For Schools & Districts

Your students are making life-defining decisions with almost no information. Heartily changes that.

A career guidance platform built around honest exposure to real work — not personality quizzes and job listings. Designed for school districts. Free for every student.

Request a district demo Download the overview

Piloting with districts across the Mountain West & Northeast — contact us to join.

9 min

Average student session — and they return. Voluntarily.

44%

Return within 7 days. Without an assignment.

Cost to students. Always. By design.

The problem you already know

You already know what's broken.

You've seen it from inside the building. Guidance counselors stretched across student loads no one would design from scratch. The college-default assumption that pushes every student toward the same answer. The seniors who arrive at decision-day without a framework for the decision.

The honest gap is not effort. It is between what your guidance department is resourced to do and what every student actually needs from this moment.

Heartily was designed for this environment — not invented in spite of it.

Counselor load. One counselor for every 385 students, on average. The math of a 45-minute meeting and a senior cohort of 300 doesn't work, and no one needs that explained again.

Default-college framing. Pathways outside four-year college remain under-served by the tools you have. CTE deserves the same editorial weight as pre-med — your students rarely see it that way.

Engagement problem. Existing platforms get used because they're assigned. They are abandoned the day the assignment ends. You know which ones.

Reporting gap. "We did career exploration" is hard to say to a board when the artifact is a print-out from a personality quiz a sophomore took once.

What Heartily gives your district

Three things, useful from day one.

01 · Engagement

A tool students actually use, voluntarily.

The biggest failure mode for career exploration tools is engagement. Heartily's content-first design — honest day-in-the-life career stories across every field — produces genuine curiosity-driven engagement. Not compliance. Not assignment completion. Return visits.

We measure this carefully and report it back to you. Engagement is a feature, not a vanity metric.

District Engagement · Last 30 Days

9.2

Average session, in minutes

44%

Return rate within 7 days

— No assignment was issued during this period.

02 · Insight

Insight your guidance team actually needs.

The administrator dashboard surfaces aggregate student interest data — which career categories your students are exploring, where interest is clustering, gaps between student interest and local employment opportunities.

Data that helps counselors have better conversations — not just more of them.

Where interest is clustering · Junior Class

HealthTradeTechEduBizArtsPub

03 · Reporting

Evidence you can report.

Heartily tracks engagement, interest development, and eventual pathway decisions in ways that produce reportable outcomes. Career exploration participation rates. Interest-to-pathway conversion. Employer connections made.

Numbers a guidance director presents to a principal. Numbers a principal presents to a board.

Q3 Counselor Action Queue

Cohort: Junior · Career interest

412 students · 18 categories tracked

Stable

3 students · sustained interest in healthcare

Have not explored nursing or allied health

Flag

7 students · skilled trades engagement

No local apprenticeship intro scheduled

Flag

How it works in your district

Operational, not aspirational.

District onboarding

A single point of contact. Two-week setup. No IT complexity. SSO where you support it.

Student access

Free. No app store. No barriers. Works on any device a student has in their hand.

Counselor tools

A guidance dashboard. Student progress views. Conversation prompts based on interest data.

Reporting

Quarterly district reports on engagement, interest patterns, and pathway outcomes.

Boundaries

What Heartily doesn't do.

Most edtech pitches don't have this section. We do — because we'd rather earn your confidence than leave you guessing.

Heartily does not replace guidance counselors. It extends their reach.

It does not tell students what career to pursue. It helps them figure it out.

It does not share individual student data with employers without explicit consent.

It does not require students to create a profile before exploring.

It does not contain advertising, sponsored listings, or employer-funded content dressed as guidance.

Pricing & procurement

Simple. No games.

District SaaS · Annual

$15K–$25K

Per year, for a typical mid-size district. Based on enrollment.

Included. Unlimited student access

Counselor dashboard for the full guidance team

District reporting · quarterly cadence

Onboarding support — single point of contact

Ongoing account management

Not included. Per-student fees

Not included. Content upsells

Not included. Training costs

We know school budget cycles. We're happy to start with a pilot cohort and expand at your next budget window.

Procurement

Standard contract.

Available through normal district procurement processes.

ESSER-eligible where applicable

Available on common state purchasing contracts

Data Privacy Agreement on request — model SDPA-compliant

SOC 2 Type II in audit

FERPA & state-by-state student data law alignment

Tell us your state and we'll send back the procurement path that's shortest for you.

Inside the dashboard

What your guidance team actually sees.

district.heartily.work / overview

District

Overview

Cohorts

Interest map

Pathway outcomes

Counselors

My students

Action queue

Reports

Quarterly · Q3 2026

Board export

Lincoln Unified · 2,847 students

District overview — this quarter

2,109

Active explorers

+18% vs. Q2

9.2m

Median session

+1.4m vs. Q2

44%

7-day return

+6 pts

312

Pathways flagged

— stable

Career interest distribution · Junior class

Health & clinical

88%

Skilled trades

62%

Technology

71%

Education

34%

Business & finance

55%

Flagged insight · For Ms. Alvarez (counselor)

3 students in your cohort show sustained interest in healthcare but haven't explored nursing or allied health — consider a targeted 30-minute session this week.

Voices from practitioners

Representative perspectives from the guidance practitioners we've spoken with.

"The honest challenge is that by the time a student is in my office asking what they should do, I have 45 minutes — and 300 other students on my list."

Representative perspectiveGuidance counselor · 11 years

"Any tool that students actually open voluntarily — without me assigning it — is already ahead of 90% of what we've tried."

Representative perspectiveGuidance director · Mid-size district

"I don't need another platform that produces a personality type. I need something my kids will come back to on a Tuesday afternoon."

Representative perspectiveHigh school principal

"Boards want outcomes. Right now I can show participation. Heartily would let me show interest-to-pathway conversion — that is a different conversation."

Representative perspectiveAsst. superintendent · Career & technical education