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ChildPilot Reviews
Pros
This has been one of the best decisions I have made in the process of opening my child own child care center. I can't imagine how people do it without this amazing product and support team.
Staff love the ability to share the day with families, while also helping each other be notified of daily activities.
Our families love having the ability to follow along with what their children are doing during the day.
Again, I love this program so far. The best thing about it is the amazing customer service and the willingness to make the program work for me.
Cons
Bank fees are charged, deposited into First School account and then drafted from the account.
I am having trouble generating reports with the necessary information.
When implementing a program software I was worried about having families and staff all on the same page.
Messaging on the platform is lacking badly. Lately we've had families say they cannot connect or keep receiving a spinning wheel when attempting to check-in/out their children.
Showing Most Helpful
Showing 25 of 59 reviews
"The Best Software for the Best Price"
Overall: It has been a wonderful experience! I'm not always the most savvy computer user and I had no problems using this software.
Pros: We are a Lutheran preschool and the price fit into our budget nicely. It's also user friendly for both our preschool staff and parents. The customer service is phenomenal! Within a few minutes of an email that we are having an issue or we forgot how to do something, we will get a call or email back within seconds or minutes. This program has saved us so much time when it comes to billing and payroll! It was a Godsend during the quarantine, our preschool was closed and the teachers were able to post their lessons and make videos for the kids so they could continue learning while at home.
Cons: We wish parents could upload photos so that teachers could see them in their messages.
Vendor Response
"Platform recognizes the importance and uniqueness of our business"
Pros: [sensitive content hidden] has been instrumental in the deployment and training of our team since last winter. She continues to be our go to person when questions, issues, or new requests arise. She asks detailed questions so that the solutions CP offers are addressing our needs. She is very good at balancing our business needs and advocating for us with CPs developers. When there is a problem, she is quick to respond and keeps us apprised as solutions are developed. The platform has been very well received by our families and our staff. We like being able to share photos and information with families and especially like how many of our tasks we can now manage on a tablet versus on paper.
Cons: The platform is customizable although there are times when what we request and what is provided doesn't fully align. My impression is that the developers give us what they think will work best instead of what is requested. This has happened with some features as well as some reporting. Part of this is ensuring that we are all speaking the same language which, when technology is involved, is difficult.
"Childpilot in a Daycare setting "
Pros: The convenience is great for the number of kids we handle daily. We are able to keep our parents updated all day with message and picture. There is no need to call parents on the land line all the time to check in.
Cons: More often than not there is a glitch with checking children in and out or messages sending. I will say the technical support team is amazing and ALWAYS fixes our problem and is quick and polite.
"Finally found something that works for us!"
Overall: Awesome experience! Would highly recommend!
Pros: Child Pilot is awesome. After many years of Procare, we found that Child Pilot had more to offer and was much more simple to use especially for our smaller after school/summer camp. We have one person assigned to our account which has been awesome when we have specific questions, I am no longer waiting on the phone for 1 hour or longer to ask a simple question. They have a lot of training capabilities and are very friendly.
Cons: I would love to be able to customize the child information form on my own without having to contact Child Pilot for every little change, as well as the inquiry form, but it's not something that drastically effects the overall running of our program.
"We love child pilot"
Overall: We are so happy with the customer service provided by [sensitive content hidden] who has been our main contact for child pilot. It has made my job as the Director so much easier and me effective with saving me time.
Pros: I love the direct customer support. Whenever i have any questions or issues someone is available right away or get right back to me. Keeping all the children's files and staff files organized and updated. Communicating with parents is so much easier and billing also.
Cons: I wish there was a way for parents and staff to communicate directly while still being monitored and approved by admin. We would also like to have a way to set timing for each classroom individually for face to name instead of just a set time for all the classrooms. We also wish there was a way to link security doors to child pilot so parents can use their same code to get into our building and check their child in and out.
"ChildPilot Review"
Pros: [sensitive content hidden] is amazing to work with. She has helped us grow our program and personalize ChildPilot to our program needs.
Cons: There isn't anything major that I would change about ChildPilot. Any little ideas or tweeks, I send them over to [sensitive content hidden]. There is already a solution, she helped me find a work around to the answer I am looking for, or she sends it on to the engineers.
"Payments made easy"
Overall: Our experience has been very good and our Service Rep is excellent! She always tries to find an answer to our questions and responds quickly!
Pros: The online payment system is easy to use for parents and for Administrators.
Cons: Email. It is disappointing that parents cannot respond directly to an email sent through Child Pilot.
"Well Worth the Time and Money"
Overall: This has been one of the best decisions I have made in the process of opening my child own child care center. I can't imagine how people do it without this amazing product and support team.
Pros: I love how helpful the ChildPilot team has been for us. We are a brand new childcare center and they have been so supportive guiding us through the way (even through TURMOIL) :) Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez!!
Cons: I wish there was a way for parents to schedule a tour on the ChildPilot app. I am currently having to outsource to another app to allow parents to schedule a tour and then redirect them to the ChildPilot inquiry form.
"First School "
Overall: Very happy with ChildPilot! It is very user friendly and relatively affordable. We miss panic button - only.
Pros: Very compact and overall useful; it saves time and money! Very user friendly!
Cons: Bank fees are charged, deposited into First School account and then drafted from the account. We would love to see the change: we get our tuition and fees go straight to the bank/childpilot!
"Easy to use and meets our needs"
Overall: Even when we've had issues, the tech support team is highly responsive and the platform has grown with us as our needs have changed.
Pros: The cost! We were beta testers, so we are locked in at $75 per month for life. Can't beat that!
Cons: We still struggle with finding the best way to do a Mass Enrollment at a particular time for over 100 people at a given time without running into some issues.
"Great update for our school."
Overall: Great, so far!
Pros: Parents get real time updates about what is going on in their child's day. Parents really enjoy receiving pictures and the ease of communicating. We like the easy billing and the access to daily reports for all children. I like that when I need help with anything at all, customer service is available and seems like she is truly willing to help! I also love that when we make suggestions for the product, they make it happen for us and its totally customizable.
Cons: There seem to be some glitches in the software from time to time but they have been improving!
Vendor Response
"Using CP at our school"
Overall: We do plan to continue our use with ChildPilot for the future. It would be helpful to have a few other options added to help with ease of use in the future for both admin and teachers.
Pros: ChildPilot has streamlined our entire process with how we not only communicate with parents but how they pay tuition as well. It has helped us register new students and keep documents electronically organized (essentially helping us go paperless). It is convenient to have access to reports for parent tax purposes and also if we need any reports on student/family info as well as billing. Having a representative to call with questions has been helpful, although this representative seems to not be as available as in past years, often having a different person return calls who doesn't know us.
Cons: It seems to have glitches when we need it to work the most. Two years in a row, our registration process has been affected and unable to fix the issue. I wish there were more options to set up "group messages" instead of having to select the recipient every time. It does seem that some aspects should be streamlined and I have to change settings or a few options in different places. It's tough to toggle back and forth between check-in/attendance. I would also like the option to send messages/pictures to classes that are not meeting on a specific day as well.
"Perfect for Childcare"
Overall: I took over a childcare center had had no administrative system in place and poor means of communication with families. This system changed all of that and I feel like we haven't even used it to its full potential
Pros: Startup was so simple and fast! This product easy to use and straightforward forward, not full of features that I don't need. I love how customizable it is I can select what features I want/need and can disable what I don't need. It is well rounded and it's perfect from an administrative aspect as well as a great classroom tool. My staff and families LOVE this app. To top off how great the program is itself is the customer service is amazing. Our reps is an amazing resource. If I have any questions or concerns she/he is very responsive, informative and helpful.
Cons: The only thing I would change is the lesson planning section. I think its great for a program that may not have a system. But we have an established( specific ) way we create lesson plans and have a hard time transitioning it to the app.
Vendor Response
"ChildPilot"
Overall: Again, I love this program so far. The best thing about it is the amazing customer service and the willingness to make the program work for me! I was on the phone today and the technician said their goal was to make this as easy on me as possible. I love that mentality!
Pros: The reason I chose ChildPilot and the reason I am excited about implementing it is the ability to have all of our records in one place. No longer do we need accounting software, employee time cards, rosters, credit card processing equipment, etc. Every part of our business can be accessed from our ChildPilot program. In addition, our parents are thrilled to be able to access their account at any time and pay their tuition at any time.
Cons: We are still working out the 'kinks" and customizing the software to meet our specific needs, but I was aware that this would be a process when I signed up. The thing I like the least is the process the parents have to go through in order to get on the waiting list. I think there is some confusion for them. Many parents think that just setting up an account is enough to register their child.
Vendor Response
"Rick’s Opinion "
Overall: It has been very good. I was very apprehensive at first. I was afraid of messing up stuff until I started and how user friendly it is
Pros: I like how it is so easy to use and to do reports. Having the parent portal it is so easy to send out updates to parents and to keep them informed of important things!
Cons: How people can go on e website and just add their names on the waiting list and haven’t been into the center to even tour!
Vendor Response
"LOVE ChildPilot"
Overall: Our overall experience has been amazing! From the staff at ChildPilot to the amount of time that has been shaved off of my workload due to this software. It is user friendly and easy to use for someone who has not had a lot of training.
Pros: I love that ChildPilot is super easy to use for administration as well as the staff and parent users. I really like that if a child is not checked out, they are still able to check in the next morning without having to find a director to correct the missing punch. The dashboard makes it super easy to see how many kids vs teachers we have in a classroom. I like that the ChildPilot representatives are very responsive when I have emailed them. I usually receive an email or phone call within 15 minutes.
Cons: I have not found anything that I do not like about this software. Anytime we have had an issue, it has been corrected very quickly.
Vendor Response
"Made running my daycare much easier! "
Pros: ChildPilot took the time to listen to my daycare needs and customized their product for us! Amazing customer service! Parents love it!!!
Cons: Would love to be able to see more then the day of children scheduled. Would be nice to click on a calendar day and see who is scheduled. I have a lot of part time children and sometimes parent need to add a day, right now I have to write down who is scheduled and check the write list.
"Fantastic Program"
Overall: Our parents love this program. It gives them access to their children all day and is very comforting to know in real time how their child is doing.
Pros: I love this software for communication with families. We no longer have to worry about a paper trail. It is so easy to communicate with staff and parents
Cons: It can be glitchy at times, causing us to redownload frequently. Works better on our phones than our tablets, which can be an issue with State.
Vendor Response
"We Love Childpilot - Their product, service and pricing it outstanding."
Overall: Was up and running very quickly. Wonderful support through [SENSITIVE CONTENT]! (and others) Childpilot has addressed every issue or need we had and makes it happen very quickly. We love the automatic payment system for parents. We love the ability to see what is happening at the center even when we are at home.
Pros: Easy to use. Direct access to families! Features it provides such as name-to-face, daily reports, assessments, etc.
Cons: We would love a component of curriculum that automatically gives teachers lesson plans and then they can share it to the parents from the app. (like tadpoles offers Teaching Strategies/Creative Curriculum) Would love creative curriculum or something similar to be an added part of the service.
"Love ChildPilot"
Pros: We are loving ChildPilot! My organization (Jewish Kids Groups) has been using it for almost a year now. We run multiple afterschool programs. The majority of the features are very user-friendly and work for our needs as an afterschool organization. The check-in system for students and the clock-in system for teachers has been extremely useful for us. The billing/tuition system is straight forward and has enhanced the way we run our organization. The customer service team has been very helpful; when we have a challenge, they are quick to respond and deal with the issue.
Cons: The main challenge we've seen is that the QuickBooks integration did not work well for us. We attempted to integrate ChildPilot into Quickbooks, and it was a pretty messy process. In the end, we decided not to integrate. It's not the end of the world, but it would be great if we could have a seamless integration between the two systems.
"Quality service "
Overall: Great experience and happy we made the switch.
Pros: What I enjoyed the most is having a representative assigned to us. With any issue she was the person we communicated with and we didn’t have to repeat the conversation.
Cons: The fees for processing credit cards are deposited into your account and then at the end of the month the fees are transferred back to child pilot
"Feedback"
Overall: It was great in the beginning with Engineering access for features or issues. Over the last few years, that has gone away and our initial technical issues still remain. These type of disruptions have us considering a future platform shift.
Pros: Ease of use and self service with family tax document preparation.
Cons: Check-in/out with teachers has been a problem since day 1. Messaging on the platform is lacking badly. Lately we've had families say they cannot connect or keep receiving a spinning wheel when attempting to check-in/out their children.
Vendor Response
"ChildPilot is an incredible software"
Overall: After using ChildPilot for two years, it is clear that ChildPilot is an incredible childcare management software. The functionality of the software is as solid as the more expensive choices. As an office manager of a preschool, it does everything that I need it to do. Utilizing the web based interface, it is very friendly for our staff and parents. The added functionality of direct messaging from the software allows us to communicate with our families. A nice feature that our families love is providing the flexibility to make tuition payments online. My experience with the ChildPilot customer service has been impeccable with amazing response times. I also appreciate their willingness to listen to our needs to customize the software or add features. I highly recommend this software.
Pros: User friendly and great customer service
Cons: I need to explore all of the features this software offers.
Vendor Response
"Excellent "
Overall: I have a Good overall experience with the app
Pros: The ability to breakdown updates and for parents to check in their children and upload documents
Cons: I would say that i don’t like the Glitching
"ChildPilot is a time saver and paper reducer!"
Overall: ChildPilot has made our days more efficient and streamlined. Contacting customer service is always a pleasant experience with answers received in the same day. I would highly recommend this software for your business.
Pros: Having each child's information right at the fingertips of our teachers and staff is critical. We no longer have to go through an actual paper file to find the answers we need. All information is accessible right on our mobile phones through the ChildPilot app.
Cons: New features that are introduced each month should be given with complete instructions as to how to use and find these features on the app or desktop version. All new features should be automatically updated to the app and desktop version.