NetForum Enterprise

Customer Service:

The bright spot. Support is friendly, timely, and knowledgeable. And since it's based in the U.S., language is not a problem as with so many providers. My only reservation is that sometimes they can't fix a problem because of platform limitations, and refer your ticket to development. All in all, a good experience here.

Ease of Use:

Day One of my introduction to NetForum Enterprise felt like a step back in time. The graphics were dated. Even on a Mac using Safari the text was hard to read. The interface had no dashboard or jumpoff page like cloud platforms I like. Navigation was like a foreign country until a person showed me. I'm no stranger to technology, so this was a rough welcome.

Subsequent experience with the interface has been similar, with occasional exceptions. For example, mouseover tooltips almost invariably echo the fixed text on the page. How is that help?!

Relationships in this product favor individual memberships over organizational ones, but we've been able to overcome most of those setbacks without too much hardship. But it does come into play at times.

At least you can learn the interface. And once you're used to it, it's not terrible, which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1.

Reliability:

The service rarely goes down, but there are what I would call "brownouts", especially for those who work on the back end doing customizations. Many days I have to try more than once before getting a stable connection. Occasionally the lag is abysmal or the VPN won't connect, so I decide to give up and work on something else.

Customization:

This is a slog uphill through mud under barbed wire. Whether or not you experience a hail of bullets depends on your boss.

Even if you know MS SQL and HTML, customizing forms is difficult and unintuitive. The GUI for designing pages is riddled with bugs and glitches, and requires MS Internet Explorer. (I hear 2017 doesn't require it.) There is much more to the iceberg just like this, such as the confusing relationship between forms, wizards, and objects.

The challenges here probably stem from the underlying architecture. Unless you have someone with the time and ability to perform/learn complex scripting, you will be paying developers to do the work. And the costs rack up quickly, because this platform eats hours like a hungry alligator in a bunny enclosure.

If you need features that don't exist, there are third-party services available for a fee. It may in fact be cost-effective to pursue them in place of customization.

Conclusion:

This product could be a decent fit for larger associations, especially those which rely on individual memberships. I recommend a competent developer on staff with a training fund, or else a budget for customization and/or third-party add-ons.

I cannot recommend this for small or medium associations without them knowing the challenges they face. There are almost certainly better AMS products for their needs.

(Not incentivized, just an opinionated and partially-frustrated customer.)

Customer Service:

The bright spot. Support is friendly, timely, and knowledgeable. And since it's based in the U.S., language is not a problem as with so many providers. My only reservation is that sometimes they can't fix a problem because of platform limitations, and refer your ticket to development. All in all, a good experience here.

Ease of Use:

Day One of my introduction to NetForum Enterprise felt like a step back in time. The graphics were dated. Even on a Mac using Safari the text was hard to read. The interface had no dashboard or jumpoff page like cloud platforms I like. Navigation was like a foreign country until a person showed me. I'm no stranger to technology, so this was a rough welcome.

Subsequent experience with the interface has been similar, with occasional exceptions. For example, mouseover tooltips almost invariably echo the fixed text on the page. How is that help?!

Relationships in this product favor individual memberships over organizational ones, but we've been able to overcome most of those setbacks without too much hardship. But it does come into play at times.

At least you can learn the interface. And once you're used to it, it's not terrible, which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1.

Reliability:

The service rarely goes down, but there are what I would call "brownouts", especially for those who work on the back end doing customizations. Many days I have to try more than once before getting a stable connection. Occasionally the lag is abysmal or the VPN won't connect, so I decide to give up and work on something else.

Customization:

This is a slog uphill through mud under barbed wire. Whether or not you experience a hail of bullets depends on your boss.

Even if you know MS SQL and HTML, customizing forms is difficult and unintuitive. The GUI for designing pages is riddled with bugs and glitches, and requires MS Internet Explorer. (I hear 2017 doesn't require it.) There is much more to the iceberg just like this, such as the confusing relationship between forms, wizards, and objects.

The challenges here probably stem from the underlying architecture. Unless you have someone with the time and ability to perform/learn complex scripting, you will be paying developers to do the work. And the costs rack up quickly, because this platform eats hours like a hungry alligator in a bunny enclosure.

If you need features that don't exist, there are third-party services available for a fee. It may in fact be cost-effective to pursue them in place of customization.

Conclusion:

This product could be a decent fit for larger associations, especially those which rely on individual memberships. I recommend a competent developer on staff with a training fund, or else a budget for customization and/or third-party add-ons.

I cannot recommend this for small or medium associations without them knowing the challenges they face. There are almost certainly better AMS products for their needs.

(Not incentivized, just an opinionated and partially-frustrated customer.)

NetForum Enterprise has long been marketed as a comprehensive and robust software solution for membership-based organizations. However, I have found myself frustrated and disappointed with the product's performance. In this review, I will delve into some of the issues that have been experienced when using NetForum Enterprise.

Customer Service Lacking

NetForum Enterprise's lackluster customer service. Their support team is slow to respond and often provides inadequate solutions to their problems. This can be especially frustrating.

Persistent Caching Issue

Since December 2023, my organization has been experiencing a persistent caching issue with NetForum Enterprise. This means that information is not updating correctly, and changes are not being reflected in the system. Despite months of work, the NetForum team has yet to fully resolve this issue, causing major disruptions for our staff and members.

Expensive Customization

Another major drawback of using NetForum Enterprise is its costly customization options. Need to update a report that comes with baseline options? That's considered customization and will cost you extra. Want to make changes to confirmation emails or welcome letters? You guessed it, more money. These additional fees can quickly add up and put a strain on an organization's budget.

Limited Marketing Module

The marketing module in NetForum Enterprise is also lacking in functionality and flexibility. We have been told that customizing content, such as confirmation emails and welcome letters, requires additional customization fees. And even then, the options for customization are limited and clunky to use.

Clunky System

Overall, in my opinion the entire NetForum Enterprise system has proved to be clunky and inefficient. Completing simple tasks often requires multiple steps and can be time-consuming. This can be frustrating for organizations that need a streamlined system to efficiently manage their membership and events.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the drawbacks of using NetForum Enterprise far outweigh any potential benefits. The persistent caching issue, expensive customization options, limited marketing module, and clunky system all make this software a poor choice for organizations looking to effectively manage their membership and events.

NetForum Enterprise has long been marketed as a comprehensive and robust software solution for membership-based organizations. However, I have found myself frustrated and disappointed with the product's performance. In this review, I will delve into some of the issues that have been experienced when using NetForum Enterprise.

Customer Service Lacking

NetForum Enterprise's lackluster customer service. Their support team is slow to respond and often provides inadequate solutions to their problems. This can be especially frustrating.

Persistent Caching Issue

Since December 2023, my organization has been experiencing a persistent caching issue with NetForum Enterprise. This means that information is not updating correctly, and changes are not being reflected in the system. Despite months of work, the NetForum team has yet to fully resolve this issue, causing major disruptions for our staff and members.

Expensive Customization

Another major drawback of using NetForum Enterprise is its costly customization options. Need to update a report that comes with baseline options? That's considered customization and will cost you extra. Want to make changes to confirmation emails or welcome letters? You guessed it, more money. These additional fees can quickly add up and put a strain on an organization's budget.

Limited Marketing Module

The marketing module in NetForum Enterprise is also lacking in functionality and flexibility. We have been told that customizing content, such as confirmation emails and welcome letters, requires additional customization fees. And even then, the options for customization are limited and clunky to use.

Clunky System

Overall, in my opinion the entire NetForum Enterprise system has proved to be clunky and inefficient. Completing simple tasks often requires multiple steps and can be time-consuming. This can be frustrating for organizations that need a streamlined system to efficiently manage their membership and events.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the drawbacks of using NetForum Enterprise far outweigh any potential benefits. The persistent caching issue, expensive customization options, limited marketing module, and clunky system all make this software a poor choice for organizations looking to effectively manage their membership and events.

As you may know, this is one of the top three or four larger AMS's available on the market. But that's not because it ranks as one of the best in that market. The folks on netFORUM enterprise have mostly been on there for years. They got in when the systems for a big association were not as varied and up to date as the choices you have now. My key issues with NFE are:

1. Community Brands has taken several decent and good companies and pulled them into a bad company. netFORUM and its creators were (and still are) members of our community. They sold to CB who then began systematically making the service and the support worse and worse. They shared development resources across all their products and as time has gone on, the support and development of the product have pushed many of us to get support and customization from third party vendors.

2. The product doesn't seem to move forward in the look and feel, nor the technology underneath. - Lack of REST API's instead of web services is one example. Another is the lack of modern capabilities in the eCommerce platform and pages. We had to go to a separate eCommerce platform to get what we needed in terms of bundling content, events, products and memberships. 

3. Expense. To have it on-prem is expensive in terms of the licensing fees, maintenance and support and running a hardware environment. They do have a cloud option which we never really looked at because before we'd look to move our on-prem to the cloud and take that expense on, we'd just assume move to something modern and effective.

4. Ease of use is not there. It's built like an old Microsoft spreadsheet with tabs and rows of search results, etc. There are better looking and easier to use systems out there.

The system runs reliably as long as the hardware environment it's on does. And I've seen plenty of people do very detailed customizations, so if you are looking for a system that can be totally customized for your needs, you should certainly put netFORUM on your list, but it should be on there with other ones as well.

As you may know, this is one of the top three or four larger AMS's available on the market. But that's not because it ranks as one of the best in that market. The folks on netFORUM enterprise have mostly been on there for years. They got in when the systems for a big association were not as varied and up to date as the choices you have now. My key issues with NFE are:

1. Community Brands has taken several decent and good companies and pulled them into a bad company. netFORUM and its creators were (and still are) members of our community. They sold to CB who then began systematically making the service and the support worse and worse. They shared development resources across all their products and as time has gone on, the support and development of the product have pushed many of us to get support and customization from third party vendors.

2. The product doesn't seem to move forward in the look and feel, nor the technology underneath. - Lack of REST API's instead of web services is one example. Another is the lack of modern capabilities in the eCommerce platform and pages. We had to go to a separate eCommerce platform to get what we needed in terms of bundling content, events, products and memberships. 

3. Expense. To have it on-prem is expensive in terms of the licensing fees, maintenance and support and running a hardware environment. They do have a cloud option which we never really looked at because before we'd look to move our on-prem to the cloud and take that expense on, we'd just assume move to something modern and effective.

4. Ease of use is not there. It's built like an old Microsoft spreadsheet with tabs and rows of search results, etc. There are better looking and easier to use systems out there.

The system runs reliably as long as the hardware environment it's on does. And I've seen plenty of people do very detailed customizations, so if you are looking for a system that can be totally customized for your needs, you should certainly put netFORUM on your list, but it should be on there with other ones as well.

• The events module especially is a constant source of complaints from staff and even members. As a chapter organization, providing AMS support to all our chapters is part of the benefit to them, but several have paid for a different event management platform because NetForum is so finicky. The technical support is so bad that I honestly wonder if NetForum is the unloved redheaded stepchild of Community Brands, especially when I see people have good experiences with NimbleAMS or Aptify.
• There are loads of updates and service packs to stay on top of and customizations and configurations might hold you back and keep you on a previous version of the platform for years too long. Logging in can feel like traveling back in time. 
• We've been using NetForum since before Abila acquired Avectra (2013) and the user experience and customer service has gotten worse with each merger or acquisition. We would have already changed our AMS except COVID took a chunk out of the budget. 

• The events module especially is a constant source of complaints from staff and even members. As a chapter organization, providing AMS support to all our chapters is part of the benefit to them, but several have paid for a different event management platform because NetForum is so finicky. The technical support is so bad that I honestly wonder if NetForum is the unloved redheaded stepchild of Community Brands, especially when I see people have good experiences with NimbleAMS or Aptify.
• There are loads of updates and service packs to stay on top of and customizations and configurations might hold you back and keep you on a previous version of the platform for years too long. Logging in can feel like traveling back in time. 
• We've been using NetForum since before Abila acquired Avectra (2013) and the user experience and customer service has gotten worse with each merger or acquisition. We would have already changed our AMS except COVID took a chunk out of the budget.