Bloomz vs IRIS Reach

Bloomz is a K-12 school platform for communication, translation, attendance, behavior and social-emotional learning, forms, and school websites. It supports two-way messages and alerts through its app, email, SMS, and voice, and says its full interface is translated into more than 250 languages. Bloomz lists student information system integrations and single sign-on options including Clever, PowerSchool, and ClassLink. It describes its audience as K-12 schools and districts, including multilingual families, and is available on desktop and as iPhone and Android apps. Bloomz says every tier is free for teachers and families, while its help center also describes a Teacher Free tier limited to one class. Paid plans are listed at $3 a year for Essentials, $5 a year for Premium, $7 a year for Complete, and $11 a year for 360. These are starting rates, annual minimums may apply, and exact quotes depend on enrollment and selected modules. Bloomz states it is FERPA and COPPA compliant, iKeepSafe certified, and uses encryption in transit and at rest. It says its cloud hosting uses SOC 2-certified infrastructure from AWS and Microsoft Azure.

IRIS Reach is a parent engagement suite for secondary schools, bringing email, SMS and social media communications into one place. Parents can receive school information through a school-branded mobile app; the MyEd app includes messages, attendance, timetables, absences, achievements and behaviour. Inbound and outbound messages can be automatically translated into over 40 languages, and parents can check attendance through real-time reports based on registration data. Schools can create and collect electronic forms and surveys, host documents online and send links by SMS or email. Up to twenty accounts can create dedicated channels for departments and functions. Reporting, analysis, response management and an audit trail are included. Reach synchronises with school management information systems such as SIMS and Integris; after setup, syncing runs nightly by default. The service is available on web, Android and iOS. Pricing is on request, and the product page offers schools a free demo. The MyEd app is available for iOS and Android; its help page says messages sent to and from the app are free.