Daycare management software

Why nobody publishes a price

Because pricing varies with child count, module mix, payment volume and how hard you negotiate — and because a published price invites comparison. Checked live on 2026-10-18, Procare's pricing link leads to a request-a-quote form, Lillio's pricing page shows no figures, and Brightwheel customizes Premium pricing for each program. Brightwheel's free plan, capped at one staff member and fewer than 20 students, is the exception. The two names most programs shortlist are compared head to head in Brightwheel vs Procare.

The consequence for a buyer is that comparison articles carrying per-child dollar figures are quoting estimates, not rate cards. Some of those estimates are reasonable; none of them are the price you will be offered.

So stop reading and start specifying. One document, sent to four vendors, produces four comparable quotes in about a fortnight.

The specification to send

Keep it to one page. Number of children by room, number of staff, number of sites, expected monthly tuition volume, and the modules you actually need — attendance and ratio, billing and collection, parent messaging, food program records if you claim CACFP, and staff scheduling if you want it.

Then ask for the price in a fixed format: per-child per-month fee, any base fee, any per-user fee, setup or migration fee, card and ACH processing rates, and contract term with the monthly option priced separately.

A vendor that will not answer in that format is telling you something useful about how the relationship will go.

Send the same seven asks to every vendor and compare the answers side by side. Anything answered with a range rather than a number is not an answer.

Where the products genuinely differ

Not in daily sheets and photos — everybody does those and they demo beautifully. The differences are in billing edge cases, reporting depth, food-program support, and whether staff scheduling is a real module or a calendar.

Billing edge cases are the sharpest test: a sibling discount, a part-time schedule, a family splitting payment two ways, a subsidy paying part of a place, a late fee applied automatically. Bring all five to the demo.

Food program support matters if you claim CACFP, because meal counts and menus have to be recorded in a claimable form. A platform that cannot produce the claim is a platform plus a spreadsheet.

The traps

Annual commitment before a full enrollment cycle. Pay the monthly premium until you have run a September and a January on the platform.

Processing rates buried in a separate agreement. They are the largest number in the deal for most programs and they belong on the same page as the per-child fee.

Migration you do yourself. Moving families onto new payment authorizations is weeks of chasing, and a vendor who runs it is worth real money.

And staff adoption. A platform teachers work around is a platform you pay for while still writing paper sheets.