SmartFocus, now part of Actito vs. Veracross

Before we used SmartFocus we had a simple bespoke drag and drop builder, where we could add as many "templates" as we wanted. In SmartFocus, the drag and drop builder is smoother and better, but you can't add your own templates. If you are happy with the provided templates, then building newsletters will be really good experience.

Incentivized

Veracross is good for classroom training sessions management and conducting seminars. It keeps the record of trainers, trainees, sessions of training, etc, and helps organize trainings in a systematic manner. It helps improve the operational efficiency of the overall training and learnings of the new colleagues where they can be assigned projects/assignments and keep a track of the same.

Incentivized

• Push newsletters to customers
• Managing campaigns
• Drag and drop builder

Incentivized

• Student and family data is easy to keep up to date. And there is so much data that you can keep track of. It is so helpful to have all data in one place so we don’t have a human error in transfers g to another system.
• Recording donations is very easy and you can attach backup documents very easy which is great during our yearly audit. All records are in the system and can be pulled at anytime.
• Easy for parents to sign in to view and edit their own information as well as view student reports.

Incentivized

• Drag and drop builder
• 2-factor authentication
• Internal integration (the system is too big for an average user what make it hard to use sometimes)
• Image gallery reliability

Incentivized

• Normally it has everything I need for my work, today I was able to make a video call and chat from my cell phone and this adds more positive points to Veracross.

We will continue to use Veracross for the simple fact that we have one database across all of the departments in our school. Veracross continues to listen to customer feedback and improve and enhance the system.

LOVE the Technical Response Team - the first line of help at Veracross. I can quickly submit a ticket and receive a response knowing that they have looked in our system and know what we are trying to do! Our account manager is also amazing! So nice to have a person within the company who knows our school and our needs!

We need a service where we can have support when necessary and a system that will handle a high amount of campaigns, with the functionality where even a junior member of the team can create a campaign from assets provided by the graphic team. SmartFocus has that.

Incentivized

Veracross had so many unique features that stood against other similar software and learning management systems which compelled us to buy it over the rest. Features like the ability to create our own customized reports according to tutor/parent specifications help us to offer exactly what is needed while constant Email reminders make sure that we never miss a single email. Also, the ability to take attendance from any device makes everyone's schedules more flexible. Considering all these features it was our aim to buy this software and test it out for our company.

• By using Smart Focus we massively cut the cost of creating a new e-mail campaign
• On the other hand, the cost of SmartFocus is much higher than a competitor

Incentivized

• tasks that used to take 30 minutes can take as little as 30 seconds (I'm not exaggerating)
• it's a complex platform so there is signficant investment in both training and data preparation (for conversion)
• it's really expensive (but over time will pay for itself with systems we can sunset and attrition that we don't need to replace)

Incentivized