Moving from Ellucian Elevate to Salesforce replaces a noncredit registration system with a Commerce storefront on Education Cloud while Banner or Colleague stays the system of record. The move fits an institution that wants storefront, CRM, and service on one model. An institution standardizing on Ellucian's single student record through Ethos may reasonably stay. ElevateActual runs both conversations honestly.
What Does Ellucian Elevate Do?
Ellucian Elevate is Ellucian's software-as-a-service course and registration management product for continuing education and workforce programs. Ellucian announced general availability in December 2014. Ellucian itself was acquired by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners in 2021.
Elevate's typical home is a Banner or Colleague campus that wants a noncredit system beside the credit SIS. Its distinguishing claim, per the vendor's solution sheet, is that the Enterprise tier offers real-time integration through Ellucian Ethos so noncredit data can live with the credit student record. That is a vendor statement, and it is also the strongest reason to stay, which we come back to below. We found no Elevate-specific reviews as of October 2026, and we do not attribute company-level review complaints about other Ellucian products to Elevate.
Three products share the word Elevate, and none is related to the others. Ellucian Elevate is the active registration product on this page. Salesforce.org Elevate was a giving pages and payment services product that Salesforce retired: new sales ended in April 2023, renewals ended in October 2023, and deactivation followed on or after October 1, 2024. ElevateActual is a Salesforce consulting partner and is not affiliated with either one. Slack Sales Elevate is a separate, current Salesforce add-on. If you arrived here searching for the retired Salesforce product, our online giving article covers what replaced it.
Why Do Teams Consider Moving to Salesforce?
None of the reasons below is that Elevate is going away; nothing of the kind has been announced. The reasons are about which platform the institution wants the learner relationship to live on.
The campus is standardizing on Salesforce for the relationship layer. Many Banner and Colleague campuses keep the SIS as system of record and put recruitment, advancement, and marketing on Salesforce. A continuing education storefront on Salesforce puts the noncredit learner in that same CRM while Banner or Colleague keeps the student record.
One data model for storefront, CRM, and service. With Salesforce Commerce for higher education, the order, the enrollment, the marketing consent, and the support case are records in one database. Elevate registers; it is not a CRM, and the marketing and service tools around it are usually separate.
Storefront control. The Salesforce storefront is an Experience Cloud site your team edits in Experience Builder. Program pages, bundles, promotions, and the checkout experience are yours to change without a vendor ticket.
Multi-unit commerce. One cart can sell a certificate, a conference seat, a camp, and a gift across units. Elevate was built for noncredit registration beside the SIS. Salesforce Commerce was built for selling.
What Moves and What Stays?
The distinctive row here is the SIS. Banner or Colleague stays, and the Salesforce integration uses supported Ellucian APIs, never direct database writes. We describe the patterns in SIS integration patterns for Banner, Colleague, and Jenzabar.
| Data or capability in Elevate | Where it goes in Salesforce | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Public catalog and course pages | Commerce on Core storefront, products and categories | Program marketing can stay on the .edu site with deep links to the storefront. |
| Programs, courses, sections, terms | LearningProgram, LearningCourse, CourseOffering, AcademicTerm | Mapped in the catalog workshop. |
| Learner profiles | Person Accounts | Matching on email and Banner or Colleague ID agreed before the first load. |
| Enrollment history and CEUs | CourseOfferingParticipant | CEUs use the same learning objects as credit. |
| Orders and payments | Order Summary and Order Item Summary | History archived read-only; money stays in the processor. |
| Corporate and group registration | Accounts and account-based buying | Decide whether companies buy seats or pay for named learners. |
| Payment processor (TouchNet, Transact CashNet) | Stays | Salesforce integrates through hosted checkout; it does not replace it. |
| LMS (Canvas and others) | Stays | Enrollment handoff is built on the LMS API. |
| Banner or Colleague | Stays as system of record | Supported Ellucian APIs only; the noncredit record posts to the SIS on your rules. |
| Ethos real-time sync to the credit record | Replaced by a Salesforce-to-SIS integration | This is the row that decides the move; see the next sections. |
| Waitlists | CourseOfferingParticipant status | Automatic promotion is Flow automation we build. |
| CEU transcripts | Rebuilt as a portal page or document | The data is standard; the document is a build. |
| State noncredit reporting | Rebuilt as reports or Flow-generated extracts, or left in the SIS | Each state extract is its own deliverable. |
What Does the Salesforce Side Look Like?
Commerce on Core is ElevateActual's term for B2B and D2C Commerce built on the Salesforce Platform with an LWR Experience Cloud storefront. It is not B2C Commerce, the former Demandware stack. Every purchase creates an Order Summary and Order Item Summary record that the rest of the org can report on.
Education Cloud (Agentforce Education) supplies the learning model. Salesforce documents the program and offering objects, and continuing education uses the same objects as degree programs. Checkout creates the CourseOfferingParticipant record, so registration and sale are one event. The learner is a Person Account carrying the Banner or Colleague identifier.
Automation runs in Flow and Platform Events. Apex appears only where the platform requires it, such as a tax calculator extension or a payment adapter. The SIS integration is the piece that replaces what Ethos did for Elevate: when an enrollment is created or dropped, Salesforce posts it to Banner or Colleague through supported APIs, and the SIS answers with the identifiers Salesforce stores. On the storefronts we have built, that integration is scoped, built, and tested during the parallel period, not after.
Payments follow one of two patterns: Salesforce Payments with Stripe, or a hosted checkout handoff to Transact CashNet or TouchNet with a post-authorization adapter writing the result to the order. The payments article covers both. Our house demonstration storefront, ElevateActual University, shows the storefront side: 50 programs, seven categories, one cart, guest checkout.
How Do We Run the Migration?
- Discovery. Structured sessions with registration staff, the registrar, finance, marketing, and IT. The registrar is in the room because the SIS posting rules are the hard part.
- Catalog mapping. A workshop that maps Elevate programs, courses, sections, fees, and terms to the learning objects and the Commerce product and price book, and decides which fields Banner or Colleague must receive.
- Build the storefront on your own programs. Not sample data.
- Delta loads. Learners and enrollment history load in waves while Elevate keeps running. No data freeze.
- Parallel period. Elevate finishes the current term while the Salesforce storefront opens the next one. The SIS integration runs for real during this window, which is how it earns trust.
- Cutover. Catalog URLs redirect, Elevate registration closes, and a final delta runs.
- The production hot test. Your staff buy a real course with a real card in production, confirm the enrollment in Salesforce and in the SIS, the receipt, and the LMS seat, then refund it. The storefront is live when that passes.
Our Commerce accelerator reaches production in about two months for a unit starting fresh. An Elevate move adds the SIS integration and history, so plan in months. The UAT and go-live article describes the acceptance steps.
When Should You Not Move?
If your institution's strategy is one Ellucian student record, with credit and noncredit learners in Banner or Colleague through Ethos and Ellucian SaaS across the board, staying with Elevate is reasonable. The real-time Ethos integration is the thing Elevate is for. Replacing it with a Salesforce-to-SIS integration is possible, and we have built that class of integration, but it is work you would be doing to get back to where you already are.
Stay if the campus has no Salesforce footprint and no plan for one. Stay if you are mid-contract; use the time to document the Ethos mappings you depend on. Stay if nobody on campus can own a Salesforce org.
Move when the institution has decided that the relationship layer, recruitment, advancement, marketing, and service, lives on Salesforce and the SIS stays the system of record. In that architecture, Elevate is the one noncredit island, and the storefront on Salesforce closes it. Our migration guides cover the other platforms on that path.
Questions We Hear
Is Ellucian Elevate the same as Salesforce Elevate or ElevateActual?
No. Ellucian Elevate is an active continuing education registration product. Salesforce.org Elevate was a giving pages and payment services product that Salesforce retired, with new sales ending in April 2023 and deactivation on or after October 1, 2024. ElevateActual is a Salesforce consulting partner and is not affiliated with either. We get this question often enough that it earned its own paragraph above.
Does Banner or Colleague stay?
Yes. The SIS remains the system of record, and Salesforce integrates with it through supported Ellucian APIs, never direct database writes. Enrollment and drop events post from Salesforce to the SIS on rules the registrar signs off on in discovery. The integration is scoped and built as part of the migration and runs for real during the parallel period.
Does Salesforce replace TouchNet or Transact CashNet?
No. The campus payment processor stays and Salesforce integrates with it. Checkout hands off to the processor's hosted page with a signed request, and the authorization result is written back to the order in Salesforce. Where there is no campus processor requirement, Salesforce Payments with Stripe is the other pattern. The bursar's reconciliation continues as it does today.
We lose the Ethos real-time sync. What replaces it?
A Salesforce-to-SIS integration built on supported APIs, triggered by Flow and Platform Events when an enrollment is created, changed, or dropped. It is scoped in discovery with the registrar, built during the storefront build, and exercised during the parallel period. If real-time noncredit posting to the credit record is the single most important feature in your operation, read the section on when not to move.
How long does an Elevate migration take?
Longer than the two-month Commerce accelerator, because the SIS integration and history both add time. Plan in months, with the count set by the posting rules and how many years you load. The parallel period is a few weeks, and the production hot test, which includes the SIS record, happens the week before the public opening.