What is our primary use case?
I started using Edly three years ago for a project. I use Edly basically for my e-learning solution. I actually support some schools that have already deployed Edly. So basically, I make solutions for them, but I recommended Edly recently for them because of its flexibility in some scenarios. The only thing I think I would also add is just the integration recently with AI. I think it's actually a fantastic feature, especially the AI-powered chatbots and all the features that have been added recently. I think they are also fantastic in Edly.
How has it helped my organization?
I think recently they moved from one campus to several campuses. So they have a multi-tenant application deployed in several regions of their location. I think they scaled from before having 2,500 active users to now having up to 4,000 or 6,000 active users.
What is most valuable?
Basically, what we actually use Edly for is to explore some limitations in Moodle that Open edX actually solved for us. Because for you to have a custom dashboard in Moodle, it takes a lot of writing your custom plugin, but with Edly, you can have a dashboard that has all activities going on on your server, and everything is on a dashboard.
In my experience, what I love mostly in Edly is the mobile friendliness of the interface. Because in Moodle, you need to use the open-source Moodle application if you want to have a mobile app, but I think the compatibility of Edly with mobile is actually fantastic.
Because I'm actually a user of the application and also I'm still a builder, I fall into two cases. So I build, and I also have this experience of what I build. Basically, I love when something is actually scalable that you can put everything together as a single web application. So even having an Edly app, you don't need to push too much on developing a separate mobile application, which you can just use your web application and people can access it on any multi-devices with different views of the same application.
Integration with other systems or tools is actually cool. You can integrate with an ERP. Maybe a school has an ERP, they can integrate it because in my deployment, they actually integrated with their existing Student Information System (SIS). So it's actually a cool integration, with no issues with them integrating directly to their existing ERP.
I mentioned that one of the major reasons my clients moved to Edly was that they needed a comprehensive dashboard for their reports and analytics. So I think that was actually a fantastic feature for Edly over Moodle that they were using before. Because if you want to do the same thing on Moodle, you have to ensure you write your custom plugin itself. But I think there is actually a fantastic dashboard where you can see everything you want to see with a single click on your dashboard.
What needs improvement?
I think they should actually provide some more free versions of most of their themes. I think most of the things you have to use on Edly are all paid for you to have a good experience. I think they should work on making some open-source plugins or themes that people can also explore. Because Moodle itself is actually open-source, but if you want to go for the paid Moodle, you can still use the free one, but there are some restrictions in Edly that if they can just add some free themes, it will still make it not seem as though they are not selling, but it will attract more users to explore what they have as a solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started using Edly three years ago for a project.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Edly is very stable in my experience. If it's not stable, then I wouldn't recommend it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Edly's scalability is nice. I've mentioned several times in this conversation that Edly is scalable, provided you have a good infrastructure that could also scale too. So it's scalable.
Performance and speed are actually very ambiguous decisions because you can't talk about an application without discussing your server. So if you are talking about maybe vertical scaling or horizontal scaling, the application is fine, but you also have to work on the infrastructure. So I can say Edly has been built to be scalable, where any application user or a dev ops should be able to scale an application. However, Edly has been designed and programmed well that it can scale itself even with the bare minimum server configuration, which is fantastic. Concurrency handling and everything is okay.
How are customer service and support?
I talked about community support before. I think they are not so active as other LMS. But I can say about support; I have not used their support, but I have not seen many active communities for Edly or maybe I'm actually missing out on something. But most likely, I don't really see their community active. But I know it exists because I provide full support for people that have specific use cases they want to scale or a bug they need to settle. So I can say I have not seen the community, although I know they exist.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I mentioned I have cases where I moved a client from Moodle to Open edX when I needed a custom dashboard, which would take a lot of time to develop on Moodle. I also use Moodle and Blackboard and I have recommended Edly for a client recently.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Actually, I am someone who builds things from scratch, so I never explored anything else. What I looked for was just my normal open-source and because I am always engaged with open-source, I spent a lot of time on Moodle. But when I got stranded with some features that I had to start building from scratch, that is when I moved out of there to Open edX. So I flow between Open edX and Moodle at the moment, and I work both together. Recently, I have worked mostly on Edly more than Moodle.
What other advice do I have?
Edly's user management and access control features are very easy to use.
For the chatbot, I have never explored it deeply, but I just saw the new features, and I'm thinking I would explore that recently, but I have not even gotten into the AI capability. But I think it's actually a very good feature, which I think I would explore. So I can't talk about governance or security for now on something I haven't tried to use.
I advise others looking into using Edly to go ahead and try it because I can say I have already chosen to use Edly recently, which I know I have reason for. There's no way you can build a solution that you cannot easily customize, which is actually the powerful feature of Edly. Edly is actually highly customizable to your needs, to every user's need. So I think it's very fantastic to explore. I would advise anybody that wants to go fully into a learning management system to explore. I gave this review an overall rating of seven.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)