Fonteva for Associations Reviews

Pros

Fonteva for Associations is a highly adaptable solution for managing memberships, events, and financial transactions in one place. Its seamless integration with Salesforce allows for enhanced CRM capabilities, and the platform’s customizable features ensure that it can be tailored to meet the specific needs of any association. The reporting tools are robust, making it easy to generate insights and track membership trends. The event management functionality, including ticketing and registration, is a real game changer, especially for large conferences.

Cons

While the platform is powerful, it does come with a steep learning curve, especially for non-tech-savvy users. The initial setup and customization process can be time-consuming and may require dedicated support from the Fonteva team. Additionally, some of the advanced features feel a bit pricey compared to other solutions in the market.

Pros

I work for an association/non-profit management company that uses Fonteva for several organizations. We have been able to manage the databases of up to 8 organizations under one business account. This allows us to exchange knowledge, ideas, and training among our sub-teams. I admire Fonteva's engaging user interface for the staff-side, since many association databases are rigid, outdated, and not user friendly. I admire the object-based interconnected nature of Fonteva, with all "objects" (ex. Contacts, Accounts, Items, Sales Orders, Payment Methods, etc.) connected to each other in some way which allows for more diverse and flexible use cases. Rather than filling out a rigid form linked on the annual conference page, for instance, a member can experience an engaging, customizable registration experience. You can create as many ticket types for an event as you would like, and create different registration forms connected to different ticket types. You can easily track all kinds of data. For example, if you want to figure out which payment method was used at what time for a purchase, you can click into the sales order, the related e-payment, the related payment method, and view the details of that data piece accordingly. The relational nature of this complex database allows for ample opportunity and an increasingly stronger, more engaging user-experience for your association's members. This object-based nature also allows for sufficient reporting. Some examples include, but of course aren't limited to the following: you can pull from fields of multiple objects to report on member companies who joined the association after January 2023 and are based in Florida, you can report on attendees with a particular certification who attended the last two annual conferences, members who are volunteering on committees, and whatever else you can think of. The possibilities are endless with this platform, and you can manage most aspects of your association with it (membership, events, e-store, online communities, etc.).

Cons

With ample possibility comes ample headache at times. Fonteva is so complex that it can lead to troubleshooting, glitches, and other problems that can become a nightmare for your staff and members. Having a dedicated IT/tech person on staff to manage Fonteva and serve as staff liaison is a MUST. We often run into several issues with flow (triggering a set of actions in the database, such as a purchase of a membership item activating a membership and sending a welcome email). We also run into unexplainable software glitches, such as the purchasing page on the front-end taking several minutes to load for members and attendees. While Fonteva's object-based nature allows for easy reporting, there are pre-set templates of the objects you can report on. For example, if you are using the "Accounts with Contacts" reporting template, you could only pull fields that are connected to those object types. You wouldn't be able to pull up, say, Attendee IDs, so you want to ensure your report template will allow you to report on the proper objects before getting in the weeds with building it out. For specific data requests, staff often needs to export different reports into Excel, and then use their own manual Excel skills to sort through data as needed, since Fonteva has limited report templates. It would be nice to be able to report on all kinds of data and eliminate manual labor in Excel.

Pros

I like that it's built on Saleforce CRM.

Cons

Implementation took much longer than anticipated and cost much more than forecasted. Elements of each part of the software fail to meet expectations. Core competencies such as invoicing, events set-up and managment, reporting, renewals, and eCommerce have been faulty. Support does not include support for the whole system. Their business model changed to using 3rd-party companies for setup, configuration, and advanced support. Upgrades are not free, and fees are not controlled and predictable. eCommerce engine fails to meet standards for SEO and basic eCommerce structure. Emails and integration with platforms either don't work or require excessive labor. Renewal and invoice automations can fail.

Alternatives Considered

Nimble AMS and iMIS

Reasons for Choosing Fonteva for Associations

Membersuite by its own admission was subpar and experiencing problems.

Switched From

MemberSuite

Reasons for Switching to Fonteva for Associations

Sales process and promises. Built on Salesforce.

Pros

The best thing about Fonteva is that it is on the Salesforce platform. Having the ability to configure the AMS with Salesforce has been a dream come true for us. In regards to Fonteva itself, I really like the flexibility it provides in solving business solutions as well as the amount of time saved with basic management of association management. My staff really loves Salesforce/Fonteva and that wasn't the case for our legacy platform. With staff buy-in, we're able to get a lot done now with our AMS.

Cons

Fonteva is not a platform you can learn overnight. Your staff must devote time to learn the structure before any sort of major configuration or custom work. More than likely, a 3rd party resource should be brought to help and assist with any sort of business objectives in order to configure the platform properly. Lastly, avoid custom code as much as possible because the more you learn about the tool, the higher likelihood you'll be able to configure a solution using out of the box tools with Salesforce.

Alternatives Considered

Nimble AMS

Reasons for Choosing Fonteva for Associations

We came from a platform that was really good for a small association mainly because it was preconfigured and our administrator (who didn't have an IT background) could easily work within the four walls of the AMS. Over time, as our organization grew and business needs evolved, our legacy AMS system did and therefore we needed to make a switch.

Reasons for Switching to Fonteva for Associations

We liked Nimble a lot but at the time (year 2015), but we preferred Fonteva's storefront.

Pros

Software is easy to use and has lot of flexibility to tailor it as per the association needs.

Cons

The software has some room to improve. We have soem issues with Join process and renewal proceeses which can be improved. We also think finance side of Fonteva can be made better by improving schedule payment and lockbox functionality.

Pros

Users can adapt functions in meaningful ways to fit their business needs without a lot of admin or other support

Cons

Reporting is not always intuitive and does often require admin support to do higher level reporting

Pros

Ease of use. We needed a product that would work with our business model which is unlike regular membership processes.

Cons

I think its a great product so far. I have no cons at this time!

Pros

There are many plus while using Fonteva, My personal favourites are ,
It is an all in one platform tool which allows us to manage everything in it.
It gives an extraodinary options for customization.
The best part is it is built On Salesforce,So it gives us an huge advantage to access the CRM.

Cons

Initial setup part is little bit complicated If we are from non IT or no knowledge about Salesforce.
The setup process is somewhat is lengthy because of its extensive features and customization,So implementing Fonteva takes some time and complex.

Pros

We conducted an in-depth search and review to evaluate and select an Association Management Software (AMS) for our medium sized Association. There are a variety of reasons as to why we selected Fonteva, but to summarize here are our main reasons for selecting this product.

1. User Experience - The SF Lightning and Fonteva user experience for our end users is clean, simple, and easy to learn. The flexibility it offers is clear and concise to staff and will make their day to day work much more efficient. The system is highly configurable.

2. Community Groups - For a chapter based association like ours there will be many benefits to having this feature enabled. Chapters will have a variety of accessible features that our current AMS doesn't easily offer.

3. Integration - We use a wide variety of other software to run our organization. Salesforce and Fonteva's ability to connect with and integrate is simple and cost efficient.

I highly recommend this a solution for your Association.

Cons

No negatives have been found yet. Of course, you'd love for it to be cheaper. Keep an eye on the size of your environment.

Pros

As a developer / technical consultant, when a customer is mentioning use cases involving "customer engagement" or "organize our member base" the first product that comes to mind is Fonteva. This product easily saves me months of development for a product that I couldn't even compete with. Just like you don't want to build your own cloud based CRM product, why build your own customer engagement Salesforce functionality, when someone already did it cheaper, better, less buggy, and with a technical support team. Choosing Fonteva's software is often a no-brainer for my team and my customers. As a bonus it fills in the (many) gaps left behind by the Service Cloud that Salesforce hasn't built yet. And it saves me on the budget for when customers have big ideas.

Cons

Custom development on top of Fonteva's platform can be difficult because in addition to the usual Salesforce quirks you have to take into account, you also need to learn and understand how Fonteva's platform is built.

Pros

We use the membership and event app from Fonteva software. They are easy to use. Very helpful. Configuration is easy for administrators. The software understands the requirement of customer and staff as expected.

Cons

It will be nice to have more documentation about different features in Fonteva community and the documentation should be easy to search using more keywords

Pros

MemberNation (MN) has proven to be an excellent AMS. The product is customizable, which allows Admins to configure the system based on their origination's needs. MN has allowed us to streamline processes that were once done manually.

The Fonteva team worked diligently to help us reach our target go-live date. Our Business Analyst was crucial to the project's success, as he used his expertise to understand our business processes and guide our internal team on configuring MN.

Cons

Salesforce does have limitations on editing their managed packages which limits the Admin on certain configurations. However, we have found a work around solution for each of these limitations.

Pros

Fonteva is great for associations using Salesforce, or want to get Salesforce. This integrated system combines all our needs into one place. It also keeps us linked to other vendors, systems, etc, so everything is in touch with one another. For a more fluid process, this is highly recommended.

Cons

It can be a bit limiting in design, as customizations can be a bit tricky to accomplish.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Pros

Range of the solutions it provides for membership management.

Cons

Sometimes it's a little bit hard to customize.

Pros

I like the flexibility and the ability to make changes/ configurations as needed with or without assistance from Fonteva.

Cons

The report writer

Pros

The integration of the product with other salesforce applications is fantastic. The easy membership renewal process is a big improvement over past product.

Cons

haven’t experianced a major issue with the system.

Pros

We have used Fonteva for our membership and marking. The software is easy to use and friendly. They were able to accommodate all our custom logic we have used for a long time. The change over from our last software was so smooth and they have a knowledgeable staff to help out on the change.

Cons

We use fro membership and certain limits on the function, having saying that they accomadate us with what we needed

Pros

Makes Salesforce a useable solution for the non-profit membership based association.

Cons

Still in the implementation process but have not ran into any dealbreakers for our use cases.

Pros

Easy to Use. Looks Good. Great Interface

Pros

Salesforce Platform - it is contstantly improving

Cons

Salesforce Pricing - lets face it, Salesforce is expensive

Pros

Easy way to find what you are looking for and I like that there is an advanced search feature. I also enjoy creating reports.

Cons

Harder to do more difficult payment processes. We have different memberships that have different payments and sometimes those payments have to be split. It hasn't been the easiest to do all of those.

Pros

Ease of use, Event building, and management, easy set up of the product store. Professional appearance of the registration sites and member portal

Pros

Helps you fully track your customer relationship without custom code

Cons

none

Pros

Easy to use, and integrates with EVERYTHING

Cons

Can be a bit slow, but I hear it will be speeding up.