Does anybody's school use Parentmail to contact you? Are there any problems?

[RustyBear]

The school I work at is thinking of using
the Parentmail system to contact parents, and I wondered if anyone had experience of it (from either side) & are there many problems - especially with emails not getting through.

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We use it at dd1's school and I am getting really annoyed with the huge volume of emails we get. I suppose it's better than lots of paper letters environmentally and because sometimes they don't make it home, but practically everything in my email inbox is from the school.

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yes, you had to "opt in". Seems to work fine and don't get a flood in my inbox.

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School uses meail and paper. The email people always get the info at least 2 days after the paper people!

I think with this system you can choose text or email - text is better for things like checking up on kids who haven't arrived and haven't rung in.

I was just wondering, after the problems I had with Hotmail & the MN newsletter/talk roundup, whether anyone had major problems with it being rejected?

We use it at our school and I think its fab. I don't have to worry that I have not received a piece of paper and I am not hunting in book bags looking for things. It works really well if the parents use their email a lot.
HTH

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I like parentmail, better than bits of paper - I have a very forgetful DD!

Also school publish all letters given out on their website, so I can check every now and then to see what DD hasn't brought home, eg matches/team listings are not parentmail only paper.

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Actually I should have said you can opt for text as well as email - the newsletters would be email, but you can send texts saying the football's been cancelled or where is your child.

It costs 6p per message, but there are other charges, not sure what they are & the bursar's gone home; I'll ask her tomorrow.(I only do the technical bits, not the finance thank god.)

We do have a bit of money to spare though due to the fact that the governors told the bursar to carry over a higher percentage of the budget to next year than the local authority will allow - now we have to spend it....

I have 2 children at one school who use "Parent Mail" and one child at another school who use "Parent Pay".

Parent mail is confusing because there is "ParentMail" and "ParentMail2"
Parent Mail seems to work fine but the interface if you want to pay for meals is unintuitive, illogical and visually nasty if you compare it to "parentpay" which is clear and simple to use.

Yes. ParentMail in both primary and secondary schools.
I find it great. I can print off attachments, fill in and send back the permission slips, and yet still have details in my inbox.

The only problems have been when the school forget to add the attachment.

I think I've only seen a text once, and that was because the primary school was closed at short notice because of snow.

Why so many withdrawn messages??

We use it and have just been upgraded to Parentmail 2.

Yes parent mail works for us. Sometimes it is backed up by texting as well.

This thread was started in 2008!!!

Oh yes. Doh! I was wondering about the withdrawn messages as well.

ffs.

Very rude SPUNIB.

Parentmail is nothing but problems. The biggest of which is that the service is absolutely pointless. They send you an email to tell you that you have a letter on their website. What on earth is the point of that I can only get the message if I first got the email so why not just save all that money they're giving to parentmail and send the letter directly to parents.

This "service" is absolutely appalling. Nothing but problems. Endless admin messages clogging up boxes, reminders for messages already read, useless user settings that don't let you stop this, and worse of all they won't speak to you - if you do get through you get transferred internally and cut off after 30 mins on hold. The kids school hate it as well, it's terrible.

Works well in both kids' schools here