Quire
Quire and Blackboard
Blackboard is a long-established, quote-priced LMS sold mainly to universities and colleges, now run as a standalone company that was called Anthology until March 2026.
Last checked 1 October 2026. Quire is pre-release.
Who should pick which
Pick Blackboard if
- You are a large institution that wants a vendor with decades of higher education deployments, public security attestations (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP) and a mature partner ecosystem.
- You already run Blackboard and your Ultra courses, integrations and staff training are in place. Moving has a real cost.
- You want a vendor-run, accessibility-focused LMS with AI course-design tools for instructors already shipping in production.
- You need a vendor that can import Moodle backups into its own course format and has a published REST API with a developer portal.
Pick Quire if
- You want one platform that serves many organizations with separate domains, branding, sign-in and data boundaries, enforced by row-level security in the database.
- You want plan prices published on the site, flat by organization size, instead of a quote for every purchase.
- You want the choice of the vendor's hosted cloud or your own infrastructure with one Docker Compose file, and a tenant export that moves between the two.
- You want an audit log that is hash-chained with a verification tool, an OpenAPI 3.1 description, signed webhooks and an MCP server. Quire is pre-release, so check these against your own needs in a trial.
Side by side
| Capability | Blackboard | Quire |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor and product line | Anthology rebranded as Blackboard on 2 March 2026 after emerging from Chapter 11 and selling its enterprise (student, finance and HR) business to Ellucian. Blackboard LMS stays in the Blackboard portfolio.Source: Blackboard press release, March 2026 | Pre-release, closed-source product from one vendor. No customer track record yet. Many behaviours are tested but not yet verified against live accounts or real browsers. |
| Hosting options | Ultra is the current cloud-hosted experience. Anthology told customers that Original courses and organizations become read-only on 31 December 2026. Self-hosted Learn 9.1 documentation is still published.Source: UMBC DoIT, Anthology retirement notice for Original courses | Hosted cloud, or self-hosted with one Docker Compose file. The same product runs both ways. The web tier can also run on Vercel or Cloudflare Workers. |
| Tenancy and security attestations | Each institution runs its own site. The vendor lists SOC 2, FERPA, GDPR, ISO 27001/27017/27018, FedRAMP and WCAG 2.2 AA with external audits. It does not publish how sites are isolated in its hosted service.Source: Blackboard LMS product page | Many organizations in one installation, each with its own domain, branding, sign-in, email sender and data boundary, enforced by PostgreSQL row-level security. Tenants can move to a dedicated database. No third-party certifications are claimed yet. |
| Pricing model | No prices on the vendor site. The page directs buyers to Book a Demo or Contact Us. Treat it as quote only.Source: Blackboard LMS product page | Flat plans by organization size, hosted or self-hosted, with prices listed on the Quire pricing page. The top tier is by quote. Video minutes and AI use are metered add-ons. |
| API and integrations | Public REST APIs with OAuth 2.0 and a developer portal where you register an application. Building Blocks and LTI are also documented. A long-running, widely used developer ecosystem.Source: Blackboard Help, Building Blocks and REST APIs | REST API with an OpenAPI 3.1 description, cursor pagination, idempotency keys, signed webhooks and an MCP server. Newer and not yet proven in the field. A few write routes are not offered yet. |
| Standards and course import | Ultra imports ZIP and IMSCC course packages, without enrollments or grades. Original can export Common Cartridge 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2. It can import Moodle 4.0+ backups, but not discussion posts, submissions or grades.Source: Blackboard Help, Import Course Packages | Common Cartridge 1.0 to 1.3 import and 1.3 export, QTI 2.1 and 3.0 (a subset), SCORM with the ADL suite passing, LTI 1.3 Advantage as platform and tool. Tests against real third-party exports are still open. |
| AI features | AI Design Assistant for instructors: course structure, discussions, rubrics, test questions, assignment prompts and images, which the instructor reviews. Built with Microsoft Azure OpenAI. Shipping now.Source: Blackboard Help, AI Design Assistant | Built in, with a per-tenant provider and monthly budget: editor help, a course assistant with citations, a course tutor, course building from documents and grading suggestions a teacher confirms. Real vendor accounts have not all been tested. |
| Audit logging | Self-hosted Learn documents an authentication log, an input validation log and a central security events log. The page does not say the logs are tamper-evident.Source: Blackboard Learn self-hosted docs, Audit and Accountability | Separate streams for security, learning activity and page views. Entries are hash-chained with signed checkpoints and a verification tool. Testing the production signing key is a check still to be done. |
Last checked 1 October 2026. Each claim about Blackboard links to the page it came from.
Moving from Blackboard
Export the course from Blackboard as a Common Cartridge package (1.0 to 1.2 from Original), then import it into Quire, which reads Common Cartridge 1.0 to 1.3 and shows a dry-run report of what will map before anything is written. Web links, files, discussion topics, assignments and LTI links map; QTI 1.2 question sets come across; vendor-specific items are reported, not silently dropped. Grades, enrollments and user activity do not travel in a cartridge, so load people from a OneRoster or IMS Enterprise file and plan how to keep grade history. Test with a few courses first.
Join the waitlist
Quire is pre-release. Early supporters get 50% off the first 12 months of any hosted plan.