I am a techie and use Constant Contact for my personal business so putting that aside I still have issues with GroupVine and am considering paying out of my own pocket for CC.
--Really don't like the web signup form or that members cannot manage their own accounts and new signups have to be spreadsheet manupulated then entered. Web form is not pretty on the website. CC was clean and easy to put anywhere (we put it everywhere)
--Have been unable to find a place that says how many members are in each group which is important when the PTA President asks me how many people we have signed up on the blast.
--How are bounces being managed?
--I was able to manipulate the newsletter form and get out something that looked okay, but much different than the preview. VERY unhappy about that. Text was bigger and because of that images were moved around.
I'll hang around for another month or so and see if anything changes, but although I understand that PEX is free, it's just not worth the end product which looks free.
By the way, re: FONTS in PEX 2.0. Those are also changed from the email editor, just as if you were in a Word doc. Just highlight the text and pick the font you want from the pulldown list.
Glad to jump in here and answer/offer what I can. A whole bunch of thoughts:
1. Glad to hear that GroupVine has been so responsive. That's been our experience, as well. Good partners, which bodes well for our ability to make sure that PEX provides agreat experience. One example: we got a ton of early feedback that folks wanted the ability to chaneg the color of the masthead. That change is now live.
2. If you were an existing PEX (with Constant Contact) user *and* you were using a lot of the higher-end customization features in Constant Contact, then I'm not surprised if you find PEX 2.0 with GroupVine to be a ver differentexperience and that you might consider paying for CC. CC is a great tool, and PEX isn't meant to be (and at free -- can't be) a mirror of CC.
3. On the other hand, if you haven't used PEX before or if you're like the majority of existing PEX users who used PEX/CC very basically, I think you're going to love PEX 2.0. PEX is meant to be a really easy-to-use, free, email toolo for typical PTO and PTA groups and typical (not overly techy) PTO and PTA users. It's already really clean and simple, and we're actively working with GroupVine to clean up any areas that we're hearing add any confusion. The number one goal is to make it really simple for average groups and average leaders to send really good and solid (but not the fanciest in history) emails to their parents.
4. RE: Customizing your email in PEX 2.0. If you test out PEX, it's decidedly simple to change text color and text size, etc. It looks just like a Word doc with those buttons up top of the email editor for changing text color or inserting an image or making the text bigger, etc.
5. Finally, re: merging PEX 2.0 and PTO Manager/Volunteer Manager. We're working on building that connection for PEX 2.0. It's not currently live but should be this fall. Think you'll like that, too.
Glad to continue the conversation.... thanks for the questions and feedback.
I really wish more people would try this out and get some comments out there. There seems to be only a handful of us, but we're having some issues. To GrapeVine's credit, they are responding pretty quickly. But if you were an extensive Constant Contact user, there are substantial differences.
In my own case, I'm pretty close to reaching the conclusion that I'm going to have to start paying for Constant Contact, but I still have two weeks before we finish up our budget for the year.
If you have finalized your budget for the year, or otherwise don't think you can afford Constant Contact, and you use it a lot, you really should check out PEX before it's too late.
Jewel--PEX is an improvement over the emails sent through PTOManager, but someone from PTO Today has to explain the interface between PTOManager and PEX. I know how it used to work with Constant Contact, but haven't had time to try it out with PEX (nor, actually, do I even know how to). I don't know if it will be transparent or if you will need to maintain two separate databases, or if there even is any interface.
