- Centralized Financial Management: Manage budgets, forecasting, accounting, financial reporting, procurement, and accounts payable from a unified platform for streamlined operations.
- AI-Powered Analytics: Use AI-driven dashboards to track financial performance, forecast trends, and optimize resource allocation with real-time insights.
- Compliance Support: Simplify adherence to GASB and FASB standards with built-in reporting tools, ensuring data accuracy and financial transparency.
- Role-Based Access: Provide personalized, secure access to financial data for CFOs, department leads, and staff, tailored to their roles.
- Scalable SaaS Foundation: Offer cloud-based deployment on AWS with enterprise-grade security, continuous updates, and scalability for institutional needs.
- Invoice and Billing Automation: Streamline invoicing, billing, and payment processes, reducing manual tasks and improving efficiency.
- Expense Synchronization: Integrate purchasing and expense data for better control, insight, and approval workflows across campus.
- Journal Voucher Management: Enable financial teams to access, process, copy, reverse, or delete journal vouchers, including budgets and transactions.
- Finance Query Module: Provide a visual dashboard to view spend analysis, save, and share queries, enhancing collaboration among accounting teams.
- Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connect with other Ellucian products and third-party tools like AvidXchange for enhanced AP automation.
Ellucian
Higher education ERP and student information platform, with finance tools for budgets, grants, and compliance.
Updated July 27, 2026
Ellucian Overview
Ellucian is a software provider for higher education, selling ERP and student information systems to roughly 3,000 institutions across 50 countries that together serve more than 21 million students. Its lineup covers the full student lifecycle, from recruiting and admissions through student records, financial aid, and advancement, under Ellucian Student, the current name for its long-running Banner line, alongside Ellucian Finance and Ellucian HCM for institutional operations.
For campus finance teams, Ellucian Finance connects budgeting, forecasting, grant management, procurement, and reporting, with AI-powered dashboards and compliance support for GASB and FASB standards. It is built for universities and colleges rather than general businesses, and pricing is quote-based, varying with institution size, modules, and deployment.
Key Features
Pricing
| Plan / Tier | Price / Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Base Cost | Contact for Quote | Pricing varies depending on size, modules, deployment. |
| Pricing Based on FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) | Based on institution size | Pricing depends on number of students, modules selected, and environment requirements. |
| Modules (e.g. student records, finance, HR) | Varies by selection | Additional modules like finance, HR, financial aid may increase cost. |
| Deployment (Cloud vs On-Premise) | Varies | Cloud-based deployments typically cost less than on-premise. |
| Support and Customization | Varies | Costs depend on the level of support, customization, and integration needed. |
| Existing Customer Offers | Some services at no additional cost | For existing customers, certain features like the Experience Foundation may be included at no extra charge. |
| Implementation and Services | Varies by scope | Custom implementation, data migration, and training add to the cost. |
Pricing source: https://www.ellucian.com
Pros
| Competitor | Pros of Ellucian |
|---|---|
| Workday Student | Ellucian does nothing but higher education: roughly 3,000 institutional customers, 21 million students served, and a line that runs from recruiting and student aid through Ellucian Finance and Ellucian HCM. Its lineage goes back to Banner and Colleague in 1979, and Gartner named it a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Higher Education SaaS Student Information Systems for a second consecutive year. Workday Student is a module attached to a general-purpose enterprise suite, and neither company publishes a price. |
| Jenzabar | Ellucian scales from small colleges to multi-campus research systems, while Jenzabar One aims at small and mid-sized institutions. The suite is wider too: dedicated Finance and HCM modules, student aid processing, advancement, and a platform layer with no-code process automation, reporting and data orchestration. Ellucian has also bought depth into that stack, adding CampusLogic in 2022 and EduNav in 2024. |
| Anthology (formerly Campus Management) | This comparison has largely closed: Ellucian completed its acquisition of Anthology’s SIS and ERP business in 2025, bringing more than 260 institutions across, and Anthology’s own site now routes Anthology Student enquiries to Ellucian. What remains of Anthology trades as Blackboard and sells teaching, learning and engagement products rather than a campus ERP. Institutions consolidating student records and finance onto one vendor now find both former product lines under Ellucian. |
| Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions | Ellucian is putting its investment into its own SaaS line — Ellucian Student, Finance and HCM on a shared platform, with AI applied to grant management and predictive analytics. Oracle’s campus story runs the other way: PeopleSoft Campus Solutions stays on its existing footing while Oracle publishes migration paths to Fusion Cloud ERP and HCM. Ellucian is a higher education pure play with around 3,700 employees behind that single industry. |
Cons
| Competitor | Cons of Ellucian |
|---|---|
| Workday Student | Workday holds the same recognition: a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Higher Education Student Information Systems, and for the second year in a row, so the analyst line settles nothing. Many Ellucian sites still run legacy Banner or Colleague deployments, and moving those onto SaaS is a full project with its own cost; reviewers describe steep modernisation bills. Workday offers one cloud codebase across ERP and student records without that migration step. |
| Jenzabar | Ellucian implementations are larger and longer projects than most Jenzabar One rollouts, and a small college can find the suite more system than it needs. Reporting beyond the canned set usually still needs technical staff, even with the platform’s no-code tooling. Jenzabar sells simpler administration for lean IT teams, and since both vendors quote per institution, comparing cost means running two procurements. |
| Anthology (formerly Campus Management) | The 2025 acquisition cuts both ways: institutions on Anthology Student now sit inside a roadmap they did not choose, and consolidation on that scale takes years to land. For recruiting and student engagement, Blackboard’s CRM-led products remain a separate purchase and a genuine alternative to Ellucian’s admissions tooling. Ellucian’s breadth also means more training before staff are productive, a recurring theme in reviews of its student and finance modules. |
| Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions | Oracle extended PeopleSoft’s rolling ten year support commitment through at least 2037 in March 2026, so campuses on Campus Solutions face no support deadline forcing a move. Existing PeopleSoft customisations and in-house Oracle skills make switching expensive, and Ellucian is no escape from complexity: reviewers report forced third-party software changes and crashes during peak advisement and registration. Heavy customisation complicates Ellucian upgrades in the same way. |
Reviews
- Software Advice Review (Rating: 3.6/5): Ellucian transformed one institution from “antiquated methods to operating at light speed,” and users call it a “great suite for information storage and processing” that feels stable and functional. Others report “massive additional costs during deployment,” confusion among “experts” about basic features, forced third‑party software changes, and even “repeated crashes during most critical time in student advisement and registration.”
- G2 Review (Rating: 3.4/5): A Director of Financial Operations values Ellucian Colleague as a solid base ERP with a central database for essential data and notes it feels more robust than Powercampus. A student reviewer praises Ellucian CRM Advise for allowing comprehensive checks of individual student records, highlighting the depth of record tracking.
- Gartner Review (Rating: 4/5): One review highlights an “Enhanced Experience, Scalability, Security, and Upgraded Tools with Banner SaaS” for Ellucian Student. A critical reviewer says Ellucian Elevate (Legacy) fits continuing education needs but “Failed on Financial Management Integration,” pointing to gaps in finance connectivity.
- mcleanco.com Review: Aggregated feedback shows 69% positive sentiment and a +61 Net Emotional Footprint, with a 74 score for Likeliness to Recommend and 69 for Satisfaction of Cost Relative to Value. Users rate the vendor well on “Security,” “Protects,” “Fair,” “Reliable,” and “Client Friendly Policies,” while some critics feel it “Leverages Incumbent Status.”
