OpenEMIS

What OpenEMIS does

OpenEMIS is an open-source Education Management Information System (EMIS) distributed free of charge under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, United States, the platform facilitates collection, processing, and management of education data — including student records (attendance, behavior, progress), teacher data (qualifications, attendance), and institutional information — at school, district, and national levels. The product architecture is a platform-plus-modules model built around OpenEMIS Core (sector-wide EMIS) and OpenEMIS School (single-school management), extended by specialized modules (Exams, Dashboard, Monitoring, DataManager, Integrator, Visualizer, Charts) and a growing suite of mobile applications (Survey, Classroom, Staffroom, Guardian, Scanner, Chatbot). The system is purpose-built to produce indicators for monitoring Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) and to operate both online and offline for low-connectivity environments.

The business model is freemium on the software itself (no licensing fees) and monetizes exclusively through paid support subscriptions, hosted access, and professional training services. The customer base consists almost entirely of government ministries of education in developing and emerging markets, with named deployments in countries including Jordan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Lesotho, Uzbekistan, South Africa, Malaysia, and others across 40+ countries. Distribution is product-led growth via direct download of the open-source code, augmented by strategic partnerships with UNESCO, the World Bank, UNICEF, the Global Partnership for Education, and the World Food Programme, which reference OpenEMIS in their published EMIS frameworks, case studies, and country-level implementation programs.

The operating model is unusual for a software vendor: there is no parent company, no disclosed venture or private-equity backing, and no public revenue disclosure. Sustained development is funded through services revenue and supported by community contributions, with international organization endorsements providing distribution and legitimacy rather than direct subsidy.

Name

OpenEMIS

Legal name

OpenEMIS

Website

https://openemis.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1963

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

OpenEMIS is a free, open-source Education Management Information System (EMIS) serving government ministries of education in 40+ countries. It provides sector-wide and school-level student, teacher, and institutional data management, SDG4 indicator generation, and monetization through paid support, hosting, and training services.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Education Management Information Systems

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132), Educational Support Services (611710), Educational Support Services (61171)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

OER Authoring, Remixing & Publishing Tools/Platforms (EDAGAJAM)

Keywords

• Education management software
• Student information system
• Open-source EMIS
• Education data analytics
• School management platform

Headquarters

HQ city

Ann Arbor

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Software Licensing: OpenEMIS software is provided free of charge under GNU General Public License v3.0 with no licensing fees or software costs.
2. Support Services: Paid support services available including online professional support, local support, and annual support packages for technical assistance subscribers.
3. Hosting Services: Hosted access options where users can access OpenEMIS software online with their own dedicated secure workspace.
4. Training Services: Professional training courses including Setup and Configuration, Security Management, and various training agenda programs for different user roles.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

OpenEMIS is an open-source Education Management Information System (EMIS) that enables education ministries and institutions to collect, manage, and analyze education data. The platform provides modular tools for school management, examinations, monitoring, and reporting on student and institutional outcomes at national, regional, and school levels. The software is licensed under GNU GPL v3.0 and is supported through paid hosting, support, and training services.

Product overview

OpenEMIS is an open-source Education Management Information System (EMIS) built as a platform-plus-modules architecture. The core platform is OpenEMIS Core, a sector-wide web application for managing education information at school, district, and national levels, complemented by OpenEMIS School for individual school-level management. The portfolio includes specialized add-on modules: OpenEMIS Exams (national examinations), OpenEMIS Dashboard (data dashboards), OpenEMIS Monitoring (M&E against targets), OpenEMIS DataManager (data warehouse administration), and OpenEMIS Integrator (ETL for data warehouse population). Data visualization is handled by OpenEMIS Visualizer (web-based) and OpenEMIS Charts (mobile app). The suite also includes OpenEMIS Survey (mobile field data collection), OpenEMIS Classroom (teacher classroom data), OpenEMIS Staffroom (staff management), OpenEMIS Guardian (parent engagement), OpenEMIS Scanner (barcode/QR scanning), OpenEMIS Chatbot (AI-powered customer support), OpenEMIS Connect (offline wireless access point), and OpenEMIS Profiles (offline area profiles). All software is free and open source under GNU General Public License v3.0.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• OpenEMIS Core: Sector-wide open source Education Management Information System that facilitates the collection, processing and management of education information.
• OpenEMIS School
• OpenEMIS Exams
• OpenEMIS Dashboard
• OpenEMIS Monitoring
• OpenEMIS Integrator
• OpenEMIS DataManager
• OpenEMIS Visualizer
• OpenEMIS Charts
• OpenEMIS Survey
• OpenEMIS Classroom
• OpenEMIS Staffroom
• OpenEMIS Guardian
• OpenEMIS Scanner
• OpenEMIS Chatbot

Products and services

• OpenEMIS Core Core platform of the OpenEMIS Education Management Information System providing foundational modules for managing education data, student records, and institutional information for ministries and education authorities.
• OpenEMIS School School-level module of the OpenEMIS platform used by schools and education institutions to manage day-to-day academic administration, student records, and operational data.
• OpenEMIS Exams Examinations module of OpenEMIS that supports the planning, scheduling, and management of national and institutional examinations and the recording of student results.
• OpenEMIS Dashboard Analytics and reporting dashboard component of OpenEMIS that visualizes education data and key performance indicators for ministries, regional authorities, and school administrators.
• OpenEMIS Monitoring Monitoring module of OpenEMIS used to track attendance, learning outcomes, and other operational indicators across schools and education systems.
• OpenEMIS Hosting Services Paid cloud/hosting service for OpenEMIS deployments, allowing education ministries and institutions to run the open-source platform on managed infrastructure without self-hosting.
• OpenEMIS Support Services Technical support and maintenance services for OpenEMIS implementations, providing issue resolution, upgrades, and ongoing platform assistance to deploying organizations.
• OpenEMIS Training Services Training and capacity-building services for OpenEMIS users and administrators, covering platform configuration, data management, and reporting workflows.

Quantifiable outcome

• Supports monitoring of SDG4 (Sustainable Development Goal 4) indicators for quality education
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers8 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

AI capability1 record

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• UNESCOcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUNESCO and OpenEMIS have a strategic partnership where UNESCO features OpenEMIS in its EMIS case studies and guidelines. UNESCO has organized international conferences (April 2018 in Paris) bringing together education policy-makers to discuss EMIS including OpenEMIS implementations. UNESCO also publishes reference materials that reference OpenEMIS capabilities for SDG4 monitoring.
• World BankcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerWorld Bank features OpenEMIS in its SABER-EMIS (Systems Approach for Better Education Results) documentation and frameworks. World Bank published education notes, rubrics, questionnaires, and framework papers that reference OpenEMIS as an EMIS solution. The partnership helps guide national and international education agendas.
• UNICEFcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUNICEF collaborates with OpenEMIS on inclusive education monitoring, particularly for children with disabilities. UNICEF has published guides specifically for including disability in EMIS systems that reference OpenEMIS. UNICEF also supports OpenEMIS implementations in countries like Malaysia for refugee education tracking.
• Global Partnership for Education (GPE)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerGlobal Partnership for Education co-organized the International Conference on EMIS in April 2018 with UNESCO, creating a space for countries to share best practices including OpenEMIS implementations. GPE supports education systems strengthening that utilizes EMIS solutions.
• World Food Programme (WFP)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerWFP's school feeding programs align with OpenEMIS capabilities for tracking education-related welfare programs. OpenEMIS references WFP's Revised School Feeding Policy 2013 in its resource library.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• iSAMS: iSAMS is a school management information system focused on independent and international schools. Like OpenEMIS School, it manages student, staff, attendance, and assessment data, making it a direct functional peer for school-level MIS though serving a private-school segment rather than national ministries.
• ManageBac: ManageBac (by Faria Education Group) is a school management platform for IB and international schools globally. It overlaps with OpenEMIS in handling academic, attendance, and student progress data, and competes for the same international school and ministry-adjacent buyers.
• Veracross: Veracross is a unified school management SIS serving independent schools worldwide. It is a direct functional peer of OpenEMIS School for student information, learning, and admissions workflows, with comparable target end-users (school-level administrators).
• OpenSIS: OpenSIS is an open-source student information system targeting K-12 schools. Like OpenEMIS, it is free and open source, addressing similar school-level student/staff data management needs, but with a U.S. private-school focus instead of national ministries.

Broad incumbents

• Infinite Campus: Infinite Campus provides a K-12 SIS widely adopted by U.S. school districts. It competes in the same education data management category as OpenEMIS but is a closed-source commercial vendor serving state-level and district deployments rather than national ministries in developing countries.
• PowerSchool: PowerSchool is a leading K-12 Student Information System and education data platform serving school districts primarily in North America. Both companies operate in the school management information system category, though PowerSchool is a proprietary, well-funded commercial SIS whereas OpenEMIS is open-source and targets government ministries.
• Follett School Solutions (Follett Destiny): Follett provides K-12 education technology including SIS and library/resource management. As an established incumbent in U.S. school data systems, it competes broadly with OpenEMIS for school-level information management mandates.

Emerging players

• RosarioSIS: RosarioSIS is an open-source SIS for K-12 schools developed with Inter-American Development Bank support. It is functionally comparable to OpenEMIS School with open-source licensing and a similar emerging-markets deployment profile.
• Fedena (Verloop): Fedena is an open-source school management platform covering admissions, attendance, and exams. It is comparable to OpenEMIS School as a packaged open-source MIS solution, with overlapping product scope but focused primarily on individual schools in India and emerging markets.

Others

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS): UIS is the official statistical arm of UNESCO that sets education data standards (including SDG4 indicators OpenEMIS supports). It is comparable as a peer organization in the education data ecosystem, though it is an intergovernmental body rather than a software vendor, and serves as a partner and standards-setter for OpenEMIS.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/OpenEMIS

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about OpenEMIS