Compare
Districts shopping this category meet three different animals wearing similar names. Here's the map — and side-by-side comparisons with the programs you'll actually evaluate, built only from each company's own published materials.
The category, untangled
| Model | What it is | The trade-off to understand |
|---|---|---|
| Pure-software VMS | Software the district (or its program manager) licenses and operates: requisitions, submissions, invoicing workflows. | Somebody still has to run the program — vet agencies, chase documents, resolve disputes. The tool doesn't operate itself. |
| Managed service provider (MSP) | An operator runs the vendor program for the district: onboarding agencies, administering the workflow, consolidating billing. Usually funded by a fee on participating vendors. | Everything depends on the operator's rules — and whether those rules are published and provable, or just promised. |
| Master vendor | One staffing company holds the district's contract, fills what it can with its own workers, and subcontracts the rest to other agencies on its own terms. | The company grading the vendor pool is also the biggest vendor in it. Fill priority and subcontract economics are typically theirs to set. |
| Fullbench — open network, operated | Both the software and the managed program: an open multi-agency network where no agency sees your opening before another, only your office can advance or place a candidate, no one starts before you've approved their file, and the program's fee never touches district funds — each rule enforced by the software and visible in the record. | The trade-off: you're trusting an operator's rules, and the program is new. So the rules are published, the software enforces them, and we ask you to verify the record in a walkthrough rather than take anything on faith. Your office still owns every approval — the program can't do your judgment for you. |
Head to head
Each comparison uses only public, published information about the other program — with sources, an "as of" date, and a standing offer to correct anything we got wrong.
Both are free-to-district, vendor-funded education MSPs. The differences: how many agencies genuinely compete for each opening, what stops an unapproved start, and whether the operator's own staffing company plays by the same rules.
Read the comparisonSunburst is Amergis's cross-sector MSP with cooperative-purchasing reach. Fullbench is education-only, with its economics and enforcement rules in public.
Read the comparisonStafferLink is healthcare-origin VMS software you license and operate. Fullbench is an operated education program — the software comes with the service.
Read the comparisonThe self-described nation's largest education staffing provider employs the substitute pool itself, at negotiated markups. Fullbench keeps many agencies competing under published, recorded rules.
Read the comparisonAn exclusive single-employer program at contract-negotiated markups, versus an open nonexclusive network with published economics and a per-decision record.
Read the comparisonEvaluating a program that isn't listed here — a master-vendor arrangement, a substitute-management provider, another MSP? Ask us in a walkthrough and we'll give you the same sourced, dated side-by-side.
Ask about a programAll comparisons are based on publicly available information as of August 2026 and each company's own published materials. Company names and trademarks belong to their owners; their appearance here is for factual comparison only. If we've gotten something wrong, tell us and we'll correct it.
Next step
Thirty minutes on the live platform — your roles, your rate ceilings, your agencies' names on the screen. No slideware.