User Reviews Overview
About Blackbaud K-12 Solutions
Blackbaud K-12 is a cloud-based school management solution designed to help educational institutes record and track students’ information, grade and health records. It offers an online attendance tracking system, which enables...
Learn moreAll Blackbaud K-12 Solutions Reviews Apply filters
Browse Blackbaud K-12 Solutions Reviews
All Blackbaud K-12 Solutions Reviews Apply filters
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
-
Review Source
A very capable behemoth
We had an in depth investigation process to determine we needed to replace our School Management Platform and with a very friendly and helpful sales person at Blackbaud we were convinced they were the best option for the price. While not the best option purely on features and output, they beat the top choice by being 30% less expensive. By no means inexpensive, they seemed the affordable option. The Toyota Camry of cars for this if you will.
Once we signed the papers, the on-boarding and implementation process was a highly templated meat grinder of a process. In some ways the deployment on rails process relieved a lot of stress in that it answered questions we didn't know we had and removed a lot of deliberation that would have slowed down our launch. However, in the areas that we knew there would be nuance to our situation, it also left a lot of frustration because of the inflexibility. Subject Matter Experts during the onboarding were also very niche. Two products might overlap and if we had questions about how one might impact the other, we would have a specialist in one and a specialist in the other but very hard for them to discuss the one that wasn't their or talk to each other.
Once we slogged through an on-boarding and launch we had purposely taken slow to build our internal capability, it has been like an old car that has a reliable engine, but that doesn't look very impressive and takes a lot of elbow grease to keep running.
Pros
Through the longevity of the organization and their focus on the products as well as strategic acquisition of other products and services they have folded into the platform it is capable of being used for so many of the things we need in the operations of a school. If looking to simplify the number of organizations with whom you have to make contact for the variety of operations, aligning on a single platform can be attractive and sometimes cost saving.
Cons
Because of the comprehensiveness of the platform and the longevity of some of its parts, there are many things about the systems that are incongruous or inflexible to the adaptation needed for an organization trying to remain nimble. I've used the analogy of building a wheel from the outside toward the hub before but also feel like it can be akin to the two teams building a bridge from opposite banks only to reach the middle and realize they will not connect because they were not aligned. There are part of the system that require you to build up to the end result in such a way that you cannot see that the end result is not what you desired until you are done with a lot of work that when failing at the end you have to unpack and redo again and again until it is right.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
-
Review Source
Fantastic holistic program. Horrible implementation experience
In 2016, we made the decision to move from our former database (Rediker) to Blackbaud Cloud hosted products: Core, OnRecord, OnCampus, OnBoard, Raiser's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT and Smart Tuition. We wanted a holistic database for all of our departments to pull from and for information to move seamlessly in realtime. We are in the middle of the first year and we are very pleased with the functionality, User friendliness and wide variety of reports that are available. Customer support is phenomenal. Every person, without exception, has been friendly, professional and competent. I really enjoy using the chat feature and appreciate case central's ticketing system.
Our implementation experience has been horrible. Most of it seems to be attributed to the Whipple Hill acquisition along with a confusing model. Even though we paid thousands of dollars for implementation fee, I felt like we did 90% of the work. Our Project Manager only provided a confusing project mgmt. software and introduced us to our product specialists. The implementation comprised of a series of useless group sessions and one-on-one sessions implementation consultations which were really training sessions in disguise. The grading setup is incredibly complex and non-intuitive, however our specialist was instructed to only setup our Upper School and we would have to setup the lower and middle schools on our own. The whole process left us feeling confused, frustrated and behind schedule.
We highly recommend Blackbaud Products, but here are a few pointers for anyone considering the program:
1. Give yourself a year. No matter the timeline Blackbaud gives you, double it.
2. Keep your former SIS one more year and work in tandem with the new OnProducts. We are halfway through the year and we're still importing information over from our prior system.
3. Historical Grade Data ' This can only be done for current students. They will not do it for previous students and Alumni.
4. LMS ' Blackbaud does not integrate with any other LMS. OnCampus is highly functional, but lacking in a few features we like in Haiku.
5. Smart Tuition - The Smart Tuition integration is new and still going through development. We've been working at this for several weeks and delayed re-enrollment contracts pending their resolution. If you're considering a transition, you should wait another few months for the bugs to work out.
Pros
Holistic, cloud-based platform which allows data to move seamlessly and in realtime.
Cons
The implementation process needs a lot of work.
- Industry: Primary/Secondary Education
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
-
Review Source
Teachers for Teachers
Overall it has been a decent experience using K-12. No software is perfect, but this software gets the job done and is functional.
Pros
I love that there are so many different options available on this software. I can see my students' information, their parents' contact information, birthdays, grades, and assignments all in the same place. It is a good central location for all the important information of my classroom.
Cons
This software can be hard to predict when it will time out. Unfortunately there were occasions when putting in grades that I would lose entire portions and have to retype the grades because the page would time out without warning, and the grades hadn't been saved. I had to be very diligent about saving the page manually after entering any grades.
Top Blackbaud K-12 Solutions Alternatives
ezKurs
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
-
Review Source
Very helpful for benchmarking
Pros
We have used blackbaud for over 15 years. We use this for tuition payments and payables. Extremely easy to use.
Cons
If there are 5 people in the system then you can't get in. Not a problem except for busy times of the month
- Industry: Banking
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used for 6-12 months
-
Review Source
Blackbaud K-12 Solutions
overall this is really good remote learning and presenting a solution and recommending for purchase.
Pros
Blackbaud K12 is one of the best solutions for doing attendance tracking/class schedule. The analysis of the attendance is also very helpful when we doing assessments.
Cons
As like most of software, the help desk support is very less and had to send reminders for fix my issues
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
-
Review Source
After one year, price is sky-rocketing
The program is fairly "dossy, but they are upgrading to a new interface. We were provided a demo and it looks good, but it comes with a price - like times 10, almost. The old program we have will no longer be supported. We can't afford the new one. We have implemented a system and finally got to the point of our teachers not complaining about issues, and now we'll need to start the process again.
Pros
The program is multi-functional, addressing most needs any school would need.
Cons
There have been separate purchase options, and we purchased just what we felt we needed. Later we discovered that many functions of the program we purchase would not work without purchasing another part of the program. The new software appears to well-integrated, but at a much higher cost to the customer.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
-
Review Source
Blackbaud is a solid LMS with a pretty interface
Pros
The home screen pops up your daily schedule which makes it easy to review your classes and take attendance. Attendance function includes student photographs which is helpful when just getting to know a new class.
Cons
Some functions, like running reports, are not intuitive to use at all and seem almost buried in the software. It's colorful and very visually driven which may work well for some but I find it unnecessary and distracting.
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
-
Review Source
I use Blackbaud to look up information on alumni and potential donors.
Pros
I love the "recently accessed" side bar that comes up every time I sign in. This allows me to go back to a record that I was previously looking at, which makes it much easier when researching donors and alumni. I also like that their constituent ID is right there next to their name for a quick reference!
Cons
Blackbaud does pretty much everything I could want it to do. If there was something to improve on, I think it would be the constituent search screen. When I search for a constituent, Blackbaud brings up all possible matches. Sometimes, I use broad search words and the system will only show me the first 100 matches or so, limiting the number I can see. When I'm searching for someone with a very common name, this can make it difficult to go down the list and try to find the one I'm looking for.
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
-
Review Source
Overall, I've had a positive experience using backbaud software and tools
Pros
One of the great pros of using blackbaud has been it's reliability and ease of use. It's the most intuitive program I've found as far as simplicity for new users, as well as customization for those advanced or more experienced. I also like that any time I ever had an issue, a quick google search or email usually cleared up the error. Overall, it was a solid product and I would use it again
Cons
The problem with this product as well as some others by the same company is that they can be cost prohibitive. While I had a positive experience with this particular software, one school I was at dropped it due to cost.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
-
Review Source
Blackbaud Review
Blackbaud can be a great solution for a fully integrated solution for independent schools' business and educational needs; training and learning time will be needed.
Pros
Blackbaud was a great move at our high school for combining business needs and the LMS functionality. It was a single tool that served the full community well.
Cons
There is a definite learning curve in the transition to the LMS side. It sounded as if the business end was much smoother.
-
Review Source
Recent Down Hill
Been using it for years. The past few years the product has really gone down hill. We have an issue and have been waiting for 2 years! for a decent resolution. Still pending. Its a mess. Very disappointed. Now an update is changing some of the access of data in queries crossing relations.
-
Review Source
Expensive but does it all
If you are looking for one suite to meet your school's full needs, this would definitely be a legitimate candidate. The content management piece has made great improvements and can really fit any specific needs. User data management has improved a lot since WhippleHill was acquired by Blackbaud, and the development piece is really where Blackbaud is the gold standard.
