ParentSquare

• Free

Last verified 30 Aug 2026

• Free to download

Last verified 7 Aug 2026

4.6 76029 ratings · App Store

1. 4/5Mostly really pleased, with a few hiccups

   I’m generally happy with the app, just a couple annoyances: 1) Notifications. My high schooler is often tardy. When he is, I get an alert. I appreciate that part! But after I see the alert, it stays marked with a red unread-style dot, both within the app and on my phone app icon. It will stay that way for an undetermined amount of time, sometimes only a day or two, sometimes up to a week. No matter how many times I click in and out, swipe to refresh, etc, it stays. That means that I get used to seeing the red alert and don’t notice when something important happens. Very aggravating! 2) Appreciating posts. You can’t do it from the Home feed, it has to go into the specific message. When you are there, you can’t click the heart, that’s not activated, you have to click the word “Appreciate” on the other side of the screen. Not at all intuitive and requires multiple unneeded steps. 3) Group Messages. I often want to loop two teachers into the same conversation, but it doesn’t allow for group messages. For example, at our elementary the students each have two teachers. I have to copy and paste the same message to both, and they don’t see each other’s responses, so work is often duplicated unnecessarily. In the middle school my son has a 504, but I can’t communicate one message to all the teachers at once. I gave up on ParentSquare and use email.

   ean2891 · 30 Aug 2026

2. 1/5Teacher side is inefficient

   Mac specific: the messaging app will delete what you are typing when you hit the space bar it takes too long to message a specific child’s parent. On my end, it doesn’t make sense for me to click “message” —> “private message”then the next screen just be a comprehensive list of all the students contacts listed alphabetically. Even you have as little as 10 kids in a class, that is a list of 20 - 40 people. It’s also a problem because it assumes you know a child first and last name starting the first day of school, since the students are organized by last name. It also takes too long because you can’t search a name within in a class or grade. So if I need to contact “John’s” parents, I have to type “John” into the search bar and all the “Johns” in the whole school pop up. This isn’t much of an issue if I’m a lower elementary teacher with one class. But if I’m upper elementary + and teaching multiple classes (even across multiple grade) this search bar is not good. Then once you find the parent you’re looking for, it takes to long to send the message from just navigating the app. Often times we do not have more than 3 minutes to find a student’s contacts then craft a message (and those three minutes will be interrupted) so everything needs to be faster / less clicks / less scanning and reading. More filters for the search bar. And let me type freely with out deleting the message. Overall, needs to be more efficient. Think of teaching as a sport. Everything is in constant motion so tech needs to be as efficient as possible.

   _kimberrito · 30 Aug 2026

3. 1/5I don’t like it.

   I feel as if the platform is unnecessarily complex at least the way my district manages it. I use it as a parent, a teacher in one district and as a coach is different district. As a parent I HATE it. The district my son is in waaaaaaaaay overuses it and this tends to shut me down in terms of paying attention to it. The vast majority of what is communicated is just not necessary and very repetitive and in my estimation is not worth the cost. As a high school teacher, I think it’s ok. I don’t send a lot. At times it is useful as a reminder for little things but on the whole it is used to announce things over and over again and as such I think it becomes annoying and people shut it out. As a coach I hate the inflexibility. Home school kids and open enrollment kids make it so that I have to send all messages to all the parents which irritates some of them for reasons above and makes me send less information than I would to the team about changes in practice plans, times, parking restrictions, etc. The athletes don’t like it either and they are hesitant to use it even though they are forced to use it. Overall it reminds me of the cone of silence on Get Smart. It’s overly complicated and I think makes communication worse and not better.

   PTC100 · 30 Aug 2026

4. 5/5Excellent Communication Tool for Schools and Teachers

   ParentSquare has been an amazing platform for staying connected with my child’s school and teacher. The interface is user-friendly, making it easy to receive updates, announcements, and reminders in real time. I especially love how it centralizes all communication—whether it’s messages from the teacher, school newsletters, or event invitations, everything is in one place. It’s also great that I can send messages directly to my child’s teacher and get timely responses. This has made coordinating things like conferences or addressing any concerns so much smoother. The ability to include attachments and photos has been particularly helpful for keeping track of assignments and events. ParentSquare truly strengthens the connection between parents and schools, creating a better experience for everyone involved. Highly recommend!

   SimplyKTD · 30 Aug 2026

5. 1/5Doesn’t honor settings very confusing if you have kids across multiple schools.

   It doesn’t seem to matter how I adjust settings I get duplicate notifications both via text and push when I click on them it often fails to load. I think they really haven’t thought through how the app needs to work with families who have kids in multiple schools. Notifications seem to not work right if I was last in a different school than the notification. I was in. There isn’t an easy view where I can see all recent notifications for my kids across schools which is a huge miss and makes it really hard to make sure you didn’t miss anything. My wife gets some notifications I don’t and vice versa it just isn’t set up well for families. Unfortunately our district was sold a program that would make communication better and it largely has made it more confusing but they are likely locked into a contract now. I really wish there were software companies who had customer obsession as a core value in the educational software space and really built good products. Sitting in community council meetings it doesn’t sound like teachers or facility like it much better either so all around fail.

   Greensombrero · 30 Aug 2026

4.3 42696 ratings · Google Play

No store reviews collected for Google Play · US

Privacy

Accessibility

No accessibility labels collected yet.

Privacy

Accessibility

No accessibility labels collected yet.

• 2.114.0 · 24 Jul 2026