--- title: "Ellucian Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Ellucian. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Ellucian is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/erp/ellucian-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [School Accounting Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/education-software-comparison/) / [Ellucian](https://www.softwareadvice.com/erp/ellucian-profile/) / Ellucian Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/erp/ellucian-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/erp/ellucian-profile/alternatives/) # Ellucian User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 3.6/5 - Total reviews: 84 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.2/5 - Customer support: 3.5/5 - Value for money: 3.2/5 - Functionality: 3.5/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 14 reviews (17%) - 4 stars: 40 reviews (48%) - 3 stars: 18 reviews (21%) - 2 stars: 6 reviews (7%) - 1 star: 6 reviews (7%) ### Most mentioned 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. - It's very stable and has nost of the functionality we need. - Great suite for information storage and processing. ### Most mentioned cons - 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. - Repeated crashes during most critical time in student advisement and registration. - years ago Ellucian was a solid product and worked great but since being forced to move to the cloud the quality just isn't the same. ## Ellucian customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 84 (page 1). ### It does what it's supposed to - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### 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. --- ### University Accounting - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall we are very satisfied with Ellucian. It provides our business and finance team books that are used for easy reporting and a clean UI interface. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I have been a user of Ellucian banner for over six years and have been through countless updates. The product keeps improving where I think things are already good, and is quick to address current issues. Our organization loves the fact that we can use a web based version as well. Additionally, the UI is very clean and I can understand what is affecting our balance sheet, income statement, ect., all at a quick glance. Finally, the reports that are generated from Ellucian are very helpful and make it so I can create accurate reconciliations. #### Cons The one problem we run into with Ellucian is that training to use the product is difficult. Many screens have specific acronyms to access them, which is hard for people to remember. However, they have introduced a search function that allows you to use words and it acts more like a google search, which is helpful to find what you need. --- ### Mixed Reviews - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Cyrus C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### 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. --- ### Ellucian Banner SIS -- Solid Product In Use for Nearly 20 years - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Been using Banner since 2004 (and SIS since 2005). I serve as the manager of the IT team that supports the student offices that use the product. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I commend Ellucian for recent updates they have made to the look and feel of the product. I find it now easier to use and easier to support (no more Java needed for the admin side!). #### Cons The number of Financial Aid releases is challenging. Plus, when we apply them we need to take our Banner Admin pages offline temporarily. It would be better if the Financial Aid releases were isolated so that we could apply them without taking all of Banner down. #### Reasons for switching to Ellucian We were using an HP3000 system, and it simply could no longer satisfy our needs. --- ### The Industry Standard but why? - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Transportation/ Trucking/ Railroad - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. This product is very commonly used and it feels like they rely on this fact to put in minimal efforts towards innovation. If you have a different option, I would recommend investigating that. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros This product is very commonly used in industry. The online support community around this product is very active and is very helpful when you encounter issues, bugs, odd behavior, etc. (which is often). It is based on a relational database so query writing is easy enough. #### Cons Software patches and updates from Ellucian are notorious for breaking various modules, connections between modules, etc. The UI is a very outdated model and tends to be very unfriendly for those who are not tech savvy. Customer service from Ellucian leaves a lot to be desired. --- ### Ellucian was our school's SIS for 15 years - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros I wish that I could say what we liked about this software, but there really is not anything to put here. #### Cons The system was extremely outdated. The portal experience (Luminus) to get in was awful. Even as they try to update that portal experience, it is simply putting cards and widgets where links used to be. But those things break repeatedly. As well, the lack of interconnection inside the system and with external tools is just plain weak. There is a reason Workday is starting to see so many adoptions in the market and that so many schools are switching out student portals for updated, contemporary, mobile friendly, inter-departmental software options. --- ### Powerful SIS That Need Usability Enhancements - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Ellucian SIS is our source of truth for virtually every system. It comprises current and historical data for our entire user community. We've built many integrations over the years and use it daily for reporting and accreditation needs. It's the backbone of our organization and people have learned to use it effectively. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The solution is flexible enough that each of our functional departments can use it effectively to accomplish their objectives. Our two largest user groups are Financial Aid and Accounting, each of which uses it daily. What isn't available OOTB can typically be added via customizations, although customizations often present problems when upgrades happen. #### Cons In my opinion, the solution has a very poor design. It consists of many, many UI screens that are accessed by typing in acronyms. This may work well for power users that memorize all the acronyms but there's been several instances where users have had issues, only to discover a 'new' screen that can offer the information they need. Simply put, if you don't know the acronym, your life will be difficult. --- ### Not so friendly Student Info System - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have had both good and bad experiences. However, I don't fuss about it like my colleagues because it is the only SIS I have ever used. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros The product integrates with other software, i.e. Leepfrog (catalog and course inventory management system), Degreeworks (degree auditing/graduation software) #### Cons Speaks a foreign language that you have to learn. Quite the learning curve. The implementation process can be lengthy. Did not always feel supported by the implementation team. --- ### Not always the most user friendly - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros The recent upgrades have made it much more user friendly and easier to navigate. #### Cons Integration with other products can be very glitchy at times. It takes someone with serious knowledge to be able to navigate that process. If you have that, then you're fine. If not, prepare to spend some money on it. --- ### It gets the job done - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Larry B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Fully operational ERP, many different tools and options #### Cons The company itself is the worst. Their customer service is abysmal. --- ### Overall good CRM for non-profit/fundraising - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Lauren J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Fund-Raising - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Online platform available - the ability to store a lot of information in many different ways, and report customization. #### Cons A little clunky in how many clicks it takes to find the information you are looking for. --- ### Difficult to use | Difficult to maintain | Expensive | Releases are poorly tested by Ellucian QA - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Steven S. - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered -Business users in all departments find Banner difficult to use -Database engineers find Banner difficult to maintain -IT staff finds Banner difficult to support Banner is obsolete in the technological age we live; there are cloud finance, HCM, CRM, and student information applications which integrate well with each-other and outperform banner in nearly every category. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros Customer support Is friendly and responsive. #### Cons -There is a Massive maintenance overhead -There is a need for business users to constantly watch the community for systemic issue and bug alerts -Documentation is intentionally over-complicated to encourage the purchase of Ellucian consulting -Implementation is more complicated than competitor applications due to the age of the product -Data is stored un-uniformly in 'shotgun' style in the database making migration away from banner very difficult. -There is no dashboard -- the entire user interface is a very weak showing -Self service is impossible to leverage for reliable company-wide / student-wide document delivery. -Almost no reporting capabilities are built-in; admins must instead write database queries for end users. --- ### Access your university from your pc - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have used this system when I was a professor assistant and student #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros This product provides a learning management system which makes the jobs easier for students and the professors. Students can easly check their duties and see their activities on this system and professors can easily manage their classes easily. #### Cons If there are a lot of students dont buy this software, during the peak times it makes lots of bottleneck and managing the problem is not that easy always some problem appears if some administrative user did something wrong. The money you pay and the service you have dont compensate each other --- ### Colleague as an ERP - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Mike J. - Industry: Higher Education - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2016 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Colleague is an overall great product. Ellucian has been working hard to improve Colleague's features and functionality, especially on the Self-Service platform. This work has kept them at the front edge of innovation with responsive design that allows your constituents serve themselves from any device. This takes pressure off of administrative staff so they can focus on quality support to your students. Ellucian does a good job at being connected to their customers and understanding the constantly changing needs in the academic world. They hold focus groups, beta testing groups to allow the engaged community of customers to provide input, and it shows in the quality of the newer products they have created. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Mobile friendly self service Integration through Ellucian XE Active user community on Ellucian's eCommunities social media platform #### Cons Reporting. Expect to spend money on a reporting tool. --- ### Great suite, odd language - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Great suite for information storage and processing. #### Cons Odd language for how to navigate. Too difficult for novice users. --- ### Started out as a great idea, but functionality is horrible. - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: August 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros Visually appealing and the user interface is easy to use and navigate through tabs. A nice face lift from the older interface. #### Cons The program is so slow. When you're trying to do multiple processes a day, the waiting adds up. Sometimes I will wait a whole minute to wait for a process to execute, very frustrating. --- ### I work with one module for the software and they have a great network for help. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Kathy K. - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The Ellucian software is very helpful in keeping our school on track and making it easier for the student to navigate Admissions to registration to financial aid to graduation. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Very functional and customizable to your school. We get the opportunity to let the company know what we want in the software and they usually update to meet the various schools needs. Very aware of all federal guidelines and requirements. #### Cons Training for use of the module or processes would be nice when something new is implemented. Several screens and options are usually available with short descriptions. --- ### Ellucian works well as a student information system. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Ashley V. - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The software houses all of our student information and IT finds securing the database reasonable for higher education. Though Ellucian, we are able to recruit, register, and maintain financial aid records for students. Our HR office also uses it to house employee and faculty information. #### Cons Many of the screens take excessive commands to get through. There are three or four extra steps every time you want to pull a transcript, run an evaluation, or register a student for classes. --- ### Overall good customer service. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Isaac S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The community that is always ready to help each other. You can reach out to hundreds of users and get answers. #### Cons Upgrades can be very time consuming and complex, the reporting is not up to standard and some user functionality is not easy. --- ### Easy to use - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Connie T. - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We use this as our database for all alumni and friends. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's easy to use and my favorite thing about this software is that I can enter very little info to do a search to find who I'm looking for. The possibilities are endless! #### Cons When it shows a listing of all the proposals a person has received, I have to pull each one up because there isn't anything about the listing that identifies specific ones. It's a minor irritation --- ### I work at a community college and use for various tasks. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros I like the different search functions between forms and person search. I like being able to generate reports with historical data going back to the life of the employee. #### Cons Having to many fields on a screen initially, sometimes it takes a while to find what I'm looking for when in a screen . Also having to learn the different key combinations to doing simple things can be a little difficult at first. --- ### Worked in Ellucian at a community college - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Nela B. - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Very user friendly. Screens are very self explanatory making it easier to understand what fields need to be filled out #### Cons There is a lot of functions that cannot be changed once saved. In leaves it would be beneficial if you could delete something if it was inputted incorrectly --- ### Better that other similar products - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Beth E. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros the ability to see all the course work, history, current, gpa's, holds, etc at one place #### Cons still isn't always correct, some courses show up in places where they don't belong --- ### Great Higher Education Tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Syrine J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used other for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I liked the fact that it could house both student and faculty information at the same time. In addition, it allowed you to input information for instructors and move them around if necessary. We used the Banner by Ellucian software and it was useful for our needs #### Cons Nothing to note. It is good for meeting the needs of an institution. --- ### Banner SIS through Ellucian is a solid piece of software - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Brian F. - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: May 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. A place to store student data for access across campus. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Banner allows us to store all of our student information in a campus-wide database in an easy to access system. #### Cons The Banner interface by Ellucian SIS is difficult to navigate and complicated to edit. The interface is not the easiest to use and is a big detriment with this software. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/erp/ellucian-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Ellucian Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice