CivicReady

What do you like best?

The user friendly ness and ease of sending out mass messages to our community! We use it for everything from emergency management to program and event announcements. It is great.

What do you dislike?

The ease of which you can accidentally send calls when you mean to send a text. The only thing I would change is the ability to send a long message as an mms instead of an sms, just so we could send longer messages without annoying people with too many short messages. Messages also come out of order sometimes which can be frustrating.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Please make sure to use it on computer and not on phone without the app. Also please make sure to make replies go to group address if it is just a general announcement. Be careful with calls as people will call back, so make sure you intended that. I have done it on accident several times.. oops. Also please please please don't send out messages at 3-4 in the morning.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Communication- it has really streamlined it! Automated messages from the weather service, pre-scheduled messages for events and programs, and easy to send out quick urgent messages has made communication with out community easy. We sometimes schedule our messages out as far as a year! It has really worked in our favor in that way. We are also able to create and account for a user- which is great for use to give people access to when they may not understand how to sign up.