Case Study

Kintera: Scaling to 1,000 SaaS Users With Canadian Data Residency Without Compromise

Key Highlights

Kintera (formerly Chartwell Consultants) is a British Columbia-based consulting firm specializing in GIS, mapping, and logistics for the natural resource sector. Through its Application Services division, the company develops and supports a proprietary SaaS platform that helps a major B.C. utility manage vegetation and access projects across utility right-of-ways.

~1,000 users in the SaaS platform at time of adoption
1 utility client with mandatory Canadian data residency requirements
Previous tool: Outlook — outgrown as user base scaled into the hundreds

The Challenge

For years, Kintera’s Application Services team relied on Outlook to communicate with users of their SaaS platform. When the user base was small, that worked. As the platform grew into the hundreds, and eventually toward a thousand users, sending bulk emails through Outlook became unmanageable.

Mathew Evans, Director of Application Services, needed a proper email platform. But when he began researching options, he quickly ran into a barrier that ruled out most of the well-known names in the market.

Outlook wasn’t built for bulk communications.
As the user base scaled, managing sends, tracking delivery, and maintaining accurate contact lists through Outlook created too much manual overhead and too little visibility.
Canadian data residency was non-negotiable.
Kintera’s primary utility client required that all data reside in Canadian data centers. Mathew signed up for trials with Mailchimp and Constant Contact and reached out directly to ask both whether they could guarantee Canadian data residency. Neither could. Both were ruled out immediately.
The team needed something they could actually use.
They were looking for a tool built for non-technical personnel. Mathew needed a platform that was straightforward enough to get up and running quickly, without a steep learning curve or IT involvement.

The Solution

Mathew discovered Envoke. He signed up for a trial, spent a short time exploring the platform to confirm it would meet Kintera’s needs, and converted to a paid account within days.

The combination of Canadian ownership, Canadian data residency, and a clean interface built for communicators, not marketers, made the decision easy.

Key capabilities that made Envoke the right fit:

- Canadian data residency, guaranteed.
  Envoke is a Canadian company and stores data in Canadian data centers — a firm client requirement that no U.S. platform could meet. This was the primary reason Kintera chose Envoke.
- Ease of use.
  Mathew was able to get up and running quickly without significant IT support. The platform was intuitive enough that he could focus on communicating with users rather than learning software.
- Tag-based segmentation.
  With nearly 1,000 users across different roles, regions, and project contexts, Kintera needed to send targeted communications to specific subsets, not blast the full list every time. Tags and segments made that possible.
- Responsive support.
  When Mathew encountered a question during domain verification setup, Envoke’s support team resolved it quickly, the kind of responsiveness he noted as a meaningful contrast to larger platforms.

The Results

"It was as frictionless as possible, easy to get set up and we were able to use it very quickly. I love supporting a Canadian company."

Mathew Evans
Director of Application Services
Kintera

A client requirement met from day one.
Canadian data residency was the filter that eliminated every other platform Mathew considered. Envoke met it without compromise. For Kintera’s utility client, there was no acceptable alternative, and Envoke delivered on that requirement immediately.

Fast setup, no IT bottleneck.
Mathew converted from trial to paid customer within days. The platform was straightforward enough to configure and use without pulling in IT resources, which kept the process lean and the timeline short.

Targeted communications to the right users.
Using tags and segment expressions, Kintera can reach specific groups within its user base by role, region, or project context, without sending every message to everyone. This matters for a team managing a platform across a large and varied utility operation.

Looking Forward

As Kintera’s SaaS platform continues to grow, Mathew sees Envoke playing a broader role in how the team communicates with its user base.

"Canadian data residency was paramount for us in choosing Envoke. That, combined with how easy it is to use, made it a straightforward decision.”

Mathew Evans
Director of Application Services
Kintera

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