Most daycare apps demo beautifully. The demo is a curated school with tidy data and a salesperson driving. What decides whether the app survives at your school isn’t in the demo at all — it’s whether a tired teacher will still use it at 4:30pm on a Friday.
These are the twelve questions worth asking, in the order they actually matter.
Disclosure: we make Mazhali, a preschool app. The checklist is written to be used against us as much as anyone else.
1. How long does the daily routine take a teacher?
This is the question. Everything else is secondary.
Ask the vendor to time it live: mark attendance for 20 children, and fill one child’s daily report. Not “show me the screen” — do it, while I watch the clock.
Attendance for a full class should take under two minutes. A daily report should take under a minute per child, and much less if common values are one tap. If a teacher needs six minutes per child, the app will be abandoned by the end of the first month, no matter what it cost.
2. Does it work on the phones your staff actually have?
Not the latest iPhone in the demo. A four-year-old Android on patchy 4G.
Ask: what happens on a slow connection? Does a half-written report survive the app closing? How large is the download? If your teachers share a school tablet rather than using personal phones, ask how switching between staff logins works — some apps make it painful enough that everyone ends up sharing one account, which destroys your audit trail.
3. Who owns the data, and how do I get it out?
Your children’s records, attendance history, and photos are your school’s, not the vendor’s. The contract should say so plainly.
Then ask the practical version: “Show me the export.” You want a CSV or PDF you can open yourself, covering children, guardians, attendance, and fees — available at any time, without a support ticket, without a fee.
A vendor who can produce that in thirty seconds is telling you they expect to keep you by being good. A vendor who deflects is telling you their retention strategy is friction.
4. What exactly can each role see?
Get specifics, not “it’s role-based”:
- Can a teacher see children in classes they’re not assigned to?
- Can a parent see any other family’s child, in any screen, including group chats and photos?
- Who can see a parent’s phone number and address?
- Can a former staff member still log in after you deactivate them?
Ask them to demonstrate the parent view on a real account. Photos are the usual leak — a class gallery that shows every child to every parent is a decision your parents deserve to have been asked about.
5. How are parents contacted — push, SMS, or WhatsApp?
Push notifications are free to send; SMS is billed per message and adds up fast. If a vendor leans on SMS, that’s a running cost on your bill forever.
Also ask whether parents can reply. One-way broadcast is fine for announcements and useless for the twenty small conversations a preschool has every day. If your answer to those is still WhatsApp, the app hasn’t solved your actual problem — see Running a Preschool on WhatsApp: Where It Breaks Down.
6. What happens when a teacher leaves?
Staff turnover is normal in preschools; the app has to handle it cleanly.
Ask: can I deactivate a teacher instantly? Do their past reports and messages remain in the record, attributed to them? Can I reassign their classes without re-entering anything? Does a deactivated teacher lose access to children’s photos on their device?
7. Can I run two children from one parent account?
Very common, very often handled badly. A parent with a child in each of two classes should have one login and a simple way to switch between children — not two accounts and two passwords.
Ask about the other direction too: two guardians for one child, both getting notifications, perhaps living separately. And ask whether a grandparent or driver can be given limited access for pickup without seeing everything.
8. What does it do about fees?
Decide first whether you want fee collection in the app at all — plenty of schools are happy keeping money in their existing system.
If you do want it, ask: which payment modes (cash, UPI, bank transfer, card)? Can I record an offline cash payment so the ledger stays true? What are the gateway charges, and does the vendor take a cut on top? Can I produce a defaulters list in one click? Are receipts automatic?
Fees are where a half-built feature costs you the most, because the errors are financial and the person who finds them is a parent.
9. What’s the total cost at twice my size?
Not today’s price — the price at the enrolment you’re aiming for. Per-child pricing that looks cheap at 15 children can be your largest software line at 80.
Get the full picture: setup fees, GST, SMS, gateway charges, storage overage, per-staff charges, and what renewal looks like in year two. Preschool Management Software Pricing in India breaks down each of these.
10. What does support actually look like?
Ask for the specifics and hold them to it: which channel (phone, WhatsApp, email), what hours, what typical response time, and — critically — is support in the language your teachers are comfortable in?
An app your admin can use but your teachers can’t get help with in Tamil, Hindi, or Kannada will be used by exactly one person at your school.
11. How do you handle children’s data and privacy?
You’re handing over photographs and personal details of small children. Reasonable things to require:
- A published privacy policy that names what is collected and why
- Photos not usable for marketing without explicit school consent
- Ability to delete a child’s record fully when a family leaves
- Ability for a parent to delete their own account
- Clear statement of where data is stored, and whether any third party can access it
If the vendor is uncomfortable with these questions, that is the finding.
12. What’s the exit?
Notice period, refund policy, and what happens to your data after cancellation — how long is it retained, and can you still export during that window?
The best time to understand leaving is before you arrive.
Three things the demo won’t show you
A pilot beats a demo. Run one class for a full month with a real teacher and real parents. You’ll learn more in that month than in five sales calls — mainly about question 1.
Ask to speak to a school like yours. Not a marquee reference; a school your size, in your city, that has been on the product for at least six months. Ask them what they stopped using and why.
Watch the parent side. Most evaluations are done entirely from the admin screen. Your parents are the largest user group and the ones who will complain. Install it as a parent, live with it for a week, and see whether the daily update is something you’d want to receive.
A one-page scoring sheet
Score each vendor 1–5 and weight the top three heavily:
| # | Question | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Teacher daily-routine time | ×3 |
| 3 | Data ownership & export | ×3 |
| 4 | Role permissions & parent privacy | ×3 |
| 2 | Works on real staff devices | ×2 |
| 5 | Parent communication model | ×2 |
| 9 | Total cost at 2× size | ×2 |
| 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 | Everything else | ×1 |
The cheapest app that scores badly on rows 1, 3 and 4 is the most expensive decision on the page.