Anthology Encompass vs Gecko

Anthology Encompass is a browser-based platform for coordinating an institution’s giving, events, communications, and community engagement. It supports email campaigns with templates, audience selection, A/B tests, deliverability tools, and performance reporting. Giving features include donation campaigns, forms, recurring gifts, and transaction reports; event tools cover RSVPs, registration, fee-based activities, confirmations, reconciliation, and attendee check-in. Membership campaigns can manage dues, benefits, renewals, and scheduled payments. Its Engagement Dashboard tracks email, event, giving, membership, online usage, and volunteer activity, though only Super Admins and the Engagement Metrics Admin can access it. Institutions can also use branded crowdfunding templates and a Giving Microsite Builder; the builder was in an Early Access Beta program in the 2026.5 release. Anthology says more than 800 higher education institutions use Encompass. The service is paid, with pricing on request, and is available on Android, iOS, and the web. Constituent sites support recent mobile browsers, but administrative tools are not supported on mobile.

Gecko is a student engagement CRM for higher education, bringing student conversations, data, and touchpoints together. Its platform includes chat, texting, email, calling, events, contact management, forms, workflows, student portals, AI, and reporting. A shared inbox brings email, text, chat, and social messages together, with tools to assign conversations, add internal notes, and use canned responses. Workflows can use event or scheduled triggers, conditional paths, and connections to external systems through webhooks and APIs. The AI chatbot provides automated support across web, social, and SMS, with complex queries handed to human agents. Other AI capabilities include sentiment analysis, automatic tagging, summaries, and support for over 50 languages. Reporting includes customizable reports, event metrics, communication tracking, and scheduled delivery and exports. Gecko identifies Slate, Salesforce, and Ellucian as systems it works alongside; its Salesforce integration supports two-way API data exchange. Its audience includes admissions, student services, international recruitment, career services, graduate admissions, community colleges, and online education teams. Pricing is on request, and Gecko offers a free 30-minute demo, not described as a product trial.