HubSpot vs. Bloomerang: Which Is Right for Your Nonprofit?

Most nonprofit software comparisons pretend there’s a clear winner. The honest answer we’ve got for you is that HubSpot and Bloomerang are designed for different problems.

The average nonprofit retains only 54.73% of its donors year over year. First-to-second gift conversion—the share of new donors who return for a second gift—sits at 25.84%, meaning roughly three out of four new donors give once then walk away. At their core, both HubSpot and Bloomerang address that problem, but they approach it from completely different directions. 

This comparison covers what each platform does well, where each one falls short, what each costs for nonprofits, and which type of organization should use which tool. It also covers whether running both together makes sense, and what other Bloomerang alternatives are worth knowing about if neither is the right fit for your nonprofit organization.

Bloomerang Is Built for Keeping Donors Around

Bloomerang is best suited for small to mid-sized nonprofits (typically raising between $500K and $5M annually) that want a purpose-built CRM with strong donor retention analytics but don’t need enterprise-grade marketing automation.

Bloomerang was founded in 2012 around a single insight: most nonprofits are losing donors faster than they’re gaining them, and no existing tool was specifically designed to fix that. Every major feature in the platform (the engagement meter, the donor retention analytics, the donor timeline, etc.) traces back to that founding problem.

What Bloomerang Includes

• Bloomerang includes a donor database with engagement scoring, email marketing, online giving pages and donation forms, grant management tracking, wealth screening, nightly NCOA address verification, and deceased suppression updates. 
• All plans include unlimited users (which is a big advantage over per-seat pricing models used by many competitors).
• Bloomerang has a donor portal where supporters can log in to manage their recurring donations, update payment methods, and view their full giving history. That self-service capability matters for organizations with a strong base of recurring giving supporters who prefer to manage their own donor journey without staff involvement.
• Bloomerang has added volunteer management as a separate module and membership management capabilities more recently, making it a more complete nonprofit operations platform than it was two years ago.
• Bloomerang acquired Qgiv in 2024 and rebranded it as Bloomerang Fundraising in September 2025. This means peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, text-to-give, event registration, and event management are now available within the platform rather than requiring a third-party integration.

HubSpot Is a Marketing Platform That Happens to Be an Exceptional Nonprofit CRM

HubSpot was built for marketing teams, sales teams, and customer success operations. However, nonprofits have found that it maps exceptionally well onto donor management when configured correctly. HubSpot’s nonprofit discount, launched through a formal program verified via TechSoup, acknowledged that reality.

What HubSpot Includes

• HubSpot includes contact management for up to one million contacts, email marketing, marketing automation, landing pages, live chat, a chatbot builder, SEO tools, social media publishing, ad management, and reporting dashboards. 
• At the Professional tier and above, it also includes advanced marketing automation, custom reporting, campaign attribution, and sales pipeline management.

What HubSpot Does Not Include

• HubSpot doesn’t include donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising, donor-specific features like LYBUNT/SYBUNT reporting, or text-to-give. These capabilities require integration with dedicated fundraising platform options like Classy, Fundraise Up, or Donorbox, all of which connect to HubSpot through the HubSpot App Marketplace or via Zapier. Stripe also connects via integration for payment processing. This is a real added cost and complexity consideration, but for organizations already committed to one of those platforms, the HubSpot integration is strong.

The 40% nonprofit discount applies only to Professional and Enterprise tier plans. Starter plans are excluded. After the discount, Marketing Hub Professional runs about $534/month billed annually. A mandatory one-time onboarding fee of $3,000 applies unless you’re onboarded through a HubSpot Solutions Partner, which waives that fee.

HubSpot is best suited for growth-focused nonprofits with marketing capacity on staff, organizations running multi-channel campaigns, teams that need sophisticated marketing automation, and organizations already using or evaluating a dedicated fundraising platform rather than an all-in-one donor management system.

How Big Sea Evaluated Both Platforms

Big Sea is a HubSpot Platinum Partner, and we’ve implemented HubSpot for nonprofit clients in fundraising, healthcare, museums, and social impact contexts. We’ve also worked alongside organizations using Bloomerang and helped several others evaluate which platform to adopt, or whether to run both in combination.

The sections below assess both platforms across six dimensions: donor management and contact database, fundraising tools, email marketing and automation, reporting and analytics, integrations, and pricing.

HubSpot vs. Bloomerang Comparison

1. Donor Management and Contact Database

Bloomerang wins on donor-specific depth. The engagement meter, color-coded donor retention risk signals, donor timeline, and LYBUNT/SYBUNT reporting are purpose-built for development teams and require no out-of-the-box configuration. HubSpot requires custom property configuration, lifecycle stage mapping, and workflow setup to replicate similar functionality.

HubSpot wins on contact scale and segmentation. Its smart list capabilities and contact filtering are more powerful for marketing use cases. For nonprofits managing constituent relationships beyond donors (e.g., volunteers, program participants, corporate partners, event registration lists), HubSpot handles the complexity better. Organizations that have been tracking constituents in spreadsheets across departments will find HubSpot’s unified contact record particularly valuable for consolidating that donor data.

2. Fundraising Tools

Bloomerang’s acquisition of Qgiv (now Bloomerang Fundraising) means donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising, text-to-give, online donation pages, recurring donations, recurring gifts, event registration, event management, and auctions are now built into the platform. For most small-to-mid nonprofits, this eliminates the need for a separate giving platform.

HubSpot has no native fundraising tools. Organizations using HubSpot for donor management need a connected fundraising platform: Classy, Fundraise Up, Donorbox, or Givebutter are the most common. (Stripe connects via integration for payment processing.) This is a real added cost and complexity consideration, but for organizations already committed to one of those platforms, the HubSpot integration is strong.

3. Marketing, Email, and Automation

HubSpot wins here. The marketing automation, email marketing, campaign management, social media scheduling, ad management, and content creation tools at the Professional tier are all genuinely enterprise-grade. For nonprofits running multi-channel fundraising campaigns, the gap between HubSpot and Bloomerang’s built-in marketing tools is significant.

Bloomerang’s email marketing is functional and sufficient for basic donor engagement since it includes newsletters, acknowledgment sequences, and campaign appeals. It integrates with Constant Contact and Mailchimp for organizations that want a more capable email platform, but it’s not a replacement for a full marketing automation stack. Organizations that need sophisticated donor journey mapping across channels will find Bloomerang’s marketing capabilities limiting over time.

4. Reporting and Analytics

Both platforms have reporting dashboards. Bloomerang’s reporting focuses on donor retention, while HubSpot’s focuses on marketing and pipeline. That includes campaign attribution, traffic sources, conversion rates, deal pipeline, and marketing-influenced revenue. 

Custom report builders at the Professional tier are more flexible than Bloomerang’s. For organizations that need to report marketing automation ROI to a board—or demonstrate the full donor journey from first click to first gift—HubSpot is the stronger tool.

5. Integrations and Ecosystem

HubSpot has over 2,000 integrations in its App Marketplace, including Zapier, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and most major fundraising platform options. The API is well-documented and widely supported.

Bloomerang integrates with common fundraising and finance tools, such as QuickBooks, DonorSearch, and Mailchimp. Its integration ecosystem is narrower than HubSpot’s but covers the tools most nonprofits actually need for donor management. The API is available for custom connections.

6. Volunteer Management

Bloomerang has a native volunteer management module ($119/month add-on). It syncs volunteer profiles with donor data so you can see the full supporter relationship (volunteer hours, event registration history, giving history, etc.) in one place. This is meaningful for nonprofits where volunteers and donors overlap significantly, and it’s part of what makes Bloomerang a more complete nonprofit software platform than it was two years ago.

HubSpot has no native volunteer management. Organizations need a third-party tool connected via Zapier or API. This is a real gap for volunteer-heavy organizations evaluating Bloomerang alternatives.

What HubSpot and Bloomerang Cost for Nonprofits

Bloomerang Pricing (Billed Annually): 

• Nonprofit CRM from $125/month
• Fundraising module from $40/month
• Volunteer management module from $119/month
• Full giving platform (bundled) from $242/month

HubSpot Pricing for Nonprofits: 

• Marketing Hub Professional, after a 40% nonprofit discount, runs about $534/month billed annually
• A mandatory $3,000 one-time onboarding fee applies unless onboarded through a HubSpot Solutions Partner
• Sales Hub Professional runs approximately $450/month after discount

The total cost of ownership leaves Bloomerang’s pricing predictable and scalable with record count. HubSpot’s pricing scales with contact tier, hub tier, and any add-on tools needed for fundraising functionality. Organizations switching to HubSpot should budget for both the platform cost and either a fundraising platform integration or a dedicated giving platform running alongside it.

Choose Bloomerang If…

• You’re a small to mid-sized nonprofit ($500K–$5M in annual giving) focused primarily on donor retention and stewardship rather than broad marketing campaigns.
• Your team wants a purpose-built donor CRM they can use from day one without significant configuration or technical capacity.
• You need peer-to-peer fundraising, text-to-give, event registration, auctions, or recurring giving tools built into your nonprofit CRM rather than integrated from outside.
• You don’t have marketing staff with the capacity to configure and maintain a sophisticated marketing automation platform.

Choose HubSpot If…

• You’re a growth-focused nonprofit with marketing capacity on staff: at minimum, someone who can own the platform’s configuration and ongoing management.
• You need sophisticated marketing automation, multi-channel fundraising campaign management, and board-level reporting on marketing performance.
• Your fundraising happens through a dedicated platform (Classy, Fundraise Up, Donorbox, Givebutter, etc.) that you’re already committed to, and you need a nonprofit CRM layer that integrates with it cleanly via Zapier or API.
• You’re outgrowing spreadsheets or a simpler donor management tool and looking at HubSpot as a long-term marketing and operations infrastructure investment.

Other Bloomerang Alternatives Worth Knowing

• Neon CRM / Neon One: This is a full nonprofit CRM with membership management, event registration, and fundraising tools, and it’s often cited as a direct Bloomerang competitor.
• Virtuous: This is an AI-driven responsive fundraising CRM. It’s more powerful than Bloomerang for large nonprofits, but also more expensive.
• Little Green Light: This is a budget-friendly donor database for very small nonprofits. It’s simpler than Bloomerang with a lower price floor.
• DonorPerfect: This is a full-featured donor management system with a long market history. It’s also a common migration source for organizations moving to Bloomerang or HubSpot.
• Keela: This Canadian-based nonprofit CRM includes many AI features and is strong for smaller organizations and those wanting integrated grant management.
• Blackbaud / Raiser’s Edge NXT: This is an enterprise-grade, purpose-built CRM for large nonprofits raising $1M+. It’s significantly more complex and expensive than Bloomerang.

So, Which One Should You Choose?

Bloomerang is the right pick if your primary goal is a donor database that makes donor retention-focused development work easier, your team doesn’t have marketing technical capacity, and you want nonprofit software built specifically for how development offices operate day-to-day.

HubSpot is the right pick if marketing automation is a genuine organizational priority, if you’re thinking about the platform as a long-term infrastructure investment, and if you have, or plan to build, the team capacity to use it at full capability.

The most common mistake is choosing HubSpot and underusing it, or choosing Bloomerang and outgrowing it faster than expected. If you’re not sure which direction fits, it’s worth a conversation with an implementation partner before you commit.

FAQs

How Hard Is It to Switch Nonprofit CRM Platforms?

Switching nonprofit CRM software is a significant project that typically involves exporting and cleaning donor data, mapping fields, creating a migration plan, training staff, and a transition period where both systems may run in parallel. Complexity depends on how many years of donor database records you’re migrating, how clean that data is, and how deeply your current platform integrates with other nonprofit software. Organizations should budget several months for a full migration, not weeks.

Can I Export My Donor Data From Bloomerang?

Yes. Bloomerang allows data export in CSV format. Before any platform migration, export your full constituent database including giving history, communication records, recurring gift schedules, and custom field data. Verify your export is complete before deactivating your Bloomerang CRM account.

Can HubSpot and Bloomerang Work Together?

Yes. Organizations that need Bloomerang’s donor management depth and HubSpot’s marketing automation capabilities can connect the two platforms via Zapier or direct API integration. Data governance planning is essential—specifically, defining which system owns constituent records and how updates sync—to avoid duplicate donor data and data quality issues.

What Are User-Friendly Bloomerang Alternatives for Small Nonprofits?

Little Green Light and Keela are frequently cited as user-friendly, affordable donor management software options for small nonprofits. Givebutter offers a free-to-start fundraising platform with built-in donation forms, text-to-give, and peer-to-peer fundraising. Donorbox is worth evaluating for organizations whose primary need is a clean donor experience on online donation pages with strong recurring giving and donor portal functionality. For organizations prioritizing ease of setup and low cost over deep nonprofit crm analytics, these tools are worth evaluating before committing to Bloomerang or HubSpot.