FACTS

It has helped to keep all my classroom information in one place.

Pros:

The ease of grading reports. It also allows me to keep all my classroom info for each student in an organized system.

Cons:

Sending parents messages though the program requires too many steps to send a simple message. This is one area that could be improved.

Renweb

Comments: My experience was not very positive as I had to continually help people try to figure out how to do something. Then they would come up with an update and that would all change.

Pros:

I thought the pros of Renweb was that it was a starting point. It had lots of features that you could purchase and lots of options.

Cons:

I think the software was not extremely user friendly. It was hard to navigate and they just needed a UX designer to go in and update thing. There were various versions that people were using that made things complicated. Also they make it so you can't pull your data out easily.

Lacks customer service and over priced

Comments: I have used FACTS at multiple schools and they seem to have different standards at each school. It causes confusion and frustration.

Pros:

Ease of use setting up payments. Easy to work within product.

Cons:

Over priced and terrible customer service

Saves a lot of money and easy to use!

Comments: Wonderful!

Pros:

Working for a small school means trying every way to save money and we were able to do that with this software.

Cons:

It doesn't offer as many of the "bells and whistles" as other big-brand names do.

Great for Finance Departments!

Comments: Overall, would recommend.

Pros:

FACTS Grant and Aid Assessment is great in compiling and organizing data. Every year, we would make our financial aid application available and have families fill it out. Once the application was closed, FACTS compiled all the data and made recommendations. It was great.

Cons:

A majority of the people who filled out the application (families applying for aid) were able to do so without a problem. There was, however, a portion of people who couldn’t figure it out and had issues. Just be mindful that you may receive phone calls!

Solid Software; Sucky Support

Comments: FACTS has been a good cloud-based replacement for our aging SIS hosted on our local server, and has had all the features we need. However, the support has been so lacking it threatens to overwhelm an otherwise solid product.

Pros:

Integrates easily with our website and Google classroom; robust SIS and communication tools. Better than average school accounting features. Reliable cloud access.

Cons:

Technical support was agonizingly slow and frustratingly unresponsive. It took months of calls to get our school calendar to not show multiples of all recurring events and our customized school app continues to experience delays due to slow responses from tech support.

Great School Information System for small schools or school that are starting out with an SIS.

Pros:

It is one of the more affordable options out there and includes most needed features in the basic plan.

Cons:

Although it is improving—and I am hopeful that this continues—it does not integrate well with other platforms. There are also areas there are not well-developed. For example, announcements, resources, etc. can only be made available to the entire school or district. It would be easy to implement and extremely helpful if these could be made available by grade levels.

Report card emails are good

Comments: It may not completely be RenWeb's fault that I don't care for them but a combination with the schools that have used it. I have had my children at two different schools who both used RenWeb and I have never figured out what the heck we are supposed to use it for. We get weekly automatic emails that generate our child's report card which is clear and easy to access but the site itself is confusing and not easy to use.

Pros:

Report card emails are clear and clean

Cons:

Navigation is frustrating and confusing I don't fully understand its purpose Clunky program

Renweb

Comments: Good!

Pros:

It gives details of the charges to our account.

Cons:

I am not sure if this is because of Renweb or another third party, but I wish we didn’t have to pay a fee each time we add lunch money to our child’s account.

Easy to use and useful for students, parents and teachers

Comments: Very helpful

Pros:

A great tool to maintain communication with parents, within the school and between students. Allows teachers to assign tasks from a distance

Cons:

Some functions and features of School Management are slow or do not work well always. They can be improved.

Renweb is all you need!

Comments: The benefits of this software are too many to list. Renweb has taught me things on the administrative side that I did not even know I needed to learn. My teachers have their classroom information organized and can make their own customized reports if needed which is a huge benefit because not all students are the same.

Pros:

Having all the information for our students literally at our fingertips has been a huge advantage in moving into the digital age. We can quickly look up everything we need and it tracks it for all students and families. Having the access to personal information, tracking emails, communications, grade book and calendars all in one spot has been my favorite parts of diving into this software.

Cons:

The thing I really hate is when you go to a classroom and it pops up "communication has moved". I did not go there for communication but since it is the first alphabetically on the list, this error pops up every time. I just scroll down and click grade book so it is easy to get out of it. It is just annoying that I feel like it yells at me every day when I go to that section. Small annoyance really but still annoying.

Buyer's Remorse.

Comments: Renweb is a disaster.
1. The default date setting for all documents your teachers and staff go to the trouble to upload and make accessible to students and parents is ONE DAY. You read that right. You didn't know your staff would go to the trouble to upload something for just 24 hours, but that is what Renweb thinks, and refuses to change. Their default should be a one week date range. In what universe would anyone want documents to disappear in 24 hours? In the Renweb universe only. You must remember to change the date when you upload it.
2. Renweb will not set a default for any links you click within Renweb open in a new tab, claiming that is a function of your browser. But many, many websites set their links to be either pop-ups or new tabs. Renweb will not.
3. No flexibility on naming links on the website you pay them for. If you want to use Lesson Plans for Assignments, forget about naming it correctly for YOUR school. Your parents and students will have to use their pre-named tabs, whether or not that applies to your school. Forget about any customization for the big bucks you pay.
4. 'Resources' as a link name is used twice, which is very confusing to parents and students, and unnecessary, given there are many words in the English language. Why not name the Class tab for Resources, 'Documents'? Because that is what it is. Then the other Resources, in the menu column, will be distinct, and for schoolwide resources.
5. Email formatting is abysmal; some kind of primitive html form that yields automatic spacing (not visible to the sender) between paragraphs and an ugly font; there is now a Communications Beta, so perhaps that will address the sheer ugliness of their email formats. There is much more disappointment awaiting you in the inflexible Renweb, but after spending my morning untangling yet another problem, I need to get to mission-critical tasks.
Yes, they get high marks for customer service from many users, but that customer service is necessary to compensate for all the inherent issues. I am so sorry we invested in Renweb. Unnecessarily complicated to interface with, while yielding emails that look like they were created ten years ago. An odd combination of behind the scenes 'sophistication' with primitive-looking email communications with parents/ students.

Renweb has been a good solution for our school

Comments: We can keep grades, behavior reports, medical info, admission paperwork, etc. all in one place. This has been invaluable.

Pros:

Renweb has an incredible amount of diversity. We can keep grades, behavior reports, medical info, admission paperwork, etc. all in one place.

Cons:

For all the positives that Renweb provides, it is still not very user-friendly. They also totally botched the unveil of Renweb 1. Users have been in limbo for too long.

RenWeb is, by far, THE BEST and most user friendly software out there for school management!

Comments: I have used RenWeb at several different schools I have been a part of and have yet to find it's equal. It is the best experience I have had with ANY school management software. It changed our schools for the better.

Pros:

-Easy to learn and navigate -Everything your school needs under one umbrella -Very user friendly -Quality and detail oriented -Simply stated - the best decision you could make for your school

Cons:

Customer Service wait times were often a bit long.

Improved Gradebook Software

Comments: It's a great product that gets the job done for the classroom.

Pros:

The interface of this software has dramatically increased over the past few years. It is easier to located classes, enter grades, and copy-paste material across multiple classes.

Cons:

I really wish that FACTS would bring back a much-improved app for a smartphone. It was so convenient to take role by pulling up the app.

I have used this software from beginning to now and have learned just about all areas of it.

Comments: One central area to keep student information together.

Pros:

This software has multiple sections that integrate with each other . This makes troubleshooting easier since you can actual get to the same area different ways. Also, once you get their support team they are awesome when it comes to helping you understand what you need done.

Cons:

No area for emailing thread or contacting conversation with a co-workers on family balances. Also call in to many buttons to get software area needed.

Great Program for Educators

Comments: I feel it is very positive. I know that once I get into the program, I can do what I need to do in a timely manner.

Pros:

This program is one that makes it easy to track attendance, enter grades even mass communicate with students and parents. I love the autosave feature when entering grades.

Cons:

Sometimes, logging in is more diffucult than others. Sometimes when I try to log in, I get several options from which to choose and I have to choose the right one. I would think one option would display when I search Renweb and then after opening, all of the wonderful options Renweb has would be available.

I love the new update.

Comments: I like that I can send email to the whole school or just one grade. Posting announcements are really easy.

Pros:

I like the new update and renweb one. The emailing is a lot easier and posting announcements. I am slowly learning how to use it more and more every day.

Cons:

I wish there was an app for administrators to be able to post from the phone or ipad. Having to have a desktop everytime is harder to do.

A Complete Solution

Comments: It has been a wonderful tool. It allows us to have our gradebook, attendance log, health info, and behavior reports all within a single program.

Pros:

This software is very versatile. It solves many of our issues.

Cons:

Because it has so many facets, it can be a little difficult to navigate. Things are not located where I think they should be. I find the layout to be illogical.

School Management software

Comments: we use this as our main communication resources , and it works great. we do our report cards and emergency contacts and name it and you can find the details. there are few new additions they keep adding which have some bugs but they work with us to help us out

Pros:

easy to communicate, and mobile app make life easier

Cons:

it doesnt work well with google chrome, messes me up

Very basic functionality, but intuitive

Pros:

It was very easy to learn all the features of the software and implement its use across a wide number of teachers and parents.

Cons:

The mobile app experiences a lot of loading lags. I also had several issues with documents not uploading correctly.

School database system

Pros:

It has many detailed features and can have most items under one program

Cons:

Has many glitches, not easy to use, too detail oriented, and hard to teach others to use. Can not customize to school needs

RenWeb Grading System

Comments: Although they are improving, my overall satisfaction with RenWeb is low.

Pros:

This software is relatively affordable for schools. I like that you can send weekly progress reports to parents to keep them in the loop.

Cons:

The functionality of RenWeb is poor. It is not teacher frindly and doesn’t have many of the features that teachers would like.

Renweb

Pros:

The software allows a lot of information to be stored for access for students, administration and parents. Helpful that can great folders on different topics.

Cons:

Not easy to use for parents. Could use an update to the look.

For the most part, I feel that RenWeb is intuitive as far as Student Information Systems go

Comments: I have been using RenWeb since 2008-2009. Usage is generally easy as most things are rather intuitive. As the person in charge of the system for scheduling and report cards, I have come up against some issues over the years. However, the strongest feature of this program is the Customer Support. I have utilized their services on more occasions than I can remember, often because some tasks are only done once a year and are not as familiar as those done with regularity. Any time I have contacted Support, the individuals have been friendly, knowledgeable, professional and have either given me a solution immediately or have gone the extra mile to turn the problem over to programmers or other support personnel who were better able to solve the problem. I can confidently say that I have never been left without a resolution and have been the beneficiary of special instructions to fit our particular situation. The Customer Support for RenWeb is one of the strongest selling points in my estimation and I have worked with other Student Information Systems for nearly 30 years before we started using RenWeb. Keep up the great job!