We use PracticePalMusic, which has now changed its name to InvolveEducation. I was involved in assessing it and selecting it. I now regret not carrying out a more thorough assessment of its capabilities, and the alternatives.
It's OK, but maybe the best of a bad bunch, or a big fish in a small pond. Colleagues at other schools have recommended something called MyMusicStaff, and some also report dissatisfaction with PracticePal. I daresay the problem is that the market for this sort of software is relatively small, and probably not that lucrative.
PracticePal suffers from a few issues:
It isn't stable, or at least it wasn't at the beginning. In the very first term we were using it, we had a nightmare of failures, to the extent that they waived the fee for that term, and I believe all their other customers. I don't know if the system is an more sound now, but I am never 100% sure things are going to work.
Changes of interface which disrupt users' experience. Those changes sometimes happen without much warning, if any. Quite often those changes might make sense to PracticePal, but not to the actual users. And when one has only just established a "workflow" with a particular piece of software, it's massively disruptive to have to change. As one of my colleagues said - "why do they have to keep changing things?"
A fairly rapid turnover in customer support staff (I think it's actually one person, who has now just changed). We were partly persuaded to buy it because at the time the CSR was an old pupil of the school, and did an excellent in person demonstration.
An unwillingness to believe customers. I have now taken to videoing (as in screen recording) problems, in order to "prove" to PracticePal that something has happened, as they often seem to doubt my word.
PracticePalMusic (now InvolveEducation) seem to be scaling up their application to involve Sport, Drama and other "out of class" activities. I am not at all confident that they are capable, from a software development perspective, of rapid change that won't be disruptive to the users.
If it's possible to sign up for it as a trial, and you are prepared to back out, I would say try it. The problem is, of course, that by the time you've given it enough of a trial, it's often too late to back out. I am investigating alternatives, but I doubt I will be able to persuade the school and my Head of Music to change - "better the devil you know" and all that.
Hope this helps
