Compare brightwheel vs Procare Solutions

Brightwheel offers transparent, all-inclusive pricing plans that scale with your program, often proving more cost-effective as you grow, with no hidden fees for essential features. While Procare may advertise a flat monthly fee, it can often involve additional costs for key modules or payment processing, making brightwheel’s straightforward pricing a more predictable and value-driven choice for many programs.Request pricing information and see how brightwheel’s all-in pricing benefits your program.

Brightwheel excels in modern, real-time parent engagement, offering a visually rich experience with seamless photo/video sharing, live activity updates, and integrated messaging—all designed for ultimate parent convenience. Brightwheel prioritizes making daily updates and milestones effortless and enjoyable for parents.

Brightwheel offers a comprehensive suite of features that often surpasses Procare in user-friendliness and modern design.

Brightwheel is designed as a modern, all-in-one platform that prioritizes ease of use, intuitive design, and seamless integration across features (like check-in, billing, communication, and curriculum tools). We focus on saving staff up to 20 hours per month through automation and a fluid mobile experience.

Brightwheel often stands out for its superior mobile app experience, more flexible billing options, robust PCI Level 1 compliant payment processing via Stripe, and a strong emphasis on real-time family engagement through rich media sharing.

Brightwheel goes beyond basic management tools with features like sign-ups, making it easy to coordinate parent-teacher conferences, classroom donations, and more—all in one place.

We recommend exploring our detailed feature comparison chart above to see how brightwheel specifically meets your needs.

Brightwheel proudly offers Experience Curriculum, which stands out for its unique blend of digital lesson plans accessible directly within your brightwheel app and a monthly delivery of hands-on learning materials. This research-based curriculum, aligned with all 50 states’ early learning standards and national frameworks like NAEYC, supports educators with ready-to-implement activities for infants to preschoolers.

In contrast, Procare offers a “100% digital curriculum” through its partnership with Learning Beyond Paper (LBP), which primarily focuses on online lesson plans. While digital is convenient, Experience Curriculum’s tangible, mailed curriculum kits provide invaluable sensory and hands-on learning experiences that many programs prefer, directly complementing the digital tools for a truly enriched educational environment. This integrated, multi-sensory approach ensures that not only are lessons easy to plan, but they are also deeply engaging for children and highly convenient for educators.

Brightwheel’s billing system offers a distinctly superior experience. It’s included in your subscription at no extra cost, doesn’t have any hidden service fees, and features highly-customizable plans that adapt to your unique program needs.

We prioritize unmatched security, leveraging industry-leading Stripe for PCI Level 1 compliant payments and robust fraud monitoring, ensuring every transaction is secure without storing sensitive banking information. This combines with a user-friendly experience for families who appreciate easy online payment options and automated billing, significantly reducing late payments and administrative overhead compared to less modern, module-based systems.

Brightwheel provides robust tools to streamline even the most complex childcare operations, making it an ideal choice for multi-location centers and after-school programs. It offers integrated multi-site management tools that allow administrators to oversee all sites from a single account, easily switching between locations to manage staff, view real-time data, and ensure consistency across their entire organization, all accessible from both web and mobile devices.

The user-friendly platform provides the flexibility to create and manage distinct programs, including dedicated setups for after-school care. This allows for customized billing plans tailored to specific program needs, efficient attendance tracking, and targeted communication to relevant families and staff.

With customizable user permissions and roles, directors can define specific access levels for staff across different locations or programs, ensuring data security and operational control. This means that each unique program, regardless of its location or focus, can operate smoothly and efficiently.

By automating administrative tasks like billing, attendance tracking, and enrollment across all your locations and after-school programs, brightwheel not only reduces manual effort but also offers a unified, real-time overview of your entire business. This comprehensive approach streamlines daily operations, facilitates consistent communication, and provides valuable insights to support the efficient management and growth of your multi-site childcare business.

Switching from Procare to brightwheel is designed to be remarkably easy and stress-free. Our dedicated onboarding team, supported by comprehensive resources in brightwheel Academy, provides personalized training and hands-on support onboarding every step of the way.

We focus on a smooth transition, helping you import necessary data and ensuring your team is fully confident in using all brightwheel features from day one, so your program experiences minimal disruption and quickly reaps the benefits of a more modern platform.