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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Jenzabar SONIS

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AJenzabar now offers SONIS, a student information system (SIS) oriented around the needs of smaller higher education institutions. Jenzabar supports the former SONISWEB product since its acquisition of original developer RJM Systems in 2015.N/A

    Thinkific

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AThinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
    Pricing
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    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
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Considered Both Products
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answer on this topic
    Thinkific
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    87%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    40 Answers
    Features
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Jenzabar SONIS and Thinkific
    Feature
    Jenzabar SONIS
    8.8
    2 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.32 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management7.32 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    iSpring Suite
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    9.2
    (54 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.7
    (44 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.6
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    3.6
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Jenzabar SONISThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    We often had students who came and took a class or completed a program, left, and then came back for something else at a later time. It was nice to be able to have someone in Jenzabar SONIS with multiple statuses. They could be in as a Student for the current class while still being in as an Alumni for the program they had graduated from. Most of our programs are set up so the students within that program are all taking the same courses at the same time. The bulk registration feature made it easy to enroll one student and then use that student's enrollment to quickly enroll all of the others in the program. That was a huge time saver. We had letters and emails that we wanted to send out at specific times in the application process. The Activity tool in Jenzabar SONIS made it easy for us to have some things that were automatically added to a person's record and others that we could add as needed. We could then run timed letters or emails and get our communication sent out. We had some challenges with Jenzabar SONIS because we have a number of certificate programs that are only one semester in length. We often had students who would complete one certificate (program) in the fall and then complete another one in the spring. Many of the reports pulled data only for the active enrollment so we had to go back and manually pull the data for the enrollment from the other semester if we needed something for the full school year.
    Incentivized
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    Thinkific
    I think Thinkific is very well suited if you want more control and not a ton of competition. It is very well suited if you want to create courses because it does an amazing job with providing course outline examples for you to stay organized and so forth. The only thing I would say where the courses might be less appropriate is if someone is expecting it to be like an udemy where people can see a ton of different course creators all in one place with course recommendations. Thinkific is not that type of platform and I LOVE that. On Thinkific, it almost feels like our site is our own ya know. I tried out other platforms and it just felt like you were competing with so many other people and could see other courses. Felt like being on a platter served with others. Thinkific just feels more unique in the sense it feels like when people come to your page, they are only seeing your page.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    • Great value
    • Built in reports are great, but it also has add on reporting that is fantastic.
    • Hosting they offer is phenomenal nearly no downtime, ever!
    Incentivized
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    Thinkific
    • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
    • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
    • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
    • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
    • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    • SONIS sorts my advisees by class and then by name. This is NOT useful. There should be an option for sorting by name only. I advise almost fifty students. It wastes my time looking for them in the sophomore listing, then the junior listing......
    • When registration of a student for semester courses is complete, there should be an option to print out only the courses scheduled, NOT the entire page which shows available courses at the bottom.
    • SONIS sometimes kicks me out for no reason.
    Incentivized
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    Thinkific
    • auto formatting of some course building content, does not format well on phone vs desktop
    • filter by group functionality for website based content, it's mostly filter by enrollments
    • the plug and play web building is convenient but really we need a UX/UI designer to build a super good looking website. Plug and play builder works but doesnt look SUPER sharp if done by someone with no dev skills or coding ability
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I'm very likely to renewal as long as Thinkific stays focused on helping small businesses like myself to stay in the know of new and more effective ways to use digital learning tools to help our students get better success. I will also stay with Thinkific if they do not intend to hike up the prices and keep the different price plans suit all businesses regardless of the size.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    It's Easy to use and navigate through. It gets the job done for daily tasks. Sometimes it may require a small amount of manual work. You can handle student records, housing, and check-ins without needing multiple systems. After staff are trained, they can move through tasks pretty quickly, which saves lots of time.
    Incentivized
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    Thinkific
    Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    It was good and easy to understand
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I highly recommend utilizing the bulk importer for video content early on, as it saves a massive amount of time during the initial setup phase. Another insight is to set up your custom domain and email integrations (like Mailchimp or HubSpot) at the very beginning of the implementation
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    We changed databases in 2011 because the company we were with was going to quit supporting our software. We evaluated a number of different SISs available at the time and felt Jenzabar SONIS provided the best tools for our school. Most of the others were either geared more for adult education, individual course offerings or for schools that primarily had degree-seeking students. We needed something that could address both needs.We felt Jenzabar SONIS did that best of the ones we reviewed.
    Incentivized
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    Thinkific
    ClickFunnels is great for funnels, but as of now, it does not do well with e-learning. Maybe they'll change that in ClickFunnels 2.0. But for now, I use Thinkific because I need a place where the students can come into their own dashboard, find all the courses they have purchased on a single place and be able to track their progress.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    Great use easy and simple
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Jenzabar, Inc.
    • Facilitates grade input by faculty.
    • Facilitates course enrollment by students.
    • Facilitates viewing student records and determining progress to program completion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    • No email marketing makes it more difficult to collect leads.
    • Price can be a barrier at time for small businesses who don't have revenue.
    • Easy to use and helps with my business needs vs platforms like Squarespace.
    • Community building through workshops and webinars Thinkific host.
    • Access to educational resources and mobile app.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots