Brightwheel is the #1 software solution for preschools, child care, daycare, camps, and after school programs.
Brightwheel is the only app that integrates everything you need: sign in/out, messaging, learning assessments, daily sheet reports, photos, videos, calendars, online bill pay for parents, and much more.
Brightwheel lets you manage your center, streamline workflows, and engage with parents, so you can save time and money, make life easier for your staff, and improve satisfaction for your parents.
Join the thousands of preschools, child care, and daycare programs across the globe that have fallen in love with brightwheel!
PRESCHOOLS / CHILD CARE / DAYCARE / CAMPS: Manage your students and classrooms, track attendance and room ratios, share photos and videos, assess learning milestones, communicate with parents, send paperless invoices and payments, review daily sheets, and manage staff. Brightwheel is your all-in-one child care and daycare management app!
PARENTS: Engage in your child’s day with a real-time feed of photos, videos, reminders, and updates. Use brightwheel’s digital check-in to securely sign in and out, pay tuition online, and even invite grandparents, nannies, and friends to join in the fun!
Features include:
• Central Database: Store everything related to kids and families in one secure place.
• Student Check-In: Multiple digital check-in options available including digital signatures, 4 digit check-in codes, and a kiosk mode – all aligned with child care licensing requirements.
• Staff Check-In & Ratios: Make administrative tasks easier by managing staff check-in to see your ratios across all your rooms in real time.
• Attendance: Easily log attendance and absences for your school-age students, infants, and toddlers. Use our attendance tracking system to keep track of your toddlers.
• Photo and video sharing: Snap photos, record videos and tag students with one click. Automatically saved to your account and shared with parents (with no extra work!).
• Daily Sheet Reports: Log naps, meals, bathroom, and other activities. Parents get a feed and daily summary. Daily sheet reports are a breeze with brightwheel.
• Assessment & Observations: Make note of progress, achievements, and activities with pre-loaded state standards and a DRDP tool. Share with parents or privately amongst teachers.
• Student Feed: Parents get a personalized feed throughout the day. Save time – no more paper tracking sheets or sending individual photos.
• Parent Communication: Manage parent communication from one central hub (notices, calls, texts, etc.).
• Calendar: Share events, holidays, and important dates with both families and staff.
• Paperless Billing: Seamless electronic billing and payments for tuition and fees. Use brightwheel for all your child care accounting needs.
• Reporting: Detailed reports of every brightwheel feature for billing and licensing requirements.
• Seamless Sync: Brightwheel stays up to date across all phones and tablets – so teachers can use their own device or a school device.
• Web Portal: Easy management and great functionality available on the web, too.
• Affordable. Both free and premium plans available to fit your needs.
And… much more coming! Brightwheel is the #1 early education platform for preschools, child care, and daycares, and we’re always committed to innovation with frequent improvements and new features.
Have really enjoyed the ease of sign in and sign out, messaging, and having all school documents in one place. I think the photos could be a bit better if they were stored more like a gallery, and if you could download them as a group rather than individually. Photos in the app seem hard to share. But love other app functionality!
update: now it just doesn’t even open. (I’m a teacher) Powerful but some stupid things about it like how uploading multiple pics with a caption results in a separate post for each pic with the caption repeated. Most frustratingly it’ll repeatedly send notifications for old messages, and even while I’m literally looking at the thread it’ll jump back to old messages and the most recent ones will temporarily disappear. has led to awkward exchanges with parents.
It’s a decent app. As a teacher, I would like an easy way to share documents directly with my class only and not have to go through the main office portal. I would also like a way to post class albums and multiple photos and fix the newsletter option to be able to pull photos from anywhere instead of just from Brightwheel.
This makes having my child in preschool so much easier, and less worrisome. The ability to communicate with the teachers on a regular basis, and get updates, as well as sign in and out and all the awesome features of this app really make my life easier. Thank you guys. My only request would be to make tables be better designed, perhaps The columns could be collapsible. Because when I’m on my mobile and I’m looking at billing it’s very hard to see the totals. It seems like I have to scroll a lot
Well built, user friendly app that makes it easy to receive photos and communicate with the staff taking care of your kids while you are at work. The only thing I wish would be fixed is a small issue with push notifications. They won’t go away unless I manually clear them, even after tapping them to open the app. My spouse has had the same issue as well as other parents I’ve spoken to. Maybe it’s actually a feature so parents don’t accidentally miss notification. 🤷♂️
The idea is good but functionality is bad. Frequently, I’ll have to heart a photo/video multiple times. Refreshing the page too quickly or closing the app too soon and it won’t register you liking the photo. It doesnt always register check-ins/outs so I’ve accidentally checked out of daycare in the morning or checked in when picking up. The payment option for all current invoices doesnt work. I have to use individual invoices and select all to pay in full. Other issues but out of characters
Great app but would love more granulated abilities to manage notifications. Specifically getting messages but not pictures, and have an option to notify for pictures once a day and pick a time. Love the pics out provider sends and don’t want to discourage them from sending…but at times it’s too much but I don’t want to turn off notifications and miss an important message.
I love being able to have communication with my baby’s childcare providers. In addition, I love getting updated on what he’s doing throughout the day. The absolute best part is the picture/video feature. LOVE seeing picture updates of my baby playing with his daycare friends, playing outside, learning, or trying new sensory stations!!! The app itself doesn’t usually have problems, but on occasion it won’t allow me to send messages to the facility. Overall rating is 9/10.
The app is decent at covering the main functionality. But it has a few annoying limitations. 1. The photos added by the teachers are not automatically downloaded, so we have to click download many times often. 2. The conversation functionality is limited, e.g. today we wanted to send a photo of a missing toy, no way to do that. 3. Hard to find out remotely if q kid has been checked in – have to scroll through the notifications. Why can’t i just see it on the home page? So. Good, but not great.
I could write endlessly about what I like and dislike about this app. But one thing that stands out most of all is the number of taps it takes to compete even the most mundane actions. Many tasks and pages violate the 3-click rule. The date/time interface needs to be updated. Teachers need to be able to copy and paste lesson plans on mobile. I read the original case study for the design and much of the testing seems to be in calm settings. In the heat of the classroom, every second counts.
The idea of this app is awesome. IF IT WORKS!!!!! Still Missing push notifications. It often missing notifications like check ins and photos. The time on the notification is off too. Checked with the daycare center and they have all notification on time but it’s the app that not delivered it to us. It would skip some item and send out next item push notifications randomly. The note was entered 10:30 am but the app notification didn’t receive until 2pm. My phone was on WiFi at work all day.
Great App for parents to monitor what’s going on. It’s really up-to the provider to update activities to the App so the more diligent they are the better for the parent. The message feature is a great way for providers to communicate. I get copies of the menu so that’s helpful. As a parent I’d like to know if there’s a way for the provider to easily note the arrival and departure time for the child. My friend’s school has daily arrival and departure time. Mine does not.
This app been on my phone for over 6 months. It’s great to know my son’s progress while at daycare. But, for the past week, or so when I open the app, it lags and then errors out saying “error check your connection ” It was working fine until the last update. Now, I have to restart my phone every time I get a message from the school hoping that it works just so I can check the message. I am not having any issues with any other apps on my phone just this one. Giving 1 star until it’s fixed.
Without a doubt a great app. But I have been asking for push notifications for student check in since the onset of using the app. The 4.6 that you got could possibly be higher if you add push notifications. That is very important for classroom staff to know students are ready to be picked up. Messages are great but push notifications for check-in is highly important. It would let the classroom staff know that a student is ready to be picked up. Parents complain constantly about this feature.
I’ve used this app twice now and it’s wonderful. My kids were at a facility that used this app and we loved it. Unfortunately, we moved to a new facility that didn’t use it. So, we had to tryout several other systems until the new place adopted brightwheel; those other apps were clunky, confusing, and crashed frequently. However, THIS APP is fast, secure, dependable, and super user-friendly. It makes parent<->teacher &admin communication, as well as sharing files and photos fast, safe, and EASY.
Works great when it actually works, but for whatever reason(s) the app on my phone (Galaxy S21+) only works 50% of the time. Otherwise all I get is blank screen with the loading symbol spinning nonstop before finally giving me an “error” message. As a teacher this is VERY frustrating because if it wasn’t for the tablet we get in our classroom, I’d have zero way of communicating with parents. I’ve tried turning wifi off and on, restarting my phone and even uninstalling and re-installing the app.
Update: the team is super responsive. My bar code scanner stopped working and they were really on top of getting it fixed. Other than that issue ( which is no longer an issue) i love the app. My childs school really utilizes it well. The barcode scanner stopped working like last week out of no where I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times
The customer support for this app is second to none. I was having an issue being able to sign in/out my kid. After uninstalling/reinstalling the app, double checking the permissions, and restarting my phone, I emailed customer support (around 5pm). I got a reply in minutes and we talked back and forth as I gave them information they needed. The next morning the app worked perfectly! This is how customer support is supposed to be. Great job!
Great app! Easy to use for parents and care providers. Great to recieve updates, documents and photos of our kid and communicate with the care provider. Only issue is it is quiet expensive, we have to pay $30 a year plus $10 a month?? Totally understand posting for the app. But, no app should cost that much and we can’t opt out of it cause the daycare uses it.
Parent perspective: I love how user-friendly this app is. It has the check-in and check-out feature (including covid screening), photo sharing, and messaging. So I always feel connected with the teachers, and seeing my child progress in class.
Really amazing app makes leaving my baby a lot easier as I can see updates throughout the whole day as well as photos the only issue is sometimes I don’t receive the notifications Until I actually go into the app. I’ve made sure that all notifications are on as well as push notifications but sometimes it just doesn’t send.
The app is great, a bit of easy work to tone down the significant amount of notifications it defaults to at install. At the end of the day, any of these apps are only as good as the center using them, but this has been very seamless compared to others we have used.
Check-in and check-out are a breeze and communicating with the school is great. Not sure how easy it is for the schools to setup or use, but from a parent perspective I highly recommend it to simplify things.
Great app. We had this for preschool, loved the ease of communicating with teachers privately and downloading photos. The only thing I wished they had was the ability to zoom on videos. We use seesaw now for kindergarten and I am not a huge fan of it.
Absolutely amazing app! Tells me everything my child does in a day and I can keep in touch with their teachers. Also love when the teachers will post pictures and videos! Even the administrator is able to keep parents up to date with important messages right away! All in all I give it 5 stars!
I absolutely love brightwheel at my son’s daycare. It alerts you right away when a new picture has been uploaded which for me is great bc I can see how my son’s day is going. I am able to communicate with his teacher and vice versa. It’s simple, fun and very easy to navigate. Very satisfied!!
Can’t speak for usability for staff but as a parent it’s great! Has everything we need, love getting pictures during the day, instant messaging, never had a problem with access/uptime. Small suggestion to add more emoji reactions to pictures (e.g. laughing).
Brightwheel is essential to keeping in touch with what’s going on with my little ones’ school day and making sure that my partner and I have excellent communication with their caregivers. Because of the good experience I’ve had with caregivers using Brightwheel pre-pandemic, it’s definitely something I looked for when we returned my children to daycare/preschool after the pandemic.
This is fantastic to keep parents in touch and aware of how their babies are doing. It is hard to be a working parent missing your little loves, the updates throughout the day really help ease the worries. Any school looking into to this…get it! Parents will love you for it
Great app. Love the way I get updates on what my child is doing for the day. Also, receiving messages on school updates/activities is really convenient. Overall, very happy with the app!!
Fantastic! As long as admins/teachers keep up with the app everything is perfect. We are blessed with great teachers who keep us updated regularly throughout the day.
It is a very clear app. Always on time. VERY EASY APP TO USE ! I DO RECOMMEND FOR OTHERS TO USE. I DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THE PRIVACY GUIDELINES. WOULD LIKE TO KNOW .
The app is nice to have everything in one location. You can pay for service on the app as well as see current pictures posted of your child.
I love the Brightwheel App. It shows me the love and passion the staff has for their kids. I love to see them actually learning more than just a place to babysit. It also give us as parents/grandparents so much security and peace knowing that our babies are in the best care. This app/ Lymir Academy is AWESOME AND AMAZING….
Absolutely AMAZING I don’t have to pick up the phone and call to know that my baby is ok. This app shows me how & what he is doing. I love getting pictures throughout the day. Such an amazing app & stress reliever !!
The preschool/daycare is in a wonderful location and ALL the staff is excellent and wonderful as I personally have nieces and nephews that are so excited to get there I love seeing their expression they make……its my personal opinion that 2 of the people that own it and work there and they are such wonderful ladies. ❤ keep up the great team work. Martina and carrie Lee i know personally and I have known them since elementary school and they r both very excellent with children 👏
Expedient and effective way to communicate with Day Care staff. Frequent updates throughout the day keep you informed of your child’s progress and welfare. Ability to make payments also convenient. Only live video capability would make it better.
I love this app! It makes everything easier with communication and I even get pics of him throughout the day. Very useful!
I love this app! I thinj every child care provider should use this! It makes me feel better while im at work, getting updates and pictures helps knowing hes okay
Love this app! As a parent, it is so wonderful getting little updates from my childcare provider throughout the day! There’s photos, videos, and all her feedings and diapers are logged! The app has definitely helped me feel more comfortable with leaving her all day. My only complaint is that I wish parents could comment on the events so there’s more back and forth communication. This app would be perfect if it supported more back and forth communication but it’s still great regardless.