Blackbaud Tuition Management vs. Ellucian Colleague

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blackbaud Tuition Management
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Blackbaud Tuition Management (formerly Smart Tuition) is a tuition management application providing student parents with online account access, online payment processing, a mobile app, and other features.N/A
Ellucian Colleague
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Ellucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.N/A
Pricing
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Features
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Student and Faculty Administration
Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Product A and Product B
Blackbaud Tuition Management
10.0
1 Ratings
20% above category average
Ellucian Colleague
7.8
4 Ratings
5% below category average
Online Registration Management10.01 Ratings7.53 Ratings
District Communications, such as messaging and alerting10.01 Ratings7.03 Ratings
Student Data Security10.01 Ratings8.04 Ratings
State and National-level Reporting10.01 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology00 Ratings7.54 Ratings
Roster Management00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Platform Customization00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Teacher Self-Service00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Community Support00 Ratings7.53 Ratings
Class Scheduling00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Compliance Support00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Teacher and Parent Mobile Application00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
Schoolmint Hero
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(2 ratings)
7.3
(13 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Blackbaud Tuition ManagementEllucian Colleague
Likelihood to Recommend
Blackbaud
The way Blackbaud Tuition Management handles the charges and how accessible it is makes my job much easier. I love that parents can see the same view of their account as I have when entering/reviewing an account so that it doesn't sound foreign when I try to explain something to them.
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Ellucian
Ellucian Colleague is wonderful at streamlining processes and unifying data related to students, finance, human resources, and financial aid. It continues to support and manage administrative needs, enhance student experiences, and improve operational efficiency across the University. Ellucian Colleague is less suited for quick data retrieval and comprehensive financial reporting. These functions could use some improvement to optimize the user experience.
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Pros
Blackbaud
  • Website is easy to navigate
  • Customer service is very professional and helpful
  • Multiple options for making payments and setting up accounts
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Ellucian
  • Colleague Student allows us to integrate services across the university for students with staff in various departments able to see the information about a student that they need to serve the student well.
  • Colleague Student makes it easy to see our students current academic record as well as transfer courses (and information) and their past records here at the university. Our old system required a lot of homegrown connection points to be able to see all of this information. It was neither quick nor easy.
  • Colleague Student makes the registration process for our students much easier. Our old system was clunky and would often prevent students from registering for a class but not provide information for them about why. Colleague Student makes it easy for students to see if they are missing a pre-requisite, have a hold, etc., so they can know how to get their registration back on track.
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Cons
Blackbaud
  • Divorced parent log in access
  • Split family contract processes
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Ellucian
  • Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
  • Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
  • Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
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Usability
Blackbaud
No answers on this topic
Ellucian
For decades, Ellucian Colleague has served the University as our primary student record-retention CRM. Its functionality has weathered many recent trends in CRM development and continues to produce the needed results for our constituency and the size of our university. We look forward to continuing to utilize Ellucian Colleague in the future.
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Alternatives Considered
Blackbaud
I use FACTS in my role at work, and my children's school uses Smart Tuition. I am more familiar with Smart Tuition as a parent, but it seems to be a good solution for the high school. Since we do the financial aid in-house at my school of employment, FACTS works better for us.
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Ellucian
I did not use Jenzabar as extensively as Colleague, but they perform similar functions for student information tracking. I think Colleague is more appropriate for use across campus, as its student billing and scheduling options exceed Jenzabar. Jenzabar, however, offers better tools for use exclusively in student affairs. If an organization wants to track all student data, they should consider Colleague.
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Return on Investment
Blackbaud
  • Online access is key
  • Multiple payment options are great
  • Since there are so many payment options we receive funds faster
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Ellucian
  • By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
  • Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
  • Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
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