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Should I Use Gibbon?

gibbonedu.org·Analyzed 8 hours ago··Based on 15 sources

Gibbon is a flexible, open source school management platform designed to make life better for teachers, students, parents and leaders.

Depends

Depends

Schools with their own IT staff get a genuinely free, full-featured school platform — if they commit to fast security patching.

Free open-source school platform; real value if you have IT staff, but a rough CVE record means patch fast.

Confidence: Medium

Free

Starting price

Open source, self-hosted

6+

Public CVEs found

2023–2026, incl. RCE and SQLi

10

G2 alternatives tracked

Competing school platforms

Value for money5

Free, open source; no license fees

Feature depth4

Full school platform including finance module

Support quality2

Guess: community forum support, no vendor SLA

Security posture1

Six-plus CVEs 2023–2026, including RCEs

Pros

  • Free and open source — no license fees¹
  • Broad school modules, including finance²
  • Active community of users, admins, developers¹
  • Publishes security advisories on GitHub15
  • Tracked on G2, Capterra, and AWS Marketplace

Cons

  • Repeated serious CVEs: RCE, SQL injection, file inclusion
  • No security page found on the official site³
  • Open source means hosting, updates, backups are on you¹
  • No published vendor pricing or hosted tiers

Gotchas

  • highSelf-hosted: you provision hosting, run upgrades, and must patch fast when RCEs land¹
  • highCVE-2026-8207 SQL injection affects versions before v30.0.0 — verify currency before deploying10
  • mediumFree core, but budget for hosting, migration, and admin time; no vendor tiers published
  • mediumSecurity info lives in a community forum category, not a proper security page

Best for

  • Schools with in-house IT
  • Budget-constrained schools wanting a full SIS
  • Open-source-friendly admin teams

Not for

  • Schools without a sysadmin — the CVE history demands fast patching
  • Tutoring or small teams needing just a gradebook
  • Buyers who need vendor support and SLAs
  • Anyone expecting polished hosted onboarding

Pricing

Community (self-hosted)

Free

  • Full open-source school platform
  • You host, maintain, and patch

Security

Rough record: multiple RCE, SQL injection, and file-inclusion CVEs between 2023 and 2026; patching discipline is mandatory.

  • CVE-2026-8208 — RCE via local file inclusionGibbon LMS local file inclusion leading to remote code execution.
  • CVE-2026-8207 — SQL injectionAffects Gibbon versions before v30.0.0.10
  • CVE-2024-24724 — remote code executionRCE vulnerability in Gibbonedu Gibbon.11
  • CVE-2024-24725 — PHP deserializationDeserialization vulnerability exploited in Gibbon LMS.12
  • CVE-2023-34598 — local file inclusionGibbon v25.0.0 vulnerable to LFI.13

What users say

No substantive user reviews of the school platform surfaced; most 'Gibbon' search results concern unrelated products like slacklines and speakers.

Alternatives

Compare Gibbon with each alternative.

Full analysis

Based on 15 public sources; user reviews are thin — most 'Gibbon' hits are unrelated products (slacklines, speakers, apes).

Sources

  1. official
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  9. security
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