Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effectiveness or success of universities' portal implementation from the perspective of students as users. Adopting the model developed by Delone and McLean, portal effectiveness is defined as being composed of information quality, systems quality and service quality. In addition, the paper also seeks to investigate the influence of individual factors comprising attitudes towards the portal, personal innovativeness and web self-efficacy on the effectiveness of the portal. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a survey research design with questionnaires being administered to 600 students as respondents. The cross-sectional strategy for data collection resulted in 405 usable responses that were used for data analysis. Findings: The results show that IS effectiveness dimensions consisting of service quality and systems quality are significantly correlated with user satisfaction. In addition, the study also showed that of the three predictors investigated, only attitudes towards the portal were found to be significantly correlated with IS effectiveness dimensions. Research limitations/implications: The perceptual self-report measures rather than objectives measures adopted in this study contribute to bias, and a cross-sectional design for data collection only provides data at one point in time. Practical implications: The instrument developed in the study could assist the authorities concerned in evaluating the effectiveness of the portal. Originality/value: Despite the growing interest in universities adopting portal technologies, studies addressing the issues of successes and effectiveness are still very limited. Hence, this study provides an impetus for evaluating campus portals from the users perspective. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)