Kastr vs Apptegy
Apptegy Thrillshare is in 5,250+ districts and sells district websites, a branded mobile app, communications and social autoposting as one contract with one team. We sell communications, at a published price. This page is mostly about working out which of those two things you are actually trying to buy.
| What the bundle contains | Apptegy | Kastr | If you unbundle, where this job goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| District and school websites — CMS, hosting, accessibility remediation | Core product | Not built, deliberately | A website vendor, or a person on your staff who owns it |
| Branded district mobile app, iOS and Android | Yes | Not built — our family surface is a web app with no push | Your comms vendor's app, or no app at all |
| Social media autoposting to Facebook, X and Instagram | Core product | Not built | A general social scheduler, or the comms office by hand |
| AI-drafted newsletters and district stories | Yes | Not built | Whoever writes them now |
| Mass notification — SMS, email, voice | Yes | Yes, no per-message fee | The comms vendor |
| Two-way conversations with families | Yes | Yes, audit-logged | The comms vendor |
| Translation | Yes | DeepL-powered, previewable before you send | The comms vendor |
| Digital forms and permission slips | Present; depth varies | Included at every district size | The comms vendor, or a dedicated forms vendor |
| Public REST API, CLI, signed webhooks | Not published | 28 endpoints, MIT CLI and MCP server, HMAC-SHA256 webhooks | — |
| A price you can read without a call | No — custom quote | $3.50 / $3.25 / $3.00 per student per year | — |
| A cap on increases, written into the agreement | Not disclosed | §3.2 — 36 months fixed, then CPI-U or 5%, whichever is lower | — |
| An exit right if the vendor is acquired | Not disclosed | §11.2 — 90-day termination, export, prorated refund | — |
Four of the first five rows are things we do not build and do not intend to. If any of them is load-bearing for your district, the fourth column is the actual cost of choosing us, and it is measured in staff time rather than licence fees.
If you are replacing a website vendor too, choose Apptegy
We will say this before anything else because it is the single most useful sentence on the page. If your district is replacing its website platform and its communications platform in the same procurement, Apptegy is a coherent answer and we are not one. Not "we are the underdog" — we are structurally the wrong product, because two of the three things you are buying do not exist here.
The reflexive best-of-breed argument underrates what a bundle buys. It is not software; it is the absence of a job. Somebody has to own a district website: accessibility compliance, stale content, the principal who wants a photo carousel, ADA remediation when a complaint lands. In a district with a two-person technology team and no communications staff, paying one supplier to own that is straightforwardly cheaper than the alternative, and anyone telling you otherwise has not run a district website.
So the honest framing is not Apptegy versus Kastr. It is: are you buying a suite, or are you buying a messaging tool? If the answer is a suite, stop reading and go and negotiate hard on the quote. If the answer is a messaging tool, the rest of this page is about what a suite costs you when you only wanted one component of it.
What a bundle costs when you only needed one part of it
Three costs, none of which appear on a quote.
You cannot price the component you wanted
Apptegy's pricing is a custom quote. That is normal in this category and it is not sinister, but it has a specific consequence for a bundle: there is no line item for communications, so there is no number to compare against a comms-only vendor. You cannot run the arithmetic that would tell you whether you are overpaying for messaging, because the arithmetic requires a figure that does not exist. Our entire price list is on one public page — $3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students, $3.25 to 14,999, $3.00 above — and you did not have to talk to anyone to read it.
The renewal is a single conversation you cannot walk out of
When website, app and communications sit with one supplier, the renewal is one conversation in which both sides know that declining means replacing three systems in a single summer. That is the structural reason bundle renewals escalate, and it has nothing to do with the vendor being unpleasant — it is what any rational supplier does with that leverage.
The test is short. If this renewal came back thirty per cent higher, what would you actually do? If the honest answer is "pay it, we cannot move three systems at once", then you are not in a negotiation and no amount of shopping changes that until you unbundle. Our answer to the same question is a clause: §3.2 fixes the per-student rate for 36 months and caps year four onward at the lesser of CPI-U or 5%, and anything we ship inside the locked period is included.
The surface you did not want still has to be governed
Social autoposting, AI-drafted stories and a branded app are not free to own even when they are included. Each is a thing that publishes in your district's name, and each needs someone to approve, correct and occasionally apologise for it. Districts that adopt the whole surface because it came in the box tend to discover the staffing implication in year two.
The rows where Apptegy wins
| Capability | Apptegy | Kastr |
|---|---|---|
| Districts served | 5,250+ | None. We are pre-launch and recruiting design partners |
| Single sign-on (Google, Microsoft, SAML, ClassLink) | Yes | Not built — a magic link is our only authentication |
| Mobile push notifications | Yes, via the branded app | Not built |
| Photo, video and file attachments | Yes | Not built |
| Vendor-native SIS connectors | Yes | Roster data is POSTed to our API; no native connectors |
| SOC 2 Type II | Ask for the current report | Not audited |
| Automated attendance and lunch-balance notices | Present; depth varies | Rules configure; no engine fires them yet |
| Reference calls with districts your size | Yes | None to offer |
Eight rows, six of them clean losses. Single sign-on and push notifications are the two that show up in the first fortnight of daily use; having 5,250 districts and no reference calls to offer is the one that shows up in your evaluation committee. If a challenger publishes a comparison table with no red in its own column, you are reading an advertisement, and you should treat ours the same way if it ever looks like that.
Two of those rows deserve extra precision rather than a tick. Our automated attendance and lunch-balance notices are configurable as rules today, but no engine fires them — that is roadmap, and we would rather say so here than have it surface in a demo. And "no vendor-native SIS connectors" means exactly that: roster data reaches us by being POSTed to our API, via OneRoster-shaped payloads or your own script, not by us logging into your student information system.
What buying comms on its own gets you instead
If you have concluded you only need the messaging component, the things worth weighing are not feature ticks. They are terms and surface area.
- A number, in public, before any call. One tier, every feature, no add-on modules and no per-message fees. Forms, voice, translation and two-way messaging are included at 900 students and at 90,000.
- An increase cap you can read. §3.2. Thirty-six months fixed, then CPI-U or 5%, whichever is lower.
- Export as a right, not a favour. §7.1 — everything, any time, machine-readable, no notice, no fee. To be exact about today: the self-serve tooling ships in the May 2027 release; until then we run the export for you, same day, on request.
- An exit if we are acquired. §11.2 — terminate within 90 days of a change of control or a material change to data terms, with export and a prorated refund. In a category where ParentSquare bought Remind and PowerSchool bought SchoolMessenger, that clause is worth more than most features.
- No revenue from your families, ever. §9.4, in the agreement.
- An integration surface you can actually use. 28 documented REST endpoints, an MIT-licensed CLI and MCP server, and signed webhooks with HMAC-SHA256 over the raw body, a DNS-resolving SSRF guard, exponential backoff and auto-disable after repeated failures. Suite vendors in this category do not publish a district-facing API.
- A release calendar that respects yours. Major releases land in May with professional-development packs; September to May is polish only. Nobody else in this category commits to that, and every district administrator understands immediately why it matters.
If you do unbundle, do the communications half first. It is bounded and testable, and it gives you a working channel on which to announce the website change. The sequencing argument is set out at greater length in our Apptegy alternatives guide.
Questions worth asking when the price is a quote
These four apply to Apptegy, to us, and to everyone else you shortlist. Ask them in writing.
- "What is the communications component of this quote, on its own?" If a bundle cannot be decomposed, you cannot benchmark any part of it. Ask for the line item even if the answer is that one does not exist — the answer itself is informative.
- "What is your maximum annual increase, and will you write it into the agreement as a number?" Escalation is where the money is over a term. It is answerable in one sentence if the answer is yes.
- "Can we export everything today, without asking you?" Not on exit — today. Portability that exists only at the end of a contract is leverage, not a feature.
- "If you are acquired, what are our rights?" This category consolidates constantly. Get the answer as a clause.
What we would do in your position. Get the Apptegy quote, then get one quote from a comms-only vendor at your enrolment, and compare the three-year totals rather than year one. If the gap is smaller than the cost of employing someone to own a website, buy the bundle. If it is larger, you now have a number to negotiate with, which is more than most districts take into the room. Either way you are better off than accepting a renewal because moving three systems is unthinkable.
Questions people actually ask
How much does Apptegy Thrillshare cost?
Apptegy prices by custom quote and publishes no figures, so there is no list price to quote you and no per-component breakdown. The two practical routes to a number are a sales conversation or your own district's public board agenda archive, where approved contracts are usually recorded with dollar amounts and terms. Neighbouring districts of similar enrolment are the fastest comparable.
Is Apptegy a communications platform or a website platform?
Both, deliberately. Thrillshare bundles district and school websites, a branded mobile app, mass notification and two-way messaging, and social media autoposting into one contract. That is the product's whole logic. If you need the website side, it is a coherent purchase; if you only need messaging, you are buying a suite to get one component of it.
Can I use Kastr alongside my existing district website vendor?
Yes, and that is the intended shape. We build communications only and have no plans to build a CMS, a branded app or social autoposting. Districts running Finalsite, EChalk, an in-house site or Apptegy's own website product can put communications somewhere else without touching the website.
What does Apptegy do that Kastr does not?
District websites, a branded mobile app, social media autoposting, AI-drafted newsletters and stories, single sign-on, push notifications, file and photo attachments, and vendor-native SIS connectors. They also have 5,250+ districts and reference calls; we are pre-launch with neither, and no SOC 2 audit.
Does unbundling communications from the website actually save money?
Sometimes, and the honest test is arithmetic rather than principle. Compare the three-year bundle total against a comms-only contract plus whatever the website genuinely costs you to run elsewhere, including staff time. If the gap is smaller than the cost of a person to own the website, keep the bundle. The larger benefit of unbundling is usually renewal leverage rather than the licence fee.
One price. Every feature. Locked for three years.
$3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students. No tiers, no add-on modules, no per-message fees. Published on the site because you should not have to book a call to learn a price.