Altru x Wordfly

Gerardo Velasco
Gerardo Velasco
Second Anniversary Blackbaud Certified
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions

Hello,

Our organization is currently looking to acquire a new bulk email platform that integrates effectively with Altru. We've been looking into Wordfly as a potential solution.

We are interested in learning if there are any other organizations within the Altru community that are currently using Wordfly successfully for their bulk email needs and have achieved a seamless integration, ideally without having to build a custom API.

If your organization uses Altru and Wordfly together, we would be incredibly grateful if you could share your experiences, including:

  • How well the two systems integrate.
  • Whether you required a custom API for the integration.
  • Your experience with automating emails based on Altru data (e.g., membership renewals, post-visit follow-ups, donation acknowledgments).
  • Any insights or recommendations you might have regarding this integration.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Gerardo Velasco
CRM Administrator
Fresno Chaffee Zoo

Comments

  • Nicole Joanlanne
    Nicole Joanlanne
    Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Gerardo Velasco
    We’ve been using WordFly with Altru since January and wanted to share our experience in hopes that it may help others evaluating this solution!

    While WordFly has been promoted as an integrated solution for Altru, it’s important to clarify that, as of now, the integration is not a true two-way or “live” integration. Although you can upload Altru queries to WordFly, the process is not automated — each time you want to send a new email, even if using the same list, the data must be manually re-uploaded. The lists do not dynamically update, which limits the type of automation many organizations need (e.g., membership renewals, post-visit emails, or donation acknowledgments).

    More recently, we’ve encountered issues with uploading larger subscriber lists — our queries from Altru include well over 300,000 records, but WordFly only uploads a small fraction of that. Despite attempts to troubleshoot with both Blackbaud and WordFly, communication has been slow and the issue remains unresolved. We were recently informed that the issue cannot be reproduced on their end, and we are now assisting in gathering additional information to help identify the root cause. It's been a frustrating process with limited clarity on next steps or resolution.

    To our knowledge, we did not require a custom API to use the available features, but limitations in functionality and a lack of automation have made it difficult to scale or rely on WordFly for our more robust email needs.

    We remain hopeful that improvements will be made and that Blackbaud and WordFly will continue working together to enhance this integration. However, based on our current experience, we would advise organizations to proceed with caution and carefully assess whether this setup will meet their specific communication and automation needs.

    Happy to connect further if anyone has questions — we’re learning more each week.

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