Kastr vs ParentSquare
ParentSquare is the most widely deployed platform in K-12 family communication, and for a lot of districts it is a perfectly reasonable choice. This page is the comparison we would want if we were on the other side of the table — including the rows we lose.
| Capability | ParentSquare | Kastr |
|---|---|---|
| Mass broadcast (SMS, email, voice) | Yes | Yes |
| Two-way conversations | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic per-family translation | Yes | Yes, DeepL, previewable before send |
| Digital forms and permission slips | Tier dependent | Included |
| Public REST API for districts | Partner programme only | 28 endpoints, documented |
| Open-source CLI and MCP server | No | MIT licensed |
| Signed outbound webhooks | No | HMAC-SHA256, SSRF-guarded, auto-disable |
| Cost estimate shown before you send | No | Live, per channel |
| One identity across schools and roles | Known friction | Effective-dated roles on one person record |
| Signed migration receipt on import | No | HMAC PDF with per-file SHA-256 manifest |
| Roster sync withdraw guardrail | Not advertised | Aborts above 50% withdrawals |
| Published price | No | Yes |
| District website CMS | Yes (SmartSites) | Deliberately not built |
| Payments / fee collection | Yes | Deliberately not built |
| Attendance product | Attendance Plus | No |
| Single sign-on (SAML / Google / ClassLink) | Yes | Not built — magic link only |
| File attachments, photo and video sharing | Yes | Not built |
| Mobile push notifications | Yes | Not built |
| Automated attendance / lunch-balance notices | Yes | Rules configure; engine not shipped |
| SOC 2 Type II | Yes | Not yet audited — pre-launch |
| Customer references | Thousands of districts | None — we are pre-launch |
If a comparison table from a challenger has no red in the challenger's own column, it is marketing, not a comparison. Six of the rows above go to ParentSquare, and two of those — SSO and attachments — are genuine daily-use gaps.
Where ParentSquare is genuinely stronger
We are pre-launch. ParentSquare has thousands of districts, a mature product, and a completed SOC 2 Type II audit. If your evaluation weights proven scale and reference calls heavily — and for a lot of districts it should — that is a real argument in their favour and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Specifically, they have four things we do not:
- Single sign-on. ParentSquare supports SAML, Google and ClassLink SSO. Kastr's only authentication today is a magic link. For a district standardised on Google Workspace or Entra ID, that is a real operational difference.
- Attachments, photo and video sharing. Teachers use this daily. We have not built it.
- Mobile push notifications. Our parent app is a web app; push is not wired up.
- A bundled suite. Websites, payments and attendance under one contract. If consolidating vendors is your goal, that is a coherent reason to choose them.
There is also the obvious one: they have customers and we do not. Ask us for references and we will tell you we are recruiting design partners. That is the honest answer in August 2026.
Where the difference actually matters
You cannot find out what it costs
ParentSquare's pricing page does not contain a price. We fetched /platform/compare-packages/ on 4 August 2026: three tiers, four add-ons, 510 words, and the identical button — "Contact sales" — under every column. There is no self-serve path to a number anywhere on their site.
That is a choice, and it has a predictable consequence. Districts discover their renewal number after they are already committed, and comparing two vendors requires two sales cycles before you can put figures side by side. Our entire price list is on one public page, including the contract clause that caps year-four increases.
The renewal is where the money is
The pattern that started this company: a district signs at a reasonable number, then renewal arrives materially higher, and the alternative to accepting it is a migration nobody has budgeted for. We wrote the answer into the agreement rather than into a blog post. Clause §3.2 fixes the per-student price for 36 months and caps year four and beyond at the lesser of CPI-U or 5%, and any feature we ship during the locked period is included at no extra charge.
Your data is scriptable
Kastr ships 28 documented REST endpoints, an MIT-licensed CLI, an MCP server, and signed outbound webhooks with an HMAC-SHA256 signature over the raw body, a DNS-resolving SSRF guard, exponential backoff and automatic endpoint disable. No major competitor in this category ships a public district-facing API at all — integration is a partner programme you apply to. If your team wants to script a bulk operation at 11pm on a Sunday, that difference is the whole ballgame.
What the public record shows about cost
Because ParentSquare publishes nothing, the only figures available are the ones that appear in public procurement records — board agenda packets, approved contracts, state contract databases. Those are worth requesting for districts of your size before you renew, and they are public: your own board's agenda archive is often the fastest source.
The arithmetic that matters is not the first-year number. It is the three-year total, and the difference between a rate that is fixed in the contract and one that is not. A district paying a per-student rate that escalates mid-single-digits annually pays materially more in year three than the headline suggests, and the compounding is the part that never appears in a proposal.
The question to ask any vendor, including us. "Will you write your maximum annual increase into the agreement, as a number?" It costs nothing to answer if the answer is yes. Ours is §3.2 and you can read it before you talk to anyone.
Migration, and what you get on paper
Our ParentSquare importer is open source under MIT and runs without a Kastr account. It parses the standard seven-file export bundle, normalises phone numbers to E.164, validates emails, maps language codes, de-duplicates contact points, and filters junk guardian records — the entries literally named "mom", "dad", "grandma" and "unknown" that accumulate in every long-lived roster.
It then emits a signed migration receipt: a PDF carrying a per-source-file SHA-256 manifest, an HMAC-SHA256 signature over the bundle hash, a source-versus-imported count table, and a ledger of every record dropped with the reason. That is a document you can hand to procurement and a board, which is a different artefact from a log file. No other vendor in this category produces one.
Being straight about the current limit: the importer validates your export and produces the receipt. The step that writes those records into a live Kastr tenant is done with us during onboarding, not self-serve. See switching from ParentSquare for the actual sequence.
Questions people actually ask
How much does ParentSquare cost per student?
ParentSquare does not publish a price. Their pricing page lists three tiers and four add-ons with no dollar figures and a "Contact sales" button under each. The practical route to a number is a sales conversation, or your own district's public board agenda archive, where approved contracts are usually recorded.
Is Kastr cheaper than ParentSquare?
We cannot answer that honestly without knowing their quote to you, because they do not publish one. What we can say is our number: $3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students, $3.25 up to 14,999, $3.00 above that, with every feature included and no tiers. Whether that beats your quote is arithmetic you can do the moment you have theirs.
What does Kastr not do that ParentSquare does?
Single sign-on, file attachments and photo/video sharing, mobile push notifications, a district website CMS, payments, and a dedicated attendance product. We also have no SOC 2 audit yet and no customer references. Four of those are deliberate scope decisions; SSO, attachments and push are gaps we intend to close.
Can I export my data out of Kastr if we leave?
Yes, and it is a contract term rather than a promise: §7.1 gives you the right to export everything at any time, machine-readable, without notice and without fee. Being precise about today's state — self-serve export tooling ships with the May 2027 release; until then we run the export for you on request, same day.
Does ParentSquare still own Remind?
Yes. ParentSquare acquired Remind in November 2023 and has been consolidating it into the ParentSquare platform. If your teachers are on Remind, that migration is happening to you either way, which makes it a natural moment to evaluate the wider market rather than default into the acquirer.
Switching is a weekend, and you get a receipt.
Our ParentSquare importer is MIT-licensed and runs without us. It validates your export, normalises phone numbers and languages, drops the junk guardian records, and emits a signed PDF receipt with a per-file SHA-256 manifest — a procurement artefact, not a developer log.