Graduway Reviews

Seamless, ease of use, offers an enhanced platform in which we can build a level of interest for our alumni to stay connected to our school. The ability to have our alumni connect in one place.

We have not encountered any issues that we could comment as a negative or a downside to having Graduway as our preferred software for our alumni.

This includes the following:
Great for helping us keep alumni data up to date
Like the admin functions
Like the features, e.g. groups, events, news widgets, directory, updates, jobs, newsletter.

Don't like the low profile of Updates, it needs to be front and centre.
The main page is far too busy.
Nowhere to place media files, e.g. videos, podcasts, pdfs.
Nowhere to put articles, e.g. features on alumni.

The platform provides the organisation with a useful place to centralise digital alumni engagement and helps to provide up to date and accurate data for the alumni community that sign up to the site. Furthermore, the portal allows individual graduates to shape their own experience (by posting events and job opportunities) and contact others directly.

It is somewhat difficult to encourage repeat engagement/visits to the site. I expect that this will become much easier once a critical mass of graduates is reached but I am uncertain of what that number will need to be. We have a relatively small graduate community when compared to larger HEI's which has both opportunities and challenges.

I am looking forward to seeing the rollout of Graduway's product road map as I suspect this will keep the platform ahead of the curve in terms of functionality.

Working in a Career Services office, utilizing Graduway has been a successful resource when linking students to alumni to incorporate networking and mentorships prosper. This is a helpful tool that is user friendly for all generations. My office has the ability to customize the platform as we see most appealing to our students and alumni to impact their overall experience of this experience.

We wish we could take advantage of more of the products, but hopefully in the near future.

We like how easy it is for our graduates to signup. We also like the updates wall and how it is a private place for graduates to connect with each other. Finally, the jobs board is our favorite aspect because we needed a place to promote jobs privately.

The reporting (GA) functionality is very limited, there is not enough flexibility and manipulation on our end to edit or change things. Everything has to go through the vendor (even adding other admin accounts, changing cover photos, etc.)

The obvious benefit of Graduway is a centralized zone for alumni to meet and connect, especially on their own terms. Any higher education professional can tell you how important an engaged and connected network of alumni is to the current health of the institution. All of our alumni can see any of our networking events, making our outreach much simpler. Creating things like newsletters or event pages is very simple, even for the less tech-savvy members of our staff.

Customization and functionality leaves a little to be desired... Graduway offers a centralized, "one-stop-shop" platform, but doesn't necessarily outperform other competitors in terms of specialization. Stats on open rates would be ideal.

Ability to load our own lists and the ability to link profiles to LinkedIn or Facebook.

It's also easy to download Alumni updates for our database.

Slow updates and new feature roll outs. Also inability to match mentors to mentees and see connections.

I like being able to pull up-to-date information on our alumni when they sign up with their LinkedIn account.

I am not sure that our university receives the full benefit of using this platform without paying extra for the app.

Ease of identifying and contacting potential mentors and volunteers.
Easy to sign up and create a profile.
The search function (not the filters) in the Directory is surprisingly flexible.

Everyone gets every thing, so folks in Boston get notices about events in Los Angeles.
Directory is based on city name rather than zip code or radius, which is incredibly inconvenient.
Map and nearby are only available on mobile.
The reporting is beyond bare bones - we don't even get open rates on newsletters.
Every time we talk to customer service, we get a "no we can't do that" or "I'll have to talk to IT"...and then we never hear back.
Support staff are in too-distant time zones, so we have to wait too long for a response.
When something we want or need is available, it's usually a significant extra cost - so we get nickel and dimed for everything.

Really easy for alumni to use, looks great, and does what it says it does! Help desk has always been super helpful - esp Dalia :)

As an administrator, I wish there was more functionality or slightly better search tools. Back end just seems like a place to see stats (which are awesome) and upload lists of alumni... I wish I could search by ID number. Or reset passwords on behalf of our alumni. We've had a couple of people who've moved jobs and because their accounts were registered with their former business email addresses they've been unable to login - password reset email goes to the old email... so we've had to delete their accounts so they can create a new one. Would have been smoother to have the power to reset them on their behalf.

Ease, 2 options to login without having to create an entirely new profile. Every time we send a newsletter out we recruit at least 5 new participants.

The homepage is very busy and not sure where your attention should be drawn. Perhaps making tiles that redirect to the main features of what is already on the homepage would be visually appealing.

We have found that the biggest asset has been the jobs board. It is a central place that we can advertise for local jobs and advertise for jobs at our institution with our alumni. It gives the alumni an added value and gets them to connect with us in the process.

The capturing of our alumni has been incredibly slow. We are a relatively small school as compared with the large universities and yet, we find that we do not have a lot of our alumni signing up. It would also be nice to use the Raiser's Edge integration if possible but unfortunately we have not visited that aspect yet.

The ability to send newsletters and post jobs. I also like the mentoring feature because it does not require too much work on my part. On the other hand, I would like to receive notifications when the mentoring happens and be able to send an evaluation of the experience to the mentee.

It is limited in some features and you are not very flexible regarding the design of the page. I would also love to give the alumni the option to openly chat with each other live, by writing comments (like on facebook)

The ability to engage with our large group of alumni and to get a snapshot of how many of our alumni are willing to help and in what capacity. It has allowed us to engage more and have one place to build a connection with our group.

Limited features and customization. It is really frustrating to only have a few components on the homepage that can be edited and customized. It is very busy to look at visually and some features don't apply to us.

Very intuitive for the admin person - also allows for users to post information & contact other users so very dynamic and interactive. Very functional with well thought our pages. The service from Graduway is like no other that I have experienced. Fast response times very effective & friendly.

Like it all but maybe the newsletter could allow more flexibility in design. But he beauty of it is it is quick and easy to use allowing for a high frequency of distribution to end users.

Getting it set up required little IT involvement. It is a simple interface and seems to not have a steep learning curve for less techy users.

There could be better cross-system integrations. While there were solutions available for connecting with other backend systems, the information given at purchase time was somewhat ambiguous.

This platform is highly customizable, with numerous ways to add graphics and text as well as format its appearance. We like it quite a bit, and so do our donors

There are a few limitations to what the platform can do, but nothing that's a deal-breaker. There's enough latitude that we can always find a viable alternative

Easy to use and functionally appealing. Often, users are able to navigate the website, sign in seamlessly via Linkedin and network using its add-ons.

Its inability to market itself to constituents. Not many people know about the software so the network is not as big as I would like.