Procare vs Brightwheel

The Competitive Guide for Child Care Centers

Procare is the simplest platform to run your child care center on
Procare is transforming child care management by making it simple to run your business with one intuitive tool. Whether you’re managing a single center or the complexities of multi-site operations, Procare simplifies it all by automating administrative tasks, streamlining billing and payments, and enabling real-time parent communication, making operations seamless and efficient.

In this guide, we’ll answer your questions about why you should choose Procare versus the competition, specifically Brightwheel.

The cost per month was much more reasonable with Procare. Brightwheel wanted to charge by the number of rooms or children. I also like the features and easiness of Procare.
Tami V, Childcare Manager
Source: Capterra

Why Choose Procare?

2 out of 3 centers that use software choose Procare, and for good reason!

• Procare gives you a complete child care management system at your fingertips
• All-in-one price, no matter how many children are in your care
• Procare has streamlined family engagement capabilities to help build stronger connections with the families you serve like attendance, authorized pickups, classroom management and embedded curriculum
• Procare offers a 100% digital curriculum that embeds seamlessly for easy lesson planning, giving everything teachers need to provide high-quality instruction for infants to pre-K at their fingertips
• Procare offers IACET-accredited professional development with 120+ hours of training for your entire staff, including CDA Pathways!
• Parents love the child care mobile app because they can stay connected at all times via two-way messaging, activities, milestones, curricula, contactless check-in/out, initiating mobile payments, and more
• Procare has integrated tuition, billing, payments, and payment processing all within the platform, so no need for third-party software. Low processing, greater flexibility
• Procare provides 5-star onboarding and real-live people answering support calls versus a chatbot
• Procare has expanded the Account Management Services Team so that every customer has a contact to call

A Snapshot of Some Important Features Your Center Will Need

Procare Offers an Affordable Monthly Rate That Fits Any Child Care Center’s Budget

Procare offers everything you need to manage your child care business for one low monthly price. This means that while your business grows, you don’t need to worry about your costs growing.

With Procare, you don’t pay more as your business grows.

• Manage every aspect of your child care center or multiple centers including registration, attendance, schedules, family, child, and staff information, child tracking and more — all in one cloud-based, integrated platform at an affordable monthly rate that doesn’t fluctuate
• Nurture classroom and parent interactions through an easy-to-use child care mobile app
• Automate billing and payment collection through Procare’s payment processing platform built exclusively for child care businesses
• Offer contactless solutions like check-in/out and billing/payments to support the safety of your center
• Simplify staff clock in/out, scheduling, and payroll
• Enjoy live support to help you at every point in your child care business journey
• Access to comprehensive reporting that can be customized by state and type of center

Request info about Procare’s all-in-one pricing here.

Procare’s Proprietary Integrated Payment Processing is Easier and Gets You Paid Faster

Delays in payment processing create stress and cash flow problems. The Procare platform provides integrated in-house payment processing allowing your center to accept and process multiple types of payments without additional administration on your part. With Procare you can:

• Accept credit or debit card payments in person, online or via the child care mobile app
• Set up payments directly from the family’s bank account
• Procare has proprietary integrated payment processing within the Procare platform, so your center will always get low fees and dedicated support.
• Get next-day funding for credit cards and automatic payments from checking accounts to ensure you are not waiting for your funds

Grow Your Center

Attracting new families is a key part of operating a successful child care business. Procare’s integrated lead insights feature allows you to:

• Streamline and increase enrollment with lead management
• Centralize record-keeping
• Track enrollment from start to finish
• Automate scheduling and follow-up
• Offer digital online registration

No other center management platform in the market can give you this type of end-to-end reporting and tracking.

Embedded Curriculum

Procare offers a 100% digital curriculum that embeds seamlessly, giving everything teachers need to provide high-quality instruction for infants to pre-K at their fingertips. The Procare platform embeds digital curriculum from Learning Beyond Paper to help with creating lesson plans digitally, student assessments and managing lesson plans by classroom without the stress of outdated paper formats.

Comprehensive Professional Development

Procare Professional Development offers Procare customers over 120 hours of IACET-accredited CEUs for everyone on your staff. Beyond compliance and certification needs, Procare provides more professional development and career progression opportunities, while building out a team with higher quality certifications.

Best-In-Class Child Care Mobile App

Procare has an easy-to-use child care mobile app that is fully integrated for staff and family engagement. The platform allows centers to stay connected with the families they serve by sharing important moments, information, learning milestones, contactless check-in/out, mobile tuition payments, and more.

No Contracts

Procare does not have any hidden fees or require annual contracts or set-up fees for new customers. Procare lets you focus on what matters most — the children you care for.

Live Support

With Procare, you get five-star support, whether you need help getting started or learning about our advanced features. Procare has expanded the Account Management Services Team so that every customer has a contact to call.

FAQs

How does pricing compare between Procare and Brightwheel?
Procare typically offers more cost-effective pricing because of their flat monthly rate that doesn’t fluctuate based on attendance or enrollment. Brightwheel uses tiered pricing based on enrollment.

Who has better customer support?
Procare offers friendly live phone and chat support (M-F) with no appointment necessary. Brightwheel requires support calls to be scheduled in advance.

What kind of software integrations are offered and are there any exclusive to either Brightwheel or Procare?
Both Brightwheel and Procare offer Gusto (payroll) and digital curriculum solutions. In addition, Procare offers direct integrations with QuickBooks (a direct accounting integration).

Ready to Take Your Child Care Center to the Next Level?

Procare is the only solution that gives you everything you need to run your center – from the business side to curriculum, to family engagement – all in one easy-to-use platform.