Salesforce Education Cloud vs Starfish

Salesforce Education Cloud supports institutional work across the student, campus, and staff journey, from recruitment through admissions and student services. Agentforce can answer prospective students’ questions at any time, capture interests, register campus tours, and start applications. Recruitment teams can use adaptive inquiry forms and coordinate communications across web, email, SMS, and social, with automated scoring and AI-powered applicant insights. Applicants can start, save, and complete dynamic applications, use autofill, and reuse components across programs. Admissions teams can review applications and supporting information, including third-party data, in one secure location and record reviewer recommendations with scoring. CRM dashboards and predictive AI alerts help teams follow enrollment goals, rates, and trends. The product also supports application management, admissions workflows, event management, SMS messaging, and a student portal. It runs on Android, iOS, and web, with an API. Enterprise Edition costs $87 USD per user per month, billed annually; the listed editions require annual contracts and reflect nonprofit pricing. A 30-day trial is available without a credit card or installation.

Starfish is a web platform for colleges and universities to coordinate student success work, identify student needs, and support timely interventions. Early Alert, Scheduling, and Case Management help institutions identify and track students, engage them, and connect them with resources aligned to their needs. Operational Analytics gives faculty and staff data for proactive advising and helps connect institutional strategy to student-success approaches. Strategic Analytics supports action for student groups identified through risk factors and offers focused dashboards for reported data. Degree Planning helps students follow academic pathways, flags when they are off track, and gives institutions information to anticipate course demand. The platform supports cohort management and intervention throughout the student journey. EAB provides implementation help, staff training, update management, and change-management guidance through dedicated Strategic Leaders familiar with each partner institution. Partners can also join the nationwide Student Success Collaborative to share strategies with peer success leaders. EAB directs prospective customers to contact its team or request a demo; no price is stated. Its Trust Center lists TX-RAMP Level 2 certification and security topics including role-based access control, single sign-on support, and multi-factor authentication.