Gibbon vs Gradelink

Gibbon is a free school platform for learning, teaching, and school management, designed by educators. Teachers, students, parents, and administrators use one web-based system with configurable access levels. The Planner supports lesson plans, homework submissions, curriculum mapping, and peer assessment. Student Profiles consolidate academic, behavioural, medical, and special educational needs alerts for authorised users. Markbook, rubrics, tracking, and formal assessment modules support recording and reviewing progress. Messenger can send group communications by email, SMS, or Message Wall. Schools can extend the platform with modules and themes, including BigBlueButton and Moodle integration; its documentation also describes Google calendar and single sign-on integration and Microsoft single sign-on setup. Gibbon is installed on a web server and hosting is self-managed. The v30 download page specifies PHP 8.0 and MySQL 8.0 as minimum requirements. Documentation and community forums are available, as is optional expert support through ad hoc help or a support contract. Older versions are not directly supported, and the security policy advises using the current stable release in production.

Gradelink is a student information system combining school management, teaching, and learning tools. Academic features include attendance, class scheduling, gradebooks, lesson plans, report cards, standards-based grading, and transcripts. Student records can include demographic, medical, and photo information, as well as IEP tracking. Billing covers accounts receivable, billing statements, lunch and incidental billing, and multiple tuition rates. Listed integrations include Apple School Manager, FACTS Tuition Management, Google Classroom, Microsoft School Data Sync, and NCEA reporting. Google Classroom grade syncing is available at no additional charge, and ClassLink syncs rosters automatically. Gradelink includes personalized phone and email support, staff training, help-site access, and automatic software updates. It says school data imports and setup of report cards, GPA, attendance, terms, gradebooks, and transcripts take 5–10 business days after requested materials are received. The SIS subscription starts at $106/mo, with a $275 one-time setup fee shown. Its Student/Parent app for iOS and Android requires Gradelink Standard Service.