Salesforce

●Excellent CRM alternative to organize and access data for nonprofit organization (Has non-profit pricing 10 users soft cap however))

●Excellent for connecting with customers by organizing them or their needs as objects

●Salesforce Lightning is available for $30/month

●Better for organizations with large volume of data

●Easily managed and is an industry-standard

Technical

Pros

● Intuitive design that is good for nontechnical clients

● Easy to configure and customize data architecture

● No code is used as this is a customizable package solution

● Can be used in tandem with other software (Can integrate with other apps using Zapier (an If This Then That tool) to enable automation of certain processes )

● Provides Developer Sandbox to test changes before deploying to a Production Sandbox

● Workflow rules can be used to set up automations

● Object created are silos of data that can be used for reports and analysis

Cons

● Can easily be mishandled and become messy

● Extensive customization capabilities can lead to over-developing/over-customizing

● Can be difficult to find live support

● Workflow rules are complicated and has a steep learning curve

● Cannot integrated directly with outlook

● Does not have a calendar feature

Practical Use

Pros

● Large source of forums and tutorial videos to learn (a ton of documentation for developers and users can be found)

● Has the ability to track data and generate/export reports for the organization

● Can be used across platforms and any number of users

● Great customer support system

● Can pull in data from Excel and other tools

Cons

● Lots of tools that can become confusing

● Elaborate business processes may require additional costs

● Too many options can be confusing for beginners

● Can be difficult to develop functionality with extensive customization options