Keela Reviews

Keela has been highly responsive and quick to evolve to meet the practical needs of its customers.

Pros:

I like the simplicity of Keela however, it's important to point out that the simplicity doesn't compromise how useful the tool is. They've stripped down the CRM model to make it exactly what fundraisers at small and medium size charity need and got rid of all the extra widgets that just make tracking donor data unnecessarily complicated. We have also greatly appreciated the quick response time of the support team. Multiple features that we have suggested would be useful have shown up in new iterations of the product and the team regularly checks in with us to make sure that we are happy.

Cons:

The dashboard isn't the best. I would appreciate being able to customize it to be able to see the information that is important to you at a glance.

Hearty Recommendation

Comments: We've loved having Keela since the beginning. It is an integral part of running our company and the software does everything we need it to do.

Pros:

Customer service is amazing. Constantly updating to make better. Very easy to navigate and use.

Cons:

Not a fan of paid add-ons. Wish they were included but understand why they aren't. SendGrid integration doesn't work with Wix and causes a lot of bounced emails for us.

Keela Review

Comments: So far it has been good, I am happy with our choice and the abilities, I think with some key enhancements this could be a really great platform.

Pros:

I like the overall donor management options including importing donations from other sources, the ability to soft credit, adding volunteer hours, etc. The cost of the software if excellent and it links to several other programs we use. Customer Service is great when I do reach out for help.

Cons:

I would the forms to be more dynamic, right now I have to create too many forms. An example if a campaign we did for a free sticker, within the campaign we wanted to offer the donor a chance to pay for the sticker shipping and possible donate something extra. I couldn't do this in one form, I needed a for ​the free part and separate from if they wanted to donate. Overall I think the forms could be improved to allow for more flexibility​, I would like to have some of the questions like "pay for the fee" to default to Yes. Pulling reporting from specific forms is not easy, we use this for tour registrations and it is cumbersome to get to the responses sorted by tour day, overall forms could be more efficient​ and enhanced. I would also like to see a mobile app.

A Modern and Innovative Tool that Helps Us Manage Our Donors and Sponsorships

Comments: Keela has helped our organization have a centralized data management center that multiple volunteers can access to perform tasks that keep us in compliance with our local and national government. In simple terms, it's made everyone's job a little bit easier!

Pros:

It was fairly easy to switch from our previous CRM database that we were unhappy with. This software has given us the ability to communicate effectively with our donors, keep track of sponsorship pledges, and track our yearly fundraising goals. All of this has been easy to customize to our organization and add the custom fields that pertain to us.

Cons:

To be fair, it's hard to be a "one size fits all" for any product, so of course there could be things that could be enhanced or added. For us, I would like to see when a pledge payment is past due and be able to create a segment or report that could show who is behind and by how much. Also, I would like the ability to create custom reports that would allow custom queries. The nice thing though about the Keela team, is they REALLY listen when you have a particular need like I just mentioned and they provide an Ideas Portal for just that!

Keela is better than most

Comments: Keela is better than most of the other products we've utilized but there isn't really a wow factor when it comes to using this platform. It gets the job done but leaves you wanting for more.

Pros:

Keela has a relatively clean interface with lots of features. They are continually upgrading which is very nice to know that there is a team committed to constant improvement.

Cons:

When there are issues, support is lacking and slow. Some of the integrations don't seem to work well and the payment portal, KeelaPay, doesn't work over 50% of the time.

Keela keeps us organized

Comments: Our team has used Keela on a daily basis to stay organized as a team, manage volunteers and donors, track goals, and send out communications. The customer support is great whenever we encounter an issue and we love that new features are continuously being added.

Pros:

Team access helps keep everyone on the same page regarding fundraising and communications. We love that we can see our volunteers, donors, campaigns and communications all in one place.

Cons:

As we grow as an organization and gain more contacts we need to pay more for our subscription which isn't easy. It's a tool we use daily, and at this point, we need this type of software to operate and stay organized, but it can be challenging to find funding that will cover the cost.

Amazing product and customer service support!

Comments: I enjoy Keela as I used Blackbaud Raiser's Edge for many years and it was horrible.

Pros:

The migration process was smooth and the customer service support is quick and efficient. It is also user-friendly and easy to for donations processing.

Cons:

The access form a mobile app/iPhone is not super easy. MFA process is tedious and slow.

Great Nonprofit CRM Easy to Use!

Comments: Its been great but need more customizable templates to use!

Pros:

Makes email marketing easier, donor and donation tracking

Cons:

No flexibility in email template customization -- can't export external templates

Keela, Powerful Integrations that Simplify Nonprofit Management

Comments: Overall I am very impressed with Keela as a hub for organizational information.

Pros:

The platform brings together so many tools, which makes it super flexible and efficient for nonprofit management. It’s like having a Swiss army knife for organization, communication, and fundraising all in one place, without the need to jump between apps.

Cons:

One downside I've found is with the Zapier integration—not all fields are available for mapping, which can be a bit limiting. It’s more of a personal use issue, but it would make a big difference for streamlining specific workflows if all fields were accessible for mapping.

Keela Review

Pros:

The accessibility of Keela was definitely a plus. Also, I appreciated the customer service when I needed help with the program.

Cons:

The accessibility of Keela wasn’t completely applicable across different people - my colleagues had some trouble navigating the program.

Review for small charity with staff of one looking to grow our capacity

Comments: Overall Keela is excellent and I love using it. More than that, I love the Keela brand and what the company stands for. There's a warmth and personal approach that helps me feel confident that the Keela team are in my corner. Since I'm the only staff member for my charity, I can't overstate the importance of feeling like Keela are an extended part of my charity team - you help me feel supported and less alone. Thank you!
(Also love the annual capacity conference - please keep it coming!!)

Pros:

The price point is REALLY amazing for very small, young charities. For the functionality, Keela offers huge bang for our buck. My charity Board love that Keela are specifically aiming to help small charities like our grow our capacity. Switching to Keela has allowed me (the ED and sole staff member) to streamline our work flows and automate a bunch of things (like tax receipts and donor thank yous!) that were taking up a lot of my time.

Cons:

One thing that bugs me a lot is when someone uses the contact form that is embedded into our website I seem to need to click through several layers in Keela to actually get to their message (notifications > contact > interactions > contact form > message). It'd be amazing if somehow those messages were easier to access - it took me a few goes to figure out that I need to look up "interactions" for a contact, and not "emails".

Keela rejects credit card payments for fund raising events/donations needed for operations, contacts messy

Comments: Extremely poor, there is no way to get timely human help. The program is not intuitive, contacts can't be cleaned up easily if there are duplicates (name of contacts are connected with company, company has a separate listing, deceased contacts can't be deleted, etc). By the time someone at Keela responds via messaging, our events are over and we've lost critical donors and contacts are frustrated. Bad for our brand of reliable legal service for the poor Looking again for better program like donor perfect maybe

Pros:

Our [sensitive content hidden] liked the clean look of the interface, but beyond that, as the [sensitive content hidden], I have no pro and keeping the program is no sustainable because it glitches with credit card payments, usually in the clutch of a big fundraiser. I've had it with this program.

Cons:

example: right now we're screwed by Keela. It stopped taking credit card payments in the middle of our fundraiser event. Totally unreliable credit card acceptance, Fundraising events need reliable links for donors, forms need to work without frustrating donors by rejecting all credit card payments. Our own tests of credit cards doesn't work. The form will work for awhile, and then we lose critical time and labor with all the calls that the link won't accept credit card numbers and we have to manually take payments. Its unsustainable.

Review of Keela as an admin and user

Pros:

I like that it has features we can use on a daily basis all in one system.

Cons:

Any new product enhancement isn't automatically added to your subscription. Often has to pay additional fee.

Keela streamlined us

Comments: Overall our experience has been very positive, and I am happy to use Keela for work every day.

Pros:

Our intro to Keela was fast and furious, but the customer service team made starting up very easy. The interface is user friendly, and everything is clearly labelled. We now have all of our contacts in Keela, and use the form feature to embed all of our forms onto our website. Keela forms look so much more professional than the Google forms we were using. Looking for info or data on Keela is quick and easy, and it's also simple to edit or change things as needed. It has made our paperwork load lighter, and for that we are grateful!

Cons:

The only con I can think of is that you have to manually integrate duplicate contacts, but other than that it's a great service.

Easy Button

Comments: We shopped around for something affordable. I have works with other CRMs that were even more difficult to navigate but when we were able to master them, it was useful.
With Keela, I was hoping for a little more ease.

Pros:

The price and the access. It is easy to share with colleagues, has great sections of it suite.

Cons:

Although it is easy to access I seem to get lost trying to use it. As a CRM, I am sure it is not in anyway easy but I would think it could be, maybe. It also looks confusing. Is it in Dark Mode yet colorful and blocky.

Capterra Keela Review

Comments: With Keela being fairly new for us still, everyday we use it we are learning new things that can be done within Keela! It has been a bit of an adjustment but we see lots of potential with Keela.

Pros:

I personally love how customizable Keela can be depending on the user. It's also nice that there are many functions that can be taken advantage of in Keela, keeping most of our Data in 1 place instead of spread out between multiple products.

Cons:

With the amount of Data that was in our old database, we have had a hard time with the transition of correct data into Keela from our old server. It has taken more time then we have envisioned to get everything into Keela from Kindful. Additionally, I have personally had issues with importing taking up to 6 hours with Keela.

Fantastic product for NPO's

Comments: We're happy to finally have a cloud-based database where many of our team members can access important information and we can all work together to perform tasks. Working with Keela has been a positive experience from the beginning and we especially appreciate that they consider feedback and are constantly improving and making updates.

Pros:

Keela has become our one-stop-shop for donor, member, e-mail management, etc. and has streamlined our processes immensely. The integration and import of all of our current data was seamless and quick and if we ever ran into any issues, customer service was very helpful. Keela is very easy to use and learn, which made training our very busy staff and volunteers very easy.

Cons:

Our organization has some pretty specific needs, and not every feature from our previous donor/member database was able to be customized in Keela. However, we were able to find some work-arounds and the pros of using Keela vastly outweigh the cons.

Keela Review

Comments: We are now able to track all of our sponsors and communicate more effectively with them. When we have fundraisers, we can create e-blasts and link them to our website. Support in is up! I am so happy.

Pros:

This software is so user friendly. When I began using this software, I had extremely limited knowledge of computer use and I was still able to figure it out quite easily. The software is able to accommodate all of our needs and do what we need it to do to help our animal shelter and fundraisers run smoothly and with accurate data. It is easy to track everything we need. I am so impressed. And for the price... I can't imagine using anything else. There is no need to spend a lot of money on some of these other programs when Keela and do ALL you need!

Cons:

So far, the only thing that I don't like is that I cannot print off an e-blast that I design to post in various vet offices and at the shelter. I have to create a separate brochure for anything besides e-blasts. Maybe this is possible and I just don't know how to do it. But to me, this is the only draw-back.

Great experience and meets many of our needs, but there's still room for improvement.

Pros:

The contacts database is great - it's easy to use, searchable, updates donations automatically, allows the team to stay up to date on who is assigned to the individual and events involving the individual. We used DonorPro at my previous place of employment, and it was more expensive and more complicated to use than Keela. Keela offers great value for it's database. Would love to connect to people's linkedin profiles and have pics, etc. Customer support is excellent. I get answers to my questions quickly, and they are always happy to help.

Cons:

Some functionality is still missing - when adding tags to new contacts, you need the option to check a bunch at once (almost everyone has more than one tag) as opposed to having to select each one individually. We haven't used the campaigns option much as we are familiar with and like the options of MailChimp. It's great that we can import data from MailChimp; however, we make all of our templates and mailings on MailChimp because it has so much more to offer in design and customization than Keela's campaigns, which we find to be very basic. There's also many features that I wish Keela had so that it could be a "one stop shop" for our needs. For example, a calendar that has deadlines and events on it for all to see that also connects with other parts of Keela so if there's an event on the calendar, this then becomes an automatic option for an "interaction" with those who attended; better syncing with Google Docs so that we can open and edit the docs in Keela versus having to download them or go to another webpage; ability to do/plan social media; and a Keela mobile app to access things on the go.

Game changer for our non profit

Comments: We now have way better data management. We had a really clunky membership program before Keela, and now people can easily become members and set up an auto-renewal for their membership, which is a game changer for us. We are finding over 70% of members are opting for auto renewal, which is saving us a stack of time sending follow up emails that are being lost.

Pros:

We are a small non profit and we were managing all our relationships and donors on spreadsheets. We knew we needed to take the leap to a CRM, but we were hesitant to invest the money. Over 6 months we trialled all the main non profit CRMs, and Keela came out head and shoulders above the rest. Although it is an additional expense, we easily earn that back in increased donations and recurring donations set up through Keela. There are many features of Keela we don't use, but if you had a sophisticated fundraising team they would be great.

Cons:

Some features are not as customizable as I would like, for example, you can't have a pay what you want/custom membership amount, which was a core component of our membership program.

Great for tracking and managing our contacts for our non-profit

Comments: It is a great CRM for our needs. It has increased the ability to share contacts and all associated correspondence and information. As we move to track our donations and volunteer connections, I think it will be an effective tool to manage and track them. I have also been blown away by the awesome customer service when I have a question.

Pros:

Keela is very easy to use. There is lots of support, training, and help available, both through a person, but also through online tutorial videos, etc. Makes storing donation (dollars and in-kind) and volunteer hour information easy. I love the smart list feature to tease out certain profiles and get some statistics. Being able to store correspondence information is great, especially for sharing the information with staff.

Cons:

Keela is very tied to Google products, which is great for Google product users, but is lacking for other browsers and platforms (i.e. Mozilla Firefox). A method to do a bulk volunteer hour/donation input within Keela would be great. The spreadsheets for doing this are a bit confusing.

Vertile Foundation

Comments: It's been good. One other thing, your [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] offered to donate money to us when we first signed up. This never happened and we weren't credited that amount either. It would be nice to get that as a credit for next year.

Pros:

It's very easy to use. I really like that we can put in recurring donations easily.

Cons:

Right now, we're mainly using this software to help with time-consuming tasks like sending tax receipts. It would be really helpful if you had a very customizable template for these letters. I would only like to show the necessary info - date, amount and customer name. They don't need anything else from the database and if it's messy and include too much info, we'll have to do it manually. Also, we prefer to not to put dates in there, so it would be nice to send a receipt that a cumulative amount for the year or one that lists out all of the dates and amounts. Some people want all of the amounts and dates but 95% don't. As we start using Keela more for targeting larger donors, your reporting features will be nice. It would be great to see top donors by year and then compare them by year. This allows us to see if someone is donating more or less than usual. This also helps us identify potential larger donors. You have a total donations amount listed in the contact summary. It would be nice to have a list by year for the last 3 years so we can easily see a trend and a report that shows this would also be great.

Keela -- Quality Nonprofit Software at an Affordable Price

Pros:

What I enjoy most about Keela is how many features are included at an affordable rate. Working at a small organization, we were able to transition the vast majority of our spreadsheets and loose systems into one. We also were previously using an outdated hardware CRM system installed on a single, unreliable office computer and were in desperate need of a cloud-based system.

Cons:

Because Keela is a system that does not include the bells and whistles of more expensive options, some functionality does seem limited. While most issues are very minor, I would say my biggest frustration is not being able to easily track married couples in the same contact entry.

Easy to use!

Comments: Keela has been easy to set-up, use, and teach to our team. Their customer service has also been excellent and easy to communicate with.

Pros:

I like that this software doesn't seem to overwhelm you with features and 'bells and whistles.' It does everything we need it to do, in a simple and digestible way.

Cons:

It recently underwent an upgrade to Keela 2.0. I liked the dashboard / format of the previous version better but it still works the same so I will adapt!

Good bang for your buck!

Comments: Amazing customer support and service. They go above and beyond to make sure their customers are happy and using the program to the full potential!

Pros:

It is such a great, simple to use CRM. I love that you can easily track all your donations, communicate with your donors, run reports, create forms to imbed on your website and it even sends out donation receipts!

Cons:

The one con would be that I can't create a form to sell a large variety of items. We sell gift cards as a fundraiser and would love to be able to create a form with all the cards and denominations we offer. This would allow us to be completely online with our fundraising. Also, the fact that it can only integrate with Eventbrite doesn't help us. We use different platforms like Auctria and EventCaddy and would love to see those integrated so we can essentially be using Keela exclusively for our fundraising.