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Accelerate your child care business with brightwheel - the #1 platform for early education. Brightwheel is a management software solution for childcares, daycares, and preschools specifically designed to streamline tasks tackled by directors/administrators and teachers at mid- to high-capacity centers. In addition to saving hours per week of effort for each staff member, 100% of parents are more satisfied with their school experience once brightwheel is implemented.
Provider
brightwheel
Located In
United States
Foundation
2014
Open API
Unverified
Deployment
Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Mobile Apps
Android, iOS
Training
Documentation, Live Online, Videos, Webinars
Support
Knowledge Base, FAQs/Forum, Phone Support, Email/Help Desk, Chat
Early care and education providers who manage childcare centers with 25+ students: preschool, daycare, after school, Sunday school, camps, etc. Brightwheel also works for parents and guardians.
Content Source: brightwheel
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Reviewers highlight Brightwheel's efficiency in daily communication with parents, noting that it simplifies interactions without taking time away from children. They find the messaging features particularly useful, allowing for quick updates and notifications directly to parents' smartphones. The parent portal and notifications ensure that parents are always informed about their child's day, fostering a sense of connection and involvement in their child's education and care.
Users enjoy Brightwheel's photo and video sharing capabilities, appreciating the ability to upload and download images and videos that keep them connected to their child's day. They value the ease of sharing special moments and activities, which helps parents feel more involved. However, some users experience issues with photo and video uploads, citing slow upload times and occasional glitches that hinder the seamless sharing of media. Additionally, limitations on message attachments and the inability to upload videos from the phone's library are noted as areas needing improvement.
Pros
My experience with this platform is great. I have noticed a notable improvement in the efficiency and organization of my daily tasks.
It was absolutely the best switch our organization has made. From the customer service, training to the use of the app it has been wonderful.
I been using this for quite sometimes already, and im loving it. Not only useful to my children for for my upcoming grand children.
Parents love the communication and ability to pay online. Great customer service and helpful resources Priced reasonably.
Cons
I cannot speak for the experience of the administrator as I only used this software as a user. However, overall I thought it useless.
I don't often get notifications for 15 - 20 minutes later. This can cause unnecessary stress when worried about whether they got picked up on time or if they need assistance.
The only thing that was sometimes frustrating was the messaging feature-sometimes we did not get an email notifying us there was a message and it would take a while to see and respond to it.
File upload times are excessive. My tech director and early childhood director passed the app off to me (assistant principal) because they were sick of dealing with the horrid support team.
Most Recent Video User Review for brightwheel
SEE ALL VIDEO REVIEWS
brightwheel Review: We Love You Brightwheel.
Angela B.
"Perfect for communication, logging activities, and billing"
Overall: Being able to message parents back and forth is so nice now that our staff doesn't have to use their personal phone to text. With COVID rising and possible winter weather arriving soon, the fact that we can send out an alert if we need to close is crucial! It sends a text message as well as the message in the app. Also, they are constantly adding new features and making updates using feedback from users. They are always friendly and helpful!
Pros: I love that it keeps us (mostly) paperless! All activity is logged so we have no need for paper daily sheets. We can easily message our parents individually AND send out messages to the whole school.
Cons: The billing feature isn't quite where we need it do be, but they have already fixed it and we are just waiting to be updated to the new platform.
"Pros and Cons"
Overall: Overall, it's easy to use and has a very organized structure so you can see where things should be or how they should go, even if you haven't done that specific thing yet.
Pros: I really like that you can save lesson plans from one year to the next. It makes it easier to see where the kids should typically be at at certain times of the year. The communication with the parents is really great too. It's easy to take pictures and attach them to lesson plans and send them to the parents. Messaging can be sent either from the lesson plan, from a photo or video, or from the messaging section, which is nice. And you can send to entire classrooms for announcements like our recent Halloween party.
Cons: The assessment portion is difficult. It doesn't connect to the lesson plans, so when you take a picture of a lesson plan that has developmental goals/milestones on it, it doesn't automatically upload that photo and lesson plan to that kids' portfolio. And you have to input everything separately. Each kid, each photo, each goal, each section, each description (because again, it doesn't pull from the lesson plan descriptions, even when the photo is from a lesson plan that's in Brightwheel), it's just really time consuming. It's not clear how you make a template, or if that would even be helpful. And there aren't any example templates or template tutorials so you can see what that would look like. You can't send them to the parents either. Which kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.
"Great parent interface and easy for everyone to navigate, parents and teachers!"
Overall: I was very happy with the parent interaction and the easy with the billing. If we were looking to increase our classroom visibility i.e. updates, photos etc. I would have continued to use this application.
Pros: Brightwheel is a very parent-oriented app. It is extremely user friendly. It has extensive capabilities when it comes to daily reports and updates for the child. It allows parents easy access to staff and to have a in real time picture of the child's day. From a teacher standpoint it is easy and intuitive to use. On the tuition side of things, parents have access to all of their tuition payment records and can schedule payments independently of the school. Posting payments is simple for the administration.
Cons: I would be very helpful if the data could be used for other purposes and easily adapted to such things a roll call list, classroom rosters. emergency lists etc. While you can export the data to excel spread sheets it would be very helpful if they provided pre-configured options for these necessary reports.
"A bright spot in Child Care! "
Overall: Overall my experience with brightwheel has been great. We have used it at 2 separate facilities and it works very well for communication with the providers and keeping the parent informed of any and all aspects of their children's daily routine while at the facility.
Pros: I like that brightwheel does a great job of allowing the staff at my child's preschool to keep me as a parent updated on what is going on throughout the day in many different aspects.
Cons: While not a huge problem, I would like the chat functionality within the App to send push notifications when my wife responds to messages as well. As it is, I will receive a notification if someone from my child's preschool sends a message, but I will not get a notification that my wife sent one as well in response. This would be helpful so that I would know without having to open the App and navigate to find the exact conversation, just to realize that a question has been answered or situation handled.
"Overall loved Brightwheel as a parent and staff member"
Overall: I enjoyed our time with Brightwheel, but we found a better product. I loved it on the parent side of things and even as a staff member, however the management side of things was not user friendly.
Pros: Bright colors and overall easy to use. It was very appealing to families and provided that connection to their child.
Cons: Didn't like the reports and the format in how they looked. Also had some issues with the time clocking in and out feature and reports from that.
