to as many folks as we needed for marketing purposes. However, the design space was really clunky and doesn't create quite the professional email we would like. Totally functional though.

We looked into using NEON to document volunteer hours, but we had a hard time with training and figuring out the system. We would like volunteers to be able to log their own hours, but that is not readily available with this service.

Summary: This system is cost efficient and works pretty darn good for the basic fundraiser. Be sure to have someone on your team train so they can pull the info you want out easily (mailing lists..) and build events. Once someone trains on this system - they can do just about anything!

Positive: I like that it's laid out in a logical manner and that fundraisers don't have to be data people to manage donors and giving in the system. Easy to update records, create records, record gifts...

Negative: I don't understand why company contacts never pull when building a mailing list, it is frustrating. Also - I wish the event registration form builder had more flexibility built into it so you can sell a table as well as single tickets - maybe you can, but we haven't figured it out yet. The templates for email and newsletters are ok - but could be a little more user friendly

Summary: Overall, this program is terrific and I'm very happy with the product.
It's very professional looking. I can store documents which is very important to my nonprofit.

Positive: I love that I can put all my information on a client in one program.
I'm still trying to learn how to use it but everyone that I talk with is very helpful. I love that I was able to set up a donation easy and looks very professional.

Negative: How to use it to my advantage. It's hard for me to figure out how to add sections to the Information on each of my clients. I just need a better understanding on how to. For me it's not easy.

Summary: I want to love Neon, but recently have had issues with customer service, so am unable to give the platform five stars. I think the company should give its clients a clearer road map for new features and timelines for same. I get the sense that Neon is coasting or dealing with staff turnover and this is impacting your experience with the platform. I come from the world of Blackbaud and Neon is a far better product, but I am concerned about most recent trends described above.

Positive: Overall ease of use, reporting options, new email communications options, mission control, interface with third party integrations.

Negative: There are still some inconsistencies in the user interface. Staffing turnover within the company has resulted in the loss of our client services contact, resulting in poor customer service. Recently we have experienced significantly longer resolution times for help desk tickets.

Summary: I had a good experience using NEON CRM. It was very easy to get through although some chapters were longer than others, it was still informative.

Positive: I liked the fact that it was so informative and very easy to get through all of the material. Although our program is not using all of the features in NEON, the ones that we are going to use were very easy to understand and I liked the easy testing at the end of each chapter to make sure all materials were understood.

Negative: I feel as though it should be customized for each program. For example, if a program was not to use NEON pay, they it shouldn't be listed as that information is not on a need to know basis.

Summary: Our organization needed to find a new CRM to transition to for member management, event registration, and our online store. We are still in the configuration stages of our migration and have not gone live yet, but just from our experience so far, it's pretty clear we made the right decision.

Positive: * Neon's sales team was informative, approachable, and patient. They have been transparent about the capabilities and limitations of their system and knowledgeable about how they imagined our needs could map onto their existing products.
* Speaking of transparency, I appreciated that the fee structure was right there on the website. As a nonprofit, we didn't want to spend time on pitches that were out of our price point.
* The onboarding process has been clear and well-thought-through.
* The user interface of the system itself is very intuitive and clean. Their ready-to-go modules for Membership, Event Management, and Online Store are about 75% already set up how we need them to be, and there's enough autonomy built in to allow for a lot of customization.
* The price is right!
* We do a lot of asynchronous work with volunteers across the country, and the live reporting feature will help considerably with data sharing and version control.

Negative: Really nothing to actively dislike so far. There are a few things we're used to in our prior system for which Neon does not have functionality - we track our members by X variable, while their system is set up to track by Y variable, for instance. It will take some getting used to.

Summary: Neon is an easy-to-use database with additional features that make it a comprehensive database that I would recommend to others.

Positive: I have used several CRM databases. I prefer Neon over all of the others. It is intuitive, user-friendly, simple and yet comprehensive. Tech support responds quickly through email. I also like having robust add-on options, including text-to-give.

Negative: I would like to be able to add two mailing addresses and two email addresses for an account. Currently you can only do one for each. I also would like more easy-to-use tutorials rather than working through the Neon One Academy.

Summary: Excellent overall experience, from setup and migration to daily use. I wish there was a mobile app, but even without it, I am far more productive.

Positive: I love the ability to customize the system to suit what you need. The workflow automations and connection to Quickbooks was what sold me on this CRM, and it's been better than I could have imagined.

Negative: I wish there was a usable mobile app, as I find I need to edit records on the go.

Summary: I came from 10+ years of using Raiser's Edge and when I began with my current employer, they were using a CRM that I'd never heard of before. It was not just difficult to navigate, it was practically from the neolithic age. There was no integration with other systems, no capabilities to accept online donations, and pulling a query was beyond infuriating ... it usually required consulting the user's manual of many hundreds of pages or calling/emailing their one-person 'help line' for assistance. Sometimes responses took days. We evaluated five different platforms before selecting Neon -- everything from Blackbaud to Network for Good.
It's not designed for the novice user; it does take time and patience to get acclimated. But if you persevere, you'll find you've got a valuable tool with many diverse capabilities.

Positive: When we made the switch to Neon, we had looked at a wide array of other options, but Neon was--and still is-- the clear winner for our organization. It's a comprehensive platform, one that hits nearly all the marks. The ability to integrate with QuickBooks was key as was the ease of linking online donations, we also liked the ability to customize the dashboard for each person, and so on. To me, it's very user friendly -- if you've had experience in another database, you should get the feel of it pretty quickly. But then, I'm a tactile learner, so the more I had my hands in the database the easier it became to use it. If that's not your style, don't worry, help is always available (there are tons of tutorials to take advantage of if you need them) and there's Neon One Academy, which is a rich repository of short courses you can take to help you gain broader knowledge of the program and use it to its full potential. Customer support is excellent, they're very responsive. I will say that I think it's probably best suited for small to medium development shops.

Negative: Neon is not a panacea for all situations and what works well for some may not work for others. For example, it can automate the acknowledgement process, however that was not the case for us. We still must do our letters manually, but this is primarily due to the way they are formatted. If that ever changes then that's a feature we'd certainly incorporate. For now, it's not a hurdle we can overcome. Building and running queries at times can be challenging/frustrating; it's not always an intuitive process and as fundraisers we need to know the data we're pulling is correct. The other pain point for me is that Neon does not integrate with auction software such as OneCause and that's a bit of a headache because the information must be entered manually; hopefully that's something that can be worked on in the future.

Summary: Absolutely wonderful. I was able to take a very antiquated process and bring it up to speed. We have raised more money through our CRM than ever before! It has completely changed (for the better) how we function and operate today.

Positive: From start to finish, the process was great! The team worked with me to fulfill each unique feature I needed to make the database functional for our needs. Training was super helpful and they provided easy step by step instruction. The database we created together, has been a such an added value to how we run our Foundation and events.

Negative: Not a thing. Honestly. Your team was extremely helpful and the online classes are easy to follow. Every question I encountered, you all helped me develop a solution.

Summary: Tracking, reporting, coding and segmenting our list of donors has allowed us to improve our productivity and our communication. Our team is on top of our game and NEON has given us great results and has made a difference in the way we work. I would recommend NEON to small, medium and large organizations. It's the best donor software that I've ever used in my many years working in the development field.

Positive: As a member of a team that utilizes Neon, I love NEON's tools that help us stay up to date with goals and progress daily. At the same time I like having my own dashboard and notes that help me remain productive with my individual goals and tasks.

Negative: Neon offers so many benefits! We are still learning and have the desire to master the software. It has been a changemaker for our team. One wish I have since we utilize it daily is the ability to make our emailable and mailable letters look a bit more professional. Formatting can be a bit challenging.

Summary: The communication tools it has to track emails, letters, phone calls it's very helpful. Not only does this CRM allows you to add basic information, but also more sophisticated data such as household contacts, addresses, account relations, and employment history.

Positive: Something I really like about this CRM is the timelines, which show you all the details you need to understand your supporters. The revenue management tab also allows you to manage both online and offline gifts. Something I use on a daily basis is the email campaign for when you want to send an e-blast or a newsletter to a group of people.

Negative: It runs pretty slow from time to time, but I still recommend it to anyone who's looking for a great CRM.