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<p>Yes absolutely, CiviCRM requires a lot of maintenance as it needs
updating every few weeks and is buggy.</p>
<p>Also it is not user friendly or nice looking. Unless you are
going to pass everything through to a custom front-end, it's
pretty embarassing showing people what they are going to have to
use. Things like loads of extra, useless fields on the main screen
for each contact, reports on the dashboard that don't let you
click on a contact's name and go straight to their record. May
seem small to us but are so offputting for users.</p>
<p>I wish I could suggest something better though. There must be
something out there<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/11/16 12:54, Christian Wach
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:73D4BA69-2D02-4545-A09C-E0829B85064B@haystack.co.uk"
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<div class="">Well said, Helen. Having written most of the
CiviCRM plugins in the WordPress plugin directory (as well as
the one that integrates it with WordPress itself) I agree
wholeheartedly with your experience. CiviCRM requires
technical competence and plenty of maintenance to self-host.
It will, however, scale with an organisation as it grows,
which may be an advantage in the long run.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Cheers,</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Christian</div>
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<br class="">
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<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 11 Nov 2016, at 12:38, helen varley jamieson
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:helen@creative-catalyst.com" class="">helen@creative-catalyst.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<p class="">CiviCRM is very good, but i wouldn't call it a
"lightweight CRM"; it's potentially very powerful &
requires quite a bit of maintenance to make it work.<br
class="">
</p>
<p class="">i used CiviCRM previously for a small
organisation, we didn't have a regular budget for
maintaining it so it just about all fell to me & a
couple of other volunteers. we struggled for some time
to maintain it, since it enabled us to do a lot with our
member database, however ultimately it was too much work
for volunteers to maintain & just became more &
more broken as we couldn't keep up with everything. we
were running it in tandem with a drupal website &
unfortunately the same thing happened with that, we just
could not manage to keep it going. in the end we ditched
everything & moved to wordpress & had to let the
idea of an online database go (& at the moment this
organisation is kind of in hibernation).</p>
<p class="">i run another site with drupal & thought
about adding CiviCRM, but i realised that again it would
end up being me voluntarily maintaining it, & it
requires too much time.</p>
<p class="">so if you have the infrastructure &
resources to support CiviCRM then it's great. many big
organisations such as greenpeace use it & for
members it can be quite easy to do stuff like update a
profile, sign up to events, pay membership fees & so
on. but you really need to have the people who can
maintain it.</p>
<p class="">h : )<br class="">
</p>
<br class="">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/11/16 12:53 39PM, ekes
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:507cfea0-835f-aecb-27ab-a519b79ff886@riseup.net"
type="cite" class="">
<pre class="" wrap="">On 11/11/16 12:48, U wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<pre class="" wrap="">Thanks for the suggestion, it does look decent. The organisation here is not on
open source systems, in fact it is quite rooted in .net / windows and sql servers.
The other thing is they're looking for something UK based with a solid
infrastructure of support behind it. Already ruled out Salesforce and Dynamics.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="" wrap="">There are quite some organisation that do CiviCRM hosted. I've not used
any so can't vouch for them. Well I know of an instance hosted by
GreenNet, but...
anyone in the West had experience of
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.circle-interactive.co.uk/">https://www.circle-interactive.co.uk/</a> they're listed and
talk-the-right-talk for 'solid infrastructure and support'.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<pre class="" wrap="">On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 11:29 AM, ekes <<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ekes@aktivix.org">ekes@aktivix.org</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ekes@aktivix.org"><mailto:ekes@aktivix.org></a>> wrote:
On 11/11/16 12:22, U wrote:
> I'm doing some work for a UK charity who are looking at migrating to a new CRM
> system. They're looking at Icaris (<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://icaris.co.uk/">http://icaris.co.uk/</a>) or Harlequin
> (<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/">http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/"><http://www.harlequinsoftware.co.uk/software/crm/></a>).
>
> I wondered if anyone here had any experience of using either of these systems,
> working with those companies?
>
> Any suggestions on a relatively lightweight CRM that you might recommend for
> managing a few thousand contacts would also be appreciated.
For something straightforward, but tailored to Charity/NGO, I can't see
any reason not to use CiviCRM.
For more complicated, brain hurting, functionality... then I understand
why people go for SaaS (Salesforce), or M$ (Dynamics), but for
straightforward contact, campaign, donation blah management Civi does do
it (and the code isn't completely horrid any more).
ekes
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<br class="">
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br class="">
helen varley jamieson<br class="">
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:helen@creative-catalyst.com" class="">helen@creative-catalyst.com</a><br
class="">
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.creative-catalyst.com/" class="">http://www.creative-catalyst.com</a><br
class="">
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.upstage.org.nz/" class="">http://www.upstage.org.nz</a>
<p class="" align="center"><strong class=""><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.wehaveasituation.net/?p=1402"
class="">We have a situation, Coventry!</a></strong><br
class="">
24 November 2016</p>
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