Pros
Every information we need is stored in G.Link. All lesson plans and standards are together. Standards carry a lot of information for teachers. Grades are easily entered and are not lost. Parents communication has gotten better this year because of G.Link. Every teacher has a web page that she/he can design.
Administrators can publish their announcement daily, weekly and monthly.
We like the fact that it prepares the students' report cards and transcripts. We do not have to do that any more. The discipline, students' health life, parents' information is all there for us.
Teachers like it so much. They still need to get used to it and the deadlines they receive but I know for a fact that they like the features in the lesson plans such as copy and paste the whole week then make daily changes. I keep teaching this feature because that 's what will make their planning so easy, especially for those ho have 6 different subjects to plan.
I love how the administrator can easily check teachers' lesson plans, up to date grades. Teachers reports is another feature that is really valuable. Once teacher understand how to use, they can retrieve a lot of information from those reports and use.
The Gradelink staff and team members are extremely sharp and helpful. They usually give us answers right a way even if we call 10 times a day. They still help.
They know well that once we get it we will stop calling them. I love their big support.
Cons
One thing does bother me. We want to send information to parents such as pictures, newsletters and so on. We can not send 2 at the time or more than one.
We have to wait a certain time in order to send another info. This does work for us as we have to send timely information. Something that we have to send today, we can wait until next week to send. It is time sensitive.
It's wonderful that Furqaan Academy is making good use of so many of Gradelink's features, Haiat! We're always happy to help, so, if you haven't already, please contact your service representative about sending multiple messages to your students' parents.
Not only has this software streamlined our grading and transcripting process, but it allows us to keep parents informed of students' academic progress, as well as school events in an easy and seamless fashion.
Pros
I do enjoy this software immensely! It has a lot of great features, which meld together seamlessly. I have used this software both as a guidance counselor with full admin privileges, and as a teacher. It is easily accessible to parents, and allows teachers to keep parents informed on a daily basis. The platform appears to be solid, and I don't have random "grade changes" while I'm not looking! I've listed four small issues below. When these are fixed, it will be fairly close to perfect, and I will be able to give it five stars all around. As with any multiple-feature computer program, there is a learning curve.
Customer support is always there and willing to talk to us.
Cons
1. We cannot set up grading differently for middle school and high school. (We would like 25% per quarter, 10% exam for middle school, 40/40/20 for high school.) 2. We cannot easily select out parent vs. student e-mail in the Communicate section. 3. I would like to ability to write a comment on a transcript that is neither a test nor an award. 4. I would like to have the ability to print out a grade level of transcript. Specifying graduation year rather than grade level would be fine.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a well-thought-out review, Karen! We go to great lengths to make Gradelink an all-in-one solution for schools and their students, while still keeping it easy to use. We'll get in touch with you to talk about possible solutions to the issues you listed. We'll see what we can do to earn those five stars!
I was working on creating and populating classes for exams for our seventh and eighth graders. Somehow without realizing it, I created an extra seventh-grade language arts class for quarter one. As I was double checking to make sure I had everything set up correctly, I noticed a seventh-grade language arts class with zero students. I did NOT notice that this was an extra class. I thought that somehow I had deleted grades and students from quarter one. To be honest, I was scared, nervous, and quite frankly wondering how on Earth I could correct my perceived mistake. When you're that upset, it is hard to see what is right in front of you. So, after about fifteen minutes, I called. customer support answered the call. They listened. They talked with me and found the problem. I was so sure that I had 'lost' grades for students that I didn't totally believe that everything was fine. C.S. reassured me. They led me to 'see' for myself that all the information I thought I had lost was still there. I could have cried as I was so relieved.
In the eighteen months of being assistant principal for our school I have learned so much. There are some companies I will not use anymore. Then, there are companies like Gradelink that have helped me to learn. I have often praised Gradelink's customer service. Some of the people I know by name as they have helped me with issues that I perceived to be challenging; whereas they showed me how to solve the issue.
Thank you Gradelink for great customer service!!
Pros
Once you learn it; it is easy to remember how to apply skills and teach others.
Cons
There are times when I would like to export information to create mailing labels or rosters for testing and to my knowledge, I am not able to do this with Gradelink.
Thank you for the epic review, Tina! Mike and the rest of the team are happy to help in any way we can. As for exporting info, please contact support and we'll see what we can do.
Pros
We really trust Gradelink, as they previously hosted our old site and always do a great job with our school package we have through them. Since we knew we were overdue for an updated website, it was an automatic choice for us to ask Gradelink to handle the design. We are so thrilled with our new website! It is so much cleaner, fresher, user-friendly, precise and engaging. Vince helped us take the next best steps and continues to assure us beyond the finished product, which demonstrates outstanding customer service. Rep was absolutely phenomenal! So very patient, detail-oriented, honest, attentive and kind he went above and beyond to make sure we were satisfied with the final product and that we felt comfortable to collaborate and share our ideas and needs during the building process. Our site needed so much work, and he was always very gracious in our planning meetings. His expertise was so evident and he worked extremely hard to ensure our satisfaction. Genuine excitement about our website project was also evident and helped spur us along when we needed to envision our future site. We are so grateful for Rep and Gradelink!
Cons
Everyone on our team isn't super "techy" so there will be a learning curve. However, we are glad that we can utilize the monthly support that Gradelink offers.
It's been a pleasure working with West Covina Christian School, Anissa! Please let us know how we can help less tech-savvy staff members become more comfortable with Gradelink.
Overall Gradelink helps us stay on top of our growing student body giving us a central place accessible by everybody with current information. In addition, it helps us provide better communication with our school parents.
Pros
I love how easy it is to set up and use. The user interface is very easy to get staff to buy into using. We had tried a different product first and it was just too much for my users.
I am very happy with the reliability of Gradelink. We have been using it for a number of years and Gradelink has been down less than 5 times. Ever. Wish I could say the same about our internal network!
I am very pleased with support. Everybody is friendly and responsive. Problems large and small have been handled as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Cons
The stuff that is missing like:
historical student census data -- how many in each class last year, 3 years ago? how many re-enrolled this year compared to last three years? etc.
seating chart with pictures report
different attendance reports (monthly for National School Lunch)
more financial report options
ability to enter the school calendar and have attendance automatically marked NS for those days.
Little stuff that annoys but doesn't really prevent me from accomplishing what I need to.
Feedback from our schools is an important part of our development of new features and updating existing ones, so appreciate your input, Becky!
We have worked with the staff at Gradelink for almost 5 years. The customer support is responsive and always willing to help when a challenge presents itself. Choosing them to be our SIS was one of the best business decisions we made, and entrusting their website team to streamline our site was the icing on the cake. Highly recommend!
Pros
Professional and Intuitive - Our website is easy for our families to navigate and the final design reflects the personal and intimate feel that defines us as a small private school located in Washington State. When we were in the planning process with Gradelink's Education Consultant and Website Specialist, did an amazing job configuring the online tools that would save us time and money and then seamlessly integrated them into our website. All of our school tour scheduling is now online. He designed a custom form that handles our complex afterschool care program registration procedures. Yearly or monthly tuition payments are easily made through our online store. All of these improvements have saved our staff hours of paperwork and time and have allowed them to focus on what really matters to us..... the kids.
Cons
I would love to be able to sort the Family Directory by Teacher! ;)
Thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful review, Heather! It's rewarding to learn that your new website is working so well for you.
When I first started with this program 3 years ago from the first consultation until now every treats you with such kindness. I have had to ask questions and no one acts like I should know. They are always trying to make things better. Improving their program constantly, but never overwhelming. This is so easy to setup. Even if you struggle they are there immediately to help. I never have to wait. Thankful for Gradrlink. They have made our SIS program a breeze.
Pros
The ease of getting anywhere. It always makes sense. The tabs are very user friendly. Love the news page! Tons of help videos if needed. I feel the cost is more than reasonable. I had researched a while before I found them. The cost anywhere else was too much for a small private school. Gradelink was so helpful even in the financial as I was trying to convince my superiors that this what we needed to do. Now they have an app for our families and students!!!! LOVE. Excited to share.
Cons
I can't say I have any. I love the app. Hoping the calendar can go on there as well. :-)
Wow, thanks a million for such an encouraging review, Misty! We work hard to keep our schools happy, so it's rewarding to hear how well Gradelink is working for Seymour Christian Academy. And we're glad you love the app; we have some more good stuff coming, so stay tuned!
I would definitely recommend this program for smaller schools. It was definitely the answer we were looking for and feel it was the best decision for our school.
Pros
We had used another SIS program previously that was designed for large districts and had a lot of functions, however, we were not their target audience. Gradelink's customer service makes you feel like you are a big school that matters. They listen and make adjustments as needed. The implementation and training went smoothly. My teacher and staff are extremely happy with the ease of use compared to our previous programs, yet it still has all the convenient features we wanted from the larger vendor. It is also elementary school friendly which many of the other programs aren't. Most programs seem to cater to the middle/high school. Gradelink still has all those features for upper levels, but has grading, report card and scheduling options that can be adapted specifically for elementary school. We have been very happy with our decision.
Cons
I look forward to more Google integration which I know is under development. Some reports can only be exported to Excel to be printed which is a little inconvenient. I hope this will be upgraded in the near future.
We're honored that you chose Gradelink when you switched SISs, Loraine! We look forward to working with Pearl Prep for many years to come.
We are a private school and this helps us organize our students, enroll and re-enroll our students, and helps parents keep track of how their students are doing. I think it is a very helpful tool. The rep and others at Gradelink are very helpful.
Pros
We have been using Gradelink for about 3 years. It is helpful in enrolling students and keeping track of them. We appreciate that they keep adding new features. We appreciate that parents can access their records for their students and they can enter and keep track of their service hours online. We are able to produce Report Cards at the end of each trimester. We appreciate their customer service. They get back to us usually quickly the same day if we have issues or questions.
Cons
Some features are still missing. Recently, they added a way for us to sign in/out students in Preschool which is a requirement with the State of California. But it was slow in coming.
Thank you, Nancy! Our development team is continually working on making Gradelink even more useful, so please let us know which features you'd like to see.
Pros
The help team!!!! Hands down. Everyone there is so patient with me. The customer service agent was a great help today as well and quickly answered my questions without having to call or waste time figuring it out.
Cons
I think the financial side has been very challenging. Us using this feature almost defeats what we really needed it for in the first place. If I have to record every single payment, I might as well have parents pay me directly in the office. I will say that having the auto pay plans are effective but we will see as the year progresses. There are other features I'd like to see but can't recall at this time. Engrade had some great features that Gradelink doesn't.
If I think of others, I will surely direct them to your team.
The Support Team says thank you, Kacy! Taking care of our schools is a top priority, so we appreciate your compliment. And we're here whenever you need help with the financial tools or anything else. As for features, please let us know what you would find useful. We're always looking for new ways to add even more functionality.
As a teacher, I appreciate the vast amount of information kept within the software. However, the entire program is not user friendly and, as a result, can be very time consuming. My work with the help center has been nothing but an friendly and helpful.
Pros
This is our 4th year using Gradelink at my school and I am really in the groove of using the product. It is full of information, so many things that we cannot even get to in our usage. Most importantly, the customer service and help center is phenomenal. I have never experienced such competency and kindness in a company.
Cons
This software is so full of information and buttons, that it is not always intuitive. Many teachers at my school complain about the complexity of doing what should be the easiest tasks. I have found that much of my work, especially when entering comments, does not get saved. It is also limiting in how report cards can be formatted, which we know not to be the case with other software.
Thank you for the compliments about our service, Beth! We're sorry to hear that you and some of your fellow teachers have had some frustrations. Because Gradelink has so many capabilities, it can be a bit complicated. We want everyone at your school to be as comfortable as possible with using Gradelink. If additional teacher training would be helpful, which is included at no additional charge, please schedule a time with your service rep and we¿ll be glad help.
It provides faculty with an efficient and digital means for recording grades, assignments, and lesson plans. It provides a means for parents to always be aware of the academic progress of their student. It provides administration a means for managing the classrooms of our school.
Pros
Gradelink has many features, and they continue to improve it. It is customizable. The best thing I like about Gradelink is their customer support. They have responded to me in expedient fashion. They have even made a design change or two for me.
Cons
I am not in love with the report card feature. We have elementary and secondary students which use different formats. I wish they had the ability to show cumulative GPA for high school report cards. They only provide annual GPA.
Thank you for taking the time to write a review! If you haven't already done so, please contact your service representative to see how we can help you get what you need out of your report cards.
Gradelink has made keeping parents involved with their students educations so easy. Teacher enter curriculum in the lesson plans, assignments are listed in the Gradebook. Students and teachers are able to find information about students work all in one place. Great form of communication between parents, students and teacher. School page let everyone know what is going on at the school in one easy to find place. Staff are ready to help and take your recommendations to heart. Would not want to do my job without it.
Pros
Every tool a teacher needs from lesson plans to gradebook to email, and teacher pages are in one place. Easy to work with staff. Eager to take your thought and make them a reality.
Cons
Not enough parents take the time to check what is on Gradelink.
William, thank you for your glowing review! Do your students' parents know about the Gradelink Student/Parent app? It's available for free on the App Store and Google Play. It's a great way for them to keep up to date with assignments, grades, news and more.
I get to check my grades and chat with people. I love being able to keep up with my grades daily and see how I am doing in school. I didn't answer my Industry or my Company Size because I am a student and I don't own a company.
Pros
I like how I get to see all of my grades for all of the subjects. It is so awesome to be able to do it, before I get the report card, so that I can bump up my grades if I have to. The customer service rocks and I love getting to chat with the people here. I love school!!!!!!
Cons
I don't really know if there is anything I don't like about this software. I don't like it when I forget my password or username or something. I maybe wish that I could chat with other students or maybe my classmates on here, but everything is so great. It was like pulling teeth trying to figure out bad things about this software.
Thank you, Alana! We enjoy hearing from students and we're glad you love school and work hard to keep your grades up. Do you know about the Student/Parent mobile app? You can download it for free: gradelink.com/student-parent-app.
It is an easy way to track attendance and grades. The teachers are able to plan lessons on this software. The office and staff have access to demographic data as needed.
Pros
The ease of getting help with problems is one of the best features of the program. The program is easy for teachers to learn.
Cons
The program does not have a feature to log in and deal with Service Hours for parents. This is an essential area for our parents to be able to check on their hours without an individual parent needing to maintain a spreadsheet and send out emails one by one with parent data.
It's great that San Garbriel Mission Elementary is getting so much out of Gradelink, Sister Sharon! But we're sorry to hear you're not getting what you want out of Service Hours. Please contact your service representative and we'll be happy to help you. If you haven't heard, volunteers can now enter and track service hours with the free Student/Parent Mobile App.
As Admissions Coordinator it has really helped the process for online enrollment and management of less paper. Our school is slowly transitioning our system and process completly to Gradelink.
Pros
What I like most is all that it has to offer, such as report cards, email communication and data management reports into exel or pdf. I like that the software is being updated and changed as new aspects become available and that there is a learning site to resource on how to use to our best advantage.
Cons
For now, I do wish the prospects portion of the software was a little more refined. It does store information that as a school we do use and resource however I do wish somehow those could be status switched to new enrollment if they chose to enroll. Seems like a lot of duplicating of information.
It sounds like you're really getting a lot out of Gradelink, Cindy! Please contact your service representative to see how we can help you with moving prospects into enrollment. If there's not an easy solution, it may be something we can include in a future update.
We have been using Gradelink for 4 years and are very pleased with the Teacher/Admin/Student interface and the prompt, courteous customer service. After the initial set up, Gradelink staff continued to work with use to ensure our report cards and transcripts presented the student information the way we desired it to. The staff at Gradelink is continuously looking for ways to improve their product and listens to what we, the customer, desires, i.e. parent/student app, text message blasts, separate student/parent logins, etc.
Pros
As a teacher I appreciate the ability to see my students quarterly average instantaneously. I also appreciate that I am able to see the weight each assignment carries toward the overall grade. Add/editing assignments is very easy.
Cons
As a teacher, this software meets all my needs.
It's rewarding to see that New Life is utilizing so many of the features built into Gradelink, Jenny! Thank you for the encouraging feedback.
We have enjoyed being able to enter data from any web browser. I also like being able to look up information on the go from my mobile devices.
Pros
I love the simplicity of the program, the video tutorials, and the customer service. There have been many times we were relatively sure we understood how to enter data or fix an error, but we called to make sure. The customer service reps are always helpful and easy to understand.
Cons
I wish the lesson plan module had a little more flexibility to carry over plans from year to year. If they carried over (without copying and pasting from folders) I would totally use every part of Gradelink as a teacher and a site admin.
It's rewarding to us that you're getting so much out of Gradelink, Aimee! And thank for your feedback on Lesson Plans. We're always looking for ways to make improvements, so we appreciate it.
Overall gradelink is a great tool for any school to use. It helps keep all a child’s information in one place and helps keep the school organized and running. It’s made life as a teacher a lot easier to communicate with families of students in my class.
Pros
I really like using gradelink for my classroom. It helps my supervisors, students, and parents all have access to the same system of information. I am able to put in my students grades, attendance, discipline, etc. all in the same software where we can go back and look at a later date if needed. It helps the parents of my students keep track of how their child is doing in school without them having to email me through out the semester.
Cons
I don’t like that I am unable to send certain messages/ pictures to numerous people and families at once. Everything has to be done one person at a time which just takes up extra time.
It's great to hear that you're getting so much out of Gradelink, Jennifer! For help sending emails to multiple people, please login to your account and click on the question mark icon at the top of the screen or get in touch with your support rep. We're always happy to help.
As an admin/ registrar some of my tasks are infrequently performed; that plus the unique situations of our students' needs make tweaks necessary. The service techs are exact, courteous and always encouraging, in spite of errors on our end. Best tech support system I've encountered in the past 8 years!
Pros
Variety of features available for completing the many tasks necessary in an academic setting.
The constant updates of new ones are very encouraging.
Cons
It would be much more convenient taking attendance if classes could be grouped by their time periods as they can be under the classes tab.
Wow, that's great encouragement, Sharon! We promise to keep doing our best. As for taking attendance the way you mentioned, if you haven't done so yet, please contact support to see what we can do to help.
This is our second year to use this software (2016). When my daughter started her school in the 5th grade we used it mainly for checking her grades. This year we have used it on multiple levels. I love how we know, not only her grades, but also her upcoming assignments. We can also see any papers that are attached to the assignment. Just recently the school started using the home page for the school newsletter and each of the teachers set up a teacher announcement page. Staying in the loop has made the transition to middle school a lot easier for this mom. We can also keep an eye on our daughter's lunch tab using this program.
Pros
The ease of use and the amount of information that is available to us as parents.
Cons
Nothing that I can think of that is bad - we had a couple of glitches with grades, but that was fixed quickly.
Thank you for taking the time to let us know how Gradelink is working for you as a parent, Donna! If you haven't already done so, we recommend you try our free Student/Parent app, which is available on the App Store and Google Play. It's another great way to keep on top of things.
SIMS, gradebooks, lesson plans, enrollment/billing....it does it all!
Pros
The design of the product makes it easy to learn and use. The Gradelink team is super responsive both when you reach out, and they take customer suggestions for added funtionality seriously. Gradelink upgrades its product regularly with useful features. What you get for their price point cannot be beat by other SIMS products. I had a school full of reluctant users when we adopted Gradelink, and now I have a school full of rabid fans!
Cons
I cannot think of a single thing. Even their online help is good, and I am NOT a fan of most online help areas!
Wow, Linda, thank you for telling us how much everybody at Sacred Hearts School is enjoying Gradelink!
This has been a literal, life changing experience for our school and it has definitely brought us to an even better level in record keeping and communication with our parents. Mr Kirk Wurffell has the best customer service skills and patience that I have ever seen both personally and professionally. His patience is second to none! I have attempted to reach out to other Customer Service Reps but Kirk has been the only one willing to follow thru and work with me get to the heart of the matter (solution) not just once but every time. May God truly bless your company and especially Mr Wurffell and his family for the sacrifice it has taken to build such a great Grading System.
-Shelina Harvey
Operation Manager
Calvary's Christian Academy, School of the Arts
Acct# 1515
Pros
Efficiency and compatibility with state system.
Kirk and the rest of our development team work hard to make Gradelink a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use tool for schools, so we appreciate you letting us know how well it's working for Calvary's Christian Academy, Shelina!
Gradelink SIS makes my work as a teacher easier, simplified and innovative. A superb software!
Pros
This software is undeniably the best in streamlining data processing of the school. It actually eliminates tedious task of combining the lesson plans and standards and it makes the grading easier than ever. Communication with the parents is also perfect and the students can easily access and check their academic performance. The reports that it can generate are also one the best features of this software and the administrators can easily see teachers' lesson plan and if it is aligned to the current standard. This software is like a one-stop shop in which everything that each teacher needs is carefully designed and presented.
Cons
I almost define this software as the best software ever I used but one thing I want in the future is that developer should provide feature in which each school can also print or generate transcript of records. If this will be put in reality, the Gradelink SIS is simply amazing.
Thank you for the glowing review, Juvy! You'll be happy to know that transcripts can be downloaded for entire grade levels at a time and you can print labels for transcript folders.
All of our student information right at our fingertips!
Pros
Ease of use for even the non-computer savy users. Integration of enrollment through Enroll Me into Gradelink.
Cons
Limited ability in layout of the teacher/school pages as well as inserting graphics into emails from our own files. It would be nice if it were more user friendly for the not so computer savy users.
We understand that cost and simplicity are especially important at small schools where staff members often wear many hats, Christin -- and you certainly wear a lot yourself! If you'd like help with composing teacher and school pages, and emails, there's lots of useful information at our help site, gradelink.freshdesk.com/support/home. Or feel free to contact us at [email protected] or 800-742-3083.
Most of all, the biggest benefit is that it saves our time in the office. We do not have information everywhere. All information is located in the software.