Fonteva vs. Nimble AMS: Compare Flexibility, Reports, & More

Fonteva and Nimble AMS are both Salesforce-native association management systems (AMS) that draw on Salesforce’s power and flexibility. If your association is interested in or already uses Salesforce, you’ve likely considered both platforms. 

But despite their similarities, these solutions are not equal. Fonteva is known for its all-in-one solution with highly customizable workflows, robust reporting capabilities, enterprise event management tools, and powerful integrated payment processing. On the other hand, Nimble AMS users report struggling with restrictive reporting, integration headaches, difficulty managing payments, and more challenges.

We’ll compare Fonteva vs. Nimble AMS to highlight the top reasons why associations opt for Fonteva’s comprehensive, scalable AMS.

See how Nimble AMS features stack up against Fonteva

Why associations choose Fonteva over Nimble AMS

Clean data architecture

✓ Fonteva: Uses standard Account and Contact objects

X Nimble: Relies heavily on Person Accounts

Salesforce’s data architecture is the structure from which all data is organized, stored, and retrieved within the database. This is the foundation for the entire solution’s functions, from generating reports to navigating integrations with third-party tools.

Fonteva uses the Accounts and Contacts model, allowing associations to organize data based on how it exists in the real world. In addition to offering a smoother, more intuitive experience, this data model also enables seamless third-party integrations and complex hierarchies, while reducing technical debt as developers won’t need to create workarounds for Person Account limitations.

Nimble AMS uses Person Accounts, which could present significant challenges for associations:

• Taking up more storage, potentially leading to higher costs
• Difficulty controlling who can view or edit data, opening the door to security risks
• Lacking crucial data fields that make it challenging to maintain accurate member records
• Limiting which integrations and Salesforce apps the association can use, as many do not support Person Accounts
• Making reporting rigid and clunky

Overall, this limits the inherent flexibility and scalability of Salesforce-native solutions. 

Unrestricted custom reporting

✓Fonteva: Delivers instant, 360-degree visibility across all related member and organizational data 

X Nimble: Restricts custom reporting and requires workarounds to link related objects 

Thanks to Fonteva’s interconnected data model, associations have full access to a powerful drag-and-drop report builder. Easily connect various record types to gain real-time visibility into your data and generate custom reports that show the exact insights you’re looking for. 

On the other hand, the Nimble AMS object structure, which is dictated by its data architecture, places strict limitations on Salesforce reporting. Most notably, it is unable to directly link sibling objects (e.g., pulling individual members, their parent organization, and their conference sponsorships in a single report) without building workarounds.

This can cause associations to lose real-time data visibility, miss important opportunities, and see dips in staff efficiency.

Host enterprise events

✓ Fonteva: Native, world-class event management for organizations of any size

X Nimble: Requires third-party tools for large-scale or complex events

Fonteva includes an out-of-the-box, enterprise-grade event builder. Because we serve small, mid-sized, and large organizations, our solution can handle anything from simple meeting setups to complex, multi-day conferences. Associations can manage custom registration workflows, complex multi-track schedules, sponsor packages, tiered pricing, payments, and more, directly from Salesforce. 

While Nimble AMS offers built-in event management features that work well for basic meetings and events, these tools lack the extensive capabilities that larger organizations need to host conferences or trade shows. Some Nimble users seek out third-party event tools to fill these gaps, resulting in fragmented data and complex integrations.

Ultimately, associations miss out on the promise of an all-in-one system and could be in a position to lose control of their event data, fragmenting their database.

Flexible payment processing

✓ Fonteva: Natively handles multi-currency, deferred revenue, and credit card fee pass-throughs in one seamless system 

X Nimble: Limited native accounting capabilities that could create manual work

Fonteva Payments offers secure, integrated payment processing that connects directly to your Salesforce-native AMS. It includes the following features:

• Online ACH payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna acceptance
• Global payments, acceptance, and processing
• Multilingual and multicurrency support
• 3DS2 compliance
• Advanced, AI-enabled fraud detection
• Configurable surcharges, allowing associations to pass along processing fees to the customer (available based on state and local laws)
• Automated reconciliation and quick-action tools
• Fonteva-based enterprise transaction reporting
• Google Analytics tracking for payment methods
• Saved payment methods

However, Nimble AMS’s built-in financial management tools make managing international chapters, multi-currency billing, and complex deferred revenue difficult. Often, this leads to manual finance workarounds or licensing upgrades on other platforms.

This means associations lack the security of a fully integrated financial system, leading to more human errors, security risks, and data inaccuracies. 

Considering a switch from Nimble AMS to Fonteva?

Changing your AMS is a big decision, and many associations worry about data loss, downtime, staff adoption, and training.

Because both Nimble and Fonteva are native to the Salesforce ecosystem, migrating to Fonteva is generally faster and more straightforward than starting from scratch. Our in-house implementation experts are prepared to guide you through the process, ensuring a smooth, efficient transition that protects your data. 

Once Fonteva is implemented, your team will continue working in the familiar Salesforce environment they already navigate daily. This significantly reduces the learning curve, allowing your staff to leave clunky workarounds and rigid limitations behind without having to learn a completely new system.