Move Beyond Spreadsheets

Spark gives you the power of the leading open source CRM for non-profits without the overhead of managing or maintaining the system.

Consolidate your spreadsheets and begin using a CRM built for nonprofits
Increase your impact and achieve your operational goals
Grow your skills and leverage complex features within Spark

Sign up in minutes, cancel anytime
Flexible, feature rich and powerful
Simple pricing without hidden fees

What is Spark?

Spark is a lightweight hosted version of CiviCRM that offers you quick setup, zero administration, and most of the power of CiviCRM with some limitations.

It is built and intended for small to medium-sized organizations that are dipping their toes into the CRM space for the first time or that want to take control of their data and their systems.

Spark offers an enormous amount of functionality at a ridiculously low price. As cool as that sounds, it’s equally important to understand what Spark isn’t:

Not a replacement for the full download version of CiviCRM
Not a replacement for CiviCRM support provided by the community
Not open to complex customizations unique to your organization

If you know that you need more today, consider downloading CiviCRM or working with an expert partner for your implementation.

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Why Use Spark?

Spark leverages the best of CiviCRM, putting powerful features at your fingertips in a clean, easy to use interface.

Web-based, scalable and secure, Spark allows you to quickly start with CiviCRM and to grow your capabilities without the overhead of installing, configuring and managing the software itself.

Spark is ideally suited for organizations that want:

Full control over their data
Flexiblity, simplicity and security.
Privacy first. No compromises.

What Spark delivers:

Integrate into your website
Simple, clear pricing without any contracts
Support for multilingual instances of Spark
Share access to your data with as many users as you’d like
Easy data imports and exports
Help upgrading to full version of CiviCRM (when you’re ready)
Free and paid support options
Easily take and manage payments online

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What can Spark do?

CiviCRM is a hugely popular open source CRM because it can do so many things. Spark is like the little brother… it ships with many of the most used features of CiviCRM, but not all. Listed below are a few important things that Spark can do that might interest you. Be forwarned, there’s a lot to read.

Spark Starter

Event Management

Event management in CiviCRM Spark is both powerful and flexible, allowing you to create complex event registrations, pricings and automated communications. Capture event participant information via configurable profiles and capture all event touch points in each contact’s activity stream.

Spark Starter

Detailed Reporting

Spark Starter

Peer to Peer Fundraising

Spark Starter

Case Management

Plan, customize, track and engage your client or constituent interactions easily with CiviCase. Build complex workflows in Spark in order that you and your staff members can manage sequential actions within your organization and benefit from automatic task and follow-up activities.

Spark Starter

Memberships

Manage your members with CiviMember, a comprehensive component that enables you to leverage flexible price sets, membership rules, and automated communications to engage your membership.

Spark Starter

Contact Management

CiviCRM Spark is, first and foremost, a tool to support your constituent relationship management (CRM) processes. The core component of Spark is contact management, allowing you to associate all types of data and interactions to each specific contact.

Spark Starter

Contribution Pages

Managing contributions in CiviCRM Spark is incredibly flexible! Create as many contribution forms as you want, customize them with different fields, establish set amounts for contributions, ask for recurring support, and lots more.

Spark Starter

Powerful Utilities

Spark Essentials

Bulk Messaging

For pro subscribers, Spark ships with CiviMail, a powerful mailing component that supports both rich HTML and text only emails. Because CiviMail is a part of your CRM, you can send highly targeted and personalized emails.

Includes access to

CiviAcademy

Check out a few video tutorials to get a glimpse of what CiviAcademy can do for you.

Learn about CiviAcademy

Get on the fast track to become a CiviNinja!

– Dreamcrusher

Advanced Reporting & Data Display

Spark acts as your single repository for all things related to your constituents. With Spark’s built in search and reporting capabilities, you can access and analyize your data quickly and easily.

SearchKit is the next evolution of search and reporting in CiviCRM, and it’s now available in Spark. SearchKit allows you to manage highly complex searches and to perform various actions on search results.

SearchKit demos on Youtube

Capture and display complex data using a native form builder in Spark. Form Builder integrates natively into SearchKit, allowing you to make powerful search displays for your staff and constituents alike.

Both SearchKit and Form Builder are evolving feature sets within CiviCRM and CiviCRM Spark. They are revolutionary and will take your ability to manage data to a new level. That said, they are in early stages of development and are not (yet) feature complete.

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Take payments through Spark

At its heart, CiviCRM Spark is a ‘constituent relationship management’ (CRM) system. What sets it apart from other systems its ability to take payments via range of payment processors without any additional costs, save for those associated with the payment processor. That’s right… no additional percentage points or per fee transactions when taking payments through Spark.

Take payments online via credit card, ACH, SEPA, or transfer. Simple, flexible and powerful.

Enable one or multiple payment processors in your instance of Spark
Use one or multiple processors on each contribution page, event registration page, etc.
Support for recurring payments and advanced features

We include and recommend some of the best processors in the business…

Full disclosure, because that’s how we roll: the payment processors we recommend all financially support CiviCRM through revenue share agreements. These in no way inflate transaction fees for you. They do, however, support the ongoing development and maintenance of CiviCRM.

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Clear, simple pricing

View Spark terms & conditions

Here it is… in black and white. Sign up for either the basic or pro version and pay a simple monthly fee. That’s it. No add-ons, expansions, extras, or additional fees. So simple it’s kinda scary.

30 day money back guarantee. No questions asked.
Cancel any time. No contracts or penalties. Ever.
No price increases. Not gonna happen.

Starter

Lose the spreadsheets and get started with many of CiviCRM’s most popular components including CiviContribute, CiviMember, CiviCase and more.

Community support
Unlimited users
Up to 5,000 contacts
Most CiviCRM components
CiviMail
Mosaico HTML emails

$15

Per Month

Essentials

Take Spark to the next level by leveraging the power of CiviMail and Mosaico to enage your constituents with beautifully crafted, powerful email and SMS communications.

Everything in Starter
Up to 10,000 emails
CiviMail
Mosaico HTML emails
Limited extensions

$30

Per Month

Pro

Scale your CRM with additional contact and email capacity while benefiting from powerful automation features, enhanced interface flexiblity, price discounting and more.

Everything in Essentials
Extensions included
Up to 10,000 contacts
Up to 50,000 emails

Additional extensions are being evaluated. Contact us to offer feedback.

$50

Per Month

Subscribe to Spark

Extensions Included

Starter

GDPR
SEPA
Stripe, TSYS, iATS, PayPal
UKGiftAid
CDNTaxReceipts
CiviCampaign
APIKey

Essentials

All Starter Extensions
Mosaico
Twilio

Pro

All Essential Extensions
CiviDiscount
Contact Layout
CiviRules

All instances of Spark include the following extensions as utilities:

Firewall
PaymentsShared
The Island Theme
EasyCopy
ExcelExport
NoOverWrite
Ducttape
Logviewer
Sparkpost
Sweetalert
SymbioTIC
CiviTutorial

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Looking for support?

Spark is not a vehicle for support. It is access to your own instance of CiviCRM without any of the associated setup or ongoing maintenance.

Support is available same as with the download version of CiviCRM; via 1) community support and 2) expert providers.

Community Support

CiviCRM is powered by an amazing community of software developers and nonprofit professionals, many of which actively provide support through various community channels. Whether you’re a first time user or verteran of CiviCRM, community support is a great way to engage with the community and get support.

Professional Support

If you need more than what CiviCRM’s community support provides, don’t worry, you’re covered. CiviCRM has a network of experts that specifically support Spark in addition to providing expert services including migration, custom development, training, and more.

CiviCRM Partners

Recommended Providers

View Details

If you need assistance in finding a suitable partner for support, email us at spark@civicrm.org.

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Common Questions

Have other questions before getting started? No problem. You can jump on community chat or shoot us an email at any time.

Chat with us online

Send us an email

What language are the videos in?

All CiviAcademy videos are recorded in English and have English subtitles available. At present, subtitles are not available in other languages.

Does Spark provide access to a CMS?

No, Spark does not include access to a website content management system such as WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal. While that can limit its capabilities, it also allows you to use any website platform you want.

You’ll need to review your own specific organizational needs to determine if you require website integration. If you do, we recommend testing Spark’s funcationality first to ensure that CiviCRM meets your needs, then moving on to the full download version of CiviCRM. Remember, you have a 30 day money back guarantee, so you’re welcome to kick the tires on Spark without much financial risk.

Can we migrate off Spark?

Yes, absolutely! In fact, we hope that you do. Does that seem strange? Well, we’re just being honest. Spark is a great starting point into the larger CiviCRM ecosystem and a great introduction into CiviCRM the software. But, it’s not as feature rich as the full download version of CiviCRM.

Our objective in offering Spark, in fact, is to allow organizations access to CiviCRM’s basic functionality at an extremely low cost. After having mastered it, we encourage organizations to adopt the full version of CiviCRM and really begin to flex their CRM muscles!

And, of course, your data is your data. You are free to export it at any time. Likewise, we can assist you if you do opt to upgrade to the full version of CiviCRM.

What language are the videos in?

All CiviAcademy videos are recorded in English and have English subtitles available. At present, subtitles are not available in other languages.

How does the 30 day money back guarantee work?

It’s simple. When you subscribe to Spark you’ll be charged the first monthly payment of either $9.50 or $14.50. If you cancel before your next payment, we’ll refund your first payment no questions asked.

Actually, that’s not technically true. We may ask why you are cancelling just to get a better idea of why Spark didn’t work for you, but there are no requirements for you to cancel (hence why we say “no questions asked”). Rest assured that you are free to cancel any time. We won’t lay any guilt trips on you, try to upsell you, or otherwise prohibit you from cancelling Spark.

What are Spark’s limitations?

Spark is a great starting point for many organizations new to a CRM system. And, what’s more is that Spark provides aneasy transition to the full version of CiviCRM. So, what makes Spark less than the full version?

Spark includes up to 5,000 contacts and 10,000 emails sent per month. With CiviCRM (the full download), you have unlimited contacts and email capabilities.
Spark does not provide you a website CMS. You’ll need to manage that on your own. The download version of CiviCRM integrates with BackDrop, Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress.
Spark does not support any and all CiviCRM extensions. With the full download version, you can install, use and develop whatever extensions you want.
Spark does not include any paid support from CiviCRM LLC. But, then neither does the full download version.

Can I submit requests for specific video tutorials?

Absolutely! And, even better, when they are accepted we’ll produce those videos! 😀 But, be forewarned, Dreamcrusher may squash your dreams, depending on how applicable your request is.

Is CiviAcademy included with CiviCRM Spark?

Yup! Access to CiviAcademy ships with all active Spark subscriptions. If you move on from Spark one fateful day, well access to CiviAcademy will be disabled. Don’t worry, you can always re-subscribe.

Who is this ‘Dreamcrusher’ fella, anyway?

Nobody knows exactly who he is or where he comes from, but he has a wealth of real world experience regarding the use of CRMs by nonprofits and will gladly share it with you.

Why not use the full download version of CiviCRM?

That’s a great question, and we couldn’t agree more! The full download version of CiviCRM provides you all of the features and flexbility of CiviCRM. It’s free to download and use and always will be.

Having said that, Spark allows you to use many of the most popular features of CiviCRM without any technical administration. If you’ve never used a CRM before or are not comfortable installing CiviCRM on your own, the Spark may be a great starting point for you.

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Close to home

Spark instances can currently be located in either North America or Europe depending entirely on your preference. All email communications through Spark are processed within the European Union.

CiviCRM adheres to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Data Processing Agreement

Spark is backed by CiviCRM LLC, the entity that develops and maintains the open source software CiviCRM. CiviCRM LLC is a California-based LLC that is focused on delivering the very best opensource CRM to nonprofits around the world. We aspire to make a meaningful difference in the world for those with which we’re lucky to work. We value and promote:

Openness & Transparency – Engage in a clear, authentic and respectful manner and encourage participation.
Happy, engaged users – Provide elegant, compelling, user-focused solutions that exceed user needs.
Social responsibility – Enable others to do good and to have meaningful impact on our world.

Let’s get started!

We offset our carbon footprint via Ecologi

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