ShelbyNext Membership vs ChMS: Which is a better fit?

Alisha: My name is Alisha and I am a director of communications. I work for a nonprofit religious organization, and I would give ShelbyNext a five out of five. One of the things that I was looking for when I was looking at different programs for our church to move towards was user-friendliness and how our current staff, old and new, would dive into the program. And the different programs that I looked at, they may have had a few more features, but they weren't as user-friendly. So we looked at Planning Center and, again, they have some great options. It just wasn't a good fit for us. We also looked at Raiser's Edge. We looked at Text in Church. There were a lot of different pro tools out there that we could have used, but none of them met the need quite like Shelby did for us. The reason, the biggest reason that we chose ShelbyNext was because it was able to have our members and our giving all at one location. Lots of the other programs we saw, they just couldn't do that and do it well. So our members can check into Sunday school classes, they can make a gift during a service, and then, they can also see the address and things of maybe somebody else in their Sunday school class. So there was lots of different options for us to be able to get everybody under one umbrella. That was ShelbyNext. It made everything so much easier from an admin perspective, as well as for our members. They didn't have to have four different apps to be able to come to church and enjoy what was going on. And they were able to be more connected and more intentional with their relationships. Onboarding was what I was most concerned about when we got this product. It's not always easy to train a bunch of people on how to use something the right way, but the team at Shelby made it so easy for us. We purchased the package that included eight hours of in-person training, as well as eight hours of virtual training. And their online and in-person trainers are out of this world, and we still call them to this day. They were able to come on and teach our staff all together, as well as a few of us, more specific needs. And again, their customer service, any time that we've had a call or a question, if they hadn't been able to answer it right away, they call us right back that same day. So onboarding was just super, super easy. Over the past year, they've added a lot of extra options for us. We're always getting new interns or even new staff members. And so, we don't have to do that full onboarding process every time somebody comes on. There are step-by-step tutorials and videos that are available on each screen that you go to on ShelbyNext that make it really easy just to jump right in and get started with just a few bits of basic knowledge. If your organization is looking for a product like Shelby that the offers membership, scheduling, giving, all of those things, I highly recommend that you take some time and call somebody from Shelby to see how they can tailor their program to fit yours. They are always adding new things and we've even called and seen if they will add a new feature just for our church, to which they will put in their products. We have seen that happen over and over and over again. Right now during COVID, we've experienced a few growing pains and Shelby has been there to work with us and to let us know that they're also doing some development on their backend. That has already started to help us with our check-in processes and making social distancing even easier with their check-in system. I would also like to say that if you're thinking about using a program, maybe such as Pushpay, which is something that we looked at for our giving, they were able to do some different automations for us and donor recognition through their giving site that I don't have a lot of time to tell you about right now. But it is worth, again, setting up a zoom call with one of their sales reps so they can see how it can make a big difference for you. The number one thing that I can say is nobody at their organization is going to be pushy with you. That was a major turnoff for some others that we looked at, but the people at ShelbyNext, they're kind, they're considerate. And again, they just want what's best for you. They're not just worried about selling their product.

Kenyon M: Hello there. My name is Kenyon, and I'm a beauty and hairstyling professional and a serial entrepreneur in the beauty industry. I'm today reviewing Fresha, which I would give a five to. So as many of you in this industry already know, we were doing everything manually. Paper, appointment books, something that we're all probably used to in this, this is horrible, and it's something that I needed to get away from. I was looking for other software. First, we used a lot of paper. We don't need that. We don't need to use more trees. We also need to make sure that all staff... If you're a busy person by yourself, that's wonderful. But if there's multiple staff and multiple different businesses, you need to keep track of that and all in one place. So, to get out of the paper windmill, we had to look at other software. Some of them included Booksy, Vagaro, Millennium. There's a couple others that we looked at, but these were the most common ones that were on the market at the time. Then we started coming across Capterra, five out of five stars, multiple awards, does Fresha. Fresha changed everything. Fresha was able to keep track of almost everything and anything that you need at any time that you want to log in from any point and anywhere in the world, including your staff, if you give them permissions, which we can talk about later that this software was the one to go with. It was brand new. No one knew about it, and, hey, why not? Let's give it a try. So, Fresha was a huge step and a much more efficient step and sustainable, green, than using paper and comparing it against other most popular softwares. There was multiple reasons why we chose Fresha as well. First, it caught our eye, especially from Capterra, seeing the five out of five stars with the multiple awards. That just screamed that it is a valuable software that can be implemented and almost anyone. Call it "booking by dummies." So, once we opened it up and we saw how the actual dashboard and everything was tracked, clients, sales, what type of credits, everything that was used, now it really made this made sense that this is a all-encompassing in one software. So we can use this for almost everything and anything we need on our end to track our sales, to catch our customers, to find out for someone as myself who is a entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, they need to know what is the best type of marketing and advertisement that I can use to draw more customers. Everything is kept tracked to here. On their end, on the customers', they receive text messages. They receive emails. They are notified when their appointment is upcoming, and they allow them to have multiple days ahead so that our cancellation policy, 24 hours, could be inactive because they were informed. It also gives you friendly greetings. It's very easy to review. It sends you to wherever the clients want you to go, and at the end of the day, they're able to look back and to see how much they spent so they can keep track of their spending and how many times they've come to visit you. Just recently, I had a client myself who I have now cut the hair of 20 times, and he was able to tell me this because Fresha was able to track it for him. Now, I bet some of you are wondering, "Well, how hard is this going to be for me? I don't know if I can handle that. How am I going to be able to do software when all I'm used to is doing paper?" Well, let me tell you this how basic this software is. It's for literally dummies. They should call it "Fresha for dummies," "Booking for dummies," like I said earlier. When you first get on there... And firstly, before you even get into that, they show actually. They have a YouTube channel where you can watch on how to use their software, something I've never seen on anything else before. That was very important, and I actually passed it out to a lot of my staff members that I have. So after you're able to get in and you're logging in, they will not only give you those pointers, but when you first log in, for as long as you need, the tips come up like Microsoft, where you're able to see, Windows where you're able to see what each point does. It will almost guide you because I always tell everyone, "Just do what the blue button says to do." And literally, it's easy as that. You won't understand now, but once you actually open it up and hopefully you get to try it out, that the big blue button will just guide you. Everything else is an addition you have to add in, but all you have to look for is really that blue button to move to the next phase, the next phase. Once you're in and you're able to then start to stack cart and cash out clients, you're then able to generate the invoices, which again, you can see at all times and every time you want. So, the first time you get into it, you should not be scared. You should embrace it and make sure you that you want to learn it because if you're going to take it on, you better know how it works. So, watch those YouTube videos. It's very helpful. So, some advice or recommendations I would recommend while using this software would be, one, to make sure that you firstly watch those YouTube videos, the learning channel, because first you're going to learn how to use it before you actually dive in. But they're very resourceful. They have great instructions and tutorials. They follow along. They're even updated with the versions that come out, so you won't be left behind wondering why is that screen on there but I don't see it on here. My second recommendation is not only may you be very good at software and you're able to use it as an owner, manager, whoever you may be, but you need to make sure that your staff is also well-versed. So, get them their own training. What I do personally is I get them their own training email log-ins that they're able to log in, and they're able to train. Then they can see what it's like to receive the text messages and all the emails that are sent out as we book appointments and also cashing out. They're able to do everything without messing and fuddling up your system. So, two recommendations that I'll give you right there, and then the last one I would give you is that don't be afraid of using all the features that it has. Sometimes you may wonder if there's too much going on here, but our recommendation is that you utilize this because if you don't, you may as well just go back to paper. Make sure that you keep up to date on everything they're doing, and they all always want to make sure that they're doing right by you. My last one, if I can add just one more quickly, would be that you at any time that you feel as though you have something to add for value, upload that into the community page so that they're able to know what features and programs they're able to come out with next for us.