Frequently asked questions
What a purchasing committee asks before it asks for a demo.
These are the answers we give in meetings. Each points to the page that goes into detail, and none promises anything that is not written elsewhere on this site.
Getting started
The project, from first call to the new academic year.
- Do you work with schools, or only with higher education?
- Both. GEERD is for institutions that choose their students: international schools and large lycées on one side, business schools, engineering schools, universities, vocational training and Executive Education on the other. Our clients today are higher-education and vocational institutions, and the processes are the same: applications, the start of the year, payments, documents. The platforms use your institution’s vocabulary, pupils and classes or students and programmes.
- How long does set-up take?
- Three to five days for a guided set-up of one process, two to three weeks for full support including data migration. The stages are laid out with your team during the diagnostic, and the sequence from signature to the new academic year is described on the Our approach page.
- How does data migration work?
- GEERD takes your data from your Excel or CSV spreadsheets and the exports of your current tools, cleans it with you, and loads it before training: the import flags every row to correct before it is confirmed. You validate a sample before the rest goes through. Migration is part of set-up, invoiced once.
- Who trains our teams, and on what?
- GEERD does, on your real cases: your programmes, your documents, your stages, with your data already loaded. Training is included in set-up. After that we stay present through the first real cycle, with a weekly check-in and a named contact.
- We already have Excel, Odoo or Moodle. Do we have to replace them?
- No. Excel is the starting point of the migration, not a competitor. Your accounting stays where it is: EasyClass holds tuition billing and you export its entries. Moodle stays your course platform: EasyClass manages academic administration, not teaching. The diagnostic says what stays and what goes.
Data and security
Who owns the data, and where it lives.
- Who owns the data?
- Your institution, without exception. GEERD hosts and processes them on your behalf, uses them for nothing else and never sells them. You can request a full export at any time, in open formats.
- Where are the platforms hosted?
- In the European Union, at OVHcloud, in France. Daily encrypted backups, multi-region failover, continuous monitoring. The details are on the Trust and security page.
- What happens at the end of the contract?
- You receive a full export of your data, then it is deleted from our systems within the period written in the contract. The reversibility clause is in every GEERD contract; we show it to you before signature, not after.
- What if GEERD disappeared?
- Your data can be exported at any time and belongs to you, so you leave with it. GEERD has been in operation for eight years, with institutions working on its platforms every day. That is the only honest answer to this question, and it applies to any vendor.
Pricing
Why there is no price on this site.
- Why do you not publish prices?
- Because a price shown out of context reads badly and ages worse. What we publish are the rules: an annual subscription sized on your institution, set-up invoiced once, a free diagnostic, no indispensable option discovered after signature. After a diagnostic or a demo you receive a complete written quote within 48 hours.
- How much does a GEERD platform cost?
- The price depends on the size of your institution, and the rule is public. EasyClass is sized on the number of pupils or students. AlmaHub on the number of graduates per year, free up to 300 members for alumni associations. BrightStep on your team’s seats, the modules switched on and the communications actually sent. The full rule is written once, on the Our approach page.
After go-live
Support, languages, connections.
- How does support work after go-live?
- During the first real cycle, a weekly check-in, a named contact and a reply within 48 hours. After that, the same contact remains reachable by e-mail and WhatsApp, and response times by severity are written in the contract rather than promised on a website.
- Which languages are the platforms available in?
- The team interfaces of EasyClass, BrightStep and AlmaHub are in French and in English. On the applicant side, a few BrightStep screens are still English-only: we say so before the demo rather than after.
- Which tools do you connect to?
- Today: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 sign-in, WhatsApp Business, e-mail, online payment, Excel/CSV import and export, your Word templates, and a documented contacts API on BrightStep. The full list, with what is in preparation, is kept on the Our approach page. What is not on it does not exist yet.
Your question is not here?
Ask it in the diagnostic request: it will be handled by the person who replies to you, not by a form.
The next step takes half a day.
A free diagnostic with the leadership team, a written report, a recommendation. Or, if you already know which platform interests you, a demo.