--- title: Orah Reviews meta_title: 'Orah Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 61 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Orah works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 61 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-13' parent_category: name: Student Information Systems (SIS) url: https://www.g2.com/categories/student-information-systems-sis --- # Orah Reviews **Vendor:** Orah **Category:** [K-12 Student Information Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/k-12-student-information-systems) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 61 ## About Orah Orah is a school safety platform that helps independent K-12 schools know where their students are in real time. Student location awareness is kept accurate through the routines schools already run: attendance, hall passes, dismissals, and student-initiated check-ins. All staff, parents, and students can contribute to keeping location records current. Locations are private by default and revealed only to approved staff when action is needed. When something happens on campus, Orah gives administrators a live view of expected versus actual student locations so they can account for every student quickly. Northwood School accounted for all students in under 90 seconds during an emergency using Orah. Orah consolidates attendance, pass management, visitor management, emergency roll call, and parent communications into a single platform, replacing multiple point solutions. It integrates directly with leading student information systems including Blackbaud, Veracross, and FACTS, with two-way data sync and single sign-on support. Over 500 independent schools use Orah. The platform is SOC 2 compliant and FERPA-aligned. Orah is built for independent K-12 schools, with particular depth for schools managing large, complex campuses. Trusted by leading schools like Philips Exeter Academy, University School of Nashville, The Hotchkiss School, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Crossroads Academy, Ross School, The Kiski School and many more. ## Orah Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users commend the **efficient customer support** from Nicholas Hillier, praising timely resolutions and helpful messaging. (1 reviews) - Users find Orah’s interface **intuitive and user-friendly** , making it easy to track students' locations effortlessly. (1 reviews) - Users commend Orah's **excellent customer support** and the helpful instant messaging feature for quick problem resolution. (1 reviews) - Users find Orah provides **excellent student safety** , making it easy to track students on or off campus. (1 reviews) ## Orah Reviews ### 1. Orah passes and forms review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 15, 2025 **What do you like best about Orah?** Customer support from Nicholas Hillier has been great. The instant message section of the website is also helpful. When we have had a problem using one of the features, the issues has been resolved in a timely manner. **What do you dislike about Orah?** Sometimes it can take a bit of trial and error to get event passes running the way we need but it is nothing that is not able to be overcome. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping track of students locations, particularly when they leave campus ### 2. Orah is amazing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lachlan B. | Teacher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Orah?** It is so intuitive to use. Seeing students on or off campus is a breeze. **What do you dislike about Orah?** There really isn't anything that there is to dislike about Orah. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Knowing where students are and easily being able to adjuct where they are on campus. ### 3. Easy to Understand and real time results **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ellen H. | ITS Office/DB Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Orah?** Hard to pick one. Here are my top 4: I like the visual of seeing all the students and easy to use filters. I love the real time responses for emergencies where everyone can click they are safe or not and we see instantaneously. I love the NFC checkpoints as they are easy to set up and inexpensive to distribute. I love that data feeds from Blackbaud ON system - huge efficiency. **What do you dislike about Orah?** There are some serious reliability issues with emergency roll calls and overloads of server that are being worked on. Also - staff and students here are not good at doing updates as they pride themselves in being free spirits so our data is not as good as it should be. That's an Administration problem, not a BW problem. Also - would like students and staff auto loaded from our ON SIS system. Students are but we fake the staff in as students so we can account for all in an emergency. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Prior to BW, we had a lot of shared google sheets and used email blasts to see where missing students are. Now I can easily mark who is off campus for a term or home for a weekend. No more checking the Athletics checkin, Health checkin, Gone From School, etc. ### 4. Great platform that we could easily adapt to fit our needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Orah?** We wanted to be able to use this for tracking day student locations in addition to boarders, and for conducting regular COVID symptom checks. It's done all that with ease, and it works for us just as well for day students as it does for boarders. It's also simplified communication and documentation, cutting down on email and putting all the important information about a student in one place. **What do you dislike about Orah?** The biggest challenge in our first year using it has been minor technical glitches. Some staff couldn't create accounts, for example, and some couldn't access features or get notifications like they were supposed to. Most issues got resolved, but it took a little time. We didn't adopt Boardingware until about a month before school. We were able to get it up and running quickly, but these glitches did make some of our start-of-year work challenging. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I said above, we're able to keep good track of who is on campus and who's not, which is important in a year where we've employed a hybrid learning model. We also wanted to conduct daily symptom checks and collect that information easily, and this works well for that. Beyond that, our use of Pastoral Notes has greatly improved our communication about staff, and all our records are now in one place. ### 5. A decent platform for tracking students **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Orah?** The ease of use and ability to see where students are. **What do you dislike about Orah?** I haven't used it in a couple years, but I wanted it to be more customizable. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keep track of where students were and having them submit plans in advance. ### 6. Boardingware improves the lives of its users! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John S. | Assistant Head for School Life, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2020 **What do you like best about Orah?** From an administrator's perspective, I am confident that students are safe and accounted for on a regular basis. I can make sure all of my staff knows the status of all of my students in real time. From a dorm parent's perspective, they can easily conduct check-ins from their phone or laptop. From a student's and parent's perspective, they can easily request leaves, schedule vacation travel and sign out (and back in). **What do you dislike about Orah?** The only thing I dislike is our school information system doesn't sync with Boardingware, which is more of an issue with the other system than with Boardingware. I also don't like that the language they use for our industry (boarding schools) is thoroughly British so we find ourselves having to translate (e.g., "House" means "Dorm," etc.) **Recommendations to others considering Orah:** After sales and start up, you'll be assigned to an account manager. Do use that person for technical support and questions. Our Amanda has been responsive, knowledgeable, and delightful. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having one place where everyone knows where are students are. Some are away on weekend, some are away with this team or that, some are studying remotely and others are on medical leave. That used to be a bunch of lists that dorm parents would have to consult. Now it's all in one place. More than one teacher can check in a group together. The supervisor can see the status of the check-in and all check-ins are archived. ### 7. What a change **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan B. | Director of Residential Life, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 22, 2020 **What do you like best about Orah?** Boardingware is a simple tool to track students in real time. Further from that though, our students have a history of locations, and we have connections with parents and hosts that otherwise wouldn't happen. With our connection to International Families, we have made more connections and communications than ever before. **What do you dislike about Orah?** It can be complicated for a new user. The barrier of learning a new program can make it difficult for anyone to jump straight in. **Recommendations to others considering Orah:** Be prepared for training your staff, your students, and your parents. I underestimated the workload. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I arrived, we were using paper and pencil to track the locations of our students. The idea of trust but verify is important for high school students. ### 8. Knowledge and Peace of mind when you most need it **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Will C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 03, 2018 **What do you like best about Orah?** I like the fact that Boardingware can promt you to have conversations with students and parents over their leave requests giving you the value of insight and monitoring leave. It also provides a highly convenient way for keeping you informed of your student's whereabouts when you have 101 other matters to be concerned about. In short, it help me maintain peace of mind...and not having to continuously trawl through e-mails or permission slips. **What do you dislike about Orah?** I don't like the fact that it can be complicated for parents to use and understand initially. **Recommendations to others considering Orah:** Make use of the support sessions available at Startup **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing student leave during the week and at weekends. - Monitor student's leave and potential absence. - Keep an eye on and spot trends in leave patterns. - Simple (once parents have the hang of it) and effective way of approving leave and comings and goings. - Registering students at times during the day. ### 9. Great program for boarding school **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicole C. | Dance Instructor, Resident Faculty, Advisor, Performing Arts, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Orah?** This program immensely helps facilitate the boarding life at school. The program is easy to learn, aided by the offerings of online training sessions. You can keep records of students' health conditions, disciplinary occurrences, general notes, see parental permissions, and keep track of their late or timely departures and arrivals from campus. Taking roll is a quick easy process with student lists created for different situations. **What do you dislike about Orah?** On occasion, I have noticed issues of not being able to access shared roll calls or information not being saved due to internet access/connection; however, I would say I have experienced few issues with this program. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Boardingware overall has helped our residential faculty awareness of all students' whereabouts, habits, any health issues (getting sick, etc.) and noting parent permissions. This enables our community to have access to up to date information in between our regular meetings, which also facilitates our duty rotations so no information is lost. It is a great resource for us to look back and notice any conditions that might need addressing, or to reward students for their responsible behaviors and leadership. **Official Response from Tiago Penteado:** > Hi Nicole thanks so much for the feedback, we really appreciate it. Paul ### 10. Boardingware delivers when tasked with high volume **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mac J. | Assistant Director of Residential Life, Primary/Secondary Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Orah?** The communication and accountability boost Boardingware provides us is huge. All our residential faculty and administrators know where all our children are all the time, up to the minute. **What do you dislike about Orah?** The information shared between parents and students is not always as transparent as we'd like, especially as a junior boarding school. Specifically, if parents aren't included in the workflow of an event leave, parents they have to use a workaround to see what events students signed up for. **Recommendations to others considering Orah:** We began the year with the rollout, and gradually phased in additional features/tasks within the first two months. Incrementally building this way was instrumental to our faculty buy-in. **What problems is Orah solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our parent and student-initiated checkouts are much more streamlined now. In the past, the ResLife office would field emails, phone calls, and texts relating to travel information. Now, parents are able to enter all necessary information in a uniform, standardized way, and the feedback from all parties has been really positive. We've also integrated Boardingware into all our weekend activities/trips. As context, we have 100 boarders, ages 10-15, and we send 20-25 "trips" out-- both on campus and off-- every weekend. Between these faculty-led activities and students checking out to go home for the weekend, we process on average 270 checkouts per weekend. Our residential faculty are now able to pull rosters quickly and accurately for attendance, and any last minute adjustments are easy to make. Boardingware is a game changer, period. - [View Orah pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/orah/reviews/orah-review-1487171?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-13+23%3A28%3A51+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=a2a75f82-889e-4582-b8e3-7e00286e26c7&secure%5Btoken%5D=c8ee62e1398a1d85cc0ad5c05bcc412106adab5599b234e3b0e2663e1bf3071f&format=llm_user) ## Orah Features **Platform Content** - File Sharing - White-Labeling - Gradebook **Prevention & Preparation** - Scenario Planning - Document Database - Equipment Management - Threat Monitoring **Agentic AI - Student Information Systems (SIS)** - Cross-system Integration **Platform Additional Functionality** - Cloud - Mobility - Messaging **Response** - Mass Alerts and Notifications - Geolocation - Automated Workflows - Incident Dashboard - Third-Party Data Mining - Collaboration Tools **Platform Data** - Visualization - Dashboard - Analytics - Registration - Atttendance **Recovery** - Auditing & Compliance - Incident Mapping - Post-Event Analysis - Cost Management - Document Sharing **Agentic AI - K-12 Student Information Systems** - Cross-system Integration ## Top Orah Alternatives - [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 (806 reviews) - [Follett Destiny Library Manager](https://www.g2.com/products/follett-software-follett-destiny-library-manager/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (430 reviews)