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From my own technical perspective, using the Convio product is always a nightmarish experience. It is a clunky Java application that carries its 1990's heritage enough to label it "legacy." Its built-in CMS organizational techniques and search capabilities are meager, which is bad news after several years of accruing content if your organization does not enforce naming schemes. Folks in my organization rewrite identifiers in URLs to jump to content because it's that much easier. Designing content is often problematic in the same way that getting your pages to look as designed in MySpace is a tedious exercise. It is generally a stable platform, although service outages are too frequent and problems are often encountered during bi-monthly upgrades; we have helped them isolate quite a few major issues in the last year alone. For administrators using Convio on a daily basis, Convio is painful.
Recently, Convio acquired its closest rival, GetActive, and has attempted to learn from its more contemporary and agile philosophy. The Convio Open Initiative is a promising step in the right direction of opening up your organization's data to your organization, although it's safe to say this is somewhat overdue and it is a rolling implementation across the database. For any other data, you are relegated to commissioning an expensive Data Connector which amounts to nothing more than regular FTP transfer and load of flat files (that's not entirely true - they also have automated, synchronizing connectors with popular donor databases and services). They have attempted to take the best parts of the superior GetActive CMS and begin rolling this out for clients; but it is an additional expensive service.
And lest I forget to mention that part, the cost: way, way overpriced. Especially as your email list size grows. I consider it outrageous. But then I am a member of the Austin Open Source Posse, so I am stupid about things like that.
Yet for all my complaining (I think I have been waiting for this question for a long time, Gordon - thanks!) for mass email, Convio is hard to beat. Especially since they correlate your constituents' addresses to their legislative districts very reliably (although I am convinced there has to be or soon will be a free service for this out there too). But like the Java language itself, I think Convio's days are numbered (this may not be my most popular theory). NPOs are wanting to get more technical and sophisticated in their outreach, taking advantage of all the new channels for connecting up with their constituents. I think Convio has too much baggage to move that quickly. Yet, like Microsoft, they are not going away anytime soon and they are the only game in town from a certain perspective. Also, I agree with Rich - I like everyone I've met there, and I think they feel just as hamstrung by their giant product as their users do - and are just as excited about their steps in the right direction.
gf
Rich Vázquez wrote:
We had them demonstrate their product set at 501 Tech Club, last month I believe.
We may have the presentation deck available.
They seemed like a good company, good product and good people. Very broadly speaking.
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Gordon Montgomery <gordon@gmeta.com > wrote:
Any thoughts on convio broadly speaking?
Do they make the world a better place?
Are they Number 1 at anything?
Do they fail miserably at anything?
Is there a clearly better choice in Austin, TX that serves in NPO Tech today?
...that type of thing...or any other random comments welcome ;)
Thanks.
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Gordon Montgomery
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(512) 299 3637
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Rich Vázquez
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