Blackbaud sells the school website as part of a bundle with fundraising, CRM, and often tuition and enrollment. That means an honest comparison is narrower than it looks: Full Stack Tech replaces the website, not the development office stack. For independent schools where the site is the weak half of the bundle, replacing just the website for $900 a year while keeping Raiser's Edge is usually the sane move.
Blackbaud sells a school website as one component of a bundle that usually also includes fundraising, constituent CRM, and often tuition and enrollment management. So the honest version of this comparison is narrower than most “alternative” pages: we replace the website. We do not replace Raiser’s Edge.
For a lot of independent schools that is exactly the right split.
What Blackbaud is genuinely good at
If your school has a development office — someone whose job is major gifts, annual fund, and stewardship — the Blackbaud fundraising and CRM side is doing serious, specialised work. Constituent records going back decades, gift history, soft credits, campaign reporting, reunion and class-year structures. That is not a website problem and no website vendor replaces it.
Pages that imply otherwise are selling you something. If you are running real development operations, keep the system that holds your donor data.
Where the bundle gets weak
The website. Specifically:
It is rarely the product the vendor is best at. Fundraising software companies acquire or build a CMS because it completes the bundle, not because it is the thing they are excellent at. The site tends to feel like a module rather than a website.
Bundled pricing hides what the website costs. You are quoted a total, so nobody can say what the site itself is worth. The useful question for your next renewal call is: “what does the website line cost on its own, and what happens to the total if we remove it?” Sometimes the answer is nothing, which is itself informative.
Design and editing flexibility are constrained by the platform’s needs. When the CMS has to serve every school on the platform, your site is a configuration of someone else’s assumptions.
Switching feels impossible because the bundle feels monolithic. It usually is not. That is the main thing this page exists to say.
Replacing the website only
The website and the CRM are separable concerns. A modern site can present the school beautifully, run its calendar and news and admissions content, and hand gifts off to whatever donor system you already use.
What that gets you:
- Donor data stays exactly where it is. No migration of constituent records, no gift-history risk, no retraining the development office. This is the whole argument.
- A site built for your school, not configured from a platform’s template set.
- A negotiating position at renewal. A school that can credibly move one component of a bundle is a school with leverage over the whole bundle.
What to check first:
- Does your contract bundle the website inseparably? Read the term and the component list. Ask directly what removing the website does to the price.
- How do gifts currently reach the CRM — a hosted form, an API, a nightly import? That determines how the new site hands off.
- Who is the registrant on your domain? Ask before you plan anything.
Side by side — website scope only
| Blackbaud (website component) | Full Stack Tech | |
|---|---|---|
| Sold as | part of a fundraising/CRM bundle | the website, on its own |
| Annual cost | bundled; ask what the site line is | $900, published |
| Setup fee | typically yes | $0 |
| Term | multi-year typical in this tier | 1 year, cancel anytime, rate locked 3 years |
| Fundraising CRM | yes — genuinely strong | no, and we will not pretend otherwise |
| Content migration | scoped and quoted | included |
| Design | platform templates and configuration | custom to your school |
| Domain registrant | ask before signing | you, always |
| Source code | rented | yours, in your own repository |
| Accessibility | platform-level; ask how it is maintained | checked on every deploy |
We have not seen a Blackbaud invoice and the company does not publish flat school pricing, so there is no figure in that table we would be willing to assert. Get yours in writing. Our $900 is our published rate.
Independent schools are a different buyer
Worth saying plainly, since most of our writing is about public-school PTAs. A Blackbaud school usually has an endowment, a development office, an admissions funnel, and a board that thinks in multi-year terms. That school:
- Cares more about how the site reads to prospective families than about saving $2,000
- Has real compliance and brand-governance expectations
- Will not move its CRM, and should not be asked to
If that is you, the pitch is not savings. It is that the website deserves to be as good as the institution, and it is currently the weakest thing a prospective family sees — while being the first.
The question underneath all of this
Same one as everywhere else in this category: who runs this in three years?
For a bundled platform the answer is “the vendor, as long as you keep paying,” which is a real answer. Ours is a company with a term and a contact, plus a site living in a repository your school owns — so if we disappeared, any competent developer could pick it up. When you leave a rented platform, there is nothing to hand anyone.
More on how the tiers compare in the full platform comparison, and the questions worth asking any vendor are in the PTA website FAQ — they apply to independent schools just as well.
Written by Full Stack Tech NYC. We build and host custom school and PTA websites for $900 a year flat — migration included, accessibility checked on every deploy, and you own the domain, content, and code outright. Title I and high-need public schools can apply for a free build. See pricing and process →
Common questions
Can we replace a Blackbaud school website without leaving Blackbaud?
Usually yes, and it is often the right answer. The website and the fundraising CRM are separable concerns — the site can be rebuilt elsewhere and still hand gifts off to your existing donor system. Confirm your contract does not bundle the website inseparably before planning it.
Is Blackbaud worth it for a school?
If you have a development office running real fundraising operations on Raiser's Edge, that side of Blackbaud is doing serious work and is not something a website vendor replaces. The question is only whether the website half of the bundle earns its share.
How much does a Blackbaud school website cost?
Blackbaud does not publish flat list pricing for schools, and costs vary widely by module mix and enrollment. Industry reporting places this tier in the range of enterprise school platforms generally. We have not seen a Blackbaud invoice, so get your own numbers in writing and ask specifically what the website line costs on its own.
What happens to our donor data if we change website vendors?
Nothing, if the CRM stays put. That is the main argument for replacing only the website — your constituent records, gift history, and reporting remain exactly where they are, and the new site posts gifts into the same place.
Who owns the website if we build outside Blackbaud?
With our builds, you do — domain, content, and source code, in a repository under the school's own account. With a bundled platform there is generally nothing to own; you are renting software, which is a legitimate model but means leaving is always a rebuild.