Fedena is an open-source-derived school ERP that can be self-hosted or bought hosted, with a broad module set and a plugin model. SchoolDeck is hosted only, narrower in scope, and built specifically around Indian K–12 fee, attendance and examination workflows. The decision usually turns on whether you want to own the deployment.
These two get shortlisted together often, and they are less similar than the feature grids suggest. Fedena’s distinguishing property is that you can hold it — self-host it, extend it, keep it on your own terms. SchoolDeck’s is that you cannot, and does not ask you to.
Everything below follows from that one difference. We publish SchoolDeck, so the concessions are stated explicitly rather than left out.
Choose Fedena if you have in-house IT who will own hosting, upgrades and patching, or if you specifically need to hold the deployment yourself. Choose SchoolDeck if you would rather not run infrastructure and your pain is fee, attendance and result data disagreeing. If nobody at your school will own a server, Fedena’s main advantage becomes a liability rather than a benefit.
| What you are comparing | TurtleDock | Fedena |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Hosted only, managed by us | Self-hosted or hosted, your choice |
| Who owns upgrades | We do — you are always current | You do, if self-hosted |
| Module breadth | Narrower — K–12 administration, no LMS | Broader, with a plugin ecosystem |
| Indian fee workflows | RTE receivables, concession rules, part payments modelled natively | Configurable, commonly needs customisation |
| Report card fidelity | Your existing template reproduced, versioned per year | Template engine, more setup effort |
| Extensibility | API and exports; no source access | Source-level extension possible |
| Cost shape | Per enrolled student per year, implementation included | Licence or hosting, plus your own infrastructure and IT time |
Self-hosting is genuinely valuable to some schools. If you have a systems administrator, a backup routine that has been tested by restoring from it, and a policy reason to hold student data on your own hardware, Fedena gives you something we cannot.
The failure mode is schools that choose self-hosting for the sense of control and then do not staff it. Two years in, the instance is several releases behind, the backup has not been restored since installation, and the person who set it up has left. That is a worse position than either vendor intended.
If you need a learning management system in the same product, Fedena’s breadth is a real advantage and we do not compete on it. If you need to modify behaviour at source level, we cannot offer that. And if your school already runs Fedena competently with in-house IT, the case for moving is weak — migration cost is real and "ours is tidier" is not a business reason.
Phrased the way they arrive, answered so each one stands on its own.
Fedena derives from an open-source project, but the commercial editions are paid, and self-hosting carries infrastructure and administration costs whether or not the licence does. Compare total cost including the staff time to run it, not licence price alone.
Yes. Students, fee structures, historical receipts and result data import from standard exports. Opening fee balances are the slow part of any mid-year migration; at year start it is considerably faster.
For a school under about 500 students with no in-house IT, a hosted system is usually the better fit simply because nobody has to own the server. If the school has technical staff and a preference for holding its own deployment, that calculation changes.
Checked by the Implementations desk on 31 August 2026. Corrections go in the page, dated, rather than quietly.
Pricing is on the page, in the open, with the counting rule written next to it. Nobody has to book a call to find out what it costs.
See pricingForty minutes with an implementation engineer — your classes, your fee heads, your grading scheme, entered as we go. No slides, no sample school.