Element451 vs CustomViewbook Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

CustomViewbook is a digital viewbook platform designed to help colleges and universities attract, engage and convert prospective students. Traditional printed viewbooks are expensive to produce and mail, cannot be personalised in depth, and provide little insight into how prospects interact with the material. CustomViewbook addresses these limitations by allowing each prospective student to build a personalised online viewbook based on their interests, such as academic programmes, athletics, student life and campus facilities. The approach turns the viewbook into a lead generation and engagement tool, capturing information about what students are interested in and passing highly qualified leads to admissions teams. The vendor positions the platform as a way to achieve better recruitment outcomes at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, reflecting a shift towards digital and data-driven enrolment marketing across higher education. Key features include a customisable content library of programme descriptions, photos, videos and testimonials, an interactive experience in which prospects select topics of interest, and automatically generated personalised viewbooks that can be viewed online and shared. Lead capture forms collect contact details and preferences, while analytics show which content is viewed, how long prospects engage and which programmes attract the most interest. This data can be exported or integrated with admissions CRM systems, enabling counsellors to tailor follow-up communications and prioritise promising prospects. Institutions can update content quickly without reprinting materials, ensuring information remains current. The viewbook can be embedded on institutional websites and promoted through digital campaigns, email and social media. The platform is delivered as a hosted service with support for content setup and branding. CustomViewbook is aimed at admissions and enrolment marketing teams at colleges, universities, community colleges and independent schools seeking to modernise recruitment and improve conversion rates. Pricing starts from around USD 5,000 with a free trial; there is no permanently free version.