OnBoard Reviews

Great Board Management Tool!

Comments: Having board files in one location will cut down on the amount of Trustees needing me to track things down and will serve as a secondary backup of our precious files. Customer service is astounding, especially compared to what I experienced or see available with a more expensive, similar platform I demoed, and the interface is more modern than the other platform as well. So OnBoard looks and feels great and was well received. My life has improved since adding this feature, saving hours with creating Board materials.

Pros:

This was a great cloud-based portal for full management of board materials, easy creation of Board Books, and creation of an archive in one location. This replaced a home-brewed portal that was difficult to use and clunky. Now, I can easily create and update board books instead of wasting precious time making manual, difficult updates using Adobe Pro. Great customer support.

Cons:

Some features we don't have since unfortunately they cost extra. We also have a difficult usage case that has required some workarounds but that is on us for being complicated. I hope one day they allow more than one Zoom platform to be connected to the account.

Alternatives Considered: BoardEffect

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Our home brewed Drupal solution was hard to use and our IT Department required too many hoops to use off the company property. With OnBoard, you can log in securely through MFA at home or at work, which is much easier for Trustees to use, and OnBoard is easier to both manage and use than our home brewed product.

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Cost, customer support, comparison of experiences with sales reps, how the competing sales rep treated me when I said we picked OnBoard, and the look of the interface

Secure, reliable and fast. None other like Onboard.

Comments: Starting from implementation, Onboard has shown a consistent commendable performance. It makes sense for us and I highly recommend it.

Pros:

Onboard has brought revolution in board communication. It securely create and organizes board materials just by a few clicks ensuring full control and better decisions making. The customer support team is wonderful and committed. It is quite easy to take charge of who accesses board information ensuring full confidentiality and data protection. Onboard is easy to customize and simplifies board meetings management.

Cons:

Onboard is straight forward and user friendly. It has worked perfectly well for us. Nothing to complain about so far.

Makes all updates available to the board at any time

Comments: With OnBoard, we no longer have to worry about board meetings. Updates and attachments are ready early, and it’s great that it has enabled us to document reviews and approvals transparently.

Pros:

I loved the ease of gathering updates in one place with OnBoard. It’s great that it allows updates to flow from members, and we can create sections and gather updates for each section independently. I loved how we can review meeting minutes and keep attaching updates on points related to our section and arrange them to be ready before the next meeting. The documentation capabilities are high quality, as well as the chat channel that enables us to answer inquiries and discuss smoothly. The review and approval documentation mechanism with it is excellent and enhances governance within our organization.

Cons:

With OnBoard, there are no cons, it keeps updates going and prepares reports and dashboards smoothly.

This Software is Now in the Cash Flow Phase

Comments: We are so disappointed with the ongoing lack of support. We have been asking for basic feature additions for years, and have even offered to pay for additional development (we are a $400M company). The software platform is clearly past the investment phase, and we regret the past few years of investment from a time and financial perspective.

Pros:

The portion of the software focused on meeting orchestration is good. The feature functionality around scheduling meetings, building agendas, and aggregating attachments works well (although this doesn't carry through actually running a meeting).

Cons:

During meetings, the meeting book does not automatically size to the window. At all. As users scroll through the meeting, it is very distracting to continually zoom/unzoom/scroll right/scroll down to fit information to the screen. This functionality is standard in PDF readers. Online discussions are not threaded. You may only have ONE long-running discussion with each distinct set of people. It makes the feature useless for all but the most mundane of communications. The software does not support read-only audit users. Most organizations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, need to provide access to state examiners, federal examiners, or financial auditors. Despite asking for this functionality for years, the only response is that we may buy more licenses to support temporary users, which would require manually back-allocating user permissions to all meetings and files.

Great product and good value

Comments: I have had a very positive experience with OnBoard, from the initial sales conversations right through to the feedback sessions as a client. Customer Service has been very good and the product has worked very well for us. It has greatly reduced the time spent producing paper packs and been very useful in meetings.

Pros:

Simple to use from both an administrators and users perspective. Switch from paper packs to online packs was much simpler than we anticipated. OnBoard listen to recommendations and suggestions from clients and implement them where possible - in the 12 months or so we've been using the product, I've seen a few upgrades which were a direct response to a request from clients. They are regularly updating and innovating to improve the product, which is great to see.

Cons:

Operates a little differently to other well known board pack software, so users familiar with other types may need more guidance to get used to OnBoard. Notifications that uploads have been unsuccessful are a little too subtle - meaning that you can miss it if you are working quickly (as we so often are during board pack creation).

Alternatives Considered: Diligent Boards and Brainloop BoardRoom

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: We felt that the OnBoard product offered the best functionality for us and at the most reasonable price.

If it wasn't so bad it could be an ok service...

Comments: It seemed like a good idea, but it's not worth the investment for a non-profit. OnBoard cost twice as much as our CRM and project management systems combined. And the board members weren't impressed that we were trying to improve board management in this way. They didn't want to learn a new thing. OnBoard made cancelling such a hassle that we wish we'd never would have tried it. If not for the crooked cancellation policies I would probably say that it would be a good fit for a corporate board that won't notice an additional $500 to $800 expense per board meeting to make agendas and minutes a bit easier. Given our experience though, I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Pros:

It made it easy to write and distribute agendas and board packets. It also made it easy to write and distribute minutes. Customer service was very responsive.

Cons:

Most everything else. The first time we tried to use the Zoom function it didn't work and it made our organization's leadership look incompetent. The voting functions and minutes don't integrate properly. Most of all, the company has a very high-pressure sales team with some unethical fine print. We signed a contract that clearly stated a one-year term, but the user agreement on the website has hidden autorenewal language. When we indicated that we weren't renewing they sent the balance for 2025 to collections.

Excellent combination of value and options

Comments: OnBoard has streamlined my work as the Board Admin and has allowed board members access to all files they should have access to whenever they need it. Not all board members are quick to adopt the new system and this is causing a lag in the full usage for our company but this is a people issue, not a tech issue. The tech is very easy and fairly intuitive.

Pros:

OnBoard is easy to administer and easy to use. It allows me to configure the different areas as I need to and grant granular permissions. It is a great value for the non-profit business that needs to be agile with reliable access to all the items board members could need.

Cons:

The only item I wish could be better is the integration with Zoom. The feature works fine but when board members or hosts use the Zoom link inside OnBoard they lose some functionality. To get around this I have taken to posting the Zoom link for the meeting in its title and ask the board members to copy and paste the link into their browser. If they didn't want full use of all Zoom options they are welcome to use the link provided inside the portal.

Alternatives Considered: BoardEffect and Boardable

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: OnBoard was the best mix of options and price. I don't feel as though we lost any features we wanted but we saved a good deal of money going with OnBoard.

(Almost) Perfect App for Boards and Committees

Comments: We have been able to upload all of our board and committee documentation in one place. This makes it exceptionally easy to update and share with anyone who has access. We no longer have to print out hundreds of pages for meetings or the Board Orientation Manual. Using OnBoard has allowed us to navigate through our meetings much more fluidly. The more we've used it, the easier it is to leverage.

Pros:

Plenty of room for expansion should the need arise. Extremely feature-filled. Easy but secure log-on (multi-factor identification). Passageways customer satisfaction team seems responsive to our suggestions and needs and incorporates/updates with some frequency.

Cons:

Not the most intuitive in the world to navigate but has improved over time. Wish the screen re-sizing options were somehow less clumsy/clunky. Printing documents or agendas still requires multiple steps.

Alternatives Considered: BoardPro and BoardEffect

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Filled all of our essential requirements and was preferred by our board members when we demonstrated it. Pricing was inline with our budget, although on the higher end. We appreciated having unlimited storage and the ability to add users later on.

Easy interface

Comments: Most functionalities in OnBoard are much easier to use, both as an administrator and as a user. Customer service response has been good, but there are some features that they haven't been able to improve upon (ie agenda).

Pros:

The OnBoard portal is easy for our board members to use with fewer clicks to get the information they need for their meeting. The view is the same from different devices which makes it easier for them to move between laptop and phone views. Having access to AGB resources is invaluable.

Cons:

The feature I would like to see improved the most is the downloaded version of the agenda to Word from the agenda created on the site. It takes a lot of formatting changes to make it look good. The version that downloads is very difficult to read. We have tried uploading our own agenda, but then we lose the nice online version when we pull up the meeting book.

Easy to use and excellent customer care

Comments: Above all, the customer service has been fantastic from exploration to implementation to now customer check-ins. The price is pretty good too.

Pros:

The platform is simple to use and the app is great.

Cons:

Some issues with figuring out how to attach a presentation to the meeting.

Alternatives Considered: Boardable

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Boardvantage was VERY expensive, the platform was old and clunky, and the app was useless.

Switched From: Nasdaq Boardvantage

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: OnBoard had a more robust package and better nonprofit pricing.

Continue to be pleased with the purchase

Comments: I've had an ideal customer experience with OnBoard! From sales to training to implementation ([SENSITIVE CONTENT] is awesome) to maintenance stage and IT needs. Improvements are continually coming. A very responsive team when it comes to questions or the occasional internet glitch. Great online resources for training, learning and best practices, in addition to live help.

Pros:

Ease of use, organization, look, security, customer service, always open to ideas and making improvements, analytics.

Cons:

Minutes builder and surveys could be improved. The ability to add custom fields to profile would be nice.

Alternatives Considered: Diligent Boards and Boardable

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Made the switch when our contract ended with The Governance Institute. Researched several products and OnBoard offered the functionality we needed at a price point we could manage with pandemic unknowns.

Switched From: BoardEffect and Nasdaq Boardvantage

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Functions offered, customer service and price

Flexibility of uploads

Comments: I have been impressed with OnBoard since our executive secretary brought us the product to test. I had hoped for something that was user friendly, more flexible for the various report files we upload, and lower cost than our past product. All of these were checked off the list.

Pros:

In our last board product, it was necessary to convert the files all to .pdf format prior to upload. Upon converting to OnBoard we found the ability to upload various file formats a big time saver for the team putting together all of the reports. And from my own standpoint the ability for board members to share their annotations with me prior to the board meeting is another big time saver during the meeting.

Cons:

I still find there are features I didnt know existed, or I havent been using, so I dont believe I know enough about the software to say that I dislike anything. The software works well and is easy to move from one report to the other.

Alternatives Considered: BoardPaq

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Primarily cost, and ease of use.

Switched From: Diligent Boards

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Ease of file upload which led to hours a month in time savings for our cooperative.

Best decision ever!

Comments: Our trustees love OnBoard. From the users perspective, it is perfect! From my perspective as the admin, I can't imagine an easier transition/implementation. Everyone I've worked with, from sales, through the implementation process, are professionals and willing to help me any way they can. No question goes unanswered. It has been an amazing experience and I'm excited to learn and utilize more of what OnBoard has to offer.

Pros:

Very easy to use and implementation has been seamless.

Cons:

Setting roles/terms was the most tedious part in our setup. Instructions were okay; it took the longest to understand.

Great product

Comments: Very positive experience. It has streamlined our board and committee preparation considerably.

Pros:

Does everything I need it to; integration with Zoom; unlimited storage; ease of providing documents to board members and all committees; good looking/ease of use; responsive staff at OnBoard;

Cons:

An initial learning curve for users, especially older ones; some work to do integrating storage in OnBoard with our existing document storage procedures

Alternatives Considered: BoardPaq, BoardBook, BoardEffect, Nasdaq Boardvantage, Diligent Boards and Boardable

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Combination of price, ease of use, features (not too many, not too few), sales rep

OnBoard is a Success!

Comments: OnBoard provides a secure environment and ensures confidentiality of information. OnBoard provides efficiencies. We are not coping hundreds of pages, assembling notebooks, and mailing board books. Preparation for meetings is streamlined. Support from our customer success manager is excellent. I appreciate the training videos, webinars for users, and 24-7 support.

Pros:

The board recognized the need for a secure platform for its work and wanted to move away from paper documents. We have a 13-member board, and trustees live across the country. The level of experience is varied among our trustees; however, the first trustee who agreed to move to a board solutions platform is the person with the least experience. And, she has had not difficulty using OnBoard. Some of our trustees were exploring OnBoard before we had a training session, and they found it easy to use. We offered one training webinar conducted by our Passageways customer service manager, which was recorded. The trustees used OnBoard for its first board meeting less than three months after acquiring the product and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The trustees found that navigating the site and the board book is easy. They appreciate electronic board books, earlier availability of information, and the ability to add documents as needed, even during the board meeting. In the past, material from investment managers and auditors was provided at the meeting. With OnBoard, these documents were available before the meeting, which dramatically increased the number of pages in the board book, but trustees had the opportunity to review information and prepare questions before the meeting. We were amazed that the use of OnBoard during the meeting went so well. I appreciate the ease with which you can change the agenda and and update/revise materials.

Cons:

Because staff members do not have access to all board materials, permissions have to be set individually for each staff member. While setting permissions is not difficult, it is a learning experience, but our customer success manager is a good teacher and patient! While we have not yet implemented the actions function, we are looking forward to using it for approvals, surveys, and signatures.

OnBoard Provides Ease of Access and Security for Board of Trustees

Comments: Regardless of our board desiring to maintain an in-person meeting format coming out of the pandemic, we are still utilizing the benefits of OnBoard for material distribution, highlighting important information, maintaining current contact details and up-to-date calendar information for upcoming meetings. OnBoard has been a huge support to our Board of Trustees.

Pros:

I am constantly impressed with OnBoard and their continuous improvements. We implemented OnBoard prior to COVID shutting us down and were so thankful to have the technology to enable us to share materials and conduct elections and receive approvals all online. The time this system has saved us is tremendous, but the ease access and security of materials online has been even greater. Trustees can now take action on items while traveling using a phone, tablet or computer without waiting for a package to be delivered. Meeting materials can also be reviewed and stored online providing easy access to current agendas as well as past meeting reference of actions and materials. Binders are not left behind on tables, pages are not lost and we have confidence in the security of the materials online.

Cons:

The challenge for us with OnBoard is simply the fact that we want all of the features and yet because of recent financial challenges that our university has faced we are holding tight to budget dollars and maintaining what we have with OnBoard which is still so much better than nothing! We dream of the future capabilities as there is so much to offer any company.

OnBoard-Get On Board

Comments: I really love working with OnBoard. It is easy to use for the end-user and was an easy adoption for them. As an admin, I can set permissions to various employees, and they can upload documents without my intervention. I like that new features are always coming out to test/try. The company continues to grow, but I have not seen any negative effects of it.

Pros:

The features which I love about OnBoard are the e-signature and approval options. I am able to create surveys and get results much quicker as users are already used to the OnBoard portal. e-signatures were critical during COVID as we couldn't meet in person, but I needed signatures for approval of documents. I also love the customer support of my relationship manager. They are always listening on how to improve the product. Innovative is necessary in an electronic world.

Cons:

The minutes feature is a work in progress. I am sure it works fine for some organizations, just not me. I do not like the fact that the pre-form automatically creates links of documents in the meeting minutes. Starting from scratch is cumbersome as well. They have taken my comments into consideration. Perhaps there will be a third option someday.

OnBoard at Scott Credit Union

Pros:

Our Executive Management team and Board of Directors utilize many of the features. As an administrator, my favorite feature is the ease of building the Board packets. Before OnBoard, I would have to build 100-200 page Board packets within PDF. Then, if a report would change, we would have to replace the page, save the updated file, and post it to our portal...very tedious. Now with OnBoard, an updated report is as easy as dragging and dropping. Our Board also utilizes the voting tool quite often. Previously if there was a vote or approval needed in between meetings, we would have to document it in an email. Now, the voting tool makes it much easier to track.

Cons:

I would like to see an easier way to exclude groups from certain portions of the Board packet. It takes quite a few clicks to exclude a certain group from certain sections as I have to click each member of the group individually (instead of just selecting the group). Also, the ability to add attachments to tasks would be AWESOME since many tasks relate to policy reviews and updates.

OnBoard Board Portal

Comments: We are extremely happy with our decision to use OnBoard! We've been very pleased with our CSMs. Recently we rolled out OnBoard to 2 boards and the rep conducted 3 training sessions for our board members with very short notice. It's been great working with her! When reaching out to her, she's been very quick to respond or forward my email on to tech support.

Pros:

Easy to learn both from an Admin and end user! Security measures of OnBoard! Great support team truly makes this tool excel above others!

Cons:

While building an agenda, sometimes it takes a long time to save edits. This can be frustrating and has resulted in having to re-type edits as they did not save properly. Currently email attachments aren't able to be uploaded to OnBoard without saving the document. Unable to program default admins to all new items vs. currently only individual/creator is default admin. As the owner of the OnBoard tool, I have to rely on others to assign permissions and ensuring human error doesn't happen. It's difficult to assist board admins or board users without access. It would be great to have a Super/Master Admin role which will automatically be assigned with Admin rights.

Great Tool

Pros:

An easy way to gather all board documents into one place to present. Easy for the board to approve the consent agenda.

Cons:

It is not easy to track the terms of each member and committee.

Alternatives Considered: BoardPAC

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Easier to upload documentation.

Switched From: BoardEffect

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Ease of use. Functionality.

How do individuals and businesses live without OnBoard?

Comments: We have been able to use OnBoard for meetings with people in the same room or in different branches, for folks working at home during the pandemic, and a variety of situations. It saves me an incredible amount of time communicating with meeting attendees, and I can't imagine living without OnBoard ever again.

Pros:

This software makes it possible to quickly and easily communicate important information about meetings with attendees. It is wonderful to know that everyone is referencing the same version of documents even if something changes between the time that you publish your documents and the meetings occur.

Cons:

I wish it was less expensive per user so we could make this available to every employee within our organization.

OnBoard has made my Board management tasks a breeze!

Comments: My board materials are now professionally housed in one place with an easy interface for my board to navigate and obtain whatever they need. The agenda timer has encouraged speakers to be more mindful of the meeting progress and keep things running on track. As an administrator, I appreciate the visibility into meeting analytics to know how they board is engaging with what we're posting.

Pros:

My top 3 benefits since using OnBoard include: 1. Very reliable customer/implementation support and ability to hold on-demand training sessions for our board members if/when needed. 2. Very user-friendly and streamlined dashboards to keep my board aware of what they need to pay attention to 3. Meeting minutes builder makes it so much easier to capture my minutes that fumbling with templates and paper notes as before.

Cons:

Overall I'm very satisfied but would appreciate minor tweaks such as being able to see a preview of the notifications my end users receive before they go out or screenshots of samples within the training guides. Also, further customization in the layout of the meeting minutes builder, the ability to attach multiple links and documents to announcements posts rather than just one per announcement, and less clicks to view annotations within the board book + a reply button to annotations instead of the need to post a separate message.

Alternatives Considered: BoardEffect and Nasdaq Boardvantage

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Need for improved and streamlined document, communications, and meeting management. OnBoard's interface and added features are a huge bonus (analytics, built-in surveys, voting, etc.)

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Pricing and user interface look and feel

OnBoard Review

Comments: I believe I can speak for our entire board when I say we really like this product. It has been a game changer for our organization.

Pros:

We use this product for all meetings involving our Board of Directors. Setting up these meetings is so easy and quick. If I get a last minute document, it isn't an issue because the update is instant. We also use the Approval feature for voting on items that need approval when a meeting isn't possible...especially now with social distancing in full swing. I really like the ability to add remote access details to make it easier for our "not so tech savy, older generation" board members. I also like the fact that I can access OnBoard on multiple devices, which allows me to update even if I'm out of the bank or even on vacation. Because the product is so user friendly, our board members learned to navigate quickly, even with their limited technology backgrounds.

Cons:

It is hard to come up with cons regarding the software and the functions that we utilize. There are a lot of features that we do not use. I would like to be able to have a print option on the Approvals section so I can print voting results to be retained with meeting minutes.

An easy-to-use resource for users and admins

Comments: Overall, my experience with OnBoard has been very positive. The word easy covers all the bases. Easy to set up. Easy to administrate. Easy to use. It doesn't get better than that in my opinion. I need something that doesn't require a lot of time and effort. I have a full schedule and OnBoard saves me time.

Pros:

OnBoard is extremely user friendly for both me as the administrator and my volunteers. I was able to jump right in to create our Board portal with little guidance or training. I love that I can create a relevant homepage for our directors with no clutter. Housing documents is simple and neat and easy to navigate.

Cons:

The only downside to the software is that the privilege to download documents has to be given and it's a one or none deal. Being able to allow our volunteers to download some documents such as travel forms and expense reports, but not confidential policies or reports, would be a dream. It would really cut down on the number of emails to and from people.

Passageways - A great Board portal

Comments: We now have a place to keep all our Board documents in one place and for our members to easily access them. You can also give permissions to each individual person or for each document.

Pros:

It was extremely easy to setup and use. I had it setup in less than 1 day. It is user friendly and they are always looking for ways to improve and upgrade the product.

Cons:

There is nothing that we do not like. Some of our people have an issue with the messaging but we have found it to be an internal issue with our IT security.

Alternatives Considered: Diligent Boards

Reasons for Choosing OnBoard: Needed more security and better functionality.

Reasons for Switching to OnBoard: Best product for the price.