PaulHughes

@drsox ... I'm sorry you are not happy with service provided by ParentMail. I'm the MD and I'd very much like to help if I can. Please email me using [email protected]

Hi Chris, Are you using the latest version of ParentMail (PMX) or an earlier version (PM2)? As the MD of ParentMail I can tell you there is a world of difference between the two products. We have decided not to spend money on BETT for the last two years and instead to use that money for software development where we believe it will ultimately benefit users. With regard to hearing complaints about ParentMail when we're not present to defend ourselves I can only ask you to keep an open mind and judge us on your own experience. With regard to support generally we have invested in new telephone systems, online guided tutorials (which don't exist in any competitor software), training videos, and very shortly you'll see LiveChat introduced (PMX schools only). In short we're investing heavily in improving support for schools and parents and we're confident schools are noticing significant improvements already which will continue to get better. PM2 will be completely withdrawn from service by the middle of 2016 and all schools moved across to PMX (no cost for schools and no re-registration for parents). PMX provides many enhancements including automatic overnight synchronisation with SIMS (not previously available on earlier ParentMail platforms), a free APP for parents which allows email/sms/online payments/parents evening booking/form & surveys and online meeting booking. (No competitor provides all this in single APP format). The new payment platform includes debit/credit cards, PayPal (only school system in the UK!), PayPoint & PayCash (shortly Amex also) and now provides more payment options than any other product on the market (it's also the only platform offering PayCash the latest offering from PayPoint). I really hope you'll stick with us and if want a local representative to pop in and visit you for a face to face meeting to discuss any issues or concerns, we can arrange this for you. If you need any assistance (or support) at any time you can reach me personally using [email protected] and I will ensure you get it. Finally, if you want real testimonials from schools using PMX I can give you dozens and you can read case studies if you are interested here --> https://www.parentmail.co.uk/blog/category/school-case-studies/ BW Paul.

Hi Rob, I'm the MD at ParentMail. Please email me at [email protected] and I will sort this for you.

I am sorry to hear you were not happy. PMX is a first generation product and like all first generation products will benefit from a few updates. (It has already had 6 in the first 6 months and the things you've mentioned have already been attended to). However I'm happy to hear that you are enjoying SchoolComms ... in my experience they are a good company run by some nice people. Best of luck going forward. Paul.

@sjb - Thanks for the post. Can I quickly correct this comment. Parents only need to login ONCE. There is a 'keep me logged in' feature just like that found on Facebook which means parents click on the link in their emails and go directly to the message. (Any submissions back the schools (forms for example) require the parent to input their password so protecting against any security issue when using 'keep me logged in'). It's widely recognised now that ordinary email is not secure and that sending information (especially if it's personal) is not good practice. Now that ParentMail enables parental response (form submission/trip consent etc) it is NECESSARY that parents are logged in when they reply. This also provides 100% guaranteed delivery receipts and means parents don't have to trawl through junk mail in their personal email accounts to find school messages.

I'm sure you'll appreciate that I cannot enter discussions about individual school experiences or discuss the technical setup of our system in a public forum. Please email me [email protected] if I can help.

@jcollings. I'm not sure what more I can say? Clearly if it were down to me/us, there would never be system or environment problems & you can be sure that if the timing of these things was down to us, we wouldn't pick September! In the meantime I don't have a magic wand and can only work with our providers to correct the problem as fast as we can. We will do all we can to help including providing information schools can use to explain the situation to parents. Best, Paul --------------

Folks ... many apologies! We will be issuing a statement to schools/parents for the recent problems in the next day or so we will provide this as soon as the situation is fully resolved. The root cause of the problem is with the hosting provider who had a fibre outage to their SAN about 3 weeks ago. They told us the problem had been fixed as soon as it happened but we've had to commission further diagnostic work to prove that the problem remains with them! The quality of this connection has degraded which means that our database is getting timeouts (connection errors) and this is what is producing the slow response on the website. I've now contacted the Global Chief Exec of the provider and he has pushed down so we're seeing a more focused response. The hosting provider has both US and UK experts investigating the situation and they are giving us updates every hour. In the meantime we've taken the opportunity to perform a number of 'optimizations' to the PM2 environment which has helped but which weren't technically necessary and certainly weren't responsible for the current situation. We are putting maximum pressure on the hosting provider and will let you all know as soon as we have a complete resolution. It is an incredibly frustrating situation for us being out of our direct control and all we can do is ask for your patience. This type of problem has never occurred previously in twelve years of business so it is a first for us. Clearly as a result of the issue we're now considering our hosting provider and how to avoid such a problem in the future. The situation affects ParentMail 2 users only, while ParentMail 1 and PMX users (latest platform) are unaffected. We will issue official communications through appropriate channels as soon as we are able in the next few days. Apologies again ... Paul ----------------

For me this thread is about whether 'consolidation' of systems being easier for schools, is actually good for schools in the long term. I fear that many schools will be driven by what's easier for them and I believe this is very dangerous as ultimately it will remove choice from the market. You only have to look at our high streets and the supermarkets to see the same thing happening in another sector. I am NOT saying that schools should choose inferior products just to ensure choice, but I hope they will not be driven simply by what's easy without considering the consequences.

Impartiality please gentleman ... I'm sure it's as boring to everyone else as it is to me to hear the same couple of people banging on about the same supplier at every opportunity across multiple threads :-)

What no-one seems to discuss here is whether you wish to deepen your dependency (and potential risk) by relying more and more on SIMS. Capita would have you believe that 'making your life easier' is all that matters, but by doing this all they're actually doing is making it impossible for you to ever leave and go elsewhere. Furthermore do you all want to see the end of 'choice' in the market (by going with Capita) or do you want to give the smaller guys your support and encourage Capita to spend their time improving the core MIS?

The new ParentMail APP will be in the iTunes store in the next day or two but despite the money and time we've invested I can say we won't be building another one. IMHO the APP is dead or will be very soon (the fact it drove 'mobile' is irrelevant or we'd all still be using steam trains!). As has been said by others in this thread HTML5 in combination with faster processors, better cloud technology and constantly improving connectivity will be the end of all but the most specialist APPS. From a commercial perspective, why would a company choose to support a website, and android app, a windows app, an apple app etc when a single html5 site would do it all??? Will HTML5 Spell The End For Apps? | Business Computing World

I'm not so sure you are correct there CyberNerd. What if you inform parents and they object? It's a bit late then isn't it? The general principle of telling people AFTER you've shared their data is not a good one! Paul.

Yikes! Be EXTREMELY careful just exporting parent contact data our of SIMS to third parties! You may well fall foul of Data Protection Laws and the punishment can be severe! You need specific permission from parents to export their data anywhere outside of school systems. Paul.

Hi - I'm the MD of ParentMail so I'm not an impartial participant - however I'd like to offer some impartial advice! Schools have a tendency to 'commoditise' services i.e. "what are their rates", "how cheap are their text messages" etc but this is dangerous because what all schools need is reliability. Messages that go out when they're supposed to, payments appearing in the right accounts, parents being able to top up dinner accounts during busy periods ... etc etc! Saving a few pennies here and there amounts to nothing when your systems stop working (or money goes in the wrong account) and all the parents start to call you! My second piece of advice is to do with systems being 'fit for purpose' by which I mean that 'everybody and his dog' is now jumping onto the payments wagon (just as they did with the comms wagon 7-8 years ago). This might seem great but choice can be overwhelming and tiny companies can make themselves appear larger and more capable in this modern age. That should act as a warning for schools to be extremely careful with choosing - it's easy to buy the wrong system ... especially if you're focused on price. Finally payments cannot exist without comms i.e. you need to tell parents when things need paying for and also when they've paid (receipts). Some systems are strong with payments but useless with comms and some are the other way around. Several now are partnering up i.e. comms and payments across two systems (which just gives you two problems to fix potentially)! When you make a decision please check the rounded capabilities of the whole system. Since it's difficult to step out of a payment system easily (see earlier comment) it's well worth taking your time and making the right decision. Best of luck, Paul.

I hope I'm not classed as advertising here but if I may I'd like to offer some advice. Texting is great for emergencies or where you want to get short messages across to parents but it's totally useless where you want to convey more detailed information. It is also really important that schools don't overuse text messaging as our research shows parents become 'text weary' and can fail to spot important messages amongst all the rest! (It also generally* incurs cost each time you send messages). This might sound like strange advice from a company that gains some of it's revenue from text messaging, but we're big fans of helping schools to engage their parents and that means 'mixing things up' i.e. using the right communications channel for the right situation, and email for example is much more useful for detailed information. After 10 years (next month) in the communications game, we recommend that schools look to vary their approach. *A word of caution for schools buying 'unlimited' text bundles for a flat fee ..... please check how many messages you are sending! You may find when you divide your annual premium by the number of messages you actually send, that it is rather more expensive 'per text' than you thought. Paul.

For info ... ParentMail is now linked with NRS (e-trust), Cunninghams/CRB, MH Systems, Gladstone's and by Monday Sharp Retail systems. Other integrations are also on the way.

Hi akidosaint. Which school are you from - we'll get someone to pop in to see you. (By all means PM me). Best wishes, Paul

John - ParentMail are currently live and integrated with NRS in several schools already, Gladstone have completed testing ready for their September release and Cunninghams/CRB are in final stage testing also for September. Others that are either in testing or due to start testing over the holidays are MH systems & Sharp Retail. I'm aware of a few other smaller cashless catering companies also in dialogue with us, but hopefully we'll have all the major players integrated shortly. If there are others that members would like us to talk to please let me know. Thanks, Paul

@mb2k01 @Soulfish - I am the Managing Director of 'ParentMail +Pay' and have nothing to do with ParentPay who are a competitor of ours. Clearly it would be very unprofessional of me to comment on them. @Soulfish - I'm sorry to hear you are not keen on us :-( (By all means PM me and tell me why if you would like to). Best, Paul.

Hi Mike - I'm really interested in your comment on the charges for using ParentPay (which are very similar to ours in actual fact). I had an interesting meeting two weeks ago with more than 40 schools where charges for electronic payments were discussed at length. I made the point that every payment made by card (debit or credit) carries a charge and 'most' retailers will include that charge in the retail price of their goods. Some levy an additional charge of 2.5% or more for payments made by credit card whereas our rates (and ParentPay's) are considerably cheaper at around 1.5%. (We've both achieved this by persuading the banks that school payments are low risk and of course we bring huge volume to the situation - which helps us negotiate Why do you think the charges are high? I would also be interested in how you propose setting up your own payment facility (your own merchant account?) and how you will avoid the charges that come with every card payment? It might be that I've mistaken your point and that you were making a more general point about subscription costs rather than credit card costs, but I'd be interested to know. Best wishes, Paul.

If you're interested in a payment collection and communications service then ParentMail +Pay has recently partnered with NRS. You get a heavyweight communications tool included allowing schools to set up auto-reminders as well as easily chasing low or overdue payments or balances from parents by email or text. Importantly parents aren't forced to pay for text reminders on low balances. Cunninghams/CRB are currently in final stages of integration testing with ParentMail and we expect them to be operational in the next few weeks. Gladstones, MH systems & Sharp retail systems are also currently in testing phase with ParentMail and Vericool will start shortly. We hope to have ALL the major CC providers integrated with ParentMail ready for the next school year. Paul

I agree with you Lawrence. I agree with you again Lawrence but I don't understand why you make the point? I don't agree with you Lawrence. Why is it a flawed process? I'm guessing you'll say because not every parent does it, and if that is the case, then it's no more flawed than not getting every parent to complete and return data slips each year! Our last survey of schools on this subject (late 2009) showed the average percentage of returned data collection slips was less than 60%. You missed the point here I'm afraid. You only have to update the specific details that have changed and just for the people that have changed it (there's a nice simple list ). The alternative is to check every form from as many people as care to return it, and check each piece of data to see whether it has changed or not i.e. you are forced to check EVERY single slip. As for parent logins, well that is fairly useful if you want to enable them to do other things such as paying for things for example. As my first post said, all these systems do things slightly differently or in this case substantially differently. There are supporters and detractors for the various methods. Paul

Marshharrier - We are grateful for your support. To update members here, I never did hear back from Mr Pindar which is a shame as I had a 'partner charter' suggestion whereby Capita would give 12 months notice (perhaps longer) before entering a partners space. This would give the partner time to take evasive action or diversify their products to ensure their commercial survival. More worryingly I received a letter on Thursday last week (7th April) from Phil Neal, informing me that Capita would once again be entering our space by offering payment functionality for parents. He gave no idea as to when exactly this would happen nor has he responded to my request for more information. I know he is a member of this forum so it will be interesting if he is prepared to debate Capita tactics in public? As a small company employing 50 staff, it is very worrying that Capita seem intent on ruling the world. It really does feel like we (and other partners) are now paying thousands of pounds per year (partner charges) for the privilege of doing Capita's Research & Development. I would be interested to know what members here feel about this action from Capita which will of course affect other partners too such as Tucasi, WisePay and ParentPay. Paul

Ooooh ... this is a hot one to enter for my first proper post! Each of the comms providers does something unique and useful and each will appeal to some schools and not to others - sorry that was a very obvious thing to say! The market is big enough for a number of providers to happily exist side by side :-) Nuttyprof - you have it about right in terms of process. To clarify a little, we look at school to home communications primarily from one viewpoint which is effectiveness. Without correct email and mobile data, messages don't get home (again another obvious comment - but often overlooked)! Therefore from day one (8 years ago) we took a strategic decision to involve parents in that process rather than just extracting contact data from SIMS. This also reduces the burden on busy administrators of keeping changing contact data up to date. We all do things in slightly different ways :-) Paul.