XportEdu Is Live: Schools Go First

Today we open the doors. XportEdu is live, the first school profiles are being built, and over the coming months we'll bring the rest of the industry in — in a specific order, for a specific reason.

If this is your first time here: XportEdu is a marketplace for international student placement — one shared platform for the students, schools, sending organizations (agencies), receiving organizations, local coordinators, and host families that together make a student's year abroad happen. Today, each of those groups runs on its own spreadsheets, PDFs, and personal contact lists, and can only reach whoever already knows them. Putting everyone in one place changes what everyone can reach: schools become discoverable to agencies on other continents, agencies see live availability instead of last year's brochure, and students, families, and coordinators get real choices instead of the one option that found them. We introduced all six roles — and the walls between them — in our first article.

What one shared place changes

The pitch, in the concrete — here's the busywork that stops existing when everyone stands on the same platform:

• Update once, and every partner sees it. A school changes its tuition, a deadline, or this year's availability one time — and every connected agency and receiving organization sees it instantly. No more re-sending the fact sheet to eleven inboxes, no partner quoting last year's number in March.
• Marketing materials that build themselves. Branded school pages, live price lists, and PDF brochures generated straight from a school's living profile — nobody hand-builds marketing from stale copy again.
• Your website, powered by our engine. Agencies and receiving organizations can embed live school search and marketing pages directly on their own sites — always current, never rebuilt by hand.
• The findable school. The findable agency. A great school of 400 in a small town — or a trusted agency without a global brand — becomes discoverable by exactly the partners looking for what it offers.
• More choice for the people closest to the student. Students search the whole field instead of one brochure; host families and coordinators apply once and are visible to every connected program, instead of belonging to whichever organization knocked first.

Every role has its own page that goes deeper — schools, agencies, receiving organizations, coordinators, host families, and students. The rest of this post is the practical part: who onboards, in what order, and what you can do today.

Why phases, and not a grand opening

A platform like this has a chicken-and-egg problem, and pretending otherwise is how marketplaces die young. An agency that signs up to browse an empty school directory leaves and doesn't come back. A student who searches and finds three results concludes the search doesn't work. A host family with no student to host has been asked to care about software for no reason.

So here's how we're handling it. Anyone who finds us is welcome to create an account from day one — every role, every country, starting now. But our active onboarding effort rolls out one group at a time, and each group gets our full attention when the platform already holds something worth arriving for. Schools go first, because everything downstream of a placement begins with a seat.

Every phase exists so that the next group walks into a platform already worth joining.

The onboarding roadmap

1. 1

   Schools

   Open now

   SEVP-certified U.S. schools first — schools outside the U.S. welcome now too.

   Build one living profile — programs, sports, photos, pricing, policies — so it is complete on the day agencies arrive to browse.

2. 2

   Sending organizations & students

   Up next

   The agencies families trust at home, and the students at the center of it all.

   Agencies connect to live school inventory and promote it through their own tools; students search the whole field and connect with a school or an agency.

3. 3

   Receiving organizations

   Planned

   Homestay companies and the U.S. ground network.

   The organizations holding school relationships, coordinator networks, and everything that happens after the plane lands.

4. 4

   Host families & local coordinators

   Planned

   The home, the dinner table, and the eyes on the ground.

   Activated as receiving organizations build out their networks — one application, visible to every connected program.

Phase 1 — Schools (open now)

We're starting with U.S. schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) — the certification that lets a school enroll F-1 students and issue the Form I-20. If that's your school, you can create your account and build your profile today.

What you build now is what agencies will see later: one living profile — programs, sports, photos, tuition and fees, policies, real availability — entered once and updated in place. That makes this phase quietly the most valuable moment to show up. When sending organizations arrive in Phase 2 and start searching for partner schools, the complete profiles are the ones that get found. The schools that build now are first on the shelf on the day the shelf gets browsed.

And if your school is outside the United States: you're welcome now too. The early platform is U.S.-first because that's where SEVP certification and F-1 placement live, but the profile you build today works exactly the same way — and puts you in front of the same agencies the day Phase 2 opens.

Phase 2 — Sending organizations and students

Next come the agencies: the sending organizations that work with students and their parents in their home countries, and the role families trust most. They'll connect to schools, see live inventory and real prices instead of last year's PDF, and promote the schools they represent through their own branded tools.

Students are part of the same phase. A student — or their parents — can create an account, search every school on the platform by state, sport, program, and budget, and connect either directly with a school or with an agency who can carry them through the rest. And to be explicit about that, because it matters: students who come through an agency keep their agency. The platform's job is to make that relationship better-informed, not to route around it.

Phase 3 — Receiving organizations

Then the U.S. ground network: receiving organizations and homestay companies — the entities that hold school relationships, run coordinator networks, place students in homes, and own everything that happens after the plane lands. By the time this phase opens there will be schools, agencies, and students on the platform, which is exactly the point. A receiving organization should arrive to placements worth servicing, not to an empty dashboard.

Phase 4 — Host families and local coordinators

Last, the two roles closest to the student's actual day: the family that sets the dinner table and the coordinator who drives over when something goes wrong. These roles mostly activate through a receiving organization's network, which is why they come after Phase 3 rather than before it. What they get is the apply-once model: one profile, one application, visible to every connected program — so a great coordinator's reach is set by ability rather than by a contract, and a host family gets a choice instead of the one organization that happened to knock.

What you can do today

• U.S. schools (SEVP-certified): Sign up and build your profile. Phase 1 is yours, and it's open now.
• Schools outside the U.S.: Same door, same day — build your profile now and be findable the moment agencies arrive.
• Sending organizations: You're welcome to create your account and start building your portfolio today — Phase 2 is when we turn our full attention your way.
• Students and families: The school marketplace is already browsable, and you can create an account now — every school that joins in Phase 1 makes your search better.
• Receiving organizations: See what we built for you and sign up whenever you're ready — arriving early means a head start on your network.
• Host families and local coordinators: Your phase comes last, but the door is open now — hosting and coordinating.

---

We ended our first article by saying this industry was already great — that we were just building the place where it could finally find itself. As of today, that place has an address.

Schools: you're up first.