TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    MindTap

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AMindTap is an eLearning course management solution from Cengage, a digital learning content and technology provider. For educators, it includes pre-made interactive course materials (such as homework assignments, assessments, etc.), analytics around student engagement and performance, and the ability to customize courses. For students, MindTap offers a mobile app to access eBooks, flashcards, quizzes, grades, and due date reminders.N/A

    Ellucian Banner

    Score5.2 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Banner educational ERP, including its student management system emphasizing control and reporting of process-oriented facets of education such as grading and attendance.N/A
    Pricing
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    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
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Considered Both Products
    Cengage
    Chose MindTap
    MindTap is more user-friendly and less expensive. Other products, such as Connect and MyLab and not as user-friendly; are also more expensive. Using one platform such as MindTap provides consistency across courses while allowing for individual professors the ability to create …
    Incentivized
    Ellucian
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    80%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    86%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    82%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    80%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    78%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Cengage MindTap and Ellucian Banner
    Feature
    Cengage MindTap
    -
    Ratings
    Ellucian Banner
    8.5
    8 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology00 Ratings7.98 Ratings
    Online Registration Management00 Ratings8.97 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting00 Ratings8.94 Ratings
    Roster Management00 Ratings8.56 Ratings
    Platform Customization00 Ratings8.16 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service00 Ratings8.86 Ratings
    Student Data Security00 Ratings8.67 Ratings
    Community Support00 Ratings8.66 Ratings
    Class Scheduling00 Ratings8.67 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting00 Ratings9.27 Ratings
    Compliance Support00 Ratings8.96 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application00 Ratings7.25 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (8 ratings)
    7.4
    (21 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    MindTapEllucian Banner
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cengage
    We started using the application optimally at the beginning as a digital learning and consultation platform. In it we imported all kinds of bibliographic material so that students could access them with the ease of a tap. The application is perfect for those instructors who are not beginners in HTML. In that case, the application very practically allows them to create a complete course in the shortest possible time because it has a state-of-the-art instructional design. It was excellent for unifying all the basic course plans between teachers teaching the same subject, giving the advantage that all courses at the same level would have exactly the same information and nothing would be overlooked
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    As a SIS, Banner Pages is the full meal deal. There are multiple modules that integrate out of the box. Because Banner is all I've ever used as a SIS, I can't contrast it with another program. I can say, it gets the job done for us. I will also say that a tremendous amount of time goes into strategizing how to get new functions to work for us and there always seems to be some catch that requires even more work. In general, the university has been hesitant to build too many modifications into Banner because they take a lot of time to maintain. Inevitably, a new update (of which there are MANY for Banner) will break stuff that isn't "vanilla." This is unfortunate because we've had some great ideas for how to make Banner better for us, but also understandable. If you're looking for a highly modular system, this isn't it. Banner has lots of components, but the components work the way they work and that's that. Also, don't expect very quick responses to bugs or glitches. If the bug is major, yes, it will be addressed. But, little function issues seem to be regularly overlooked.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cengage
    • digital textbook platform with accessibility tools (read-aloud, note taking)
    • interactive exercises and practice tools
    • assessments including self-check quizzes and customizable exams
    • LTI integration to pass grade information to learning management system
    • excellent support for faculty
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    • I think it's great to use if you are tracking grades for certain classes, especially if you'd like to see how students do, comparing midterm to final grades. If you have the permissions, you can see both.
    • It's also good to track students individually. You can look up a certain semester, and see how they did in that particular time frame, but you can also see their cumulative gpa, or even look up their entire course history.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cengage
    • The biggest issue our first-time users have with Mindtap is that ad/pop-up blockers often stop the tool from opening. (Mindtap typically opens in a new window vs inside the LMS) This leads to a lot of initial frustration amongst the students early in the course.
    • MindTap lacks a really strong set of roles outside of Instructor and Student. There is no Teaching Assistant role or and IT/Course Builder role. Additionally setting up students workers as TAs in one course while they may be a student in another concurrently has been more than a little cumbersome.
    • The UI is a bit dated and it doesn't implement many responsive web design features, though this can typically be worked around by downloading the free app.
    • The mobile app experience is not as strong for Instructors as it is for students.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    • One thing I miss from the previous version of Ellucian Banner, is the control + page down. I struggle with alt + page down.
    • I love the Ellucian Banner favorites; however, it is a little difficult to navigate.
    • I can honestly only think of 2 things that could be improved. I use Ellucian Banner daily.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cengage
    It's hard to imagine not renewing it as the professors would not want to go back to the way their courses were previously populated. The only thing that would cause us to change would be in the textbook changed and the new company offered a better tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    We have no reason not to renew with Ellucian - we are in deep with the ecosystem, and have Ellucian providing us with information technology support. If anything, should the opportunity arise, we'd probably consider adding a different ellucian tools into the suite of applications we already have on board.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cengage
    Very easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    You definitely have to learn it before it becomes easy to use. It's better than it was, but it's still not entirely intuitive. You can't just look at it and play around to figure out how it works
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cengage
    No answers on this topic
    Ellucian
    It's pretty much up all the time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cengage
    No answers on this topic
    Ellucian
    Has gotten much better due to new hardware.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cengage
    The effort from them always feels strong - I'd just recommend they be more prepared for OS (mac) and LMS (blackboard) upgrades
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    Our department generally does not contact the support center for Banner but the IT department does. That being said, in the seven years that I have been here, I have not once needed to contact the support center; we have had no glitches on Banner's side that needed to be addressed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cengage
    It worked seamlessly with Blackboard
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    very satisfied, along with the IT staff and ellucian support the upgrades do very well and have minimum down time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Cengage
    MindTap is the only learning software I currently use, but in the past I have used Pearson and McGraw Hill learning content. All of these companies are progresses at a similar rate and making great improvements to their educational materials. MindTap, in my opinion has the best customer service support and representatives in the business. Our rep. has been very responsive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    PeopleSoft was more user-friendly. It also provided the ability to save and bookmark queries. PeopleSoft will allow users to use common names to search for queries. Overall, it seemed much more current than Banner. PeopleSoft provided enrollment data for specific sections which allowed one to spot trends of enrollment in a given class.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cengage
    No answers on this topic
    Ellucian
    being able to scale with hardware was easy and not cumbersome. We were allowed to user virtual machines which made things very scalable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cengage
    • The positive impact is to help students practice statistics to solve business problems.
    • The negative side is that the pricing might be too high compared to other free options available, even though the free options might not have the same features MindTap has.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ellucian
    • There is positive ROI on the product overall. It had reduced or allowed us to focus our staff members on something which is very use and it does the job in the background.
    • The application has supported in a lot of ways in saving resources and utilizing them in very productive & efficient manner
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots