Charity Advantage

Hi Kathryn. Thanks for contacting us and we’re happy to help!

We provide support through our popular Live Chat Monday through Friday 10:00 am – 6:00 pm EST. If you were logged into your account at that time, we would have looked forward to assisting you. If you aren’t able to login, we also have Live Chat on our website CharityAdvantage.com. We just launched a brand new site yesterday and the live chat wasn’t functional until this morning. If you had tried to contact us during that time and couldn’t login to your account, we apologize that we were not available. It is extremely rare that a customer would not be able to contact us.

Since we’re not certain of your exact issue at this time, we would suggest one of two things for resolution. If you can login, please do so and use the Live Chat in your account during our support hours. If you are not able to login, please use the Live Chat at CharityAdvantage.com during those same hours. Our team will look forward to assisting!

Regards,

Emily

We have been online for 20 years and have built more nonprofit websites than any other provider. Everyone who signs up receives the same Getting Started email with instructions on how to work with us to get their new website. The Getting Started email is sent automatically and immediately after signup. It usually takes us 14 days or less to build the new site.

We provide professional live chat support so customers can speak directly with one of our experts. It is highly unlikely someone would ever pay us and not receive services unless they didn’t work with us to get their new site. We also reach out to new customers with a welcome call to answer any potential questions. Additionally, customers can build their own websites using our system with over 200 video tutorials and our online support. Beyond this, customer actions would be out of our control. Customers may use our system to build their own sites. They may sign up and not do anything for a period of time because they are busy.

In the event that a customer is not satisfied, we have a well-communicated 90-day money back guarantee. We are the only provider that offers a 90-day money back policy for our low monthly service fees and we don’t charge any additional costs for building the site. Anyone requesting a refund would receive one. Anyone can dispute a credit card charge and seek resolution from their card company. We all know that banks honor any legitimate payment dispute.

If you signed up, didn’t provide your website content and instructions for a new site, and didn’t request a refund, then you wouldn’t have given us an opportunity to serve you or resolve any issues. Please contact us directly for a full refund.

The online donations system you were using is the same technology that powers every user. It always works unless you are having an issue with your PayPal account which can happen. We have live support Monday through Friday and if you prefer support tickets, we answer every ticket very quickly. In addition, our ticket system has always sent an automated notice when you place a ticket and also when it is answered. While we do appreciate your writing, it is impossible that your site would be online 80% of the time. We have always maintained a state of the art web server infrastructure with a 99.9% uptime rate. If your site wasn’t online, it would be due a problem with your domain name or issue outside of our control. While we appreciate feedback, we don’t agree with your statements.

You are correct that our reviews on other sites are so positive. When we survey our own users, our satisfaction rate beats industry standards every time. This website (Site Jabber) is a “complaint” site so you are more likely to see some negative reviews written by users that may be either incorrect, frustrated with technology, or other issues not actually related to our services. While we always appreciate feedback, any business that serves thousands of users is going to see this.

We are glad to hear that you are so satisfied with the support and prices. We work very hard to keep the prices low to meet the needs of tight budgets. We do work with many Habitat For Humanities. Affiliates of most national organizations use CharityAdvantage since their headquarters often refer them.

Although your comments are incorrect, we do appreciate your taking the time to write. Every sample that you had seen were actual websites that we built for our users. On a daily basis, other users ask us to design sites just like them with a 98.2% satisfaction rate. However, for us to build a beautiful site, you needed to supply content including quality text and images. Web designers don’t supply content for your site. Unfortunately, on rare occasion a user will spend almost no time giving us content and provide minimal or low quality content and then expect a site to meet their needs. While we do most of the work and are happy to, website projects are a partnership and we do require some participation from our users. We build thousands of beautiful websites and it is very clear to us when a user doesn’t fully cooperate, and then complains when it doesn’t meet their expectations. We do have a free revisions period to handle any issues and also have a money back guarantee. In addition, we do not charge any extra fees to build a professional customized site for our users.

Thank you for your review. We’re happy to hear that the website has been instrumental in growing your contact list, which should lead to more supporters donating through your website since CharityAdvantage includes an entire fundraising system at no extra cost.

While we understand this review is from 2012 and our system has been upgraded many times since, in using any system at that time it was a best practice to save your work often if you were going to be taking a lot of time to make changes. The save button was available right on the editor. In terms of “getting it to work”, this seems like a little user frustration which all back office systems have. While we apologize that you were frustrated, saving your work more often and perhaps using our Knowledge Base or requesting our support more often could have solved any issues for you.

We appreciate the referrals. 82% of all our new users are referred by other users without compensation for doing so. The nonprofit forums all speak very highly of us.

Thank you. Most users have a very positive experience and we appreciated your taking the time to comment. As of 2018, we are in our 18th year online and have served thousands of nonprofits.

Yes, we are mentioned at so many nonprofit meetings, seminars, and conferences. We have been online for 18 years and have so many satisfied users. Thank you.

Unfortunately, so many online reviews for any business aren’t correct. This is an example. First, we only copy/paste content given to us when we build a website. We don’t “type” or enter text on a site. If there were typos, they were in the content that you provided to us. For helping with a “transition” you were responsible for logging into your domain provider to point the domain properly to your new site. Your domain vendor would have been happy to provide support for that since that is the number one support question for them. In terms of seeing a blank page when you went to your site, there are many reasons for that. Perhaps you had a page with no content set as your “home page” in the system by mistake. Perhaps your domain name wasn’t renewed at your domain vendor and when the domain was entered they routed it to a blank page. Perhaps you didn’t correctly point the domain to the new site. For whatever the reason, there were no issues with our system that would cause a blank page to appear when a user goes to your site.

We work so hard to help nonprofits. We understand that some people can write things online that aren’t correct and wish the best to them.

We have always had a stellar reputation in the nonprofit community. We understand that an organization of our size will obtain some negative reviews on a site like this. That is just the nature of the Internet and review sites. Even the best hotels and restaurants in the world have negative reviews. Best to just have your own experience with a business.

While we appreciate feedback, we do not agree with your comments. First, the back office is never “down”. Perhaps you had Internet connection issues, antivirus or other security software causing issues, were on a network that didn’t allow the connection, or other issues which aren’t normal for our users. We have stellar support and do not have telephone support nor have ever claimed to have. We have more efficient means of communication to assist you and don’t want users calling and being on hold like what happens when you call most companies. Our response time for support tickets has always been the same and beats industry standards. We respond to every ticket within one business day. We actually answer all tickets before closing support for the day. In reality, we answer most tickets within a few hours. Last, for several years we have offered our very popular and well reviewed Live Chat so you can get live support right in your account and use it as often as you need. Our users love Live Chat and having fast friendly live support anytime they need it without any additional costs, as well as the ability to save chat transcripts. Our support is one of our highest reviewed features by other users.

Thank you for the positive review. Our donation system always works and you are correct that we maintain an industry standard 99.9% up time rate. The user that stated otherwise was either incorrect or perhaps had an issue with their domain name which is outside of our control and support.

We appreciate your review. It is our pleasure to serve you.