StarChapter - Avis

Star Chapter is user friendly for both members and administrators. Customer support is great and highly responsive to questions or problems. Training and resources for administrators and Board members are excellent. One of my groups consists of a senior chapter, a young professionals chapter and a non-profit 501(c)3 education foundation. They wanted one website for all three organizations with capability to manage each of them. The Star Chapter tech team was wonderful in working with our volunteer Board and communications committee to develop a website "skin" that would function on Star Chapter's system.

I have some Board members that find it cumbersome to RSVP for a meeting when responding to an email invitation. They would prefer a one click method to indicate if they will attend or not, rather than the multiple steps Star Chapter's system requires to login as a member and register to attend a Board or committee meeting that doesn't require a payment. I have asked Star Chapter to consider changing the system to allow for a "yes" or "no" response when members are responding to a system generated event invitation. We had this with Cvent and it worked extremely well.

StarChapter offers good functionality and management for an affordable price. It puts our website and association management into the cloud, where it belongs, and doesn't require a high degree of tech savvy to manage the site or our day-to-day activity.

The lack of a financial interface is PAINFUL, and it has resulted in higher than usual external accounting expense to make sense of what we do.

I thought we would like that it was an all-in-one solution, but even that isn't worth the headaches of trying to use it.

Too many pros to list here but this box is requiring more characters . . . it doesn't integrate with any other tools, the website design options are incredibly limited, outdated and stale looking. Check out their website and have a look at the one positive testimonial listed - if you visit that site, you will see they are no longer using StarChapter!

StarChapter set everything up
The training they provided was comprehensive
The support is excellent. I had a few questions and received a response back within hours or even minutes.
Once you get the hang of how it works, it is easy to make changes
The price is incredible! We are a very small non-profit with a limited budget.
Our users love the software. The admins really like the back end and the information it provides.
Our members love the website and how easy it is to renew membership, sign up for classes and events.

Reporting is a little weak:
I can find everything I need but it isn't as easy as I think it could be. (That said it could be that I haven't figured everything out yet.)
I can get a list of new members, members that have renewed, and members that have not renewed BUT it does not produce a very attractive output. This would definitely not stop me from recommending this software.

The ease of use and support that we need

There's nothing that we don't like! It fits perfectly with our needs and budget

For an affordable price, your association can host their website and manage it easily. It has all of the features needed where you don't have to have 1000 platforms and systems to manage and keep track of logins for.

The biggest complaint I hear is that the meeting registration has one to two too many pages to click through vs. being a one page sign up. That would be a great feature to enhance.

It streamlines a lot of the processes we were doing through multiple platforms.

The turnaround time for support. When I'm stumped, I have to fill out a support ticket and it often takes 48 hours to hear back via email. It often isn't what I was asking and then it takes another 48 hours for the correct response. The functionality is usually there but sometimes difficult to find. It would be amazing to actually be able to speak with someone or at the very least, online tech support.

Software has a great website component - catalog of website pages format and views, flexible build, sleek modern look and great background site security. The website provides a "wow" factor.
The Association management portion of the software has many tools for membership management, event management, dues management and email communications functions. All are very helpful.
There are a number of on-line resources serving as a knowledge base and their support is wonderful. Most questions are answered within 24 hours.
Members also really like the ability to pay dues or make donations or purchases on-line.

As a heritage culture society we had a few membership/group use case issues that the software couldn't really address and there wasn't much guidance on possible workarounds. We needed a few more project hours on our implementation phase (we were turned over to support before we went live). There needs to be a user manual document to further define screen fields as there is great flexibility in the system. While the videos are helpful, they don't provide enough detail for taking the system to beyond a basic level. The other key limitation is the lack of interfacing to financial systems like QuickBooks. While we really like the ability for members to pay dues or buy from store via credit-card, there is double entry for bookkeeping due to lack of interface.

The ease of use that allows us to have a members only section on our website; the quick and straightforward set up and designs for each page on our site; the ability to adapt pages to include accessibility options for folks using screen readers or are hearing impaired.

The communication tool - we've been using Constant Contact for several years and we've found the flexibility both in e-list management and design that CC provides will keep us using that service over StarChapters.

The look and feel of the StarChapter ("SC") website is so much better than what we previously had through the national "mother" association.

Implementation was said to be quick and easy. We had exactly the opposite. Little follow-up, unclear directions, reliance on written tutorials rather than a live body to help us through the process, email contact that was not direct from the implementation person which caused the "system-generated" email to not just get caught in a spam filter but to get lost in a quarantine quagmire. Also, we provided tax details that only were acceptable after we pointed out it was all the IRS issued to us. SC was able to go to the IRS's online look-up which gave SC the same details we sent them - then they said what we sent was good. I still don't understand what the hang-up was but didn't push it any further.When we finally got approval for the StarPay ("SP") module, the SC implementation person turned off our "collect money at the door" option for registrants (she was not directed to do so), and had to go back again to get her to turn that back on. It was an easy and overnight fix, but shouldn't have had to go through the time and hassle of doing that in the first place.

I like the ease of use and connectedness of all of the software segments. The product also gives a lot of functions for the price which makes it an easy sell to our clients from a value standpoint.

Some items are clunky and not as nimble as they could be. I also feel like starchapter has stopped developing enhancements or improvements outside of the website templates that they sell for a fee. I would like to see more robust reporting or the ability to build ad hoc reports, enhanced functionality on the events with regards to promo codes/discounts, adjusting registrant information/substitutions, and more robust functionality with the eblasting system.

Being able to have a Member Manager page, easier set up for events, invoicing system, and communication platform. These were all pieces missing previously. StarChapter has helped to make almost everything easier.

It can be difficult to update certain things. For example: getting the correct address to appear on invoices (or get it on invoices at all). It needs to be updated in three different places. It would be nice it you could change it in one spot (in settings for example) and have it feed to the others. Also, there seems to be a disconnect on the member login side. When a primary contact renews membership, it doesn't renew anyone else with them. Not sure how to fix that, but it hasn't been a major issue that needs to be addressed yet. Just a convenience thing.

The best aspect of StarChapter is that it is an all-in-one platform to create and track event registrations and memberships while also enabling us to send emails to our database.

The list of items that I like least include two aspects: membership sign-ups or renewals that get hung-up as pending because the payment didn't go thru, yet the system sends out a notification that there is a new member which suggests everything is good to go. This has necessitated a multi-step process where we have to vet each membership transaction. To help alleviate this problem, we have requested the ability for automatic renewals which is not available at this time. Additionally, the back-end of SC is not very intuitive or user-friendly which means it's challenging to become proficient.

Ease of learning how to do stuff for someone who isn't a technology nerd. Sometimes that means my current intern has to look at the video and then show me, but once the lightbulb goes on, I can do 'most anything.

Some of their training videos have left me wondering what I just watched. That's when I reach out to a digital native / millennial to help me "get it." Or, I submit a job ticket.

StarChapter makes it very easy to track registration and payments for our monthly meetings. Our previous process was for attendees to email one specific person, and all payments were handled on-site at the meeting. We were able to reduce the time commitment for our Registration chair significantly by switching to StarChapter, and we've been able to open up pre-payment for meetings through online credit card payments. This helps to ensure more turnout, since people are more likely to show up when they've already paid.

It is also much easier to enable multiple people to work on the site, and those people don't need a background in web development to do important tasks that keep the Chapter running, like posting new meetings and newsletters, and keeping our calendar updated.

My least favorite part of the platform is the text editor, which isn't terribly surprising. If you want to include more than simple text for an event or mailing, you are better off creating the content outside StarChapter and importing an image or attaching a PDF with your content. I think this is a pretty typical complaint with text editors, but it would streamline our processes if we could do everything in one place.

Allows members to register and pay online and provides the database from which to send notifications.

Not dynamic. Very linear in reporting etc. For example, I want to report showing all of the guest for a meeting, not a list by registration date or name. Who said they are coming in person? Not to have to get the report and manipulate the CSV file.

Robust tools

Not very intuitive

we can manage events, communication, member database and website all from one platform

the communications tools are limited and the membership functions don't allow for much flexibility with memberships that have multiple people listed. The system forces you to enter a per person dues rate. So a 3 person membership that costs $100 actually costs $33.33 in their system, which when multiplied by three doesn't result in a round number. Members can't upgrade and downgrade as they see fit as well, they have to get in touch with staff.