Explorance Blue vs Synap
Explorance Blue
explorance.com
Synap
synap.acSide by side
| Figure | Explorance Blue | Synap |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | £100/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Education Analytics Software | 7.2 (#12) | 8.0 (#4) |
| Accessibility | Explorance says Blue meets WCAG 2.2 AA and Section 508 accessibility standards. | The pricing page lists WCAG 2.1 AA / Section 508 conformance in all plans. |
| Audience | Explorance describes Blue as enterprise-ready and presents use cases spanning higher education and employee feedback programs. | Synap describes its platform as serving awarding bodies, universities, companies and training providers. |
| Company | Explorance says it was founded in 2003 and built Blue as an enterprise-ready feedback management platform. | Synap says it is Leeds-based and was founded in 2014. |
| Founded | 2003 | 2014 |
| Headquarters | Montreal, Canada | Leeds, United Kingdom |
| Integrations | Blue integrates with LMS, HRIS, SIS, and CRM systems; the product page also describes reaching respondents through LMS portals, email, mobile, and QR codes. | Synap lists REST API, Zapier, webhooks, LTI 1.3 and Blackboard App Center support; its LTI integrations include Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard. |
| Support | Explorance offers implementation assistance, customized training, ongoing support, expert consulting, and a community of Blue administrators. | All plans include personalised onboarding; Standard includes chat support, Pro includes priority chat and Zoom support, and Business includes a Customer Success Manager. |
Plans
Synap
- Standard£1,200 a year
- Pro£3,500 a year
- Business£8,000 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Explorance Blue
Explorance Blue is a paid web platform for collecting, analysing and distributing feedback insights across higher education and employee programmes. It supports employee engagement, course evaluation, onboarding, exit, 360-degree review, student engagement and campus surveys. Blue can import data, tailor questions and content to each respondent, distribute surveys and insights, and validate data through its Data Integrity Gateway. Role-based reports and dashboards provide real-time results, trends and visualisations, with benchmarking, advanced reporting and data export listed. Explorance MLY adds sentiment analysis, topic categorisation, recommendations, alerts and redaction for open-ended feedback. Integrations cover LMS, HRIS, SIS and CRM systems, while respondents can be reached through portals, email, mobile and QR codes. Explorance says Blue meets WCAG 2.2 AA and Section 508 standards, maintains an annual SOC 2 Type II examination and supports stated privacy requirements. Hosting may use Canadian or Microsoft Azure regional data centres. Pricing is on request.
Synap
Synap is an online exam platform for authoring, delivering, proctoring, marking and analysing exams. It serves awarding bodies, universities, companies and training providers. Reusable question banks support more than 15 interactive question types, with tags for topic, skill and difficulty. Security options include lockdown, record-and-review, and live invigilation, with incidents timestamped. Objective questions can be marked instantly; written work can be routed to examiners using rubrics and moderation. Analytics include pass rates, item discrimination and KR-20 reliability. Integrations include a REST API, Zapier, webhooks, LTI 1.3 and Blackboard App Center, with LTI connections for Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard. Synap lists iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, web and extension access. Mobile apps require enabled access on Business or Enterprise plans. It states ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification, GDPR compliance, TLS 1.2+ in transit, AES-256 at rest and AWS hosting options in the EU and US. Plans start at £1,200 per year, with a 14-day trial after a demo.