Firsthand 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Firsthand

4.5

(41)

Pricing

Starting at $7,600.00 per month

About Firsthand

Firsthand is a web-based networking and careers development platform designed to help students, professionals, and job-seekers engage with engage with prospective employers and find jobs or internships through mentoring programs and virtual events. Administrators can create online communities to enlist student ambassadors and recruit alumni as mentors to current students, while employers can use the platform to find and engage candidates who fit their company.

Students and jobseekers can use Firsthand to connect with experienced mentors in their field of interest, to receive firsthand knowledge about specific industries or roles, conduct mock interview, and have their resumes critiqued. Firsthand also ranks and benchmarks employers based on a range of criteria including DE&I, company culture and prestige, allowing applicants to make informed decisions about who they want to work for.

Firsthand Screenshots

Firsthand Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $7,600.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$7,600.00

per feature, per month

No plan information available

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Firsthand Features

Popular features found in Alumni Management
Communication Management
Email Marketing
Event Calendar
Fundraising Management
Job Board
List Management
Member Accounts
Member Portal
Website Management
More features of Firsthand
Action Item Tracking
Activity Dashboard
AI-based Matching
API
Appointment Scheduling
Attendance Management
Attendee Management
Campaign Management
Career Development
Chat/Messaging
Conferencing
Content Library
Customizable Branding
Engagement Tracking
Event Management
For Alumni Associations
Lead Generation
Learning Management
Live Streaming
Member Directory
Membership Management
Mentor/Coach Matching
Mentoring Program Management
Online Registration
Participant Profiles
Progress Tracking
Real-Time Chat
Reporting/Analytics
Reporting & Statistics
Self Service Portal
Virtual Lobby

Firsthand Integrations

Microsoft Outlook

Blackbaud Enrollment Management System

Simplicity

Google Calendar

NetSuite

Ellucian

See all 7 integrations

Firsthand User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

54%

41%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.3

Value for money

4.5

Customer support

4.6

Functionality

4.2

Have you used Firsthand and would like to share your experience with others?

Joep E.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

501-1000 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2020

Great career services tool for students and alumni

Super tool, good feedback from users, who are extremely satisfied about using the tool.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to use, it's not complicated to use. It's also great that it has the feeling of an RSM Erasmus University tool

Cons:

It's kind of hard to motivate students to use the tool. When they use it they are very satisfied! Users need to go through 'all' settings to ensure the best use, some of them like 'time zone' are beneficial but easy to forget

Reasons for switching to Firsthand

We started with a small start-up company and switched to First Hand as a professional company

Ben E.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

A Platform That Has Extended the Value of our Organization

Overall, as mentioned previously, the platform has been invaluable. We're very happy with what it is doing for us and our organization and the potential it creates for connecting members with like-minded professional aspirations or skill sets.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

With Firsthand, our organization was able to launch what we call the Delta Chi Mentorship Network. This created an opportunity for us to connect our members throughout North America with one another to offer coaching or mentoring and to seek professional guidance and advise. It has been invaluable in expanding the experience associated with membership in our organization. Thus far, the user-friendly interface has been one of the biggest selling points.

Cons:

As we continue to seek ways in which we can contour the platform to our needs, we've seen limitations in the way we, without the assistance of tech support, are able to customize the platform. For some of the pages, we've had asks about enhanced visual customization, from using images as title banners, etc. Currently, we cannot do that.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

While the decision making for utilizing Firsthand was not solely my choice, I think it was the strongest candidate in aligning with our vision for what the Mentorship Network could be. Other considerations were given to customer service and price, which were extremely competitive amongst other alternative products.

Will P.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

1001-5000 employees

Used other for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

A platform with great potential

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

-Very easy account registration process. -Intuitive user interface - mimicking a 'tinder' approach to mentoring. - Takes out a lot of the fear of being rejected when it comes to networking. Makes it very easy and 'risk free'. - Flexibility for students to select what sort of outcome or conversation they want with their mentor. - Convenient scheduling tool to allow students to find a time to speak with a mentor without having to play - diary 'ping pong' between them and advisor. - Dial-in option easy to speak with advisor and retains students privacy of personal number. - Access to global network of advisors.

Cons:

- Very U.S centric, so less relevant for those seeking mentorship within a U.K context. - Could benefit from a wider range of mentors across different roles / industries / sectors. - Webinar content appears to be more targeted at more experienced hires - could benefit from more content focused on early careers.

Juan M.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2019

An excellent way to engage your community

It has been great, for us it's a really cost-effective way to engage with our most engaged alumni, to promote engagement with the school since the time our cohorts are studying and make sure that employability and visibility of our graduates also keeps very high.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Firsthand is easily one of our best sources to source people that are very committed to our brand and values. It also provides a better student experience to RSMers that can find fascinating people and get to know about their journey after university and how to get there.

Cons:

The internal e-mail tool is fantastic to engage people however, it is VERY limited in the customization and branding that you can use. This tool only has very basic text options to engage your community which is a shame because the response rate is great.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

Functionality, tracking of users and great customer support.

Nichole P.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

Firsthand Platform

Firsthand has helped us streamline our mentoring program, but it could still use some improvements. The customer support should be a little better and faster. Also, I feel like the users should have an option as to whether to contact the admin or the user support directly through the platform.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The combination of features is helpful for different purposes other than mentoring, but it especially drives those one-on-one mentoring connections.

Cons:

The current registration process is a little long and tiresome. Additionally, it needs to be more customizable, which I know the developers are working on, but the original product we started using over a year ago was very rigid.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

Firsthand had a better value: we got the most for the money we spent.

Maricel P.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

5001-10000 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

FirstHand for MBA and alumni networking & advising

It's been a very good experience. We have had the most issues with lack of student use.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The platform puts the students in the driver's seat to engage with alumni for flash networking and career advising, while at the same time allowing the alumni to control the number of consultations and scheduling.

Cons:

Technical issues with phone calls that were reported to us by alumni advisers.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

At the time, FirstHand was being used by other schools in the Jesuit network and FirstHand had been in business for longer than PeopleGrove.

Patty S.

Verified reviewer

Education Management

5001-10000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

A great tool for your University community to network; get and give career help

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I work on the admin side for the alumni and professional volunteers who sign up to become "advisors" in Firsthand. That's what we named them but you can customize using your own info and school branding. We have looked at other platforms but we realized we are happy with Firsthand and think it is great for the price. Also, unlike Graduaway and Peoplegrove, you can run reports to see who connected with who, what they thought about it and share their feedback to the alumnus and/or to the student. It's great to be able to quickly and easily email from the platform and load our own webinars we offer with the existing national webinars offered in the platform. We can post jobs and the connections made are recorded for quality assurance. I love the groups feature and we are using it to bring in more alumni and students by school, region and student group or program as well as building and enhancing our campus partner relationships as we offer this in place of a them having to create a separate, manual mentoring program for their community. On a monthly basis, I send a video-embedded email to our advisors who have helped someone in the platform (message from a student advisee). I also can look at the leaderboard on the admin side and know who the top users, advisors and advisees are in the platform. We also have a close working relationship with our customer success liaison at Firsthand. Their [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is very, very accessible too! Like Firsthand the best!

Cons:

I have to say that, after comparing the other, similar platforms, Firsthand offers the same if not more due to their reporting capabilities. I really don't have any cons. If we have suggestions Firsthand always tries to make accommodations and they are constantly making improvements.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

They offer the same for a better price AND they offer various reporting capabilities on the connections made and feedback from both the advisee and advisor. I'm able to thank the alumni on the platform and know who they talked to and what the main topics were. I also can share a quote from the advisee to the advisor. We asked the other vendors and they couldn't do that.

Vanessa G.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

1001-5000 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

Firsthand: An Excellent Tool for Online Career Education

Firsthand allows me to extend the Career Services we offer our graduate management students. We have a small team and over 600 students, so having a team of high level professionals from all over the world that our students can reach out to, for free (for them), is invaluable. Like anything else there have been ups and downs with the career advisors sometimes not being available. But they are professionals with real jobs, so this is not surprising. Firsthand is also expanding its offerings and has built a platform enabling Career Centers to set up virtual career fairs and recruiting. It's amazing.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Firsthand is an excellent tool for online career education. My favorite feature is the online Career Library where professionals discuss their careers in a wide range of areas. I use this Library extensively in the career courses that I teach to support the career exploration process. My students love the Career Advisor platform where they can connect with over 2,500 mentors from all over the world and get live help with learning about different careers, mock interviews, resume reviews, etc. Implementation was easy and fast.

Cons:

The only thing I would like to see would be even more videos in the Career Library, addressing some of the newer types of roles, like business analytics, social media influencer, etc. Some of the material is a bit dated. But Firsthand is investing in other areas that are more focused on live interaction with alumni, recruiters, etc., which is a good thing.

Reasons for choosing Firsthand

I chose Firsthand (originally called "Evisors") to complement another product we are using, called Beyond B-School. BBS provides a huge career library that is focused on building job search skills. Whereas Firsthand offers "first hand" experience from professionals about their careers, as well as the ability for schools to offer virtual recruiting activities. The combo of the two platforms is perfect for us.

Denise W.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

1001-5000 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

Excellent Client Experience

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The software works really well and has helped thousands of students and alumni at our university connect to have meaningful conversations. What most impresses me about Firsthand is the dedication the entire company has to help their clients solve solutions. This spring Firsthand helped my university deliver a virtual career fair for the first time. This event would have been otherwise canceled, and hundreds of teaching credential students would have missed out on the opportunity to connect with potential employers. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and his team worked tirelessly to support us. They were innovative, problem solvers, that were not afraid to dive into a new project with us. I would full-heartedly recommend Firsthand to any university.

Cons:

I have no cons to report. My experience was positive all around.

Verified

Reviewer

Financial Services

2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2020

Firsthand/Evisors