brightwheel vs. Progress Sitefinity

Any preschool can benefit from brightwheel, no matter the size. Brightwheel is also excellent for billing, which is especially helpful for schools that do not have other databases and billing systems. Because our school is a PS-12, it is a little cumbersome to have brightwheel along with another management system that we use school-wide. It would be nice to have a separate price point that does not include the things that another database system does for schools that are required to use what the older grades also use.

Incentivized

Progress Sitefinity remains a little heavyweight for sites that require basic text content, or a limited number of pages. However, its flexibility (including the range of different content types if supports) make it a good choice for any organization requiring advanced content management capabilities at an affordable price.

Incentivized

• Recording data for students.
• Connecting to parents with photos, videos, and messages.
• Signing in and out electronically and saving paper daily.

Incentivized

• 'Low-code structured content' (dynamic content types) is one of Sitefinity's most powerful features that allows you to structure content according to business needs, while at the same time dampening editorial freedom to ensure accessibility, meta enhancement, SEO and API consumption can be achieved.
• Sitefinity's content provider model allows us to flexibly (by means of admin interface) easily aggregate or separate content sharing within a multi-site instance.
• This proofs particularly powerful in emerging situations where there suddenly is a demand for content sharing across countries or regions.
• Adaptability at its core.
• While there's never a perfect fit for everything, it allows for easy code customization and extension being a .NET application at heart. Giving it a corporate edge over other custom solutions, whether it is on the development side or deployment side (on premise, IaaS or Azure DevOps Paas). And it has enabled us to put the system to use in its core feature - which is to manage content, where on other occasions we were able to take full advantage of its features such as A/B testing and personalization.

• Offering a price point that does not include billing.
• Allowing more freedom of uploading own documents.

Incentivized

• Diagram or illustrate more use cases for server setups, and managing of upgrades.
• I'd like to see the ability to synchronize from one server to multiple others at once.
• Implementation assistance as part of the purchase rather than farming out to 3rd party, although they did answer every question we asked in order to determine our best architecture setup.

Incentivized

Pricing makes this a no brainer. Not the best CMS, but with work arounds and some fumbling around we are able to make it do what we want it to do

Incentivized

Very big fan of this CMS, as it allows scalability, performance, and everything else. The support is great whenever we need it. As a marketer, the digital/marketing side of things is very easy to use and we've seen strong results from an SEO and marketing perspective. I can't speak to the developer/creative side too much, but in talking with these teams, they do recommend the tool as well.

Incentivized

Has been solid for us on availability

A bit sluggish sometimes as the compiler works.

Support can be pretty good, even though, depending on the level of licensing, it can take longer to hear back from their team. They do have a phone option, which works well. Overall, they are knowledgeable, and helpful when needed. At times, support is able to access the system directly and troubleshoot critical items when needed.

N/A - I was not part of the implementation team. We have had this internally for over 5 years. Based on my experience, ensure that you have documentation on the initial implementation and subsequent upgrades. I would also recommend to have all the documentation on how and why the system was implemented the way it was

Incentivized

Brightwheel does much more for the preschool level than FACTS does. The creators of this app know early childhood. The company also provides helpful webinars that are unrelated to their software, such as staff retention or ways to market. They understand the business of early childhood and exist to make the lives of providers easier.

Incentivized

It is hands down just easier for our customers to use. The interface and the page builder experience is much better than what we have used in the past and has many enterprise features even in the lower price-point

Incentivized

Seems pretty scalable.

• Value add for parents
• Saves paper
• Benefits for teachers who fully utilize

Incentivized

• Sitefinity has reduced the amount of time it takes to edit and publish content, which has enabled us to get information out more quickly.
• Sitefinity allowed us to establish a consistent and modern brand identity and apply it across multiple websites.

Incentivized