GrowthZone Reviews

Capacity is key in any business. If a business does not have the capacity to fulfill its mission, it dies. Operating a small, rural chamber with big goals and a staff of 4 to manage 470 members without GrowthZone would be a nightmare. From the internal management to the member benefits, GrowthZone allows us to stand out in our community as their advocate and partner in growing their business. The customer service and technical service is above the bar in knowledge and attentiveness. They allow us a to operate at a more professional and top-tier level than other member-based organizations without this service.

There are only a few cons which pertain to technical features for the back-of-the-house users such as not being able to preview blog posts prior to publishing and having different banner size options for our sponsors.

Helps us track our 3 levels of membership and collect dues. We've had some success enrolling members into workshops with the option to pay online.

Where to begin...Back end is not at all intuitive with lists and committees that need to be populated in a separate setup in order to be functional.
We tried using their "event management" to sell and track ticket sales to a festival, which is our number one fundraiser for our non-profit of the year. It was near disastrous because GZ assumes your event is a business conference. We sold 2,000 tickets and had so many confused customers emailing us and calling asking whether or not they had actually purchased tickets. Many people said they never received any confirmation especially if they signed up on their phones. We will only use their event tool for in-house member workshops going forward and never again for a public event. We'll have to use Eventbrite or Brown Paper Tickets instead.
The Member Hub is clunky and not one of our 70 + members actually uses it. There is no cloud storage included so the only items we can upload to the member hub to share with our members are text forms. It's OK for meeting minutes, but if we really want to share ideas and interactions between members, this is not the place to do it.
The fees that GZ (or Stripe, which they partner with) takes out of online credit and debit payments are not clearly communicated. So for instance, the festival that we sold over 2,000 tickets for online...accounting for the money is a nightmare because there is no flat rate. The average rate was really high like over 5%!

Switching from one system to another is never easy, but GrowthZone made it a smooth transition, from decision to launch! The entire process took us about 9 months to design and implement both a management system as well as website. All tools are easy to use and reporting is effortless!

I appreciate that GZ takes user recommendations into consideration (voting process) and offer ongoing development!

GZ customer support is fantastic!

GZ has great report templates, but sometimes I need to report on something not available. I wish we could create our own queries/reports without needing GZ to do this for us.

I wish GrowthZone would integrate directly with QuickBooks. To continue utilizing this accounting software, it requires manually updating QB with deposit summaries vs. automatic batches.

Ease of use and ease of training. Training is very simple and employees can continue to learn more through tutorials and webinars. Support has also been excellent with little down time despite the fact it is Internet based. It is flexible for me to be able to use my membership software and make updates from home or on the road. Having so much information about your members and multiple ways to contact and interact with them through the software has made a huge difference that has been noted by our members.

The website module saves time and allows us to keep our website content fresh. I wish it was a little more adaptable within the templates.

Keeps membership records, member usage, tranfers to website, accounting of member participation. Tracking email correspondences.
Software has been used for years - with various employees, we need the time and personnel and education to improve our database - remove old old event information and correct membership records.

Need a better way to use GrowthZone when at events. No longer use or trust the payment processing and still need to use other software.
Website setup has little flexibility and is time consuming - not easy to use or change.
Struggling to transfer accounting into Quickbooks 2021. Lots of issues which I am told are from Quickbooks. No helpful - have you ever tried to get an answer from QB? Life is too short! need CM to help and be able to know the accounting software better...

- Like the event and calendar feature
- Business Directory looks nice, but adjustments need to be made so all of our members can be found

- Invoices do not show the total of the invoice and then the payment plan amount (what is the total outstanding income?)
- Have to do double entry of payments into QB so I can still have Balance Reports and Profit-Loss Reports for our Board and Tax Accountant
- GZ is cumbersome and not user friendly - mistakes happen or changes need to be made, and it should be easy to fix them. This is not the case with GZ.
- There is more than one way to do things. The GZ way may work for the majority of Chambers you work with, but not all of us. Flexibility would be nice.
- Double entry of all contacts for our memberships. I use Outlook for all of my correspondence with members, vendors, partners and the community. To have two different places to keep track of changes is not efficient.

Can't think of anything that made it stand out.

For a membership-based organization, it is not user-friendly and is cumbersome to use.

I like the fact that it is web based. Meaning multiple users can log in and handle our membership accounts. Events are all housed within the product as well as a directory.

I wish the customer service understood the nuances of the National Home Builders Association. I was used to having someone that understood how reporting works. Also, while Chambers and HBAs can be similar, they are very different organizations. GrowthZone seems to have a lot of knowledge in how Chambers run, but not as much for HBAs.

The data capturing components and that it is not limited to the amount of data you input in all areas. I like the many features, the reporting, the statistics for the members and the interfacing with our website.

It is not graphic friendly. It does not allow for changes in all set up features of retrieving data such as the e
referral component. You should be able to choose and customize the data you send to your members - consistency isn't always king. Many times members and consumers asking for different information from each member.

Calendar, events registration, online payment option, directory, low maintenance database (MemberZone takes care of all the maintenance, yea!)

Not at intuitive for group/mailing lists. I would like a little more options for customizing fields.

I love that it's completely online and allows us to work remotely. Also that it has features for each of our job roles: membership, education, E&O policies, communication - and billing features for all of these.

Sometimes editing communication templates and billing documents can be confusing and small changes can cause changes in other areas. Despite this, GrowthZone has an incredible support system so it's never a huge stress.

The wide range of features and the ease of making updates to the website.

Certain limitations to the features, like a better method of organizing sub companies and reps in different company locations