School Signals and Apptegy support school-to-home communication but serve different needs and priorities.
Apptegy is designed primarily for district-level communication and branding. Apptegy delivers announcements through branded mobile apps and websites. It is a strong choice for centralized public relations and marketing. Apptegy offers limited communication tools at the classroom, PTA, or parent engagement levels.
School Signals is a complete communication platform and app that connects entire school communities. School Signals is a central hub for official school-wide announcements, emergency notifications, events, and day-to-day communications. School Signals provides a broad, flexible set of tools to support authentic communication. The School Signals app includes all admin features, making the user’s experience between different devices seamless.
| Item | Apptegy | School Signals |
|---|---|---|
| Communication Features | + District announcements + Rooms feature for Classrooms + SMS and app push notifications + School websites + Newsletter system + Direct messaging between teachers and parents + Teacher directory + Brand consistency | + School Feed for school-wide news and announcements + Commenting and reactions on teacher posts + Post notifications (SMS, app push, email) + Scheduled posts + Parents participation in feeds + AI driven profanity checks for content monitoring + Classroom communication + Discussion threads integrated to most features + Direct messaging between teachers and parents |
| Parent Engagement Features | + Limited | + RSVP-enabled events + Volunteer Signup + Parent Groups by classroom and activity. + Full school directory (includes parents) profiles with hobbies/interests/pictures for community networking + School-wide Parent-Teacher Conference scheduler and management |
| Other Features | + Student behavior tracking (PBIS support) | + Online Forms (surveys, permission slips, feedback forms) + Documents management + School Calendar for important dates + Photo Galleries for school/classroom sharing + Staff Groups for internal school communication |
| Mobile App | Yes. Branded mobile app. | Yes. Includes all admin features. |
| Audience | • School districts, PR teams & schools | • School districts, schools • Designed for admins, teachers, office staff, and volunteers to coordinate together |
| Pricing | • Pricing details not fully public | + Free 30-day trial + $0.32 to $.0.55 cents per student per year |