PowerCampus Is Sunsetting: Your SIS Replacement Options in 2026

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PowerCampus Is Sunsetting: Your SIS Replacement Options in 2026

When Anthology filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 29, 2025, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone watching the financials — but it was a gut punch to the hundreds of small colleges that had built their operations on PowerCampus.

The company had accumulated $1.625 billion in debt, with annual interest payments consuming 41% of its revenue. PowerCampus had seen no significant feature release since 2023. And now, with the SIS and ERP divisions acquired by a larger enterprise ERP vendor in January 2026, the writing is on the wall: PowerCampus is being absorbed into a larger portfolio where it is not the priority.

If you’re one of the roughly 300 institutions that ran on this platform, you’re not waiting for an announcement. You’re already asking: what do we replace it with?

This article compares your real options — honestly, without hype, and without pretending they’re all the same.

Why This Decision Is Harder Than It Looks

SIS migrations are notoriously expensive and slow. For larger universities, full SIS replacement projects routinely span one to three years and cost tens of millions of dollars. Even for small colleges — your institution, not a flagship R1 — implementation complexity, data migration, and staff retraining add up fast.

But here’s the counterweight: staying on a sunsetting platform isn’t free either. Every month you delay is another month of no vendor roadmap, no security patches, and no support escalation path that leads anywhere useful. The Tambellini Group called Anthology’s restructuring a “retreat from the all-in-one bet” — which means the platform you knew is gone regardless of what the new owner calls it.

The global SIS market is projected to grow from $13.2 billion in 2024 to $22.3 billion by 2030, driven by exactly this kind of forced consolidation. Vendors are building for that demand. The window to move on your terms — not under duress — is right now.

What to Look for in a Replacement

Before the comparison table, get clear on your actual requirements. Most small colleges are picking from a shorter list of constraints than they realize:

Timeline. Can your team absorb a multi-year implementation? Most small institutions can’t. Look for vendors whose typical go-live for institutions your size is measured in weeks, not quarters.

Architecture. Cloud-native means the platform was built for the cloud — not a legacy system moved to a hosted server. The difference matters for uptime, updates, and mobile access.

Mobile experience. Your students expect a mobile-first experience. So does your staff. A system with a bolted-on mobile app is not the same as one designed from the ground up for mobile.

Total cost of ownership. License fees are only the beginning. Implementation, data migration, training, and ongoing customization costs can double the sticker price. Transparent pricing — especially for small institutions — is a feature.

Scope fit. A platform built for a 40,000-student state university will overwhelm a 500-student private college in complexity and cost. Match the vendor’s target market to yours.

The SIS Replacement Comparison: 2026

The table below compares five platform categories available to PowerCampus institutions making a move in 2026. Vendors are described by category — not by name — because the category tells you more about fit than the brand does.

Platform Category	Target Institution Size	Implementation Timeline	Mobile-First	Cloud-Native	Pricing Model	Key Strength	Key Limitation
Cloud-native SRM platform	100–5,000 students	3–4 weeks	Yes	Yes	Subscription + per student	Speed, white-label mobile apps, modern UX	Newer to market; fewer third-party integrations
Enterprise ERP suite	5,000–50,000+ students	12–24 months	Partial	Partial (legacy core)	Custom enterprise contract	Deep feature set, large support ecosystem	Overkill for small colleges; expensive and slow
Mid-market cloud SIS	500–10,000 students	3–6 months	Yes	Yes	Subscription-based	Familiarity in small college market	Platform retirement announced; uncertain roadmap
Budget self-service platform	50–2,000 students	2–6 weeks	Partial	Yes	Transparent per-student pricing	Affordable, easy to get started	Dated UI; limited module depth; weak mobile
Enterprise CRM adapted for education	Any (scales up)	6–18 months	Yes	Yes	High-cost enterprise licensing	Powerful data and automation capabilities	Expensive, complex, requires heavy configuration

Breaking Down Each Option

Cloud-Native SRM Platforms

This category — where Edular sits — was built for exactly the institution size that PowerCampus historically served: small to mid-sized colleges with lean IT teams and no appetite for multi-year implementation projects.

Edular’s implementation timeline is 3 to 4 weeks. That’s not a marketing claim softened with asterisks — it reflects a platform designed for rapid deployment rather than one that tolerates it. The architecture is cloud-native, and the student-facing experience is built mobile-first, including genuine white-label iOS and Android apps that carry your institution’s brand — not a vendor’s.

Beyond the basics, features like facial recognition attendance (via selfie-based triangulation verification) bring compliance documentation into the 21st century without requiring additional hardware. The six integrated modules — admissions, financial aid, attendance, academics, student engagement, and digital documents — cover the operational core without demanding that you buy and integrate separate point solutions.

For a PowerCampus institution, the critical advantage here is speed. If your platform is being sunset, a 3-week implementation means you can be live on a modern system before your current vendor’s next support cycle becomes a problem.

The trade-off is honest: cloud-native SRM platforms are newer to market than their enterprise counterparts. Third-party integration ecosystems are still maturing. If your institution has a deeply customized legacy setup with 15 connected systems, expect the integration phase to require more attention.

Enterprise ERP Suites

The largest players in higher ed ERP have deep feature sets, large implementation partner networks, and decades of institutional knowledge baked into their products. For a 20,000-student university, that depth is worth the complexity.

For a 500-student private college? It rarely is.

Implementation timelines in this category routinely run 12 to 24 months. 30 institutions went live on one major enterprise ERP vendor’s SaaS solutions in all of 2024 — a record year for them. That pace signals the complexity involved, not vendor inefficiency. For institutions that need to move quickly off a sunsetting platform, this category may not be realistic.

Cost is the other variable. Enterprise ERP contracts are negotiated, not published — which almost always means they favor institutions with bargaining leverage, not small colleges replacing a $30,000/year SIS.

Mid-Market Cloud SIS

The mid-market cloud SIS category has historically been a natural fit for PowerCampus institutions — similar size targets, similar pricing tier, genuine cloud infrastructure. Several platforms in this space have strong track records with smaller private colleges and community colleges.

The complication in 2026 is that at least one prominent mid-market SIS vendor has announced the retirement of its own legacy platform, creating a migration situation nearly identical to the one PowerCampus users now face. Before committing here, confirm you’re evaluating the vendor’s actively developed product line — not a platform that’s been quietly deprioritized.

If the roadmap is solid, timelines of 3 to 6 months are achievable, and the user experience has improved meaningfully with cloud-native rebuilds. This is a legitimate option for institutions with slightly more implementation runway.

Budget Self-Service Platforms

Transparent pricing — genuinely posted on a website — is rare in higher ed software, and it matters for small institutions doing real budget planning. Some platforms in this category publish per-student monthly rates with no discovery calls required.

The trade-off is visible in the product. UI design hasn’t kept pace with what students and staff expect from software in 2026. Mobile functionality exists but often feels like a responsive web view rather than a purpose-built app. Module depth is adequate for basic operations but can strain as your institution grows or adds programs.

For a college with under 500 students and a tight budget ceiling, this category deserves a serious look. For anyone prioritizing student engagement features or compliance-grade attendance tracking, it will likely fall short.

Enterprise CRM Adapted for Education

Some institutions — particularly those investing heavily in enrollment management and alumni relations — have turned to enterprise CRM platforms configured for education use cases. The automation capabilities and data infrastructure in this category are genuinely powerful.

The barrier is cost and complexity. Implementation projects in this category are among the most resource-intensive in higher ed technology, requiring either a large internal IT team or an expensive implementation partner. Licensing is enterprise-tier. And the platform’s roots are in commercial CRM, not academic operations — meaning the further you get from enrollment and engagement, the more custom configuration you’re buying.

For a small college coming off PowerCampus, this option is almost always a category mismatch. It’s worth knowing it exists; it’s rarely worth pursuing at your size.

Migration Planning: What to Do Before You Sign Anything

Choosing a platform is the easy part. The work that determines whether the migration succeeds or stalls happens before you issue an RFP.

Audit your data first. Every SIS migration surfaces data quality problems that weren’t visible in day-to-day operations — duplicate student records, inconsistent formatting, missing legacy fields. A data audit before vendor selection tells you how long migration will realistically take and which vendors’ import tools can handle your specific situation.

Map your integrations. Document every system that currently touches your SIS: financial aid tools, LMS, payment processors, state reporting exports, accreditor data feeds. Any vendor you evaluate needs to demonstrate a clear path for each of these connections — not a vague assurance that they “support integrations.”

Define your go-live requirements. What has to work on day one? What can be phased? Small colleges that try to migrate everything simultaneously often extend timelines by months. A phased approach — core records and enrollment first, advanced features after — is almost always faster and less disruptive.

Build your evaluation scorecard before demos. Vendor demos are designed to show strengths, not expose limitations. Build your criteria list from your own requirements before you watch a single demo, so you’re comparing vendors on your terms, not theirs.

The Bottom Line

PowerCampus isn’t coming back in the form you knew it. The platform was acquired as part of a bankruptcy restructuring, it hasn’t had a meaningful release in years, and the new owner has a larger product portfolio that will set the priorities going forward. Waiting for clarity is just waiting.

The good news is that the replacement options in 2026 are genuinely better than they were even three years ago — faster to implement, more mobile-forward, and more honestly priced for small institutions. You don’t have to accept a two-year enterprise implementation project to get a modern SIS.

Match the platform to your institution’s size, your team’s bandwidth, and your timeline — not to what the largest schools in your conference are doing.

Ready to see what a 3-week implementation actually looks like? Schedule an Edular demo to see how a 3-week implementation compares to your current timeline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PowerCampus being shut down? PowerCampus was acquired by a major enterprise ERP vendor as part of Anthology’s Chapter 11 restructuring, which closed in January 2026. No official end-of-life date has been announced, but the platform has had no major feature releases since 2023 and is now part of a portfolio where it is not the flagship product. Most higher ed technology analysts expect it to be migrated or sunset over time.

How long does SIS migration take for a small college? For small institutions (under 2,000 students), implementation timelines range from 3 weeks to 6 months depending on platform complexity, data migration scope, and integration requirements. Cloud-native platforms built for small colleges are at the faster end of that range; enterprise ERP implementations typically take 12 months or more.

What’s the difference between an SIS and an SRM? A Student Information System (SIS) manages academic records, enrollment, and administrative data. A Student Relationship Management (SRM) platform does everything an SIS does but extends into engagement, communication, and the full student lifecycle — from inquiry through alumni. For small colleges competing on student experience, the SRM framing reflects a more complete operational picture.

Should I wait for more clarity on PowerCampus’s future before migrating? That’s a reasonable instinct, but it carries real risk. Every month on a sunsetting platform is a month without a vendor roadmap, without new features, and potentially without responsive support. Institutions that move proactively — on their own timeline — have more negotiating leverage and more time to plan than those who wait for a forced migration.