StarChapter Reviews

It is a cost-effective way to manage association information, particularly with officer transitions. It also allows for quick and easy web site updates and various notifications to different member types. It has made membership information management and document retention a breeze as well!

Meeting registration requires multiple steps, which may be a deterrent for members who don't often use a computer or need to take extra steps to pay for an event , etc.

StarChapter set everything up
The training they provided was comprehensive
The support is excellent. I had a few questions and received a response back within hours or even minutes.
Once you get the hang of how it works, it is easy to make changes
The price is incredible! We are a very small non-profit with a limited budget.
Our users love the software. The admins really like the back end and the information it provides.
Our members love the website and how easy it is to renew membership, sign up for classes and events.

Reporting is a little weak:
I can find everything I need but it isn't as easy as I think it could be. (That said it could be that I haven't figured everything out yet.)
I can get a list of new members, members that have renewed, and members that have not renewed BUT it does not produce a very attractive output. This would definitely not stop me from recommending this software.

It's attractive for the users. When you can get the features to work it has a polished looks. Content added in the admin menu is automatically added to the website.

Where do I start? I have a long list of complaints about this platform. If it were more user-friendly it would be great. Unfortunately it is not user-friendly or intuitive. I have used other systems that required much less customer service requests on my part. I would not call myself a tech expert but I do tend to navigate technology with mild to little difficulty, including editing my own website and some light coding, so I am not a complete novice. I am constantly having to go back and rewatch support videos or fiddle with the system because its just not intuitive. If and when i do figure out something that should be simple, the features are pretty nice, but the platform is so frustrating that I have not found the transition worth my while and I regret it.

What I liked best was for a small non-profit association it is easy to use, and what you do not understand, the customer support is quick to get back to you. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but we didn't need all that, and that makes things more complicated. We like the simplicity, but for the most part it does everything we need it to do.

Membership dues renewal is not the easiest to work with, I think StarChapter was made more where the national association collects the dues rather than the local chapter. Also, templates for meetings are pre-packaged and creating new ones requires interfacing with the design team. But there are ways to work around these.

This checks all the boxes for us. We needed a platform that let us send comms to our members, manage our membership list (including sending invoices for renewals and new members), manage event registrations, post news articles, allow our members (and non-members for a fee) to post job openings, and more...and this fit the bill! It was affordable, easy to use, the initial set-up was simple (StarChapter is a HUGE help and does a great deal of the work), and we've found their support team to be very responsive and helpful. We're very happy with our switch, and now all our data is managed in one place - which was the ultimate problem we set out to solve with our previous website.

There are a few little nuances we've discovered, such as not being able to use multi-byte characters (emojis, etc) in subject lines of comms and not being able to export ALL comm data (must be exported individually). I think the biggest thing that could stand to be improved is the comm data - you can get open rate, but that's pretty much it. You can't see what links are clicked on the most, or other data that other email-specific platforms offer. That said, it wasn't a deal-breaker for us.

StarChapter has streamlined our volunteer organization's processes and saved each of us time — which is important as volunteers! It's eliminated the use of an email campaign system and invoicing system. It has streamlined our communication with the newsletter feature, and contacting members and non-members with the email templates makes our roles simpler. I love that each of our board members are learning how to maintain their own pages through StarChapter's Knowledgebase. Everything you need to know is in there and it's presented in a style that's easy to read, follow and understand. I've had to request support for a couple items that were more complex than what I could handle, and their support team has responded within a day or two to resolve the challenge.

I've been using the software for about eight months. I think I still have so much to learn — it's a very robust software — yet they do make it easy to use. I just wish I could dedicate more time to really diving in to understand the connections between the modules and how to maximize the software.

Several features for chapter management seemed to be an advantage to Constant Contact. Communications to members, non-members and expiring members seemed to be be better.

Can't call anyone for support. Users are required to submit an online ticket and wait usually 24 hours to get an answer. This isn't helpful when trying to meet a deadline and run into trouble. Some event registrations don't show up in orders and I must do manual reconcilation of credit card payments (I'm told to avoid this we need to upgrade to PayPal Pro. Constant Contact worked fine with Standard Business PayPal). Requires our NAHU members to create an account and "log in" when registering.

The process to set up was very easy and inexpensive compared to all other products we have used. There are a lot of option we were easily able to adapt from the old system to Star Chapter.

Our previous forums were done in real time and automatically emailed to subscribers, this system requires the extra step of the admin emailing the posts to interested parties.

Ease of running membership, communications, events, networking, announcements and training (just to name a few) for a large dynamic non-profit organization of Project Management Professionals.

As with any powerful software platform there is a learning curve to become proficient.

My answer address my concerns with the software and the service provided.

Customer Service Response time and System used to help with the administration of the software.

Integration was easy and the support team did a great job. I felt we received everything we asked for and I am learning how to use the system everyday with the help of the support team.

Navigating and understanding my way around the website is my biggest challenge but I am new to this and feel that eventually I will get the hang of it.

I like the ease of use of the backend along with the price of the product.

The reporting options could be better and the registration process is a little clunky for our customers.

This is great for organizations and non profit that need something simple to get them going. We use this to manage members, as well as host our e-commerce type transactions for events.

It is a bit clunky and not as intuitive when wanting to do more advanced level organizational management. For example, if a member has not renewed their membership there is a grace period and then the member gets moved to a different list. If that member wants to renew- they have to create a whole new login which adds to confusion when the user expects to just to be able to login and renew their membership. Since starchapter has membership level built into their pricing, it makes it very hard for organizations to keep a seemless record of "active" and "inactive" members. This makes a big difference when doing complex registration or selling of items on the e-commerce site. For example a member may get a certain discount versuses a non member. It is very clunky if a user wants to pay for a membership and get membership pricing of an event registration all at the same time. It is very limited in that logic.

I liked that they provided the initial set-up and conversion from our previous web-site. I like that over-all it is easy to manage the site and to update content. Please note that I do NOT have an IT background and learned everything from scratch. We are looking at an organizational name change, so it will be interesting to see if I still hold this view once I tackle that project. I have always had great customer support when I have a question, even when I pose something that the program can't do.

It is not intuitive for someone that doesn't have skills in web design. I have to research and learn new options, not just pick them up along the way. I find some of the finance and accounting functions too basic, as well as only a basic reporting functionality. There also don't seem interested in updating and adding functionality, just maintaining what they have.

Being able to have a Member Manager page, easier set up for events, invoicing system, and communication platform. These were all pieces missing previously. StarChapter has helped to make almost everything easier.

It can be difficult to update certain things. For example: getting the correct address to appear on invoices (or get it on invoices at all). It needs to be updated in three different places. It would be nice it you could change it in one spot (in settings for example) and have it feed to the others. Also, there seems to be a disconnect on the member login side. When a primary contact renews membership, it doesn't renew anyone else with them. Not sure how to fix that, but it hasn't been a major issue that needs to be addressed yet. Just a convenience thing.

Top items:
1) Ease of access from any location.
2) Ability to have most of the associations information in one spot
3) Email communication
4) Reports available. Love the graphs for membership, meeting attendance, etc...
5) Love that the members can download the meetings they attended to track their own CEH credits.
6) Love how the support team gets back promptly on issues.
7) The newsletter StarChapter sends out although finding time to read it gets in the way.
8) The ease of using it. It's not hard to train others to use it.

Least liked:
1) Email verification.
2) The difficulty to find where to change some information and the need to ask what page it is on.
3) Renewing a members dues from administrative point of view has been difficult.
4) Would like notification of any issues concerning members.
5) Screen size for creating an event. Would like it bigger.

Complete, Easy to use, we can have more then one person work on the back end We dont'' need a "software guy" to make it work.

The initial learning curve is something you have to deal with but its much easier than learning Joomla or HTML.

Ease of implementation, orientation to members, flexibility, ease of using various modules - meeting manager, newsletter, etc. What we were most pleased with was the ability to integrate with PayPal to streamline our dues and meeting registrations. We have seen a huge increase in the retention of members as well as new members since implementing Star Chapter

The only CON I can think of is not having the ability to pay for multiple members with one payment (i.e. company pays for 2+ individuals) Each member record stands alone and there is no bridge to a company name.

I liked the integration capabilities. Once one learns the software , its very easy to manage

Migrating from a more traditional website platform, it took some time to rebuild the content in a more object oriented fashion. I like it , but I found the training to lack a high level view that would have been a huge help in bridging from our old system to StarChapter. The implementation team on our side are all tech savvy, but not with StarChapter so learning how it was set up took more time than needed because seeing the bigger picture of the design was missing in the training.
We also purchased the "basic" version and several times we were trying to do something basic (including meeting GPDR requirements) and the help desk answer was "oh that's not available in the basic plan" . The GPDR issue they fixed for us,and the others we were able to work around, but having a CLEAR and COMPLETE list of what is and is not on the basic plan would have saved us significant time.

I was weary about how easy it was supposed to be to use, but it really is easy to use. If I have a question, it is answered very quickly. Migration from our old website was done so accurately that we only had additions not issues.

I am fairly new to StarChapter so when something appears difficult, I just ask!

The ease of use of the software and its intuitive nature.

Complexity with adding CSV member lists for integration in to notification triggers.

It simplifies my job which in external communication for member of our non-profit group. Rather than logging into multiple different platforms to set up events, I only have to login to one. The website user side is also easy to maintain.

It seems to lack more common functionality options that other sites (Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, Mailchimp) have. The defaults seem odd, specifically for the meeting ticket generation - multiple people are used to a live list of tickets purchased/attendees shown on the meeting page, which this does not have - The newsletter is not very customizable when you have different levels of sponsors, I have to go in each time and remove the code of the sponsors I don't need on the newsletter - And for some reason we had a big problem with register member's usernames being deleted

We had a home grown system for 15+ years. We decided we needed to update the look and it make it an all in one system for sign ups, membership, events, etc. We looked at many different products and found Star Chapter best met our needs.

I am learning new things all the time and am sure . I wish there was someone to talk to in a quicker manner. Since we joined all questions are in writing and can take at least 2 days to get an answer and often times there are follow ups so even longer. I find the videos and help questions helpful but my only complaint would be more customer service employees.

The software has SO many pluses for association management. Although I've used it for 3 years, I'm still finding great ways that it can help me analyze data and improve service

Some functions seem to require duplicate steps (member registration) and I'd like that streamlined