Parent mail type services.

[maniac]

I'm currently looking into mailing services for the academy which will allow us to bulk e-mail, text message parents etc. and I want to find a few so I can evaluate them side by side before we chose who to go with.

 

The only problem is the only one I've found so far is parentmail, but I'm sure there are others that exist that I've seen mentioned on here in the past, so can anyone tell me the names of other companies which offer this service - I've not managed to find any by googling, but I'm probably using the wrong search terms to find them!

 

cheers,

 

Mike.

[steve]

Depends which MIS you use.

 

For SIMS capita have just launched their own - intouch. Others for SIMS include schoolcomms and callparents.

[glennda]

I believe Parent pay have just launched there new communication center which i think does all the stuff you are talking about - you could then move to online payments in one fell swoop?

 

toby

[elsiegee40]

A few to consider:

 

ParentMail no direct links to SIMS but inital population from SIMS data

 

Teachers2Parents

 

KeepKidsSafe has links to SIMS

 

HomeContact

 

 

there are more!

[john]

I looked at ParentMail, Teachers2Parents, Serco's partnership do-dad thingy, and Groupcall's and went for ParentMail as it was best value for money, seemed to offer far more flexibility for the admin staff and just a general all round better package.

[CSNM-Carl]

I know the guys behind E-mail and Text Messaging for Schools and Organisations - Free Trial and they really know what they are doing!

[nadeem]

we use edutxt - txt messaging for education - I can recommend them.

[sister_annex]

I think we also use Teachers 2 Parents

[Sylv3r]

We use Schoolcomms - no problem with them, but I may investigate alternatives when our annual contract is up to see if there any cheaper alternatives available.

[Ben_Stanton]

We use clarion call here and are very happy with it. It updates from our MIS (PASS) each night, does emailing, texting and voicemail boxes.

 

We did have parentmail for a year but had a few problems/issues with both them as a company and their system. The main gripe, it was in no way effective as an emergency contact system (snow days last year).

 

Ben

[john]

We use clarion call here and are very happy with it. It updates from our MIS (PASS) each night, does emailing, texting and voicemail boxes.

 

We did have parentmail for a year but had a few problems/issues with both them as a company and their system. The main gripe, it was in no way effective as an emergency contact system (snow days last year).

 

Ben

 

Thats interesting Ben they marketed it as great last year in the snow chaos with no issues or anything and they were 100% successful with all messages, no delays etc, I hope we don't have epic weather again!

[Nuttyprof]

first poster here ... but i have to start somewhere

 

We use ParentMail and have nothing but good things to say about them. (Our messages worked brilliantly last year through the snow?) The other thing I must say (as a techie) is that it's great to always be able to speak with a human being there ... I notice one or two of the others now do support by email, and are not keen to talk to schools when there is a problem.

 

There's also one or two innacuracies in this thread about the ParentMail SIMS link i.e. It isn't just on setup, you can run it as often as you like to sync data.

 

We're also looking at ParentPay for payments but ParentMail have just added a payment module called +Pay (... I think) which we've seen a demo of and it looks brilliant.

 

The SLT team meet to discuss both options amongst other things in a couple of weeks so we'll see what happens.

 

Amanda.

[backoffice]

Amanda,

 

Thats interesting - I hadn't made the connection between communications and taking payments until you mentioned the two together.

 

I was suprised when I delved a bit deeper that it looks like at least 10% - 15% of our messages relate to something that needs payment from parents and that excludes all the dinner money chasing we have to do.

 

Any idea how Parent Pay with comms stacks up vs ParentMail with Payments?

[Nuttyprof]

Amanda,

 

Thats interesting - I hadn't made the connection between communications and taking payments until you mentioned the two together.

 

I was suprised when I delved a bit deeper that it looks like at least 10% - 15% of our messages relate to something that needs payment from parents and that excludes all the dinner money chasing we have to do.

 

Any idea how Parent Pay with comms stacks up vs ParentMail with Payments?

 

Backoffice, I've now seen both systems properly so can give you my thoughts.

 

1. ParentPay has cashless catering links setup whilst +Pay doesn't yet (but I've spoken to the Director responsible for +Pay (Mr Temple) and he has given me a list of the first 6 cashless companies +Pay will integrate with and confirmed the links will be live by January. They are already coding the API's)

2. ParentPay's new comms suite (Parents Communications Centre) seems disconnected/separate from the payment system. It's not integrated into the payment items/events which means you have to remember to generate manual messages at the right time.

3. +Pay integrates messaging (email/sms) into the payment items i.e. as you create each payment item/event, you add in the relevant parents and setup the messaging type/date. It's all one process so that once the payment item is setup the messages go out automatically at the right time and only to the specific parents (not to everyone).

 

Looking at the parent side there seems to be a big difference.

 

1. ParentPay - parents see all items that could be paid for (even those not relevant) and when the parent pays for an item, it still remains visible i.e. it could be paid for twice!

2. +Pay - parents only see the payment items that are directly relevant to them and when they pay for the item it vanishes from the display (moves to history).

 

From a purely aesthetic perspective +Pay wins hands down and it has IMHO a much nicer/easier user experience. I think since ParentPay has been around for some considerable time it will undoubtedly have bells and whistles that +Pay doesn't have, but for us we're already using ParentMail and so +Pay is the obvious choice.

 

Hope that helps and isn't too biased!

 

Amanda.

[john]

1. ParentPay - parents see all items that could be paid for (even those not relevant) and when the parent pays for an item, it still remains visible i.e. it could be paid for twice!

 

Sorry to be slightly OT here but people will no doubt spot it on this thread, that statement is incorrect. IF your services are setup correctly then if its a pay once, EG a one off payment for a trip, a hoodie etc then once paid its gone and vanished from your account. They will remain on if they are repayable (as you need to use them more than one hence the repayable part of the name).

 

Parents also don't see every item, you have to assign Services to students / staff, you can globally assign items to everyone by one click but its only a couple more to assign to a tutor group or year group or house so it can all be done very quickly so just the correct student(s) can see what they need to.

 

Services « ParentPay Support some of the PDFs and videos on that page should help you set that up better as I think that could be why you feel its not suitable for your needs.

 

(I am no way connected to ParentPay just I work with our Finance Office to move us onto all electronic or as close as we can get thus am fairly up on these things from assisting them)

[wesleyw]

There's schoolpost too decent price as well compared to some we've looked at!

[Nuttyprof]

Thanks for the corrections John and apologies for providing incorrect information. We don't use ParentPay and we have only seen a demo (which clearly was not as good as it should have been!)

 

As I said in my post, the decision for us has been made to go with +Pay and this is largely because we already use ParentMail (although the product is also much nicer to use IMHO - intuitive, user-friendly etc for the office).

 

I should also have provided some cost comparisons in my last post for a more complete answer so I've shown these below;

 

Transaction charges

 

Consumer credit cards: ParentPay 1.55% + 10p per transaction (+Pay 1.65% with no extra transaction charge)

Consumer Debit Cards: ParentPay 32 pence per transaction (+Pay 32 pence per transaction)

 

ParentPay offer Paypoint where parents can top up cards using cash in post offices (+Pay doesn't offer this yet as they think it it too expensive (rates) for schools, but will add it if there is demand (Mr Temple comment again)

+Pay offer PAYPAL for parents (rate 1.9% + 20 per transaction) - ParentPay don't offer PAYPAL.

 

There's not a lot between the two in terms of 'per transaction/ costs, but +Pay will be marginally cheaper for credit card payments.

 

With regard to subscription costs

 

+Pay can only be used with ParentMail (it's embedded into the product).

 

For a typical school of say 300 students, ParentMail +Pay will cost £698 per annum

For the same school using ParentPay, it will cost £700 in year 1, and then £500 in year 2 onwards (based on £1 per pupil, £200 annual license and £200 setup in 1st year).

 

For a larger school

 

1000 pupils --> +Pay £1398 per annum / ParentPay - £1400 in Year 1, followed by £1200 per annum thereafter.

 

2000 pupils --> +Pay £1998 per annum / ParentPay - £2200 in Yeal 1, followed by £2000 per annum thereafter.

 

These are published list prices but I'm sure discounts for group purchases will make the prices above cheaper. Looks to me that +Pay (being the newcomer) have set their prices to be competitive with ParentPay but that may be the cynic in me ;-) When you take into account +Pay slightly lower transaction charges for credit cards ... there's nothing between them as far as price goes.

 

Hope this info is useful.

 

Amanda.

Edited September 25, 2010 by Nuttyprof

[marshharrier]

Amanda,

 

We also recently ordered +Pay having studied the options.

 

It was a strange choice of ..... "whether to choose the established 'comms' player who are moving into the 'payments' space, or the established 'payments' player moving into the 'comms' space?

 

Both of these products (in my opinion) play to their historical strengths at the moment and it will be interesting to see how things develop.

 

For us, the fact that we already had 90% of our parents registered with ParentMail made the decision an easy one in the end, although I too much preferred the user interface in +Pay.

 

I'll be running a full analysis of our use of +Pay as it's a new product and I thought it would be useful for others here. Early days yet of course but I'm happy to answer questions from anyone if I can help.

 

H.

[john]

We decided for now to stick with the two sepearate systems so we use ParentMail for the texting / emailing and ParentPay for payments. We will review this decision in 12 months time and see where we go based on number of transactions with ParentMail on the card types to see what 12 months payments have done for us

[andymacfarlane]

Hi All

 

We use Tucasi's Schools Cash Office, it is a great product. I am in a school in Portsmouth and I set it up when I started here prior to that I supported 3 Hampshire schools and used it there.

 

Tucasi Home

 

It is a great product it's a total EPOS style back office system that deals with all income in schools, they also have an Internet banking module. The advantage of this system is that the admin team sell uniform or process trips or dinners for the pupils in school, then the parents can log in and settle their account over the internet. It can be used to manage lettings as well they have a lettings module.

 

Haha sorry I sound like a Tucasi salesman, I'm not I just think it's a great product and all the office staff say it's revolutionised the handling of our Income at school and has saved so much time.

 

The other advantages are the costs it's about half the cost of the others out there, the Credit Card Charge is 1.5% +10p and Debit Cards are 29.5p. The annual service and maintenance charge it £585 for secondary of £360 for primary. I think if you already have Tucasi it's £227 to add the internet payments module.

 

I know a lot of Authorities have set up links to their finance systems, Hampshire County has done it. So the internet Payments module, updates directly to the counties SAP system as well as the school own Back office system. This is a huge time saver as the transactions don’t need to be entered in twice.

 

I hope this helps, cheers, Andy

[zag]

I'm just looking at moving from Tucassi to Parentpay or Pay+. I'm sick of the failed local syncs with tucassi.

 

Does anyone know which one is better? Parentpay or Pay+? I just want a simple web interface that parents can pay for dinner money or school trips on.

[john]

I'm just looking at moving from Tucassi to Parentpay or Pay+. I'm sick of the failed local syncs with tucassi.

 

Does anyone know which one is better? Parentpay or Pay+? I just want a simple web interface that parents can pay for dinner money or school trips on.

 

Have you read the ParentPay threads on here, if not I suggest a quick search and read as well as a google about ParentPay problems.

 

Needless to say I would say Pay+ as I've yet to hear a bad thing about them in my research so far, they are fairly new to the payment system, about a year or so but they have been around longer as a firm with them being ParentMail Support is about 100000x better than ParentPays as well so will certainly not complain about the support I have had on the texting side so yes well worth a look at them