Hi Mike,
Thanks for the good feedback on our ticketing report, and completely agree with your conclusion of 'small pieces loosely joined' being the best way forward in most cases - this allows each component to be optimised and even switched without breaking the overall system.
As you've said, I think the Goliath systems are often far too complex for the majority of admin users, often aren't as good at any one task as nimble, single-function competitors, and they require a mountain of cash to properly configure and then maintain or improve as core requirements change. This is said with my previous disclaimer that they are right for some that can properly invest in them, but they're certainly not necessary for the majority of small or mid-sized (and even some large) organisations. More worryingly, they're often the worst barriers to productive working and to implementing the smart marketing/fundraising campaigns that arts marketing professionals are now designing.
I've tried to put together my rough wishlist for a system of small pieces below, although as ever there are loads of alternatives for each of the components so obviously dependent on exact needs/functionality/volume etc - devil in the detail!
I think the essential components would be:
- CRM/Fundraising
- Email
- CMS
- E-commerce and Ticketing
- Finance
FINANCE and EMAIL are the easiest to recommend - for finance, Quickbooks or Xero (both ~£25/mth) and Mailchimp (free up to 2k subscribers, ~£50/mth 5k, ~£60/mth 10k) respectively. All connect with each of the other components mentioned below (free).
CMS and E-COMMERCE are obviously heavily dependent on exact requirements - Wordpress with Woocommerce/Stripe (free plus fees) can be a great solution as Jim suggests, or splitting e-commerce out to Shopify (from £23/mth plus fees), or for heavier lifting Magento with merchant account (free community edition). CMS tends to lean to Drupal or Wordpress (free community editions), but Silverstripe is also worth considering. All of these easily integrate with Mailchimp, and these e-commerce platforms connect with Quickbooks/Xero if needed.
TICKETING - again depends on exact functionality, and e-commerce set up. It's relatively easy to use extensions to your e-commerce software to sell tickets, but I've found that this sometimes limits functionality for some of the quirkier museum requirements, so compromise/workarounds/extra dev may be required, although could be worth the development or opportunity cost (it's a long-term commitment though!). Alternatively, Eventbrite connects well with all the other components mentioned and can handle most of the requirements without extra dev resource - list of free connectors at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/spectrum/
On CRM/FUNDRAISING components, the one I keep coming back to is SugarCRM community edition (free) connected to Mailchimp via SugarChimp or similar (£39/month for basic) and Eventbrite (free), or alternatively NEONCRM looks interesting but haven't used it myself yet (£40/mth basic) - connected to Mailchimp and Eventbrite (free).
Plenty of alternatives for each, but hopefully a useful starter for ten. The system above would cost in the region of £100-150/month, facilitates important marketing/fundraising strategies and minimises spreadsheets!
Interested to hear whether anyone has got something like this working in the wild though :-)
thanks
Simon
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Simon Cronshaw
Managing Partner & Co-Founder
REMIX Summits
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