FACTS

Our parents do not need to call our office as often, they can go straight to RenWeb and FACTS to see what is going on with their student and their account. It is transparent and user friendly to them.

RenWeb is amazing. There are so many features and abilities that make our school run. We simply don't use everything RenWeb offers, but all of its core modules we use all the time. Its newest web interface is convenient and efficient. They do make continual improvements to the product, which I appreciate.

There is a real learning curve associated with starting out implementing RenWeb. Their video training is good, and their customer support is great, but it's still a big undertaking. Teachers have a few key things to do in the system, and most of them will get up to speed quickly. Admisistrators have much more to do, and it just takes time to figure it all out.

Renweb is a disaster.
1. The default date setting for all documents your teachers and staff go to the trouble to upload and make accessible to students and parents is ONE DAY. You read that right. You didn't know your staff would go to the trouble to upload something for just 24 hours, but that is what Renweb thinks, and refuses to change. Their default should be a one week date range. In what universe would anyone want documents to disappear in 24 hours? In the Renweb universe only. You must remember to change the date when you upload it.
2. Renweb will not set a default for any links you click within Renweb open in a new tab, claiming that is a function of your browser. But many, many websites set their links to be either pop-ups or new tabs. Renweb will not.
3. No flexibility on naming links on the website you pay them for. If you want to use Lesson Plans for Assignments, forget about naming it correctly for YOUR school. Your parents and students will have to use their pre-named tabs, whether or not that applies to your school. Forget about any customization for the big bucks you pay.
4. 'Resources' as a link name is used twice, which is very confusing to parents and students, and unnecessary, given there are many words in the English language. Why not name the Class tab for Resources, 'Documents'? Because that is what it is. Then the other Resources, in the menu column, will be distinct, and for schoolwide resources.
5. Email formatting is abysmal; some kind of primitive html form that yields automatic spacing (not visible to the sender) between paragraphs and an ugly font; there is now a Communications Beta, so perhaps that will address the sheer ugliness of their email formats.

There is much more disappointment awaiting you in the inflexible Renweb, but after spending my morning untangling yet another problem, I need to get to mission-critical tasks.
Yes, they get high marks for customer service from many users, but that customer service is necessary to compensate for all the inherent issues.

I am so sorry we invested in Renweb. Unnecessarily complicated to interface with, while yielding emails that look like they were created ten years ago. An odd combination of behind the scenes 'sophistication' with primitive-looking email communications with parents/ students.

Our entire school's information and grading is found in one system - it is connected and has everything I need for the gradebook aspect.

We are able to track all our school families, with notes and interactions and even distant family members. It has professionalized our database management efforts at our school.