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 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.

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 it doesn't integrate with any other tools, the website design options are incredibly limited, outdated and stale looking.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!

Its simple and has the website/database/financials/surveys/emails all in one.

The email system is not pretty and has too many templates hidden/buried to update. Make it look more like constant contact and I have no more complaints. Love it

This checks all the boxes for us. We needed a platform that let us send comms to our members, manage our membership list (including sending invoices for renewals and new members), manage event registrations, post news articles, allow our members (and non-members for a fee) to post job openings, and more...and this fit the bill! It was affordable, easy to use, the initial set-up was simple (StarChapter is a HUGE help and does a great deal of the work), and we've found their support team to be very responsive and helpful. We're very happy with our switch, and now all our data is managed in one place - which was the ultimate problem we set out to solve with our previous website.

There are a few little nuances we've discovered, such as not being able to use multi-byte characters (emojis, etc) in subject lines of comms and not being able to export ALL comm data (must be exported individually). I think the biggest thing that could stand to be improved is the comm data - you can get open rate, but that's pretty much it. You can't see what links are clicked on the most, or other data that other email-specific platforms offer. That said, it wasn't a deal-breaker for us.

StarChapter has streamlined our volunteer organization's processes and saved each of us time — which is important as volunteers! It's eliminated the use of an email campaign system and invoicing system. It has streamlined our communication with the newsletter feature, and contacting members and non-members with the email templates makes our roles simpler. I love that each of our board members are learning how to maintain their own pages through StarChapter's Knowledgebase. Everything you need to know is in there and it's presented in a style that's easy to read, follow and understand. I've had to request support for a couple items that were more complex than what I could handle, and their support team has responded within a day or two to resolve the challenge.

I've been using the software for about eight months. I think I still have so much to learn — it's a very robust software — yet they do make it easy to use. I just wish I could dedicate more time to really diving in to understand the connections between the modules and how to maximize the software.

multi user capable. Everything handled in "one place"

difficult to maintain web pages. have to edit multiple places to update a page. Switched from accepting PayPal to their own credit card processing application. Does not accept any "foreign" card (any card from outside the US, this mean even Canada. We have a number of Canadian based members who can't be processed. Fees are high than PayPal. Can not accept (swipe or chip) cards onsite, have to manually key them in.

This is great for organizations and non profit that need something simple to get them going. We use this to manage members, as well as host our e-commerce type transactions for events.

It is a bit clunky and not as intuitive when wanting to do more advanced level organizational management. For example, if a member has not renewed their membership there is a grace period and then the member gets moved to a different list. If that member wants to renew- they have to create a whole new login which adds to confusion when the user expects to just to be able to login and renew their membership. Since starchapter has membership level built into their pricing, it makes it very hard for organizations to keep a seemless record of "active" and "inactive" members. This makes a big difference when doing complex registration or selling of items on the e-commerce site. For example a member may get a certain discount versuses a non member. It is very clunky if a user wants to pay for a membership and get membership pricing of an event registration all at the same time. It is very limited in that logic.

There is a learning curve to get familiar with the program, but once you do, it is pretty straightforward and relatively user friendly. It is nice to be able to use one platform for the website, events, and email communications.

Creating the events and communications can be frustrating from a formatting perspective if you aren’t used to it – but that is the same in most platforms. And also like most platforms, there are some quirks that you end up just working around to get it to do what you want.

It’s hard to keep the bookkeeping 100% accurate, so I wouldn’t utilize StarChapter’s reporting as your only source of financials.

It's a total package for our membership organization. It allows one program that can be easily transferred to the new board each year. No need to have separate files.

Some of the areas for managing the website are not easy to find, but once you have done it a few times, it starts to get easier. It would be nice to see what the regular member sees when adding items.It's hard to get everyone on the board together to train. Individual training is fine, but it is more beneficial together.It would be nice to have a calendar that members could pull up by month and see the upcoming events. And allow us to add events to the calendar that aren't specific to our chapter but interest our members.

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.

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.

It provides all features/tasks in one software. Reports providing attendance, profits etc.

It's not user-friendly or intuitive as promoted. There's numerous steps to completing a task, revisions of different kinds are not in the same screens where things were created, all pages look the same no matter what category is being used (no color coding, no differentiation for easier learning), and a serious lack of graphics.

Ease of implementation, orientation to members, flexibility, ease of using various modules - meeting manager, newsletter, etc. What we were most pleased with was the ability to integrate with PayPal to streamline our dues and meeting registrations. We have seen a huge increase in the retention of members as well as new members since implementing Star Chapter

The only CON I can think of is not having the ability to pay for multiple members with one payment (i.e. company pays for 2+ individuals) Each member record stands alone and there is no bridge to a company name.