Introducing the Campus Experience Platform (CXP)

The new standard for higher ed technology.

The game is changing in higher ed — with the smartest institutions turning challenges into opportunities. With fewer graduating high school students and traditional funding sources drying up, students now demand consumer-grade experiences while frequently questioning the long-term value of a degree.

How does higher ed succeed in this perfect storm of challenges? Institutions must optimize their digital ecosystem and provide superior user experiences — driving enrollment while keeping students engaged before, during and after they graduate.

The Campus Experience Platform (CXP) delivers the competitive advantage needed to thrive in spite of today’s challenges. A unified, system-agnostic digital hub designed with the end-user in mind, the CXP unifies your tech stack into a cohesive, strategic solution driving awareness, community, enrollment, retention, and success.

The new standard for higher ed technology.

The game is changing in higher ed — with the smartest institutions turning challenges into opportunities. With fewer graduating high school students and traditional funding sources drying up, students now demand consumer-grade experiences while frequently questioning the long-term value of a degree.

How does higher ed succeed in this perfect storm of challenges? Institutions must optimize their digital ecosystem and provide superior user experiences — driving enrollment while keeping students engaged before, during and after they graduate.

The Campus Experience Platform (CXP) delivers the competitive advantage needed to thrive in spite of today’s challenges. A unified, system-agnostic digital hub designed with the end-user in mind, the CXP unifies your tech stack into a cohesive, strategic solution driving awareness, community, enrollment, retention, and success.

Why the CXP?

Pathify builds technology to make campus life better — more streamlined, more connected and more intuitive. After years of sustained success with an incredibly diverse customer-base, Pathify now defines this new higher ed technology category to deliver proven strategies that drive success for the next decade — and beyond.

Institutions that thrive in the next 10 years must adapt decisively and intentionally. That’s exactly what the CXP enables, helping campuses stay ahead with a more proactive, modern approach to communication, engagement and success. Pathify’s not just selling software — we’re partnering with you to build a multi-layered strategy for success now and in the future.

Over 250 institutions — from liberal arts colleges to R1 research universities and community colleges — leverage Pathify’s CXP as their digital foundation. Let us put you in touch with any of them to share how a CXP strategy provides an insanely powerful framework for meeting this very difficult moment.

CXP: Beyond the Portal

The CXP operates well beyond traditional portals and mobile apps. It connects your entire campus digitally, delivering a user-first experience driving institutional success, amplifying existing tech investments and fostering campus-wide cohesion.

Legacy Portals & AppsPathify Campus Experience Platform (CXP)
Design PhilosophyBuilt for admins first, with end users as an afterthought.Designed for what end users (students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, etc.) actually need to successfully navigate their journey.
ScopeServes only current students, often ignoring alumni, prospects and staff.Serves the entire community — including prospects, students, alumni, faculty/staff and parents/caregivers.
IntegrationTypically vendor-locked, limited and basic.Hundreds of deep integrations (Recipes) and middleware (Flow) connect your SIS, LMS, CRM — truly any system.
PurposeOperates as a simple, static link-farm-treasure-hunt.Actively consolidate front-end point solutions (portals, chatbots, separate mobile apps, student engagement platforms and more), into one interface, cutting costs and dramatically improving the user experience.

A Full Lifecycle Solution

Pathify’s CXP supports the entire community journey with a single, modern interface, maximizing investments in existing technology.

CXP ModuleFunctionCXP Value/OutcomeTools/Systems Replaced
Engagement HubServes as the centralized user experience hub for all information, systems and communications.Delivers a hyper-personalized, consumer grade technology experience while consolidating legacy systems to save money.Homegrown portals, mobile apps, link farms and SIS self-service portals.
CommunitiesA digital reflection of the physical campus where groups, orgs and clubs drive community and engagement.Replaces disconnected student engagement apps, fostering a critical sense of belonging while tracking co-curricular competencies and streamlining student organization finances.Student engagement platforms, student engagement tools, alumni affinity systems.
SuccessCurates tasks, to-do lists and critical communications from any system.Solves the “overwhelmed = at risk” problem by helping students prioritize and manage all aspects of their journey.Consolidates and centralizes tasks, forms and survey tools.
ChatbotAI-powered conversation tool that providing instant, personalized answers to common user questions drawn from institution-specific data sources.Drives operational efficiency and enhances community services by automating front-line support, freeing up staff and ensuring users receive fast, accurate information.Separate Gen AI Chatbot and legacy FAQ chatbot solutions.
FlowProprietary middleware engine (iPaaS) that facilitates deep integration, across disparate systems.Delivers extensive customization, unifying the digital experience by empowering institutions to develop widgets and content that connects, curates and personalizes data from virtually any source.Replaces custom-built intranet and portals requiring complex system connections — eliminating costly development cycle and ongoing maintenance demands.

CXP Success Stories: Proof of Value

A CXP drives results where they count — enrollment, retention, persistence, satisfaction…and less money wasted on solutions that don’t work. Here’s proof from institutions doing it right.

Replaced standalone chatbot with Pathify’s native GenAI solution, consolidating tools and reducing budget.

Achieved a 74% budget reduction on their chatbot solution.

Needed a secure ecosystem to foster student connection on an aggressive implementation schedule.

Launched a fully secure platform on deadline, instantly fostering adoption and  engagement — driving 6.4 million sessions in 2025.

Consolidated disparate systems across the IT stack.

Simplified 29 disparate systems down to five — an 82% decrease and a 45% IT budget reduction.

Everything is brought into Pathify — we’re taking full advantage of the ability to consolidate front-end systems and reduce spend.

Rob Henderson
Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Technology, University of the Pacific

Campus Experience Platform (CXP) FAQs

A Campus Experience Platform (CXP) is a unified digital hub connecting your institution’s technology, resources and people into one, personalized interface — regardless of what tech/systems are running behind the scenes.

Here’s what makes it different:

  • It serves everyone: Prospects exploring campus, current students, alumni staying connected, staff and faculty, parents and families all get a custom experience.
  • It’s built for both end users and the admin: Traditional portals were designed around admin workflows. A CXP offers what users actually need (but admins aren’t left behind — managing content, permissions and integrations is equally as straightforward!).
  • It consolidates, not complicates: Instead of adding another app or portal, a CXP replaces the chaos (legacy portals, separate mobile apps, chatbots, etc.) with one cohesive experience. 
  • It works (and amplifies!) what you already have: System-agnostic by design, with deep integration capabilities connecting your entire tech stack (we’re talking over 140 out-of-the-box integrations with higher ed’s most popular systems).

It’s a genuinely new category. Think of it this way: Legacy portals gave users a page of links and expected them to figure out where to click and what login to use. A CXP provides a hyper-personalized digital campus landing spot — where academic info, student life, support services, communication, community and announcements live. It’s higher ed catching up to what their users have expected for years — delivering the kind of seamless experience users get everywhere else.

Pathify is defining and leading the Campus Experience Platform (CXP) category because, well, we’ve kind of been doing this all along. From day one, we built Pathify around the end-user experience. We focused on serving everyone who interacts with your campus tech — not just the teams purchasing the tech or managing it. Now, we’re officially putting a name to what we’ve been building. We’re doubling down, investing in making Pathify the campus-wide solution to higher ed’s trickiest tech problems.

A CXP directly addresses your institution’s most pressing challenges:

  • Enrollment & Retention: It provides a modern digital experience (a major factor in enrollment decisions) and builds a sense of belonging and community, keeping students engaged and on the path to graduation.
  • Tightening Budgets: It consolidates multiple costly point solutions (mobile apps, chatbots, etc.), leading to significant cost savings (often, a 20 to 40% reduction in licensing/support costs) and freeing up staff time.
  • Brand Perception: It replaces fragmented, clunky systems with a unified, seamless experience, projecting an image of modernity, efficiency and commitment to student success.
  • Enhanced Engagement: Higher adoption and utilization of your existing technology (LMS, SIS, etc.), maximizing their value.
  • Prospective Students: Explore programs, connect with student ambassadors, submit forms, track deadlines and get questions answered — all the essential info without the clutter. 
  • Current Students: Everything they need in one place — courses, events, groups, tasks, announcements, communities, directory — personalized to their interests…and no more downloading or hunting across multiple applications.
  • Alumni: Stay informed and engaged with career resources, events, campus happenings and giving opportunities — no separate alumni portal needed.
  • Staff/Faculty: Streamlined workflows, fewer support calls and better collaboration tools. Many Pathify customers leverage their CXP as an employee intranet, significantly cutting down email communication.
  • Parents: Access to resources and services, campus updates and events and visibility into their students’ experience.

A CXP complements your core systems (SIS, LMS, CRM, ERP), acting as the modern front end or “presentation layer.” Your core systems stay right where they are — the CXP just pulls everything together into a dynamic, personalized interface — with windows into those different systems (no link farms here!). A CXP can replace the hodgepodge of front-end solutions you’re probably paying for — including separate mobile apps, third-party chatbots, standalone engagement platforms and outdated portals, to name a few. Instead of managing multiple disconnected solutions, a CXP provides one unified experience (and vendor!) for navigating the higher ed.

AI and personalization are central to making a CXP more personalized and relevant to each user:

  • Deliver personalized content and notifications to each user based on their role and needs.
  • Power predictive analytics identifying at-risk students (decreased engagement, missed deadlines, etc.) for proactive intervention.
  • 24/7/365 support with an AI-powered chatbot to handle questions round-the-clock.

If your tech stack feels siloed, it’s not really part of the CXP framework. Here’s what prevents that:

  1. It connects to everything — a true CXP integrates with whatever core systems you’re already using. It’s built to play nice with your existing stack, not replace it all.  
  2. You implement it specifically to consolidate the separate tools traditionally used for navigating the experience — not add to them.
  3. It serves as the central, unified hub for everything and everyone — academics, student life, support, alumni, parents, your entire community.

Tight budgets are exactly the reason you need a CXP. CXPs help you get more from what you already have — better adoption and use of existing systems, fewer redundant tools and measurable improvements in student engagement and success metrics. For instance, a CXP dramatically simplifies the tech stack by replacing multiple, separate point solutions. This consolidation often results in a 20-40% reduction in associated licensing fees and support contracts.

Unlike other vendor implementations, a CXP delivers results quickly and works with what tech you have today — giving you time and flexibility to plan bigger changes later (like migrating your ERP or LMS) without sacrificing the user experience.

Our CXP announcement furthers our commitment to help institutions compete and thrive. 

Our roadmap focuses on three priorities: 

  • Smarter Personalization: Continuously personalize interactions across the entire lifecycle — the platform should know what you need before you realize.  
  • Deeper Community Features: Further invest in Communities functionality helping users connect, get involved and feel like they belong — prioritizing relationships and resources.
  • More Powerful Integrations: Double down on integrating all systems into one cohesive experience. Less tech overhead = more time focusing on what matters.

Ready to Unify Your Digital Campus?

See the CXP in Action

Request Demo

Pathify Customer Launches

See Pathify in the Wild

 
 
 
  • “I can’t say enough about the mobile experience. It’s huge whether you’re on a PC or mobile device, so there’s no custom build on mobile that doesn’t show up on PC or vice versa.”
    Rob Henderson, Chief Technology Officer at University of the Pacific
  • “Students are a little finicky about what they install on their devices, particularly part-time students who really aren’t invested in your institutions, so we did not want a solution that was only mobile-based.”
    Joe Mancini, Executive Director of IT at Montgomery County Community College
  • “The big benefit for us is we don’t have to go back to the vendor every time we needed to change or add a widget or data to make it more dynamic.”
    Rohini Ananthakrishnan, Deputy CIO & Associate Vice Chancellor at University of Denver
  • “With Pathify, we’ve partnered to connect to other critical systems that students need access to so we can drive them to one place.”
    Bret Ingerman, Vice President of IT at Tallahassee Community College
  • “The Digital Wallet is our most used feature of the app. About 90% of our usage is mobile, and that is probably because we have a Digital Wallet.”
    Jessica James, Assistant Director of Orientation and Student Activities at Concordia University Irvine
  • “The departments that work with students — traditional students — found students never read their emails. And the more emails they sent, the less that they read them. Our students are a lot more connected and engaged when they have a mobile app.”
    Rachel Schaller, Director of IT Systems at Colorado Christian University

Why Ready schools choose Pathify

Mission

Pathify focuses on connecting an institution’s entire digital universe to create a seamless user experience.

One App to Rule Them All

Pathify offers full UI and UX parity between the mobile app and web version of the portal to provide a consistent experience students will love.

Integrations and Extensibility

Pathify empowers Portal Admins to connect higher ed’s most popular systems out-of-the-box, while providing developers capabilities to further integrate and customize the portal using the proprietary middleware platform, Flow.

Connecting People

Pathify remains the only student portal adding people into the mix alongside an institution’s content and technology. Pathify Communities supports Groups, Clubs and the broader school community, with the Engagement Hub mirroring what makes your institution unique.

Personalization

Pathify allows users to configure their portal dashboard to their liking by deploying and removing widgets, moving them or organizing them into folders.

Spans the Student Lifecycle & Serves All Constituents

Pathify covers the entire student lifecycle from prospect to alumni, while engaging faculty, parents and campus visitors.

Market Leading Feature Set

With over 100 customers and nearly 1,500,000 users, Pathify is higher ed’s fastest growing independent portal product. It’s tried, tested and loved.

Digital Wallet

Digital Wallet leverages existing institutional QR code hardware, functioning as an incredible “hook” driving user adoption and engagement by allowing students to pay for food, use the library — really anything that slippery piece of plastic could do.

Analytics

With the widest feature set in the market, Pathify provides an unmatched view across the systems, resources and content your constituents are engaging with.

For a side-by-side comparison of Pathify and Ready functionality, see the table below.

What is Ready Education? What is Pathify? So which system is better for my school?