Ellucian 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Ellucian

3.6

(84)

Pricing

Pricing available upon request

About Ellucian

Ellucian is a cloud-based software provider that helps higher education institutions with professional solutions to create a connected campus. Designed for universities of all sizes, the platform provides solutions for departments such as finance, IT, student services, human resources, recruiting and admissions.

Ellucian’s modules comprise Enterprise Resource Planning with products such as Banner, PowerCampus. Elevate and Quercus; Constituent Relationship Management offers products including CRM Advise, Degree Works, CRM Recruit and CRM Advance; Integration and Analytics delivers the products Ellucian Analytics, Ethos framework and Workflow.

Ellucian helps users create strategies, manage resources and deploy services to achieve educational objectives and priorities. The platform provides features such as application management, cloud application hosting, technology management, resource allocation and business intelligence. Support is extended via phone, documentation and an online help desk. Pricing is available on request.

Ellucian Screenshots

Ellucian Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $0.01

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$0.01

No plan information available

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Ellucian Features

Popular features found in School Accounting
Accounts Payable
Billing & Invoicing
Financial Aid Management
Financial Management
Fund Accounting
General Ledger
More features of Ellucian
Activity Dashboard
Admissions Management
Alerts/Notifications
Alumni Management
Application Management
Attendance Management
Attendance Tracking
Budgeting/Forecasting
Business Intelligence
Candidate Management
Class Registration
Class Scheduling
Client Portal
Communication Management
Compliance Management
CRM
Curriculum Management
Dashboard Creation
Document Management
Document Storage
Enrollments/Onboarding
Event Calendar
Faculty/Staff Management
Financial Analysis
For Higher Education
Forms Management
Fundraising Management
HR Management
Information Hub
Learning Management
Mobile App
Online Calendar
Online Payments
Online Registration
Payroll Management
Real-Time Analytics
Real-Time Notifications
Records Management
Registration Management
Reporting/Analytics
Scheduling
Self Service Portal
Student Information/Records
Student Management
Student Portal
Task Management
Third-Party Integrations
Visual Analytics
Workflow Management

Ellucian User Reviews

Overall Rating

3.6

Ratings Breakdown

17%

48%

21%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

3.2

Value for money

3.2

Customer support

3.5

Functionality

3.5

Verified

Reviewer

Higher Education

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2019

It does what it's supposed to

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Previously 4

Functionality

Previously 4

Pros:

Ellucian allows us to build a functional interface for students and faculty alike.

Cons:

It breaks. A lot. Can't tell you how many times I've been doing something fairly simple and suddenly Ellucian stops working or says a page can't be displayed.

Justin W.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2025

Game Changer for our Institution

Overall, it's been pleasant. There have been some hiccups, but nothing so severe that we have come to regret the decision/investment.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It's a great tool and one that has revolutionized our experieince as an institution - moving from antiquated methods to operating at light speed.

Cons:

The implementation and particularly the "train the trainer" model which just doesn't fit our instituton given our small size and limited resources.

Reasons for choosing Ellucian

Colleague was a better fit for our needs and institution size.

Cyrus C.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2018

Mixed Reviews

They are an established Higher Education software that is on the cutting edge with a lot of what they offer. The partnerships they offer with vendors seems to fall short in some cases. The support they offer for the products is generally good. But depending on the application may depend on how quickly they respond to support questions/issues.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Previously 3

Value for money

Customer support

Previously 5

Functionality

Pros:

Offers a variety of different software solutions that integrates with its ERP (Banner or Colleague). Along with a variety of ancillary applications that integrate with the ERP.

Cons:

Cost would be by far the biggest issue. The second would be that as of late the company has a tendency to tout its upcoming or just released products will work but in reality it is being built and developed as the sales people speak. To be fair their established software generally works well and no complaints.

Mark V.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed December 2022

Good product. . .maybe?

Neutral to negative. Massive additional costs during deployment, a tendency to confusion among the supposed "experts" around how basic pieces of the software worked, forced third party software changes that were unnecessary and expensive, and a quote that was clearly lowballed with the expectation that we'd end up paying on the back end for additional products that we didn't know were needed made this whole process less than good.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We liked the idea of a connected suite that worked with most of our existing software.

Cons:

The consultants were very much at odds with each other and added confusion to the process. It also turns out that it didn't work with our existing software even when the vendors were listed as compatible on the Ellucian partner site. It also turns out that some of our 3rd party software would have worked, but we were told that it wouldn't. In the end the confusion and lack of understanding/ability from Ellucian consultants cost us tens of thousands of additional dollars during our deployment.

Reasons for choosing Ellucian

Price, but our costs ended up exceeding the cost of any of the alternative vendors.

Reasons for switching to Ellucian

Jenzabar, as a software package, isn't useful to a growing college. It's expensive, restrictive, and the support was extremely poor.

Richard L.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

10000+ employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed June 2025

Old but modern tool.

Ellcian has been in my working environment for the last 15 years. The learning curve was not too steep. Does a lot of t What we need.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The product has existed for alo g time and i.proved over time. It's very stable and has nost of the functionality we need.

Cons:

The product has changed directions multiple times (frameworks) through the years, so many times we had to change our own direction to follow.

Mark D.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed July 2018

Ellucian SIS does what it is designed to do, store data in a standardized manner.

Standardized data. Student lifecycle data storage. Central hub of data for all things related to the student, their experience, and relationships.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to use and navigate. Validation tables prevent data from being entered incorrectly. Standardized data means consistent reporting outputs and expected values. Covers the entire lifecycle of the student journey so the Ellucian SIS is set up to be the storage space of all student data.

Cons:

Difficult to customize and add fields to the SIS if business processes require it. Can feel overwhelming for new users to learn the system. Very limited ability for most functional users to create their own reports. Usually need to involve report writers with SQL report writing ability. Reporting on multiple areas of the student journey can be difficult when needing to see multiple screens and forms.

Timothy S.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed June 2018

Very stable software used by best higher ed. institutes

Ellucian Banner has provided our students and staff with a single application that manages aspects of course registration, work, bills, payments, grades, academic status. Single sign on module was extremely helpful

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It is a high-end software. Very stable. It integrates with the Microsoft LDAP. We have been using it for student and employee account management in term of course registration, tax forms, billing, salaries, student employment, grading, transcripts. It has very secure and solid database which is essential for the above mentioned matters.

Cons:

Managing it requires training. It is not easy to administer. The price is very high compared to competing software in the higher education sector.

Justin S.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2019

A mess of a company and a patchwork of modules

Covers general SIS/ERP for a college but causes more frustrations than solutions

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Ellucian Banner is comprehensive in that it can cover most of the core functions of a college/university. But that's about it.

Cons:

Ellucian hasn't advanced the products in years. Every attempt for updates have been met with upgrade issues, compatibility problems, and user frustration. New products are rare and generally poor, whether they use COTS or homegrown applications.

Lisa R.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

501-1000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2019

Ellucian User for 15+ years

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Since our college gained access to the web-based version of Ellucian (we call it Colleague at our school, too), it has been a lot easier to use.

Cons:

I wish the help feature and other help documents were a little easier to follow. We used to have a gentleman who worked in Admissions & Records that would make PowerPoint presentations and quick guides to help out the Ellucian users.

Jennifer R.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2018

It's hard to be vanilla

We were in desperate need of an SIS and for the most part, it does serve our needs.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like that we have a consortium we can share ideas and code with and have a single voice to Ellucian.

Cons:

Banner INB is very clunky to use - even if you are good at using software in general. It is not a very intuitive product; however, the company is moving in the right direction.

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