Compare nursery software on its AI's handling of children's data first: whether the AI only polishes text practitioners write or drafts developmental judgements, whether managers can switch it on per role, and whether the supplier confirms in writing it doesn't train models on your data. Then compare registers, billing and the parent app, because several platforms now include AI free.
That order matters because the AI features themselves are converging. Famly says its Sidekick writing assistant is included across all its packages, and Ovivio (formerly Blossom Educational) says the same of its Bloom assistant. When two suppliers both offer a free tool that fixes spelling and tone, the tool isn't the deciding factor. What differs is how each handles children's information, how much control the manager has, and whether the rest of the platform suits the way your setting runs.
Three kinds of AI you'll meet in nursery software
Suppliers use "AI" for quite different things. Knowing which kind you're being shown helps you ask the right follow-up questions.
Writing assistants for observations and messages
These work on text a practitioner has already written. Famly's Sidekick checks spelling and grammar, adjusts tone and condenses longer text in observations, messages and posts; a manager switches it on in settings and grants it per role, and Famly's help centre says data isn't used to train the AI. Ovivio's Bloom offers similar options (friendlier, more professional, shorter, longer, proofread), and practitioners accept or reject each suggestion. Low risk, useful for staff who find writing slow, and easy to check.
Planning and occupancy tools
These forecast from your registers and waiting list. Procare launched RoomRunner in May 2026 as an AI enrolment-planning tool that forecasts room openings, flags unused capacity and matches waiting-list children to places up to a year ahead, at no extra cost for Procare Online customers. For a nursery owner, this is where AI can affect income directly: an unfilled place spotted three months early is easier to fill than one noticed the week it empties.
General assistants for staff and managers
These answer questions about your setting's data or suggest activities. brightwheel's Back-to-School 2026 page lists a Teacher AI Assistant as available now (learning activities and insights) and an Admin AI Assistant as coming soon. These are the newest and least proven; ask to see them working on a real account, not a slide.
The comparison table: criteria and what a good answer sounds like
| Criterion | Why it matters | A good answer | A weak answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the AI writes | Developmental judgements must come from a practitioner | "It only edits text your staff have written" | "It writes the observation from a photo" |
| Manager controls | New staff and students may not be ready to use it | On/off per role, set by the manager | On for everyone, no setting |
| Model training | Children's data shouldn't train anyone's model | "No", in the contract or data agreement | "We take privacy seriously" |
| AI provider and data location | You need to name sub-processors in your records | Named provider, region stated, listed in the data agreement | "A leading AI partner" |
| Cost of AI features | AI add-ons can double a bill later | Included, with the price written into the quote | "Free during beta" |
| Review before sharing | Parents should never see unreviewed AI text | Nothing publishes until a practitioner approves it | Auto-sent summaries |
| Core fit | Registers, billing, parent app and reports are used every day | Handles your session patterns and funding claims without workarounds | "We can build that later" |
| Exit | Learning journals belong to children and families | Full export of journals, photos and billing in standard formats | Export on request, at a fee |
Children's-data questions to put to every supplier in writing
Ask these by email so the answers are on record, and file the replies with your data-protection records. Data-protection law such as the GDPR treats children's data with particular care, and you remain responsible for what your supplier does with it.
- Which AI model or provider processes our text, and where? Verify: the provider should appear in the sub-processor list attached to the data processing agreement.
- Is any of our data, including photos, used to train or improve AI models, yours or the provider's? Verify: look for the same answer in the contract, not only the sales email.
- How long does the AI provider keep prompts and outputs? Verify: ask for the retention period in days.
- Can the AI see photos and videos, or only text? Verify: test it in the demo by attaching a photo and watching what the assistant uses.
- Who can switch AI features on, and is there an audit trail of who used them? Verify: ask to see the setting and the log.
- If you change AI provider, will you tell us before it happens? Verify: look for a notice clause on sub-processor changes.
If a supplier can't answer the first two clearly, stop there. For a fuller look at the risks, see whether it's safe to use AI with children's data in a nursery.
Two supplier replies to the same question
When the answers come back, you'll see the difference quickly. Here are two illustrative replies to question 2 above, "Is any of our data used to train or improve AI models?"
Reply A: "No. Text sent to the writing assistant is processed by our AI provider, named in schedule 3 of our data processing agreement, under terms that prohibit using customer data for training. Prompts and outputs are deleted by the provider after 30 days. Photos and videos are never sent to the assistant. Clause 7.4 of the agreement covers this, and we'll give you 30 days' notice of any change of provider."
Reply B: "We take the privacy of children extremely seriously and use industry-leading, secure AI partners. All data is encrypted and handled in line with applicable regulations."
Reply A answers the question, names where it's written down, gives a retention period and covers photos. Reply B answers nothing: encryption isn't the same as not training on data, and "applicable regulations" could mean anything. Reply B doesn't necessarily mean the supplier is doing something wrong, but you can't put it in your records. Write back asking for the clause number. If the second reply is as vague as the first, score that supplier low on the data criterion and move on.
Run the same observation through every demo
Sales demos use tidy example data. Bring one realistic, anonymised observation written the way your staff really write, and ask each supplier to run it through their assistant live. Here's an illustrative one:
Practitioner's draft: "A was in the constuction area and bilt a tower of 6 bricks by herself, she counted them 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then knocked it down and laughed and did it again, she said 'more bricks' to R"
A good assistant returns something like this, as an illustration:
"A played in the construction area and built a tower of six bricks by herself. She counted each brick aloud from one to six, knocked the tower down, laughed and built it again. She asked R for 'more bricks'."
That's what you want: spelling fixed, sentences split, nothing added. Now watch for the version that goes wrong. If the assistant returns "A demonstrated secure one-to-one correspondence and is working confidently at the expected level for her age", it has made a developmental judgement no practitioner wrote. That's the single most important thing to test, because a busy practitioner may accept it with one tap and a parent will read it as your assessment. Note also whether the assistant keeps the child's own words in quotation marks. More on getting this right day to day in using AI for observations and learning journals.
While you're in the demo, test translation too if your families need it. Write a short message ("Please bring spare clothes on Friday, we are doing messy play") and ask for it in the languages your parents read. You can't judge the translation yourself in every language, so ask a bilingual parent or staff member to check two samples afterwards.
A worked choice for a two-site, 45-place nursery
Take an illustrative nursery group: two sites, 45 places, 14 staff, a waiting list kept in a spreadsheet, and parents complaining that billing emails are confusing. The owner shortlists three platforms and scores each from 1 to 5, weighting the criteria by what hurts most.
| Criterion | Weight | Platform A | Platform B | Platform C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billing and invoices parents understand | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 |
| Occupancy and waiting-list planning | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Writing assistant (edits only, per-role control) | 2 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| Children's-data answers in writing | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| Parent app and messaging | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Export and exit terms | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Weighted total | 54 | 53 | 47 |
A and B are close. Platform C had the best billing but the weakest data answers, so it drops out; no feature makes up for vague answers about children's information. Between A and B, the owner asks herself which gap is easier to live with: A's weaker occupancy planning (keep the spreadsheet a while longer) or B's slightly weaker billing. Because billing complaints are the reason for switching, she picks A and plans to revisit occupancy tools in a year. Notice that the AI writing assistant carried only a weight of 2. It helped, but it didn't decide.
Why the occupancy line carried a weight of 3: a planning tool shows that four children in the baby room move up in March, but only two places free up in the toddler room. Seen in December, that's a conversation with two families about start dates. Seen in late February, it's a scramble.
Switching without losing a term: a six-week plan
If the comparison says switch, the timing matters more than the software. Here's an illustrative plan for the two-site nursery above, moving at the start of a new term so billing starts clean.
- Week 1: sign, and get the supplier's migration checklist. Export everything from the old system: children's records, contacts, session patterns, billing history, learning journals with photos. Check the exports open and are complete.
- Week 2: the supplier imports children, families and sessions. Managers spot-check 20 children's records against the old system, including allergies and collection permissions.
- Week 3: set up rooms, staff roles and permissions. Decide who gets the AI writing assistant from day one (room leaders and experienced practitioners) and who waits (new starters, students).
- Week 4: staff training in two short sessions per site. Everyone writes three practice observations and uses the assistant on them, so they see its edits before real use.
- Week 5: run both systems in parallel for registers and billing. Compare the first invoice run line by line.
- Week 6: send parents the app invitation with a short note explaining which features use AI and that staff review everything first. Switch off the old system's parent access once most families are in.
The step owners most often skip is week 5. A billing error in the first month on a new system does more damage to parent trust than any feature can repair, so run the parallel invoice check even if it feels slow.
Price rises, takeovers and exit: questions after the demo
Nursery software has consolidated. In September 2026 Procare announced it had acquired Playground, whose platform includes an AI assistant called Camber; Procare said nothing would change for customers in the short term. That's a normal event in this market, but it's a reminder to ask every supplier what happens to your contract, price and data if they are bought or merge products. A harsher example from outside childcare: the AI calendar tool Clockwise shut down in March 2026 and deleted user data rather than transferring it. Your learning journals are records families may want years later.
- Price protection: is the AI feature's price (usually "included") fixed for the contract term?
- Notice period: how many days' notice to leave, and does the contract auto-renew?
- Export: can you export every child's journal with photos, in a format another system can import, without a fee?
- Parent access after you leave: can families download their child's journal themselves?
The checks before committing to any supplier that might shut down apply here in full.
Red flags that an AI feature isn't ready for your setting
- The assistant writes an observation from a photo or a few words, with no practitioner text to start from.
- AI-written daily summaries go to parents automatically, with no approval step.
- The supplier can't name its AI provider or says the data agreement "doesn't cover AI yet".
- The feature is "free during beta" with no written price after beta.
- The demo only uses the supplier's sample data and they won't try your anonymised observation.
- Staff can't see what the AI changed; a good assistant shows the edit next to the original, which also helps staff learn to write better.
One or two of these in an otherwise strong platform may be fixable: ask for the AI feature to stay switched off until it's resolved. Several together suggest the supplier added AI for the brochure. If you want to see the same buying decision worked through for a different kind of booking-based business, the comparison of salon and spa software with built-in AI uses a similar approach.
Nursery managers also ask
Should we switch nursery software just to get AI features?
Rarely. Several platforms now include an AI writing assistant at no extra cost, so the AI gap between them is small. Switching means migrating registers, billing history and learning journals, retraining staff and re-explaining the parent app. Switch for core reasons such as billing, parent communication or reporting, and treat AI as a tiebreaker.
Can staff use ChatGPT for observations instead of the software's built-in AI?
It's the riskier route. A general chat assistant sits outside your nursery system, so staff end up pasting children's details into a separate tool, often on a personal account. A built-in assistant keeps the text inside the platform where your data agreement already applies. If staff do use a general tool, set a written rule: no names or identifying details.
What should parents be told about AI in our software?
Tell them in plain words which features use AI, what it does (for example, correcting spelling and tone in observations a practitioner has written), that staff review everything before it's shared, and that the supplier doesn't use their child's data to train AI models, if that's what the contract says. Put it in your privacy notice and parent handbook.
Further reads
- How Nurseries Use AI to Write Daily Reports for Parents — Put the writing assistant to work on daily reports once you've chosen.
- AI Chatbots for Nursery Enquiries and Visit Bookings — Handling enquiries and visit bookings, which most platforms don't cover.
- What to Check in an AI Vendor's Data Processing Agreement — What to look for in the supplier's data processing agreement.
- How to Run an AI Software Demo So You See the Real Product — How to steer a sales demo so you see the real product.
- AI Software Contracts: Auto-Renewals, Price Rises, Notice Periods — Notice periods and price-rise clauses to check before signing.
- AI Features Already in Your Software: What to Switch On First — If you stay put, which built-in features to switch on first.
- Native Integrations vs Zapier: Which Should Connect Your Apps? — When a built-in link such as Xero with Stripe or Shopify with Klaviyo beats a Zap, when Zapier is worth paying for, and how to run both without duplicates.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Famly help centre and Sidekick announcement; Ovivio AI observations page; brightwheel Back-to-School 2026 page; Procare RoomRunner and Playground acquisition releases (May and September 2026).