Pearspark vs FACTS SIS (formerly RenWeb)

For small private schools and microschools. Pricing verified September 29, 2026. Written by the Pearspark team (how we compare).

The short answer

FACTS (formerly RenWeb) is the enterprise choice: deep modules for tuition, financial aid, and advancement, sold by quote with implementation and training. Pearspark is the opposite trade — $50/month plus per-student volume bands ($2.50 down to $1.00), published pricing, self-serve setup, built for small private schools.

Pearspark

All-in-one platform for small private schools: records, academics, admissions, library, volunteers, scheduling and the portal.

Pricing: $50 a month including 20 students, then $2.50 a student a month, stepping down to $1.00 at volume. No setup fees, month to month, 30-day free trial.

Setup is self-serve: the importers preview every row before anything is written, and email support is free when you're stuck.

FACTS SIS (formerly RenWeb)

The enterprise suite for private K-12 — SIS, tuition management, and financial aid under one roof.

Pricing: FACTS doesn't publish pricing — quotes vary by school size, modules, and contract. Reviewers commonly note module-based extra costs; third-party integrations note fees like a $500/year API connection.

What each costs at small-school sizes

Students	Pearspark	FACTS
25 students	$62.50/mo	Quote required
50 students	$125/mo	Quote required
100 students	$250/mo	Quote required
What the price includes	Everything in one plan: records, attendance, gradebook, standards-based grading, report cards, transcripts, admissions, scheduling, tuition billing with family autopay, lending library, equipment booking, volunteer check-in, messaging, and an installable parent app with push notifications. No setup fee, month-to-month. No fundraising CRM, no subsidy billing, and no SMS broadcast — announcements reach families as push notifications and email instead.	Quoted per school by module — SIS, tuition management, financial-aid assessment and advancement are separate line items — plus implementation and training. Third-party integrations note their own fees, such as $500/year for an API connection.

FACTS does not publish pricing; figures shown are the best public information we could verify as of September 29, 2026. Sources are below. Always confirm current pricing with the vendor.

Feature comparison

Feature	Pearspark	FACTS
Student records (SIS)
Attendance
Gradebook & report cards
Standards-based grading & mastery
Records protected if the school closes
Transcripts & GPA
Missing-data reports & scheduled delivery
Admissions pipeline
Class scheduling & rooms
Lending library & checkout
Equipment & room booking
Volunteer tracking & check-in
Parent & student portal
Messaging
Self-serve transcript & gradebook import
Tuition billing & payments
Published pricing (no sales call)
Fundraising & donor CRM
SMS / text broadcast to families
Subsidy & agency billing

= varies by plan or not published; check with the vendor. We mark unknowns as unknowns rather than counting them against FACTS. The last three rows are jobs Pearspark does not do, listed for the same reason: a school that runs an annual fund, texts its families, or bills an agency should find that out here. Pearspark reaches families by push notification through the installable parent app, and by email, not by text. Underlined feature names open the Pearspark page for that capability, so you can check what our ✓ actually means.

Where FACTS shines

Full enterprise suite: SIS, tuition management, financial-aid assessment, advancement
Serves thousands of private schools; familiar to many teachers and admins
Handles complex multi-campus and diocesan structures

Worth knowing

No published pricing — procurement means sales calls, quotes, and contracts
Modular pricing: capabilities are often separate line items
Implementation and training are projects, not a self-serve setup

When FACTS is the better choice

FACTS earns its place when a school values the whole relationship: enterprise tuition finance and advancement, where FACTS is a payments company at its core and goes far deeper, with need assessment folded into it — an expected family contribution calculated from tax documents FACTS collects and verifies. A diocese or network standardized on FACTS is the same case. Pearspark administers aid but assesses none of it: sliding-scale bands a family picks from, automatic sibling discounts, percent or per-bill awards applied during billing, and ESA and SGO money tracked as third-party funding. Assessment on its own, though, won't hold a school here — standalone services like Clarity or SSS do the assessing, and their decisions import into Pearspark by CSV. For a 15-student microschool, FACTS is more system, and more procurement, than the job needs.

When Pearspark is the better choice

Pearspark is built for small private schools of a couple of students to a few hundred: microschools, classical schools, Montessori programs, hybrid schools and homeschool co-ops. One published price includes student records, a spreadsheet-style gradebook with student analytics (trends, score distributions, missing-work tracking), report cards, printable transcripts with GPA, school-year attendance calendars, admissions, class scheduling, tuition billing with online payments, a lending library with barcode checkout, equipment booking, volunteer check-in, messaging and a parent and student portal. Setup is self-serve, and the built-in migration tools import your rosters, transcripts and gradebooks from FACTS CSV exports with a dry-run preview.

The parts this comparison turns on

Common questions

How much does FACTS SIS cost compared to Pearspark?

FACTS doesn't publish pricing — you request a quote, and cost depends on modules and school size. Pearspark publishes its full price: $50/month including 20 students, then $2.50/month per additional student (stepping down to $1.00 at volume), with no setup fees or contracts. A 30-student school pays exactly $75/month.

Can a small school migrate from FACTS/RenWeb to Pearspark?

Yes. Export your students, transcripts, and gradebooks from FACTS as CSV files and import them with Pearspark's built-in migration tools — each import shows a dry-run preview (what will be created, what doesn't match) before writing anything.

What does FACTS have that Pearspark doesn't?

Need assessment, enterprise tuition finance, and advancement. FACTS Grant & Aid calculates an expected family contribution from tax documents it collects and verifies; Pearspark deliberately does neither, and does no fundraising at all. What Pearspark does include, at no extra charge, is aid administration: family applications behind a separate review permission, sliding-scale income bands, automatic sibling discounts, percent or per-bill awards that come off the invoice during billing, an annual aid budget with applied-to-date, and ESA, voucher and SGO money tracked as third-party funding — per-student ESA invoices, CSV settlement reconciliation, and printable verification letters. And if your school already uses a third-party assessment service — FACTS Grant & Aid, Clarity, or SSS — you come out ahead: export its decisions and import them into Pearspark by CSV as percent, per-bill, or annual awards, keep the assessor you trust, and run everything else in one published-price system instead of a quoted module stack. On tuition itself, Pearspark's billing is included in the one price: plans that bill weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or on your own academic calendar, with fixed plan terms, family autopay, one combined invoice per family, and payments landing in the school's own Stripe account. A school that would rather keep a third-party tuition service can do that and import the records into Pearspark.

Sources

Last reviewed September 29, 2026. Spotted something out of date? Email us and we'll fix it.

FACTS in a wider comparison

See Pearspark for yourself

Every task has its own short video, and your first 30 days are free. No sales call.

Start your 30-day free trial Watch it working

Email support answered by a person comes with every plan, along with how-to videos and guides. There are no paid support tiers.