Alma SIS

Glad we're using Alma

Vorteile:

Unlike other SIS's, Alma actually looks and feels like it was made in the 2010's. The system is solid, and has essentially every feature a smaller school like ours would want (and many more that we don't need to use). The gradebook is excellent, and it's easy to transfer classes and students from year-to-year. Their customer service has been great (we accidentally deleted multiple report cards in different places the other day and they quickly and helpfully solved our issue by restoring to a backup), and they are continually adding features and improving the platform. And the cost has been at least 50% less than quotes we were getting from major competitors. Many reasons to switch to Alma.

Nachteile:

The latest transcripts update was helpful - there are still a couple of features we'd like on the transcripts front, but that's mostly because our school has a unique curriculum. This is totally just a personal preference, but I'd also like to be able to search for classes in the search feature in addition to contacts.

The most user-friendly SIS on the market

Kommentare: From start to finish, the Alma team will hold your hand every step of the way to ensure that a migration to their platform goes smoothly and end users are comfortable with the transition. As needs change (and they frequently do), Alma can adapt to the circumstances with customizations and integrations that work to ensure your workflows run efficiently at every level.

Vorteile:

Alma is the most user-friendly SIS on the market. The intuitive interface makes everything from registration, grading, report cards, and state reporting a breeze. Users in any role will find Alma to be significant improvement over any SIS they have previously used.

Nachteile:

The autonomy of do-it yourself customization is limited when compared to other vendors. However, the Alma team is ready and willing to implement any desired customizations on your behalf. It might just take some time to get them rolled out.

Not for High Schools

Vorteile:

Honestly tough to answer. It’s nice as a club sponsor to be able to email whole groups of students (not just those in my classes).

Nachteile:

Basically every single function/aspect is worse than Infinite Campus. Entering grades, making/changing seating charts, printing roster spreadsheets are all more difficult and time consuming than IC. This program is not suited for secondary schools.

Alma is a modern SIS system with great support

Kommentare: Our transition from our previous vendor was a breeze thanks to the assistance from Alma staff, and they are very responsive when it comes to changes in state reporting. The support team is always great to work with. The Spreadsheet Data Editor is a great feature that makes a lot of tasks easier.

Vorteile:

Extremely user friendly with a modern interface and great support.

Nachteile:

The invoicing system is not very flexible, and isn't set up for waivers and credits.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: TeacherEase, Skyward Student Management Suite, Infinite Campus SIS und PowerSchool SIS

Warum Alma SIS gewählt wurde: TylerSIS has been sunsetted by the company.

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: It was less expensive than most competitors, there was no upcharge to help transfer our data, and they had their state reporting already up and running.

One site for all functions, that's every teacher needs

Kommentare: Most of the time it's fantastic. I can check the report and study progress not only for this year, but many years ago. And I can see students' progress for other subjects also, it helps me to have an overall vision and understanding to the student's study condition.

Vorteile:

One site for all functions On alma teachers can take attendance, record study progress, make report card, contact parents and students easily through email automatically, report incident. Parents and students can check the attendance, study progress and contact teacher as well.

Nachteile:

Sometimes it's out of service. It happened many times already. Showed a Bad Gateway.

Alma Joy! Sweet as Chocolate

Kommentare: 5 Star! I work with report cards and transcripts. My families love the electronic report cards sent right to their email for their convenience.

Vorteile:

User friendly. Thinks how I think. Attractive. Love the webinars. Everyone in Customer Engagement and the Techs are so sweet and caring.

Nachteile:

Can't really think of anything at this moment.

Great Potential

Kommentare: It is a solid experience with great people who know a large amount about data bases and most school systems. We do get a bit frustrated with some of the miscommunications over CALPADS and a few of the reports.

Vorteile:

Their cost is very competitive and their IT is amazing. They work very hard to try and answer all your questions quickly.

Nachteile:

Sales people tend to oversell the capabilities of Alma, it is a good system but it is not able to deliver the moon. We are currently fighting tooth and nail with CALPAD compliance.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Aeries SIS

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: Cost, Aeries is very expensive for a single school.

Adopting Alma SIS

Kommentare: Although we're still on the learning curve, it's been a very positive experience.

Vorteile:

Best part of the interface: It's very intuitive, logical, and organized. Best part for the tech crew: The tech help staff are very helpful, professional, and supportive.

Nachteile:

Worst part of the interface: The colors can't be customized to be our school colors. Worst part for the tech crew: The people running the system can't impersonate another user, which makes it hard to see what the user is seeing when you're trying to help someone.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Sycamore School und FACTS

Warum Alma SIS gewählt wurde: Blackbaud was expensive and complicated to manage.

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: Our teachers who went to the presentations liked the Alma interface the best.

Lesson Learned

Kommentare: Great and communicative. The really know their clients.

Vorteile:

Simple to use, integrates well with other programs, and keeps getting better

Nachteile:

there are glitches, they fix them quickly

Alma review

Kommentare: pleasant, would recommend to colleagues in search of a new SIS

Vorteile:

Ease of use, colorful UI, plenty of features

Nachteile:

Lack of honor role option on report card, newness to our state has caused some road blocks

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: PowerSchool

Warum Alma SIS gewählt wurde: Needed a more user friendly SIS for both staff and families

Zuvor genutzte Software: SchoolBrains

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: Cheaper price than powerschool with similar features

Ivana B's Review

Vorteile:

The software enables us to have all the data related to students, teachers, curriculum and assessment in one place. There are many things that are just "one click" tasks and things don't have to be re-done at the beginning of each school year. They can just be copied, transferred, modified... I also like that there is always a solution to everything, even if an option does not exist in the system, the support team helps find ways to make sure we get what we need.

Nachteile:

There are some things that we would like to have. For example: the option to show attendance on the report card per class (as opposed to per day), or the option to include a digital signature on the cover. These are some tiny things that we have found ways to resolve, but we have communicated them with the support team and we feel confident that they take our feedback into consideration.

Implementation Review

Kommentare: Excellent. Implementation folks have been great.

Vorteile:

The ease of use and functionality. It is very intuitive.

Nachteile:

Difficulty to look at/find students in different ways, ie Grade, Groups, Activities

Very useful and complete tool

Vorteile:

The platform is very easy to use and intuitive.

Nachteile:

The platform looks like a little bit old-fashioned

Hobby School of Ulaanbaatar

Kommentare: Create and download any reports that I wanted. That affects work easier.

Vorteile:

Alma SIS is understandable to use and all the school management needs are included in it.

Nachteile:

But Alma SIS doesn't match our region. Especially in the payment section. Furthermore, the time difference makes slower our connection.

Review for Alma from a First Time Teacher

Vorteile:

Calculating marks, organizing curiculum, making notes and comments about the student's marks are all bundled up into one interface. Compiles comments and report card creation onto one PDF that is simple to use.

Nachteile:

Inputting assignments and assigning them manually is tedious. The "Save" button and "Submit for Review" button are both the same size despite the "Save" button being the more important one during report cards submissions.

From a teacher

Kommentare: It is an effective tool for keeping and accessing records, communicating with students and teachers, and recording grades.

Vorteile:

Features are intuitive and easy to use.

Nachteile:

It is unclear how emails sent with the software will appear to recipients. For instance, sometimes Alma automatically adds a greeting/opening so the message ends up having an automated greeting and the one that I write.

A great Student Information System for schools

Kommentare: Alma is always open on my computer in the classroom so that I can add/change grades, put in discipline issues, or check on student information at the click of a button. I do like that it securely logs me out after a time period, but it is easy to log back in. This is a great tool for every school.

Vorteile:

This is one of the easiest products I've used at a school. It did not take me long to learn how to use it. I am able to find student information quickly. It is easy to add student grades, or link ALMA to my Google Classroom where grades are automatically uploaded for me. It has a plethora of features, all of which are vital for the seamless running of a school.

Nachteile:

I would love to see the Curriculum calendar more developed so that curriculum, units and standards could be added. I played with it a little last year but struggled to figure this section out. I believe it is in the works, however.

ALMA Year One Review

Kommentare: Alma has been highly responsive. Their customer service beat all other SIS products that we have worked with. Many of the issues that we are having are due to a specific issues to California schools.

Vorteile:

ALMA is colorful with a high ease of use for parents and students. It is easy to access and manage student and school data. Class scheduling is a breeze. We can accomplish more in one day that we could in one week with our previous product.

Nachteile:

Printing report cards is a disaster. There is no option to batch print report cards all in one job. There is no page break option, so RCs end up getting copied to the backs of one-another if they have an odd number of pages. The only option is to print each .pdf individually. There are several remaining issues with data reporting for California accountability reports.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: PowerSchool SIS

Warum Alma SIS gewählt wurde: Cost, end-user experience.

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: Cost, customer service.

Alma is very user-friendly and intuitive!

Vorteile:

I like that Alma has so many reports that I can generate to look at different aspects of the school such as progress reports, attendance, missing assignments, and so on. I also love how easy it is to create your own report card templates and create your own grading systems and monitor everything from one platform. Parent communication is also very easy!

Nachteile:

I wish it kept the history of group messages I send. Also, it would be very useful to be able to view messages that teachers send to track school-home communication. I would love to see a better lesson planning feature offered.

I want to love Alma but...

Kommentare: I really want to love Alma. There's so much potential but the problems we are running into keep building up and fixes are few and far between. Luckily we only have about 1000 students and a few schools. I don't know how we would manage if we were a larger organization.

Vorteile:

It's the only SIS that looks like it was designed in the past decade. The site itself is easy to use. The basics (scheduling, attendance, calendar, student bios, medical) are all well done, user-friendly, and look great. Gradebook is excellent. Frontline support is helpful.

Nachteile:

Reporting is a nightmare. Reports come in random formats. The descriptions are confusing. The filtering is confusing or doesn't work right. The screen where you choose reports is just a long confusing list. There's no preview of what the report is or looks like. Some information that you'd expect to be readily available (like a student's current grades) require running one of those confusing reports to find. The district portal is useless. New features that have been added (fees, report builder) feel unfinished and lack basic functionality that one would expect. While the front-line support is good, anything that has to go beyond them gets lost in a black hole when sent to "engineering". There are some quirks to the program that just make no sense. Little things here and there.

A flexible and responsive product. Unbelievably effective and efficient.

Kommentare: We have reduced our printing costs, improved communication with parents, and successfully submitted our PIMS state reports. Communication with Alma has been great! The online resources and chat feature are very effective. Chat is answered within 10 minutes, often in less time. They have been responsive to our needs. Feedback from the teachers about their use of Alma has been very positive.

Vorteile:

The user interface is very intuitive. Everything is where one would expect it to be within the program. Migration to Alma from our previous SIS was so straight forward and seamless that I was not sure the SIS was going to be ready on schedule. It was ready on schedule and very few issues have been encountered. Issuing digital report cards is very easy and our parents love it. We also communicate with our parents on a regular basis by using the email feature in Alma. Parents also have expressed satisfaction with the parent portal for checking their student's grades. Teachers find it very easy to use the gradebook.

Nachteile:

Any concerns/needs we have expressed to Alma have resulted in instant inquiry and potential solutions.

Good if your users are not picky

Kommentare: Was the right move at the right time (web based - SAS)

Vorteile:

Web based Fast Quick support Google SSO SAS

Nachteile:

Email editor is TOO basic. Report writer is not flexible, cost per extra fields. Retrieve unenrolled student's data from previous years should be easier. Apply changes to multiple classes, schedules, etc should allow to select randomly or by criteria. Backup/Restore feature not available. Mixed Letter, Numbers and Standards based grades are not compatible. Transcripts reports must allow more flexible design.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: PowerSchool Unified Classroom und Schoology

Warum Alma SIS gewählt wurde: Complete suite must be web based on the cloud

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Alma SIS: Lower cost Technical support

Alma: A Teacher's Point of View

Kommentare: Our overall experience has been satisfactory. We rarely have the "drama" we dealt with when using our previous software. Keeping up to date more quickly and making changes to make the teacher use more efficient and faster would be of big help.

Vorteile:

Our school was first drawn to Alma because it combined a good software to meet student, parent, and teacher needs with great value. Customer service is fantastic. If any of us ask an online question, help is quick.

Nachteile:

Alma takes a long time to keep up with the times. For example, we have used it several years, but they just added the ability to enter a score on one student's grade book for a given assignment, and then hit enter, and then an automatic opening to the next student's grade to enter. In effect, it now performs well with a number key pad. Entry was singularly entered one a time which was so slow. In addition, there should be a quicker way to approve report cards. Finally, because we want students to monitory their grades, it would be helpful for them to have their own password access for limited viewing, keeping the parent password private for fuller access.

Head Lower School Math Teacher Review

Kommentare: I have been please with my experience with Alma.

Vorteile:

This software allows me to easily interact with our entire student body by accessing contact information and schedules for each student.

Nachteile:

I haven't found anything I don't like so far with this software.

A Great SIS - and Getting Better

Kommentare: Our school has tried several different solutions for grading and record keeping, and Alma is by far the best we have encountered. We tried Power School (a user-unfriendly dinosaur) and internally developed software (effective but too labor-intensive and time consuming to develop and maintain), and Alma is far superior to both. I really cannot recommend Alma highly enough.

Vorteile:

The best thing abour Alma is its ease of use. In addition, it has one of the most professional and responsive customer support departments I have ever encountered in any product or industry.

Nachteile:

It does not yet have all of the functionality that we would like, particularly in the area of recording curriculum, but since we adopted it three years ago they have regulerly added new features and improved the functionality of what was already there. I really do believe that in short order they will address curriculum within the program, and at that point every major use we have for an SIS would be covered.