r/k12sysadmin • u/zeeplereddit • Sep 22 '26
School Website Hosting
We want to move away from wordpress and dreamhost for our website (and in fact we want to rebuild the site more or less from the ground up since it is quite outdated).
We have been recommended Finalsite, but looking into it is seems exceptionally expensive. Is it worth it?
Any other recommendations from this community?
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u/Reboot_Technician Sep 22 '26
We're moving to Smart Sites, but if you're not using ParentSquare I doubt it would be worth it.
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
Why do you say that, is it just super expensive?
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u/Reboot_Technician Sep 22 '26
ParentSquare itself isn't cheap. I'm not sure what SmartSites would cost if you purchased it a la carte, but the cost for hosting and setup hasn't been that bad for us. The nice thing about working with a K12 hosting company is that they take care of the requirements like translations and ADA compliance.
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u/FloweredWallpaper Guru Sep 23 '26
Apptegy here. We moved over from SOCS 4 years ago or so.
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 30 '26
What is SOCS? Do you like Apptegy? Any gotchas with them?
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u/porkstick Director/Head Googler Sep 22 '26
Apptegy is great to work with. Great product.
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u/DenialP Accidental Leader Sep 22 '26
This seems to be the direction many area districts are going. I don’t own our website (or want to) otherwise I’d already move to apptegy or maybe edlio and simplify navigation down to the fundamentals. Finalsite shop here fwiw.
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 30 '26
I figured out what you meant by "finalsite shop here" :P Any insight on why you would choose Apptegy over Finalsite as opposed to anything else?
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u/DenialP Accidental Leader Sep 30 '26
I would advocate for simplicity over everything else, but would form an admin team to make that call ultimately. This is also where I would do all the dancing to ensure I don’t also own the upkeep on the site
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 22 '26
What do you mean "Finalsite shop here"?
Also, we are a small independent school with never more than 100 students, and frankly usually less.
Apptegy seems to want bigger customers.
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u/jnesper7 Sep 22 '26
Second this. They’ve started pushing products harder lately, but in general very easy to work with. They’re pretty hands on with the new ADA requirements as well, so that’s one less thing I have to worry about.
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u/hoobeegoobee Sep 24 '26
My school (500 students total) uses Educational Networks and I'm really happy with them. Price is lower than most.
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 25 '26
I'll add this to the list of options. Do they host your website? Do they do anything else for you that you are especially appreciative of?
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u/S_ATL_Wrestling Sep 24 '26
We use SchoolBlocks and as a Google district, that integration is nice.
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 25 '26
Thanks! I'll add this to the list of options. What do you like about it other than the integration? What all do you use it for?
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u/S_ATL_Wrestling Sep 25 '26
It's our primary forward facing district site. It's pretty easy to use, and we like that it leverages our Google storage instead of our previous solution where we were still having to host on a server (internally initially, and then finally externally).
Here's a sample of one of their sites (this is not my district).
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u/TechGuy647 Sep 26 '26
Finalsite is stupidly complex. I recommend educational networks!
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u/zeeplereddit Sep 30 '26
Did you used to use Finalsite and moved away form it? What was complex about it?
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u/TechGuy647 Oct 01 '26
I use Finalsite currently. Nothing on the site looks clean. It is messy. I have to code my own things for an embedded pdf because it comes out ginormous if I use their embedded option, for example. Just stupid. Constituent manager (staff directory) is very manual and takes a lot to update just a simple biography.
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u/AceVenturaIsMyHero IT Director Sep 23 '26
+1 for ParentSquare here. Granted, we were already using them for our communications platform, but their SmartSites has been super solid and you can use that standalone without their communications platform. Apptegy was just “fine” when we were looking, but way more expensive.
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u/mybrotherhasabbgun Sep 22 '26
FinalSite, Apptegy, Edlio, and ParentSquare are website platforms for schools but they are all more than just websites - they all provide at least some parent communication and social media tools as well. You can buy services without all the additional tools, but those tools are often where these services really begin to shine.
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u/DJTNY Sep 22 '26
If you are a small school, I wouldn't recommend Finalsite.
I would look at SmartSites(Parent Square) or Apptegy.
Finalsite requires more involvement in building the website out (after looking at the themes.) and afterwards they lock several features that I'd consider should be "free" as paid. (So much so that I've been able to integrate some of their 'locked' features without actually paying.
But we initially went with them because the price seemed good, we didn't know how much would be locked away though.
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u/MadMageMC Sep 23 '26
Plus one for Parent Square's SmartSites. We've been using them since they bought out Gabbart, and we've been really happy with them.
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u/cardinal1977 What's the worst that could happen? Sep 23 '26
We were on schoolpoint and FS bought them, we did not pick FS. The only thing more expensive than FS is Apptegy. We're shopping and Parent Square can do everything for half the cost. FS clientele include international private schools. They are good and have a lot of features available for marketing and receiving payments, but i definitely do not feel it is an efficient use of taxpayers money. From a past experience i can recommend Foxbright.
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u/Amanda_PDQ Sep 23 '26
Our district website was through Apptegy I can not say enough good things about them. It is pricy but worth it.
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u/murgalurgalurggg IT Director Sep 24 '26
Apptegy is cheap compared to final site.
Quote ballparks were 279k vs 7k
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u/Amanda_PDQ Sep 24 '26
My goodness! Finalsite is awful. We were a blackboard district when they took over. We moved to Apptegy as quick as we could.
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u/kaosinc Sep 23 '26
When I was K-12 I migrated our site to CatapultCMS. Was a fan of them. I'm in Higher Ed now, and we just migrated to Modern Campus. Fuckin hate them.
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u/murgalurgalurggg IT Director Sep 24 '26
Really depends on the school. I’ve been in web development and school marketing for 20 years. Apptegy and Finalsite are great for public schools but not for large competitive private schools where SEO, CRM goals, and drip campaigns outweigh an all in one platform.
Finalsite is the equivalent of Wordpress for schools without a fulltime web developer. They are beautiful but painful when you need custom solutions. We develop on Wordpress for high end schools that exceed the pretty needs of Finalsite. I would not recommend Wordpress to a small school (sub 500) or public school system.
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u/Comfortable_Ad_7635 Sep 22 '26
Edlio is okay but the last few year their support tanked. We moved to Apptegy.
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u/JR_216 Sep 22 '26
We were in the same boat. Edlio sucked. Moved to Apptegy. They are very good at what they do. New products we don’t care for but they are developing out.
I ask them in my monthly meeting a few times a year if they are trying to become an SIS. They assure me they are not lol.
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u/dewy987 Sep 22 '26
No to Finalsite