The four pricing models

1. Per child per month

Common among all-in-one platforms. Publicly reported entry points are often in the mid-single-digit dollars per child per month for basic tiers, rising with features. It feels small and scales with success — 120 children at $8/month is $11,520 a year. Model it at the enrollment you expect, not the one you have.

2. Per center (site) per month

Common in the UK and for enterprise platforms: a flat fee per setting, tiered by feature bundle. Good for large settings; expensive for small ones. Ask what counts as a ‘site’ if you have several rooms or buildings.

3. Per child per month, everything included

The same unit as model one, without the tiers. Oyku works this way: under $10 per child per month, every feature included, with volume pricing that brings most centers near $5. At 120 children that's roughly $600–1,200 a month for the entire parent-facing experience — feed, approvals, consent, Spark, take-home activities and the printed yearbook.

4. Free, with paid tiers

Common in K-12 (ClassDojo, Seesaw). ‘Free’ usually means teacher-led adoption with school-level controls, approval and reporting in paid tiers — or a business model built on something other than your subscription. Read what free excludes.

What's typically gated behind higher tiers

  • Video sharing, or video beyond a short length
  • Full-resolution photo download for parents
  • Admin approval workflows and audit logs
  • Multi-site dashboards
  • Curriculum or milestone reporting
  • Integrations and data export
  • Priority support

The pattern to notice: the features that protect children (approval, consent, audit) and the features parents love (video, downloads) are the ones most often upsold. Ask directly.

A pile of colourful plastic building bricks
Pricing tiers are bricks. Count how many you need before comparing the price of one.

Hidden costs to model

  1. 1Teacher time. A tool that needs 40 minutes of daily-sheet writing per room costs far more in wages than any subscription. Time the capture flow.
  2. 2Onboarding. Setup fees, training days, data migration. Ask if they're included.
  3. 3The second tool. If parents don't open the all-in-one app, you'll add a communication layer anyway. Budget the stack, not the platform.
  4. 4Contract length. Annual auto-renewals and multi-year terms. Can you leave with your data?
  5. 5Growth. Per-child-per-month pricing quietly rises with every enrollment win.

A simple comparison method

  1. 1Write down the enrollment you expect in 24 months.
  2. 2For each vendor, compute the annual cost at that number for the tier that includes approval, video and consent controls.
  3. 3Add onboarding and any second tool you'll realistically need.
  4. 4Divide by expected enrollment. You now have a true cost per child per month for every option.
  5. 5Then ask the only question that matters: which one will parents open?
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