Visatory: a CRM built for education agencies

A short note about something VNIS built, and a declaration of interest up front: Visatory is our own product. It is made by VNIS Group and operated by VNIS Vietnam Company Limited in Hanoi. You are reading about it on our own website, so weigh it accordingly — and then go and open the live demo, which is a better test than anything written here.

The problem it was built for

Every education agency of a certain size runs on the same three things: a shared inbox, a spreadsheet each counsellor quietly keeps their own version of, and a folder of scanned documents nobody can audit. It works until it does not. A deadline passes because it lived in one person's inbox. A commission goes uninvoiced because nobody reconciled it against the census date. A compliance review arrives and someone loses a fortnight assembling files that should have accumulated by themselves.

Visatory is an attempt to hold the whole student journey in one record — enquiry, counselling, shortlist, application, offer, visa, departure, and the commission that follows.

The parts that matter most to an agency

Per-country visa tracks. A US F-1 and a UK Student visa are not one process with different labels. The I-20, the CAS, the provincial attestation letter and the CoE are separate steps that fail separately, so they are tracked separately — each with an owner and a due date. When a government changes a rule mid-intake, editing the country template changes what new students follow and leaves cases already in flight where they are.
A records pack. Pick a date range and it produces one export: student files, signed agreements, fee disclosures, complaints with the actions taken, satisfaction records and staff training certificates — with a manifest of what was included and what was missing. It is the difference between a review being a download and a review being a fortnight.
Commissions that reconcile. Projected against a rate card, held until the census date passes, invoiced, then split with the sub-agent who sourced the student.
Sub-agents accounted for. Agreements, training dates and background checks tracked as rigorously as your own staff — because you answer for what they tell students.
Documents with provenance. Where each file came from and who verified it, recorded on upload, with verification as a separate act by a named person.

Two design decisions worth explaining

Each agency gets its own database, not a row in a shared table. That costs more to run and it means deleting an agency drops a database rather than trusting a filter. For a business holding minors' passports and families' bank statements, that seemed the right way round.

The records pack keeps working after a subscription lapses, and on the last day of a trial. Software that holds your compliance history hostage is a bad bargain, and saying so in the product is more useful than saying so in a marketing page.

What it costs

Metered on active students; alumni files you keep on record never count against the limit.

Starter — US$49 a month (or US$470 a year): 75 active students, 3 users, one branch, full application and visa tracking, compliance records, commission receivables, an agency website on a visatory.com address, one records pack per quarter.
Growth — US$129 a month (US$1,238 a year): 300 active students, 10 users, 3 branches, 10 sub-agents, unlimited records pack exports, sub-agent commission splits, your own domain.
Scale — US$299 a month (US$2,870 a year): 1,000 active students, unlimited users, branches and sub-agents, white-label branding.

Paying yearly is 20% less. Local sales tax is added at checkout by Paddle where it applies. The trial is 14 days on the middle plan, with no card required and nothing billed automatically at the end.

Who it is not for

Worth saying plainly. A one-person agency handling a handful of students a year does not need this; a spreadsheet is genuinely fine at that size and the subscription would not pay for itself. Nor is it a marketing tool — it has lead forms and a website, but it will not generate demand you do not have. It is filing, reconciliation and evidence, which is a duller category and the one where agencies actually lose money.

Founding customers

The first five agencies to subscribe get the first year at half price. In exchange we ask for weekly feedback and a written case study — a direct line to the people building it, and your name on a page that currently has none. Say so when you sign up, or write to hello@visatory.com. The trial is the same fourteen days either way.

Where to look

The demo is live and uses a demo agency rather than mock-ups, so you can click through the screens your own office would see. visatory.com — the site is also published in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

If you would rather talk about recruitment than software: Services for institutions →