Studiously vs. the Field
How Studiously compares to other alumni
engagement platforms
A clear look at what sets Studiously apart — across the five dimensions that matter most to advancement teams.
The Competition
Three platforms. The same limitations.
Graduway, Almabase, and AlumniFire share a fundamental approach: they wait for alumni to come to them. Here's what that means in practice.
Graduway
Almabase
AlumniFire
Opt-in only. Alumni who haven't created an account can't be reached. Most platforms see 10-20% adoption.
Login required. Alumni must create an account, remember credentials, and log into a separate platform to respond.
No data enrichment. None of them update or enrich your alumni database with current career and contact information.
Not built for K-12. Graduway was designed for universities. Almabase and AlumniFire serve K-12 clients but weren't architected for them.
Enterprise pricing, hands-off support. Contracts scale with usage, lock you in for multiple years, and route support tickets to a rep you've never met.
Studiously
Opt-out by default. We capture your full alumni network, not just the segment that signed up. Every alumnus is reachable from day one - no waiting on sign-ups, no campaign to get people to build profiles. Instead, your alumni see thousands of classmates the moment they log in.
One side uses the platform. The other hits reply. Students and alumni on your platform log in as usual. Alumni receiving a message get a school-branded email directly to their inbox and reply from there. No account needed. No password to remember. No new behavior to learn.
Data enrichment included. Alumni career data is synced directly into Raiser's Edge NXT. No manual exports, no data wrangling.
Built for independent K-12. Native integrations with RE NXT and Veracross. Designed for schools with 1,000-10,000 alumni and lean advancement teams.
Founding customer pricing, with real support. Early schools lock in a rate that never escalates. And when you have a question, you're talking to the founders directly - not a ticketing system.
How we stack up
Five dimensions.
One clear choice.
What sets Studiously apart from every platform your school has already tried.
| Feature |
Studiously
Purpose-built for K-12
|
Graduway
University-focused
|
Almabase
Opt-in alumni network
|
AlumniFire
Profile-based network
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Data Enrichment
Alumni career data, synced to RE NXT
|
Syncs directly
to RE NXT |
Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
|
Opt-Out Model
All alumni reachable from day one
|
All alumni included
by default |
Opt-in only | Opt-in only | Opt-in only |
|
No Login Required
Alumni reply from their own inbox
|
Reply from
your own inbox |
Login required | Login required | Login required |
|
Built for Independent Schools
K-12 native, not adapted from higher ed
|
K-12 native,
RE NXT + Veracross |
University-focused | University-focused | Partial K-12 use |
|
Founding Customer Pricing
Rate locked forever, no escalations
|
Rate locked
forever |
Aggressive scaling | Multi-year lock-in | Not offered |
In Their Own Words
Schools tried the alternatives.
Here's what they found.
Advancement directors across the country have invested in these platforms, waited for adoption, and ended up back where they started. These are their stories.
Previously on Almabase
“It wasn't enough of a buy in. Not enough people were using it, so we had gotten rid of it to go back to the drawing board. We ended up with a Google Sheet of eighty alumni who had volunteered their info - on our own.”
Director of Community Engagement at a small independent school in the Carolinas
Previously on Graduway
“The product didn't deliver on what was promised. The price point was hard to justify, and for our alumni it was just one more place to check. They never really did.”
Director of Alumni Relations at a Connecticut boarding school
Previously on Graduway
“It didn't decrease the manual work. So it just didn't make sense for us to be paying for a platform where we had to facilitate the work behind that. You still have to do all the marketing to drive traffic there - people would get to the platform, set up their profile, and then never log in again.”
Alumni Engagement Director at an independent school in Colorado
Previously on Graduway
“We used Graduway in the past and it fell completely flat. It was another platform for alumni to login to. We were seeing almost everybody that created a profile never come back again.”
Advancement Director at a New England boarding school
Previously on Graduway
“We used it for years. After everything, fifteen hundred of our five thousand alumni ever created a profile. You spend all your energy tracking sign-ups instead of tracking actual relationships.”
Director of Alumni Relations at an independent school with 5,000 alumni
Manual alumni outreach
“We surveyed our entire alumni base asking who was open to connecting with current students. Thirty-five people responded. Of those, only four students actually followed through. We are the bottleneck - and we don't have the bandwidth to keep being the bottleneck.”
Alumni Director at a PreK-12 day school in the Midwest
“The person being asked of something should never have to change their behavior. Alumni won't log in to another platform to see if a student messaged them, but they will click reply on a personalized note in their everyday inbox. That's why we built Studiously through this mechanism.”
Ben Sapovits, Co-Founder, Studiously
Ready to see Studiously
in action?
We'd love to show you how schools like yours are using Studiously to reconnect with alumni - without asking anyone to change a thing. Schedule a 30-minute demo and we'll tailor it to your school's specific advancement goals.
Founding customer pricing is available for a limited number of schools. Request a demo before the cohort closes.