As we move closer to the launch of Madrona Community and Madrona Pro, we are compiling a few of the often-asked questions we have received.

General Questions

What is the difference between Madrona and Arbutus?

Arbutus was the working name of the program and as we move to launch we have rebranded the program as Madrona.  There will be two version of Madrona - Madrona Community and Madrona Pro.

Will Madrona Community actually be free?

Yes, Madrona Community will be entirely free and will be a powerful collection management system with no limits on the number of entries. There will also be an even more powerful pro version of the software for which there will be a fee.

We began this project with the goal of offering a collection management system that not only worked for large museums but was accessible to small museums with limited or no budgets. We are happy to have maintained this vision throughout the development of Madrona.

Are you planning to offer Madrona in French?

Not for the initial version, but it is an addition we are planning for the future.

Are you still looking for other beta testers?

Yes, we will begin remote beta testing in June and would like to have as much museum input as possible on the program.

Technical Questions

Will I need any programming skills to run Madrona?

No, when the program launches it will be a downloadable application that works on either a PC or Mac and will be as easy as double clicking and filling out some information to get started.

Do I need to host the Madrona with you, or can I run it on my own computer system?

Madrona is *not* a hosted solution - you run the application and store the data entirely within your network.