Starfish review
A broad student-success platform for coordinating alerts, advising, planning, and interventions.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Starfish is EAB’s higher-education student-success platform for colleges and universities. It brings together early alerts, progress surveys, appointment scheduling, case and cohort management, analytics, degree planning, success plans, referrals, and workflow automation. The product is intended for institutions coordinating support across advisors, faculty, staff, and students, with tools for identifying students who need help and guiding academic progress. Its scope makes it a fit for teams seeking practical student-success workflows across multiple stages of the student journey.
The feature set spans both frontline advising and institutional coordination. Early alerts, progress surveys, off-track notifications, student profiles, and referrals support intervention workflows, while appointment scheduling and kiosk support address access to services. Degree planning and personalized success plans add structured academic guidance, and operational and strategic analytics provide views for day-to-day activity and broader planning. Student portal access extends parts of the experience beyond staff-facing workflows, giving students a role in their support journey.
According to the published commercial approach, Starfish is sold through an institutional partnership and demo-led engagement, with prospective customers directed to contact an expert or request a demo. That model suits colleges and universities evaluating a coordinated platform rather than teams looking for a self-serve tool. Starfish should appeal to institutions that want alerts, advising operations, planning, referrals, and analytics in one web-based environment. Organizations prioritizing a dedicated mobile experience, public self-serve purchasing, or a narrower scheduling-only product may prefer a different type of solution.
Starfish pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Combines early alerts, appointments, cases, cohorts, and referrals
- Supports degree planning, success plans, and off-track notifications
- Adds workflow automation, analytics, kiosk support, and student access
- Where it doesn't
- Pricing is handled through contact-sales engagement
- Designed for institutional partnerships rather than self-serve adoption
- Web access may not suit teams seeking a dedicated mobile experience
Starfish fact sheet, pricing and score →
Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. Bought places stand at the number bought; this page and our disclosure say so. Paying vendors may get a fuller, more detailed review from our editors, and that review can change their score. How we rank.
Last updated · How we research and update