Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

It's the Rolls Royce of systems!

Blackbaud K-12 is very similar. I feel like I would be trading one set of issues for another so it's kind of a wash. We are very much hooked into the Blackbaud website with our Google SSO, SmartTuition, and Schooldoc integrations. It would be difficult for us to transition. That is the main reason I haven't really entertained other web firms.

Better in some areas, worse in others

While I wasn't a part of the organization when the decision was made between Blackbaud and Finalsite, I know that we went with BB because we were promised a personalized experience where our transition would be fully supported by the team at BB on our external and internal websites.

We were looking for a new content management system and our priority was having a responsive design. While we looked at other products, ultimately Blackbaud K-12 “ON” Solutions was the right decision for us because the website would be responsive AND we would have the ability to add on other modules, which we did.

11 years ago, Whipplehill was in our opinion the best in class and it continues to be that way. The only other product that I would consider stacking up against it would be Veracross.

We made the decision to go with Blackbaud (WhippleHill at the time) back in 2008, at that time the landscape of available solutions was very different and this provided the best combination of features we wanted and ease of use.
Have not seriously reevaluated a new solutions since.

Our decision was made the first year WhippleHill came out with the first of the "ON" products. We compared them to Silverlight, Blackbaud NetClassroom/Campus and Finalsite. At the time, none of the competitors offered a responsive design interface and website, had no LMS at all, or like the Blackbaud product at the time, had a really clunky version with few features. I was so unimpressed with what Blackbaud offered at the time that I actually told them the only way I thought they could ever get competitive was to buy WhippleHill.

We originally had Blackboard but it did not bring everything together in one place and frustrated parents, particularly those with more than one child. The high school not as much as the younger divisions. It was not setup in a way that teachers of younger kids could use. It did not have the photo and video share features that Oncampus does. Schoology I have only used as a student once and it also does not seem to bring everything together for multiple classes and kids for parents.

Senior Systems products were evaluated. Blackbaud was not specifically chosen, our school is a legacy Whipplehill school and we decided to continue with Blackbaud. This decision was due to the length of time we were with WH and our investment in the software both economically and from and instructional perspective.

We consistently choose to stay with Blackbaud because--very simply--they provide the best path to data consistency and accuracy while giving us access to software focused on the needs of schools.

Blackbaud is much cleaner visually and has more integration...much more helpful to the entire school. And..,customer service has been exceptional! When we have questions we either received an answer immediately or, if more complicated, a time line formwhen we can expect and answer or notification that the problem has been solved. Aesthetically (and this goes tomuse-friendly) it is so well organized.