Cognaxa vs the incumbents.
An honest side-by-side against Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, and Brightspace. We only claim what we ship today, and we only mark a competitor "no" when the gap is publicly documented or commonly reported by switching customers.
| Feature | Cognaxa | Canvas | Blackboard | Moodle | Brightspace |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | |||||
| PostgreSQL Row-Level Security tenancy Tenant isolation enforced at the query planner, not middleware. | |||||
| Single codebase multi-tenant | Partial | Partial | |||
| Cloud-native, containerized deploy | Partial | ||||
| On-prem / private cloud option | Enterprise | ||||
| Security & Compliance | |||||
| SOC 2 Type II | Partial | ||||
| HIPAA-aligned BAA available | Enterprise | Partial | Partial | Partial | |
| GDPR DPA + EU data residency | Partial | ||||
| Audit logs + SIEM streaming | Planned | Partial | Partial | Partial | |
| Published subprocessor list | Partial | ||||
| Assessment & Proctoring | |||||
| Native AI proctoring (no third-party iframe) Face detection, object recognition, and audio anomaly inside the same product. | |||||
| Server-synced exam timer (anti clock-tamper) | Partial | Partial | Partial | ||
| AI essay grading with confidence scores | Partial | Partial | Partial | ||
| IELTS-style speaking / listening assessments | |||||
| Integration | |||||
| LTI 1.3 Advantage (platform + tool) | Planned | ||||
| Public REST API + webhooks | Partial | Partial | |||
| SCIM 2.0 provisioning | Planned | Partial | |||
| SCORM 1.2 / 2004 | Planned | ||||
| Operations | |||||
| Published trailing-12-month uptime | 99.98% | 99.9% | Partial | 99.9% | |
| Direct engineer-to-customer escalation | Partial | ||||
Expert-guided migration
Migrate off Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle with our white-glove engineering support. Typical migration window is 48-72 hours.
Securely transfer Canvas .imscc, Blackboard .zip, or Moodle .mbz dumps to our staging environment.
Our engineers map your historical data to Cognaxa, preserving student attempts and cumulative GPA history.
We verify every module and assessment for visual fidelity before your institution flips the switch.
Migrating off Canvas specifically? See the 2-week Canvas → Cognaxa playbook →
Have a specific comparison question?
If there's a capability you're weighing that isn't in this matrix, ask us — and we'll tell you the truth, including where we're behind.