Language School Software Compared: Enrolment, Timetables and AI

For enrolment, timetables and invoicing, Fidelo School suits a school with agents and accommodation, ElsieApp suits one that wants agent management at a flat price per admin, and Teach 'n Go suits a smaller school with one-to-one and group classes. The AI is thin: draft messages, email-to-booking capture and reminders are real; the rest is unproven.

What matters more than the AI is whether the system models how you sell. A school that takes most students through agents needs commission statements and an agent login. One selling to individuals needs clean online enrolment, and one with a large one-to-one list needs flexible booking. Choose on those, then look at AI.

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What each system says it does

I read each vendor's own pages in November 2026. Where a page did not mention something, I say so, which is different from saying the product cannot do it.

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Notice how few cells name the CEFR. None of the three public pages does. For a language school this is the question to put on the demo checklist, because levels drive how you group students and what you print on certificates.

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Fidelo School: for study-abroad schools with agents

Fidelo's page describes its study-abroad edition, Fidelo School Travel, as a single web-based system for enquiries, bookings, scheduling and invoicing at study-abroad language schools. The class scheduler groups students by level, assigns teachers by availability and qualification, and places rooms by drag and drop. Conflicts show in colour. Invoices start as proforma and convert to final, with sequential numbering; exports to Xero and QuickBooks, and deposits split into partial invoices, are on the Pro package. Each agency gets its own login to see bookings, services and documents, plus a monthly statement covering commissions and refunds.

Pricing is per administrative user per month, excluding tax, and it is tiered: on Basic the first user costs 80 euros, users two to five 60 euros each, six to ten 50 euros, and so on down to 25 euros from the 51st user; Pro runs from 95 euros for the first user down to 32 euros. Fidelo's own example is that five users pay the sum of the tiers, 320 euros a month on Basic or 391 euros on Pro, not five times the single-user price. On top sits a one-off setup and training fee of 950 euros for Basic (six hours of training) or 1,450 euros for Pro (eight hours), and data migration is charged separately at 125 to 1,250 euros. Students, teachers and agents are free in every package, which matters because agents and teachers are many and admins are few. Pro adds API access, extended accounting (partial invoices, debtors and overpayments, teacher and provider payments) and a report generator.

The AI feature: it reads forwarded registration emails and drafts an enquiry or booking, which staff review before anything is saved, and the page names the server location it runs on, which you can check for your data policy. That is a concrete, limited use, and it is the one I would test first if registration emails reach you in a standard shape. Fidelo also sells a separate variant, Fidelo School Local, for local schools and seminar providers, and an agency product for language-travel agents, so confirm which version you are quoted.

Teach 'n Go: for smaller schools, with the most AI

Teach 'n Go lists two plans, priced by live students. For up to 100 live students the standard plan is 69 euros a month and Pro 99 euros; the page also shows separate dollar list prices of $79 and $109. The next tier, up to 200 live students, is 89 or 129 euros, rising in steps to 409 or 539 euros at 2,000 students, beyond which it quotes a custom plan. Yearly billing gives two months free. There are no paid monthly add-ons, optional one-off setup services are listed separately, and a 14-day free trial needs no card. The core covers scheduling, payments, communication and student records, with automated invoices and receipts, individual lesson booking and multi-level class scheduling for language schools.

It also publishes the most detail on AI. On every plan: AI school setup, AI leads import, an AI support assistant, and "Ask AI about your school" limited to 15 answered questions a month. On Pro: unlimited answers, AI-drafted messages to parents in their own language, a weekly digest covering attendance, revenue and students needing attention, AI fee-recovery reminders, and a read-only beta for asking Claude about your school. Teach 'n Go's home page says every draft waits for your approval before anything is sent.

What I could not find on the page: agent bookings or commission handling. If you take students through agents, ask directly before you rank it.

ElsieApp: flat price per admin, agent-friendly

ElsieApp's pricing page lists 65 pounds a month plus tax per admin account. Each admin account gives one administration user full access to the hosted service, with unlimited records and access for the teacher and student portals. A 10 per cent discount applies for every five admin accounts, up to 20 accounts. The full feature list shows online enrolment, a class schedule with room settings and student allocation, finance (invoices, payments, credit notes) and agents with multiple deals and commissions, plus bulk payments from agents and statistics. It lists group booking but nothing specific to one-to-one lessons, and I found no mention of AI on its pages.

That last point is worth saying plainly: ElsieApp may have AI features, but none are public, so any a salesperson mentions should be seen working before you count it.

A worked example: a 120-student school with three admins

Illustrative. A school has 120 students at peak, 14 teachers, 40 per cent of students booked through agents, and three administrators: a director, an enrolment coordinator and an accounts person.

• Fidelo Basic: three users on the tiered rates: 80 euros for the first and 60 for each of the next two, so 200 euros a month plus the one-off 950 euros setup. Year one: 200 times 12, 2,400, plus 950, which is 3,350 euros, before any data migration fee. Pro for the same three users is 95 plus 74 plus 74, or 243 euros a month.
• ElsieApp: three admin accounts at 65 pounds, which is 195 pounds a month and 2,340 pounds a year, no setup fee shown on the page, no volume discount at three accounts.
• Teach 'n Go: 120 students falls in the 200-student tier: 89 euros a month on the standard plan (1,068 euros a year, or 890 with two months free on yearly billing) or 129 euros on Pro with the extra AI (1,548 euros a year). The cheapest of the three by some way, but agents may be the gap.

These are not like-for-like, which is the point: one charges per admin plus setup, one per admin, one per live student. Ask each vendor to quote for your three logins, 120 students and 40 per cent agent volume, and compare the first-year total including setup and training.

A timetable worked through: why clashes are the real cost

Illustrative. A school runs 10 group classes a day in four rooms with six teachers on rotating availability. Classes run in 90-minute blocks, 09:00 to 10:30, 10:45 to 12:15 and 13:15 to 14:45. On paper that is 12 room-slots a day for 10 classes, which looks easy. It stops being easy when two teachers are part-time, one room has a projector, and a new group of 8 beginners arrives on Wednesday.

The system's job is to flag the three things a spreadsheet will not: a teacher placed in two classes, a room with fewer seats than the group, and a student enrolled in two classes at the same time. Fidelo says conflicts show in colour on its roster; ElsieApp lists room settings, student allocation and room usage; Teach 'n Go lists multi-level scheduling. In the demo, create the Wednesday beginners group and count the clicks it takes to place it. If it takes more than a handful, that is the time you will pay every term.

Enrolment: what the form must capture

Whatever the system, the online enrolment form should capture the same minimum, so write it down before the demo: name, date of birth, passport or identity details if your visa or insurance rules need them, contact for the student and, for under-18s, a parent or guardian, arrival and departure dates, level (self-reported plus a placement test result), course and hours, accommodation needs, dietary or medical notes, and consent for photos and for how you store the data. The last two are where schools slip. Ask each vendor how consent is recorded, whether a student can withdraw it in the system, and how a deletion request works.

A placement test is where levels enter. If you use a CEFR-aligned test, you will want the result stored as a level field that can drive class allocation, not typed into a notes box. Ask to see the field: that is the practical meaning of "supports CEFR levels", since no vendor page I read uses the term.

Invoicing and agent commission: a sum to run in the demo

Illustrative. An agent books a student for 8 weeks at 300 euros a week, a course total of 2,400 euros, with a 15 per cent commission. A deposit of 500 euros is paid on booking, the balance four weeks before arrival.

• Commission on the full course: 15 per cent of 2,400 is 360 euros.
• If the agent deducts commission from payments, the school receives 2,040 euros in total.
• If the student leaves after week 5 with a refund for 3 weeks, the course value falls to 1,500 euros and commission to 225 euros. The credit note must reduce both the student invoice and the agent statement.

Fidelo says agents receive a monthly statement covering commissions and refunds, and splits deposits into partial invoices on Pro. ElsieApp lists credit notes and bulk payments from agents. Ask each vendor to show this exact refund scenario end to end, and see whether the statement shows 225 euros afterwards without manual editing.

A before-and-after for the pre-arrival message

One routine job where AI-drafted messages can help is the pre-arrival email. Illustrative before: a coordinator copies a template, edits the name, course dates, airport pick-up and accommodation by hand for each student, about 6 minutes each, 40 students a month, which is 4 hours. After: the system drafts the message from the booking record and the coordinator checks and approves, about 2 minutes each, or 80 minutes. The saving of about 2 hours 40 minutes depends entirely on the draft being right.

Hello [first name],

We are looking forward to welcoming you on [start date]. Your course is [course name], Monday to Friday, [start time] to [end time]. Please arrive at [address] 15 minutes early for your level test. Your accommodation is [type], and your host will meet you at [time].

If anything changes, reply to this message.
[your name]

The risks are in the merge fields: a wrong date or pick-up time costs a missed arrival. Make the approval step compulsory, and spot-check three messages a week against the booking record.

Moving from a spreadsheet: a four-week plan

1. Week 1: clean the data. One row per student, one consistent date format, levels in one column. Remove duplicates. This is about 6 hours for a 300-student archive.
2. Week 2: set up the system. Courses, rooms, teachers, fee tables, agent list. Ask the vendor who does this: Fidelo's one-off fee covers setup and training; with others, confirm.
3. Week 3: run both in parallel for the next intake. Enter bookings in both.
4. Week 4: switch invoicing for new students and keep the old system read-only for existing ones until their courses end.

Keep the spreadsheet for at least a term. If something is wrong in the new system, you can compare, and you are not relying on memory.

Costs that sit outside the price page

• One-off setup and training: Fidelo states 950 euros for Basic and 1,450 euros for Pro, with data migration charged separately at 125 to 1,250 euros. Teach 'n Go lists optional one-off setup services. Ask each to state the total in writing.
• Admin seats added later: per-admin pricing means a new admin is a new line. Count who will need a login in a year.
• Student numbers that grow: Teach 'n Go's price rises with live students; peak season may land you in a higher tier for the months you need it.
• Payment fees: card processing is usually separate from the software price.
• Currency: Fidelo prices in euros, ElsieApp in pounds, and Teach 'n Go in euros or dollars. Convert at the rate you will actually pay.
• Your time: two to three weeks of an administrator's attention during migration.

Which AI features are real

From the public pages: Fidelo's email-to-booking drafting and Teach 'n Go's list are the only documented AI features. In each case a human approves before anything is saved or sent, which is the right design for a school: an invented booking or a wrong fee reminder costs trust with an agent or a parent.

For a wider view of how education businesses use AI beyond their management system, our tutorial on five AI workflows for an education business covers enquiry handling and reports, and the tutoring centre admin tutorial shows timetable and invoice tasks in a similar setting.

A demo script that exposes the gaps

Take the same script to each vendor, with your own data. Illustrative wording:

1. Create a class: B1, Monday and Wednesday 09:00-10:30, Room 2, one teacher, 12 students.
2. Add an agent booking for 3 students arriving on different dates, with a 15 per cent commission.
3. Move one student to a higher level mid-course; show what changes in the timetable and the invoice.
4. Book a one-to-one lesson for next Tuesday and invoice it separately.
5. Show the agent's view: what they can see, and the monthly statement.
6. Show a credit note for a student who leaves after week two.
7. Show every AI feature, live, on a real forwarded email or real message draft.
8. Export all student and financial data to CSV. How long does it take, and what does it cost?

Mark each step as done, awkward or not possible. A vendor who cannot do step 3 cleanly will cost you hours every term, because level changes are routine in language teaching.

One more habit pays off: after the demo, write a single page that scores each system from 0 to 2 on the eight demo steps, and add the first-year cost beside it. Two vendors that look alike in a brochure usually separate on that page, often on level changes or the agent statement. Share it with the director and the accounts person, because they will be the ones living with the answer, and let them veto a system that makes their job harder even if the timetable looks better.

Three realistic ways it goes wrong

• The mid-course level move. A system that ties the invoice to the class makes a level change a manual job with a credit note and a new invoice. Test it in the demo.
• Agent commission on partial payments. Agents are paid commission when the student pays. If the system calculates on the invoice total, statements are wrong whenever a deposit is split. Ask how it handles deposits.
• The AI draft that sounds wrong. A message drafted for a parent in a second language may be grammatical and still too formal or too casual. Have a native speaker read ten drafts before turning anything on for all families.

How to decide, in order

1. Sort your students by source: agents, direct, corporate. If agents are over a third, rule out anything that does not show agent logins and commissions.
2. Count logins: admins, not teachers or students. Compare per-admin pricing with per-student pricing at your size and at your size plus 30 per cent.
3. Run the demo script above.
4. Ask for written quotes with setup, training and data-export terms.
5. Trial the AI on real data for two weeks, with human approval on.

Our music school software comparison and swim school software tutorial run a similar process for lesson-based schools, and show the same pattern: the timetable and invoice basics decide the choice, not the AI. If you would rather work through it with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers; get in touch with your shortlist.

Language school software questions

Which language school software handles agent bookings?

Fidelo School has an agency portal with its own login, bookings, documents and a monthly commission statement. ElsieApp lists agent management, commissions and bulk payments from agents. Teach 'n Go's public page does not mention agents, so ask before assuming.

Does any of it support CEFR levels?

None of the three public pages I read names the CEFR. Fidelo groups students by level in its class roster, and Teach 'n Go mentions multi-level class scheduling. ElsieApp lists assessments and exams. Ask each vendor to demonstrate your own A1 to C2 levels before you sign.

Are the AI features worth paying for?

Only a few are verifiable. Fidelo reads forwarded registration emails and drafts a booking for staff to review. Teach 'n Go lists AI setup, lead import, an assistant, and on Pro, drafted messages and fee reminders. ElsieApp mentions none. Treat each as a time saver to test, not a reason to choose.

What is the cheapest way to start?

For a small school, Teach 'n Go starts at 69 euros ($79 on its dollar price list) a month for up to 100 live students, with a 14-day trial and no card. Per-user systems are cheaper only when few staff need logins. Count logins, students and agent volume, then price all three the same way.

Can I run a language school on a spreadsheet?

For a handful of classes, yes. It breaks when you have several teachers, rooms and agents, because the timetable clashes and invoices are the work that slips. Move when double bookings or late invoices start costing you money.

Further reads

• Opening a Tutoring Centre: Costs, Room Plan and AI Admin — Costs and room plan for a new teaching business.
• Montessori School Software: Five Platforms Checked for Real AI — Another check of which education AI features are real.
• Best AI Tools for Tutors: What a Private Tutor Can Actually Use — AI tools a one-person teaching business can actually use.
• Opening a Music School: Rooms, Teachers, Fees and AI Admin — Rooms, teachers and fees for a lesson-based school.
• Parents' Evening Booking System: Slots, Reminders and Clashes With AI — Booking slots and reminders without clashes.
• Independent Educational Consultant Software: An AI-Built Tracker — A tracker approach for consultants advising students.
• AI Answering Service for a School Office: Absence Calls and Cost — Model the busy absence window, then define which callers go directly to a trained school employee.
• AI Timetable Generator for Schools: What It Solves and Misses — What a timetabling solver and a chat assistant each do for a school, plus the constraints a person still has to check before the grid goes out.
• How Are Language Schools Using AI? Eight Admin Jobs and the Risks — Eight back-office jobs a language school can give to AI, from enquiry replies to homestay matching, with the specific risk and check for each.
• How to Start a Language School: Accreditation, Agents and AI — What a new language school costs in year one, how accreditation and agents fit together, and where AI saves admin time from the first term.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Teach 'n Go pricing page, home page and language school page; Fidelo School Travel product page and Fidelo pricing page; ElsieApp pricing, home and full feature list pages (all read 4 November 2026). Prices are list prices in the currency each vendor shows, excluding tax.