Sumac Reviews

User friendly interface and the customization feature "grow your own". Support staff are helpful and I love that training videos are provided as well.

I would love to see the development of connecting related emails directly to the database contact records so that the added steps of using the "communication" function were not needed.

Sumac provides a customizable platform for managing our programs and services, tracking communications and case management. We are planning to expand our use and utilize more modules and expand our use of existing ones. The software is growing with us as we move a team into an online Case Management model after 30 years of pen and paper. We have set it up so we master uses one at a time and have eased the transition of staff. This has been a blessing as I have worked with other organizations that have lost staff as an out of the can software full of bugs was implemented with little room for transition.

While for some the customization may be a challenge the benefit is huge. If you do not have someone to work with to complete the customizations there is an affordable option available working with the Sumac team.

The email component does not allow for, (or I have not figured out how to), multiple emails, so we only use it for mass emails as the responses can only go to one address.

We started using Sumac for organizing our data a couple of years ago. Before that we were swimming in excel sheets and having multiple users access the same information was problematic. We use Sumac for ticketing, memberships and donations. I like that we have one system that organizes these three aspects, as there is (as one would hope) quite a bit of overlap between those three actions. It is also useful for organizing mailing lists (either hard copy or email) and analyzing data. But most importantly for us, it's an affordable option. There are CRMs out there that are more robust but for a small non-profit we wouldn't be able to afford them. Sumac is a really cost-effective option to suit our needs.

Sumac has a lot of software updates. These updates don't fundamentally change the look or experience of using it, but the updates often require us restarting our server. The other aspect is, though they are working on this, is that the web integration is not as customizable as one might like. It's difficult to change the look or flow of it to go with our branding. Finally - there are just a lot of pop-ups for any application while using it (do you want to record this, do you want to save this, etc.) which seem unnecessary.

It integrates everything. With Sumac we can generate output to determine trends or targets, even deficiencies, by combining seemingly unrelated data. There's no data-based relationship we cannot explore and mine for fresh insights.
I like that it is held off-site so that we do not have to worry about additional data security. Of course, this also makes our Sumac data available anywhere, anytime.

Some of the modules have a steeper learning curve, but I don't see how that's avoidable. The biggest deficiency for me is that I would love an ap (application). Personally, I work with an iPad and right now I cannot access Sumac with that platform.

It is customizable to our needs (mostly). Some of the features we would find beneficial are not available.

We have encountered a number of bugs over the past few months in working with our trainer. She has been awesome in documenting and reporting them but the training time it ends up taking up in trying to find work arounds or confirm that it is in fact a bug is frustrating.

It is very basic and easy to use. The support is great. It is also on the cloud. Reporting is great for most functions.

We were never able to integrate our ticketing and donations so have to import everything from other systems. We were not able to batch import so it is very time-consuming. Same is true of our marketing email.

Excellent features and value for the price, especially for not for profit organizations who do not have a lot of funds but really need and can benefit from this software. Excellent customer support, not a long wait either.

Sorting and queries are complicated and not as automated or easy as I would like and there are some limitations.

Sumac is incredibly easy to use, is customizable, and the free support is outstanding. They are always happy to help!!

The only con I would say is that there isn't a built in email template creator, but it integrates with MailChimp and Constant Contact.

A great way to manage show attendees, we like that we can track who has donated and who has seen performances and what dates; contact types are very useful, as is the search builder function.

Very difficult and time consuming to upload batch information, especially if we do it infrequently enough that we need to relearn each time. Not intuitive in that way, annoying that you have to go through and have events set up first before you can attach an email or campaign to them - not very flexible in that way and requires you to always remember how the system works and the multiple steps involved with each new data capture.

Sumac is anti-intuitive.Functions do not follow a logical sequence. There never seems to be a video for what I need to do. Support has never recommended a video. The remote support doesn't work. One has to manage the telephone and manage the computer at the same time, while trying to follow instructions. There must be a better way. People learn in different modes, Sumac provides only one. Watching someone complete the sequence is not the same as performing it for a kinesthetic learner.

I have found Sumac to be the answer I was looking for to manage both clients and donors. After initial set up it was easy for my team to use and update information. The training videos are very helpful and available at any time.

Sometimes the glitches when updates happen, but IT support walked us through how to handle it and once we saved the process it was not an issue.

So easy to customize! I am not computer savvy and I was easily able to customize fields for a variety of programs and services we offer.

I find I need help building specific searches but thankfully tech support is always there to help me out.

The new reports are fine. The data entry is easy. I like that it is in the cloud. The telephone support is very helpful.

You can not export to excel. You cannot delete mistakes. You are not able to make custom reports, with name, address and donation amount.

The customer service was great; Brandon was very patient and kind with me and provided great support throughout the process.

The instruction manual was not helpful whatsoever and actually quite burdensome. I was given documents to help us begin our work, but they were scripts, not instruction manuals. Because of this, I had to literally work through a script word for word (even had to search for specific words), as opposed to simply an instruction sheet with headlines of simple things like "How to create reviewers... 1... 2... etc".

Further, the scripts informed me that I could watch video tutorials, but there was no video tutorial for Awarding Grants so I spent time searching through the videos and watching the wrong videos in the hopes that I could find this specific video. Only after I emailed cust support,I discover that the video was not yet available.

This was not only not helpful, but it set me back significantly. Instead of having an option to simply read step by step instructions, I had to continuously re-read and scan these scripts or email him for specific instructions.

Entering and managing all the contacts in the database. Being able to connect contacts and have all the history of each contact is very useful.

Lack of editing features for e-mail campaigns. The whole program lacks user friendlyness. It is hard to find easy ways of personalizing the database.

It did seem to have a lot of options. I found that the short period that I did look at Sumac (we purchased it, but in the end did not use it because some of the other issues outweighed continuing the use of it). It had decent records, and I liked that you could enter a lot custom ifnormation

The biggest thing I did not like was in order generate the tax receipts was you needed to use Mail Merge. In fact, that was the one reason we did not use the program long term. It was too time-consuming.

Software comes with loads of features including contact management, accounting, event management, and donor management.

Too difficult to access contacts, there didn't seem to be an easy way to find a group - say donors who gave once. I could always find what I was looking for eventually, but it always took longer than it should.

i like how easy it is to use the search features. With the ability to refine details for searching you can really narrow a search and get the information you require without having to look trhough long lists.

There are multiple information windows for every contact and it can very time consuming ensuring all information is up to date and accurate.

The software is easy to use. I personally did not do any training with it, but I am able to go in and access data whenever I need.

With any software, there are limits to the customization. Sumac has been great in providing some customization, but we are a very unique organization and sometimes it is difficult to fit what we need into a software.