# Starfish Reviews **Vendor:** EAB **Category:** [Student Information Systems (SIS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/student-information-systems-sis) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 28 ## About Starfish The patented Starfish Enterprise Success Platform can help your institution scale its student support initiatives in a way that enables students to engage more effectively with the campus community and, ultimately, achieve their academic goals. ## Starfish Reviews ### 1. Useful software for what it does, not how it looks **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert M. | Assistive Technology and Services Coordinator, Disability Resource Center, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Great way to stay in touch with college students for a proactive approach to their education. Positive praise and helpful points for consideration are included in the software's main processes. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** The software is not mobile-friendly, and the visual aspects of the software do not look updated whatsoever. It has a lot of Ala Carte items, making one school's experience different than another's. The interface is a little clunky to use. It does take a particular learning curve to learn the software and then implement it correctly. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** It is useful for what it does, but it does not have some of the basic bells and whistles visually. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Student retention and success in a college setting. Instant feedback for student performance. Once systems can be automated using the platform, then you can increase performance. ### 2. Even the students are talking about how great it is **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Natalie S. | Academic & Financial Aid Advisor , Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 05, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish Success was implemented 2 months ago. 60% of our faculty are using it and we have a higher response rate from our students. Since there is a text options for students to set up we are getting the information to the students early **What do you dislike about Starfish?** You have to go through a lot of steps to get texting set up. Each student basically has to discover it themselves. Wish it was more obvious you can set this up. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Connecting with students who never check their emails. ### 3. Good for overall scheduling, could be more open to customization **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Setting up schedule calendars is easy, and being able to examine and edit appointments directly, as well as message clients directly, is a big plus. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Difficult to fully customize appointments. Optimally, I should be able to implement surveys within the appointment process. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** It's a robust system, but is difficult to fully customize. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Starfish helps me to keep track of appointments, analyze employee scheduling, and manage employee calendars. ### 4. Excellent resource for student retention **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jerusalem W. | Assistant Professor, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish allows students to make their own appointments with me without emailing back and forth. I can share notes about what was discussed and others who teach and advise the student can access these as well. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** The platform is great, though it would be good to have a designated faculty champion within each department to encourage uptake and ensure success of the program. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Starfish is a great platform. It would be helpful to demonstrate how useful it is to faculty who are new to using the program. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** This is to improve student advising and retention. Because of poor faculty uptake within the department, the benefits haven't been fully realized. ### 5. A useful resource, but not as good as it could be **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2018 **What do you like best about Starfish?** There are a number of options for faculty and staff to personalize content for individual students. Whether they need help academically, socially, psychologically, or otherwise. These options make it great to directly connect students to the most appropriate resource. The ability to connect a student's entire "network" is also a plus, keeping everyone connected to the student in the loop regarding their progress. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Starfish as a software platform is slow and cumbersome. Load times are almost unbearable. The interface is not intuitive at all. The scheduling and calendar features are tedious. Overall, the software doesn't integrate well with any of our other campus LMS systems. So it requires having several windows open at once, updating information across all platforms. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Set aside plenty of time to learn the system. It takes a long time to maintain files, so give yourself plenty of time between appointments. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** It does the job of giving us an early alert when a student is having trouble academically, socially, or psychologically. The implementation of this system has resulted in grains in student retention. And hopefully will continue to create a more connected interface for faculty, staff, coaches, and students. ### 6. Perfect for Higher Education **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** I love how easy it is to use Starfish to track the needs and warning sings of students in our higher education institution. Starfish tracks information and manages all of our information on students. It also makes it super easy to use so that I am able to give more time to focus on the student in front of me. Early Alert has helped our office detect at-rick students quickly. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** I have no complaints and find it easy to use! **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are better able to get students at0risk the help they need quicker and more effectively because of the tracking Starfish Early Alert provides for us. Starfish Early Alert also allows for multiple people who interact with the student to provide their own insight and track it so we have multiple perspectives, which I find to greatly benefit the student! ### 7. Great way for students to map out degrees **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish Degree Planner is an efficient and easy to use program that allows students to achieve their goals academically and extracurricularly. As an adviser, it helps me determine what routes I can take to best aid each student. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Overall, I have very few complaints about Starfish Degree Planner. I do feel that the program is a bit unattractive and bland. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Make sure that your students are well educated on how to use the program. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company is using Starfish Degree Planner to make addressing students' personal goals at a large institution much easier on the advisers as well as the student. ### 8. Average **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** This product is similar to many others we've used, so while there's always a learning curve - it was OK to transition. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Like all products, the language can be confusing to newcomers and we had a lot of questions and back and forth come up. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Student advisement and support ### 9. Using Starfish **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The program is great for instructors to inform the counseling of students who are failing **What do you dislike about Starfish?** There are still glitches in the system and we are still learning how to utilize the program to work best for Students **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are trying to figure out the early alert and how its working with students. The instructors seem to like the process a bit better. ### 10. Good product for keeping track of students **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2019 **What do you like best about Starfish?** We use this at my university to manage at risk students and it keeps us aware across the university. Very full functionality and better than the banner system that we use for everything else. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** I don't dislike anything. It is a nice database of students though approaching the same data from multiple different systems that we use is annoying **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** I would use it again. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Student retentions ### 11. Starfish - appointments **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Janessa H. | Assistant Director (College of Business Career Center), Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2018 **What do you like best about Starfish?** In my role, I use Starfish every day to manage appointments; I find the system easy to use and quick. I also like that I can see all past notes. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** It sometimes freezes if I open up an appointment. As well, I know students sometimes have a hard time finding an appropriate advisor. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Ultimately, I think having an appointment management system that allows to see notes from all areas of the University is very beneficial. I have worked at institutions where the system has not been as sophisticated, and I think the benefits out weigh the costs. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** It provides an easy way to schedule appointments and see notes from all of those appointments to understand the student's situation. ### 12. Great Tool! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2018 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Very quick and easy to submit information about students to students to help them know where they stand in the course. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** It would be great if I could see the "stock" email and make edits to it prior to submission. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Very easy to use. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Notifying students of their options sooner (drop/withdraw, etc.). Students can make informed decisions soon and help to rectify their grades or make necessary changes. ### 13. Starfish Connect Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mehmet Soner C. | Marketing Analytics & Insights Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 10, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The ease Starfish Connect provides for students to make an appointment with their professors and advisors. Seeing the available time slots and days for professors and advisors. Providing the distinction of making an appointment for advising or tutoring is really helpful too. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Sometimes professors are late to update their schedules. The system can remind professors to update their appointment date and times when advising sessions are approaching. Technical support can also be better. In certain questions and problems that the users might have, current response rate seems a bit slow. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Definitely give it a try. Once you get used to it (which is really easy), you'll make all of your appointments over it. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to solve any sort of connection and getting in touch problems with my professors. It lets me make an appointment easily without interrupting my work. It is also user friendly and easy to use. It allows you to see all the professors related to your courses in one place, which makes it really practical. You can access the contact information for Professor from Starfish Connect too, which is really beneficial. ### 14. Review of Starfish Early Alert **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The system is easy to use. Integrated well with Blackboard and Canvas. Faculty have lots of options to identify students needing academic help. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Roll was harder than I expected. We spent lots of time with our integration rep from Starfish. Was very disappointed when I was told we were going to need to purchase more integration time to continue using our integration rep. Our goal was to have a stable working system that we could continue to maintain in the future. We just felt we were not receiving good information during implementation. Everything is working now and is stable. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Starfish Early Alert is a great system. Getting faculty buy is difficult at times. The system is easy to use for faculty and give them many ways to identify students needing help. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Identify students that are needing help in individual classes before it is too late for them to be successful. ### 15. Great experience so far! **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jen R. | Residence Life Coordinator, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** I think that different people across the university can connect to students all in one place. It is nice to get input from faculty about how students are doing in classes. It is a great way for advisers to take notes from meetings to see each student's individual history. I like the interface, it is easy to read and use. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** You have to constantly add on new features. A few I can see in Starfish, but they aren't active and therefore are useless right now. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Students can have one place to go electronically to get notifications from faculty, advisers, counselors, etc. great tool to better serve students. I think it helps students know where to go to find out who their adviser is and schedule meetings online. ### 16. Starfish Early Alert-Great Tool for Educators **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish Early Alert is a great tool for educators to use to track progress of their students, as well as communicate with students. It is a great place to leave notes about students so that anyone with access to Starfish can read the notes. It is also helpful that we require students to use it, so they may read messages in Starfish, but not in their school-provided email. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Sometimes it takes a while for the screens to load. For instance, if I have a student's record up and want to read specific notes, it may take a few minutes before it loads. Sometimes it gives an error and you have to log out of the student's record & back in before it will load. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** I would recommend Starfish Early Alert to any educational institution who would like to intervene in their students' progress early enough for the student to make changes. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Students are given progress of their courses early on, and not just at the mid-term or end-term. This system can recommend that at student get tutoring if they aren't passing. And again, it is a great place to leave notes about students so that anyone with access to Starfish can read the notes. I ### 17. In Higher Education **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish is a great tool to utilize for keeping contact with my students outside the classroom. It gives me prompts throughout the quarter to complete reports based on students work in class. This information is sent to them as well as their advisers. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** I wish that some comments would be able to be sent between instructor and advisers that would not be available to be read by students. This may be an option, but in the reporting I've done it appears that the information and all comments are also sent to the student. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping in touch with students whether it is praise for accomplishments or flagging students who may need extra support from groups throughout our school system in order to be successful. ### 18. Effective for measuring student success and projecting graduation. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The personal touch that is made available, along with being able to manage a schedule with appointments. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** The program crashes more often that we would like. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Consider learning the program in full by attending training. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to locate academic issues and address them. ### 19. Easy to use and effective in keeping communication open. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrea C. | Elementary School Counselor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish allows users to customize their products to fit the needs of their institution. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Only Tenant Admins can run reports to analyze the product's usage and effectiveness. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Starfish Connect can be extremely effective and is very easy to use, but be mindful and tactful in your implementation process. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Starfish to connect students with resources on campus. It is most predominantly used by our Advising office. I would like to see Starfish utilized by all student services offices on campus, and for the virtual student folder to become the primary source of student information, allowing our faculty and professional advisors to work seamlessly with one another and with students. ### 20. Starfish Connect **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2018 **What do you like best about Starfish?** This software is incredibly simple and easy to use! It makes it very easy to schedule appointments online. It is also easy to view all scheduled appointments in one easy-to-read dashboard. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** I dislike that Starfish has a limited capability beyond scheduling appointments. I wish there were more options available, such as communication options to communicate with instructors. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scheduling appointments in an easy to use platform ### 21. Utilize application to manage student accounts **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David F. | Computing Support Analyst, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Starfish is a great location to keep student's data centralized and it gives students easy access to see how they are doing in classes. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** There was a steep learning curve when it comes to using starfish to its fullest and we consistently receive questions of proper functionality and usage of the application. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** This application assists our enterprise application team to help monitor and support students attendance and performance in class ### 22. New Starfish user **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The program allows advisors to easily receive and track alerts and notifications about students **What do you dislike about Starfish?** There have been few issues on my end at this point, although I do find the daily summary emails a bit annoying. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Making sure everyone at the University is properly using the system is very important. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using the system to create and receive alerts about students. ### 23. Happy with Starfish **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Very user friendly and I love the connect to calendar feature. I never miss an appointment with faculty, staff and students thanks to starfish! **What do you dislike about Starfish?** To be honest, there isn’t much I dislike... the visual aspect could be more appealing. The design is a little backwards but overall great product! **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** None! User friendly **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Connecting with students and their families about grades. ### 24. Starfish Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victoria C. | Student Chapter Advisor, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** The user interface is easy to navigate. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Sometimes things are titled in such a way that they make more sense to a programmer than a user. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Academic advising, scheduling appointments etc ### 25. Works well, still have limited experience **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Clean and organized appearance and ease of use for students **What do you dislike about Starfish?** Learning curve coming from a different software can be difficult **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Advising appointments for students are created through this software. Empowers students to be in control of their advising experience ### 26. Great documentation/early alert program! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stacey S. | Clinical Coordinator for Radiography, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 07, 2016 **What do you like best about Starfish?** I love that you can use this product to warn students early of their classroom performance! It's a back up way of documentation other than an email directly to the student. The attendance feature is also awesome because you have more options that just present or absent. This program is easy to use for the most part. The setting up of your schedule can be confusing sometimes but can easily be figured out. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** I dislike that this program is not geared as much toward health sciences, however it does have editing ability to create items that health science programs can use. In the attendance feature, I would like to have an option to denote snow days or school closures/delays. It would make it easier for me to track attendance and make up time. A time calculator tool would also be a great feature for programs who require time based attendance. Along with the tardy button in the attendance, an option to type in how tardy the student was would be beneficial also. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** Early alert to students and the ability to document those alerts. ### 27. Performs Well **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mental Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2016 **What do you like best about Starfish?** I like how user-friendly and intuitive the Starfish platform is to work with. It's easy to navigate and to connect with a number of other offices in a few seconds. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** What I dislike about Starfish is it's connection with Microsoft Outlook which sometimes results in appointments being double-booked or cancelled appointments appearing as still active. Although many software programs might conflict with the Microsoft exchange, it's imperative that the calendaring system bugs get worked out sooner than later. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Make sure that the software fits your organization's needs...do not modify your organization's needs to fit the system. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** The business problems we are addressing are student retention and early detection to effectively identify and assist students in need. We also use the software to schedule student appointments every day. ### 28. Use this service to make appointments with students **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Starfish?** Allows for digital sign in sheets and helps us monitor how many students we are meeting with and what recurring issues they are coming in to resolves. Also helps our staff schedule meetings for each other while working the front desk. **What do you dislike about Starfish?** The layout is kind of bland and it is often difficult to find how to customize my account for example business hours. I have also found it confusing when trying to link to my Microsoft office calendar. **Recommendations to others considering Starfish:** Make sure you know who the starfish representative at your business is. They did a training for our department and I found it very useful. **What problems is Starfish solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have much more data than we had previously and students feel that they are being seen in order to when they came into the office. - [View Starfish pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/eab-starfish/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-13+09%3A31%3A43+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=744a06e8-86f2-4cf6-8e27-d0160f8526ff&secure%5Btoken%5D=f6dccd0047dc6c91870a68a6948c0cb766c91494ed75be1ead34171855558ea6&format=llm_user) ## Starfish Features **Planning** - Creating plans - Scenarios **Progress monitoring** - Degree progress - Reporting and analytics - Identifying at-risk students - Recording notes **Outreach** - Messaging - Appointment scheduling - Alerts and Notifications - Self-Service tools - Mobility ## Top Starfish Alternatives - [Ellucian Student](https://www.g2.com/products/ellucian-student/reviews) - 3.3/5.0 (260 reviews) - [PowerSchool SIS](https://www.g2.com/products/powerschool-sis/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (722 reviews) - [SchoolStatus](https://www.g2.com/products/schoolstatus/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (805 reviews)