Convio provided internet marketing and business management applications tailored specifically for non-profit organizations, and virtually all of its customers were charities, educational establishments, and political advocacy groups.
The name "Convio" (pronounced con-VEE-oh) is false Latin for "with vision" and was chosen to be abstract, short, memorable, and because the internet domain name convio.com was not previously registered.
GetActive Software was founded by Bill Pease, Sheeraz Haji, Tom Krackeler, Ken Leiserson and other former staff members at the Environmental Defense Fund who had been doing work within that organization to enable internet activism via the then nascent World Wide Web.
They realized that many non-profit organizations could benefit from the same technology, and set up a spin-off commercial software company to further develop and distribute it, with Environmental Defense as a shareholder.
The original "placeholder" name of GetActive was Locus Pocus, a pun on the concept of using address mapping technology to connect a visitor to a web site with the political representatives for their district.