RedShelf vs. WizeHive Zengine

RedShelf has been great in a higher ed environment to help connect students to textbook and publisher materials. It has helped make the process of purchasing/accessing those materials so much easier for students. I am at an institution now where we don't have RedShelf, and the faculty and students are regularly frustrated with this process, so I'll be looking to get us a license here soon. RedShelf is particularly useful if instructors are using various different types of materials from different publishers. However, if an institution was only using Cengage Unlimited for example (that is a service where students will just pay for access to that site and all the books/materials for all of their courses would be accessible on there), that would be a time where I would think RedShelf wouldn't provide you with as much benefit. That being said, we may be using RedShelf in a very specific manner, and it may be able to provide us more ability/features that we haven't taken full advantage of.

Incentivized

I highly recommend this software, as it has allowed us to be much more transparent with the delivery of benefits and their applications, also the hours of work in this regard are less, allowing staff to devote to other tasks. A very useful and necessary software.

Incentivized

• Provides access with or without internet connection to read your books.
• You can access the application from your mobile device, tablets, or desktop computers.
• Streamlines the distribution of e-books, e-textbooks, and other digital content.

Incentivized

• It has made the application, which is almost identical to the application questions previously displayed by our old service, seem less daunting and more user friendly to grant applicants.
• The grant review team has exclaimed that the side-by-side review option is the best feature ever invented and has saved them loads of paper.
• Internally, I appreciate the ease of use of the back end system. Being able to easily assign grants to reviews both in and outside the organization, easily create queries for the stats I need, and the ability to move application through the steps of the system seamlessly make this my top choice since I'm the only staff member dedicated to the Foundation which leaves me with lots on my plate to balance.

Incentivized

• Waiting for a course management tool to streamline the process. It's in the works and a tall order since all clients approach the process differently.
• A little bit of a stumble with a recent software rollout for day one access roll out, but at least it was intuitive to work through

Incentivized

• It's messy- we can only apply a question to a certain amount of applications so we have 2-3 of a lot of questions
• The affiliate directors can't export an excel file from their dashboard
• If a question changes or becomes required or not required it impacts all past applications

Incentivized

We are so happy with the service that we just signed the contract for another year.

Incentivized

The platform is very basic. On the other and, our staff does not take advantage of its full capabilities because such features did not work well for us/fit our needs

Incentivized

We didn’t really use their support. I wish they would have told us more about the fact they were changing to get rid of the flash player as that was the main reason we left.

Incentivized

Their design team gave us the option to save some money by creating the forms ourselves for both the submission and review portals. This also allowed us to get to a point where we felt very comfortable in any future changes that would need to be made to forms since we were so immersed in creating them.

Incentivized

I don't believe I'd used many products that are similar to RedShelf.

Incentivized

SurveyMonkey and SurveyGizmo are great to use for other programs and events that require collecting fairly basic responses and feedback, however, these don't provide the level of information and data that is needed for our grants processes. WizeHive provides a number of tools and other benefits that are just beyond these products' capabilities

Incentivized

• It is a great provider of affordable digital learning materials that help improve teaching and learning through technology.

Incentivized

• Zengine is definitely a time-saver, but there are a myriad of grant management software platforms on the market that save just as much time, some even more time-saving. But if you have a basic need to offer an application process of any sort (grant, scholarship, etc.) to the public, Zengine can be very helpful in saving time and keeping everything related to the grant handy in one location, and all connected (application, reviews, final reports, etc.).

Incentivized