What’s New At Groupanizer
It’s a big day today, the first time we released any new products for six whole years!
If you're involved in any groups in your life (and really aren't we all?) stick around to learn about about the TWO new platforms launched by Groupanizer, group automation software.
We've been doing this since 2009 and the last major Choir Genius update was about six years ago. So you might wonder, why did we do this? Why did we decide to make a brand new Choir Genius platform from scratch when we already had hundreds and hundreds of happy groups using our previous platform? Well, there are a few reasons.
We are always looking for ways to improve our customer experience, and to make things easier for Choir Managers to succeed.
We had been serving choirs for years, but there are so many other groups out there! We thought, how can we open up this platform and make it relevant for other groups?
It's very difficult to upgrade an airplane while people are flying in it. Even the small changes that we were implementing were actually quite disruptive to the code.
So we thought: let's take a step back. Let's re-imagine what the platform would be if it was as modular, intuitive and easy to use as possible. Almost two years ago now we started that process, culminating in the recent launches of the re-imagined Choir Genius and the brand new Groupanizer Essentials.
Essentials vs. Choir Genius
You might be wondering what is the difference between Choir Genius and Essentials.
Both platforms have the same basic features:
Powerful membership & community database. Custom contact fields, parent/child linked accounts, your whole community, including stakeholders, volunteers and members, can log in to participate in your group.
Highly automated online smart store. It takes the work out of selling merchandise and memberships, and accepting donations.
Communication tools. Emails, bulletins, forms, notifications and segmented contact lists based on roles. CRM and additional email templates coming soon.
Event Planning. Plan private or public events, with scheduling, volunteer management, attendance and more. You can even set up and sell tickets!
Public Website Builder. Simple and beautiful themes, responsive and mobile-ready, easy to self-manage
Choir Genius is Essentials PLUS additional music and choir specific features.
CHOIR GENIUS EXCLUSIVE FEATURES:
Digital Music Library. Upload PDFs of your sheet music, assign it to members by role and include relevant information like memorization or submission deadlines.
Music Learning Tools. Attach learning tracks and video links to individual songs for members to listen and/or download.
Changes to Choir Genius Platform
Let’s talk about some of the core differences between what we’re calling “Choir Genius Classic” and the new Choir Genius.
Pricing Structure
The first major difference is that in Choir Genius Classic we charged based on membership size. With the new Choir Genius, we have 3 different pricing levels separated by feature sets. Whichever set of features you choose to use, you can have as many member accounts as you need.
New features
A smart store, quickbooks integration, ticketing, event planning (including volunteer sign up and management), customizable contact fields in member accounts, linked parent/child accounts, these are just a few of the brand new features we’ve added to the new platform.
Dropped features
There are a few tools that we haven’t carry over to the new platform (yet): automated riser placement, document library, image gallery, music learning tools.
Ongoing improvements and feature additions
Plans are already in the works to build new features, based on our customer’s needs. Is there something you feel would greatly improve your work and ability as a choir manager? What are the most time consumer, menial parts of your job?
Our intention is truly to make this an all-in-one tool, to replace the many stand-alone programs you use to accomplish tasks and automate as much as possible so that you everything you need to be successful.
Why Groupanizer products are more secure than other platforms.
We are the most secure, private and reliable platform that you'll find. We've been up for three and a half years straight 100 percent uptime on amazon web services.
Unlike a lot of competitor’s platforms, when you have a product of ours you have your own private database. There's no chance of any kind of bleed of your data between any other people who are using our software.
