NetForum Enterprise

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AMS still working after all these years

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jun 30, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have been using this AMS System since 2002. We are still on the 2008 version but it is still working. It has been very flexible during many changes over the years of our corporate structure and global changes. There are great vendors available to customize and train on the system.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:12-14 years

Cumbersome and confusing

Reviewed by Anonymous on Mar 12, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
I can't seem to get the data I want when I want it but am unable to tell for certain if that's an in-house management problem or a problem with the data base. At times, I have requested the same list but gotten very different results. I am not certain anyone on our staff can create a meaningful query on their own.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Communications, Public Relations, Publications

Number of Years Used:4-7 years

AMS has meet our needs

Reviewed by Anonymous on Dec 31, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

net Forum allows us to manage our business effectively and serve our members. Implementation had a few bugs but eventually we worked them out

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: —

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Does the core stuff but not very nimble...

Reviewed by Anonymous on Dec 10, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We've used Netforum enterprise for more than 5 years now. It does the core stuff pretty consistently. I've found it's not very easy to customize however, unless you have a team of developers on staff.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:4-7 years

Bulky and complicated, but it works, usually.

Reviewed by Anonymous on Dec 1, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Perhaps it's related to the size of our association (we're small: about 8 staff, 1,800 members and without a true database expert), but netForum seems to be overly complicated when it's working as it should and frustratingly buggy at times. From windows that don't open at the right size making it difficult to edits in the CMS module to really complicated processes for creating products and events it's difficult to value all the good stuff netForum does. The UI on the member side is no prize, either. That said, it does, at the end of the day, provide what you need, detailed member records, ecommerce services, event management etc. etc... It's all just wrapped up in a complicate, bulky and frequently buggy interface.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Communications, Public Relations, Publications

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Non-intuitive AMS a Poor Choice for Smaller Associations

Reviewed by Anonymous on Oct 17, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

For a small association with minimal in-house IT staff to perform maintenance and customizations, we find NetForum Enterprise to be cumbersome, buggy and difficult to use. It's possible that more in-house IT resources would help us make NetForum less of a head-scratcher and more intuitive for our staff, but as it stands, we have a hard time supporting membership and other program areas who frequently get lost or confused by the system. And the difficulties are not limited to non-IT staff; when customizing, our lone developer frequently quotes Alice and Wonderland: "curioser and curioser."

While I can't broadly recommend NetForum, I will say that if we had a larger internal IT department and used 20 or more of its 26 modules (instead of less than 10), we might be pretty content. That said, as a small association with limited resources, it does not feel like a good fit for us.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:4-7 years

Marketing Director avoids using AMS at all costs

Reviewed by Anonymous on Oct 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
While the platform is extremely robust, getting to the data in an intuitive manner is laughable. Some problems can be blamed on our internal structures, but even those in the office that are fully trained in the AMS still struggle to build the reports/events/registrations they need. ...and forget about trying to get a usable web interface presented to members and the public.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Marketing

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Expensive customizations required

Reviewed by Anonymous on Oct 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Unless you are willing to pay around $10,000 for report customizations every year on top of the $30,000 annual subscription, I would look into other AMS's. netFORUM is a mishmash of SQL databases requiring both advanced SQL knowledge and Microsoft Reporting Services in order to get your money's worth out of it.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:—

Death by customizations

Reviewed by Anonymous on Oct 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have had netForum for 11 years, but we customized too much. We are now considering going back to baseline or starting with a new system, using limited customizations. Overall, the product is OK, but the customer service is poor.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:—

Useable if you have the resources

Reviewed by Anonymous on Sep 18, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
I was involved in transferring to Netforum in two different healthcare associations. I found the system usable and adaptable. However, these were larger associations that had the resources to be able to customize for our purposes. Even without customization I think it would be a good package but a bit pricer than others that might provide the same core objectives.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Convention, Exposition, Meeting Planning

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

AMS Good Fit for Some, Not for Others

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jul 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

There have been a lot of challenges with this system for my group. First, it is highly customizable so can really be 'bent' to meet any need. The downside to that is that you need full-time staff to both implement that and manage it. You also need to invest heavily in training for these folks, initial training was over $10,000 for one person to learn most of the developer tools, will be another $5000 to learn the rest.

By far the largest issue we have experienced is with support and the release of 'buggy' upgrades. We have yet to have a software release that was not fraught with issues or unintended regression errors. The staff referred to it hidden and undocumented features that would inevitably cause issues or break whole processes. Any major version upgrade would easily take 100 plus staff hours and the one from 2011 to 2013 was halted after a year of trying do to the numerous issues with the baseline features. Even one of the support folks said of some features "we do not want to talk about that feature as if users take advantage of it menus will disappear and while data is not lost, getting menus back are very hard".

If you have dedicated technical people who can develop, implement and upgrade and need a lot of customizations, this is an excellent tool. Understand that customizations are not without risks, they require reapplying or fixing after each software upgrade.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: —

Number of Years Used:—

Untitled Review

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jun 26, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Communications, Public Relations, Publications

Number of Years Used:—

AMS too fast on the upgrades

Reviewed by on Jun 18, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
netFORUM is a great system and works for all our needs. Our primary issue comes in the mandatory schedule for updating. Every two years you must upgrade or fall out of support. That would not be a problem except that most upgrades come with so many bugs we tend to wait until they are fixed before moving forward. This always puts us outside the support range which has not been a major problem since what ever current version we are on runs smoothly. But would like to see an upgrade come out of the box working smoothly rather than it always being a struggle.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:—

Functional but clunky

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jun 17, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Our association with 4000 members has been using Avectra for over 10 years, and we're now in the process of looking a new AMS. We find that netForum is functional, but not intuitive to use. Because of this, staff avoids using the database as much as possible. Also, although we are a few updates behind, but we find that report writing is very difficult for the average user.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:—

My Thoughts on netFORUM Enterprise

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jun 16, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

Overall, I think netFORUM Enterprise is still a very solid, relevant product, even though it was created in its initial versions almost 15 years ago. The backbone of the technology, the development toolkit, was truly ahead of its time when it came out, and it continues to be one of the most flexible tools out there available to associations. This is a critical factor, and has shaped an entire industry around the development partners doing custom development with netFORUM. If you have the budget, there are resources out there that can make almost anything happen within the system. When investing so much and so many years into a platform, its important to know that you won't easily find yourself in a dead end in a couple of years where the core system will no longer meet your needs, and it can't be properly extended either.

Of course, with great flexibility comes great complexity, so organizations really need to be careful how to customize and build out the system. It seems like associations just cant stop thinking up new ways to make their business model different from everyone else's, forcing IT teams to scramble to customize their systems every which way. With netFORUM in your hand, sure it can be done, but that doesn't mean it should!

In this day and age, associations are using multiple "best of breed" vendors to deliver various content to their customers, and everything needs to be integrated with core systems (AMS). With the right internal staff, netFORUM can be very empowering in this regard. Custom webservices can be built relatively easily, allowing systems to communicate together. There are also many pre-built integrations with various email marketing systems, accounting packages, social networks, job boards, and other platforms popular with associations.

In general, netFORUM Enterprise is very powerful. But I can't imagine having to use it at an association without at least one or two strong technical internal resources. There are gobs of external resources within the ecosystem of partners, consultants, and the company themselves, but you need to have some internal technical people to tie that all together in a way that is not completely overwhelming for the rest of your staff.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:—

Good and getting better

Reviewed by Anonymous on Jun 11, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We especially like how customizable netFORUM is while still supporting upgrades. Upgrades are still a lot of work with a complex system but we are overall very pleased. The partner network is an excellent way to extend the functionality of the product. We also like how easy it is to integrate with third-party systems. Avectra was acquired by Abila and I have been very impressed with the rigorous and robust approach they take to software development and especially quality assurance. The product to date has had more than a reasonable number of bugs. They are committed to changing that. I expect to see major improvement with their next release.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:—

netFORUM Enterprise - Not for the faint of heart

Reviewed by Anonymous on May 20, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

I have been using NF Enterprise for 7 years now. In my experience, it is far from a user-friendly system, rather it seems that it was designed by developers, for developers. Queries, reports, even the Wiki itself is difficult to use beyond the most basic actions. A user needs to have knowledge of the back end tables and which module to use to best access certain fields for queries and report writing. Knowledge of SQL is also a big help, but there aren't many day to day users I know with SQL training.

With the recent acquisition by Abila, users have been promised a more robust support system, and yet I am still experiencing 5-7 day turnaround times.

It is good that NF Enterprise is customizable, but again, you have to pay considerable amounts for those customizations, unless you have a very robust in-house IT team.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Fundraising, Development, Sponsorships

Number of Years Used:—

Need in-house IT

Reviewed by Anonymous on May 20, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
With a strong in-house IT department netFORUM can be a robust and powerful tool. Don't count on Abila's customer support.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Membership, Customer Service, Data Entry

Number of Years Used:—

nForum customer service is appalling

Reviewed by Anonymous on May 19, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have an excruciating spring with Avectra (now Abilify). Their customer service will not make fixes to our netForum enterprise system in a timely way. They routinely blame us (the customer) for the errors. In the meanwhile, two major pieces of eCommerce do not work, costing us tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales. Now they want to charge us for a customization because we believe they broke a piece of code on our API.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Communications, Public Relations, Publications

Number of Years Used:—

Membership Director

Reviewed by Anonymous on May 16, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have been using Avectra Net Forum for a number of years. Avectra was acquired last year by another firm and the customer service has become very slow to respond to requests. It also seems that some of the more experience tech support staff are leaving. We also continue to experience a number of issues with the recent Net Forum 2013 upgrade, which has nullified some of the custom programming we had done with an Avectra approved vendor. Our frustration level is high and we are beginning the difficult task of finding a replacement CMS. We are used to the interface, though I would say that it's not initially that user friendly.

Response from NetForum Enterprise on [Date of Response]

Fonteva is a software company whose mission is to empower associations with innovation and flexibility. Fonteva delivers future-ready solutions with the most flexible, scalable, and responsive apps in the cloud. Their flagship software, Fonteva for Associations, is the first true-cloud Association Management Software (AMS) and is built on the Salesforce platform.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Membership, Customer Service, Data Entry

Number of Years Used:Less than 1 year

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