# Arbor Parent App — user reviews > 333 indexed App Store user reviews of Arbor Parent App by Arbor Education Partners, rated 1.90/5 from 8 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/arbor-parent-app/id1448707412/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/arbor-parent-app/id1448707412.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 1 · 4★ 0 · 3★ 1 · 2★ 1 · 1★ 5 ## What do users think of Arbor Parent App? Overall sentiment: negative **Pros** - 🚀 Versatile and has many options - 👍 Good app for parents to view child's progress **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent login issues - 👎 Confusing and unintuitive layout - 🔒 Forced password changes every 180 days - 💳 No option to add reminders for low meal balance - 🤯 Complicated to book clubs and appointments - 🤔 Lack of confirmation for purchases - 🤷‍♀️ Difficult to access important information **Commonly reported bugs** - Login issues with incorrect password errors - Inconsistent behavior across web and mobile versions - Inability to delete or archive old assignments and activities **Most requested features** - Add a calendar view for events and appointments - Improve messaging functionality with better organization and notifications - Allow parents to manage multiple children from a single account - Integrate with digital wallets and enable auto top-up for meal balances ## Newest reviews (19 of 333) ### 1/5 — Awful *2026-08-27, version 38* The most unintuitive app I’ve ever used. Separate money accounts for different things. Add money. Checkout . Go somewhere else to add meals. Checkout. Money not taken out at the point of booking so you never know much much balance is left. Hate it ### 1/5 — Diabolical *2026-08-26, version 38* Diabolical app but forced to use by school!! Would be zero stars if I could! ### 1/5 — Not a good platform *2026-08-26, version 37* Locks you out every few weeks and it is not very clear where to find what information. No option to record absence in advance. Which school would use something else ### 1/5 — Crashes on the first day back *2026-08-26, version 37* What amateurs are running this that they can’t deal with traffic on the first day of school? ### 1/5 — i hate schiol *2026-08-25, version 37* school is bad ### 1/5 — Review *2026-08-17, version 37* awful, can’t login even after resetting my password numerous times. ### 2/5 — Lots of potential but utterly infuriating interface *2026-07-24, version 36* The Arbor app looks nice and has plenty of features. However, it’s overcomplicated and lacks basic user-friendliness. If you have multiple children, they are separated, so you have to keep switching between them, rather than (for example) booking school meals for each child on a particular day in one go with ease (instead, it’s SIX presses of buttons to go via menus and sub-menus get to another child’s meal for the same day). Changing meals requires removing a meal, confirming, then going back into the menu before you can change it. Payments are strewn around all over the place, separated into different menus. Viewing payment history to check if you’ve already paid for an item is also not intuitive – you go to Payments and it’s not there, and there’s no way to access it from the payments screen (instead, you have to go to the Main Menu, scroll down and click ‘Invoices’… why not call it something more obvious like ‘Payment History’ or ‘View Past Payments’?) When on certain pages, it’s obvious you may want to go to a related page (e.g. if I’m on the Payments menu, I may want to View Payment History to make sure I’ve not already paid for something!) but there are no shortcut links provided on most pages, so this requires going back to another menu to find your way from there, as per the above example. There’s really no need to have Clubs, Trips, School Shop and Payments as four separate menus – if they’re separate then at least have some shortcuts to get between them easily rather than having to go via the main menu all the time. And one of the most egregious features is that, when you get a message from the school, the push notification from Arbor doesn’t tell you what the message is – you have to click on the notification to take you into the app. That’s not all, though – once inside the app, the message doesn’t even appear, so you have to then go to the right menu, to click on ‘Messages’, and then select the new message that’s just been received to see what it says! It’s so badly thought out. And possibly the most infuriating issue: it doesn’t even save your debit/credit card details, so EVERY time you want to make a payment, you have to enter ALL your card details from scratch. It doesn’t support ApplePay either (despite it having existed in the UK since 2015). There are bugs, too – sometimes (though not all the time) when you go to login, it doesn’t put your password in for you, even though you’ve clicked on the ‘Password’ field, and then selected the option to input your password automatically via your iPhone. Overall, there’s lots of potential in this app, but the interface is utterly exhausting to use, nothing is where you would expect it to be, and it then requires far too much clicking, scrolling. It’s as fiddly as you can imagine, as you endlessly click around to try and get where you want to go. The menu layout and navigation needs a complete rethink – it very clearly lacks any thorough real-world testing. Fix this, and it could be a superb app that’s an asset to any school, parent/carer and child – but, even as someone who is very computer literate, it often has me tearing my hair out due to its lack of user-friendliness. ### 1/5 — Very hard to book clubs and No invoices provided *2026-07-15, version 35* This has been the worst by far parent app. Its time consuming. I have two children attending clubs morning and afternoon. To book them in I have to deal with this more than 30 minutes every time. Topping up 4 accounts, 2 breakfasts and 2 after school . After paying I have to go to each of them (4 times again) book the days and the times. I don’t want to think parents with 3 or more children. Very chaotic. And another thing, I cannot download any invoice, thing that I need to declare my childcare costs every month. Rubbish ### 1/5 — TELL YOUR SCHOOLS TO STICK TO PARENT PAY *2026-07-15, version 35* This app is a total farce compared to parent pay. Everything takes longer to do, requires more clicks, it clunky bordering on unusable. Speak to the admin team at your school that have to suffer on the other side. No one consulted them, it so much harder for them. Schools have to be responsible with budgets but don’t let deploy this abomination ### 2/5 — Notifications not descriptive *2026-07-15, version 35* The notification appears as “New message received. Tap for details” why can’t the message be descriptive rather visiting to app every time to understand about that notifications. The message read and unread should be highlighted with different background or foreground colour, as it is very difficult to differentiate both. ### 1/5 — Inexplicably bad *2026-07-14, version 35* Logged out and seemingly never to be let in again. Linked to a school that doesn’t use it, not to the one that does and can’t change. Arbor team seemingly think parenting isn’t time consuming and stressful enough so have added this fresh hell for us all. Thanks! ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work *2026-07-14, version 35* Always glitchy and I can’t log in ### 1/5 — It’s still awful *2026-07-13, version 35* The process for booking a child into wrap around care is way more complicated than it needs to be - I need to add funds before I can even register for a place, and even though the session only costs £1.85, the minimum I can top up is £2. Make it make sense. Diabolic app that appears to have been designed by someone who never set foot in a school let alone had a child attend one. ### 1/5 — Terrible *2026-07-12, version 34* Absolute dog shot of an app. Useless ### 1/5 — A constant challenge *2026-07-12, version 34* Relentlessly serving error messages that make no sense, combined with a horrible, clunky UI that makes achieving even the simplest of this a constant uphill struggle. Dreadful and infuriating. ### 1/5 — Worst app *2026-07-10, version 34* Unfortunately both my children’s schools use this app. It’s appalling. For messaging there is no way to delete once read so all of the messages pile up, surely that’s basic for messaging apps? When I logged on yesterday it forced me to create a new password. Now it won’t work at all and I can only log onto the desktop by recreating a password each time. I have no idea why schools would invest in such rubbish. ### 1/5 — A Chocolate Teapot is more useful *2026-07-10, version 34* One of the worst apps I've used in a long time. Password AutoFill doesn't work, forcing me to open my password manager, copy a long, complex password, and paste it manually every time I log in. That's a basic feature that should work reliably. The interface feels dated, the user experience is frustrating, and it honestly seems like very little usability testing was done before release. Please invest in proper design, testing, and quality assurance. Modern development tools can help speed up improvements, but fundamental functionality and user experience need much more attention. In its current state, this app simply isn't good enough. Just use Claude FFS! ### 1/5 — Very poor *2026-07-09, version 34* Unreliable and very poor functionality. Ugly design. Have to do loads of clicks to do anything. ### 1/5 — Trash 👎 *2026-07-08, version 33* So hard, logs me out. So stressful. 🗑️ ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Flaky *2026-09-03, version 38* Frustrating and glitchy. ### 1/5 — Possibly the worst ever parent app *2026-09-02, version 38* Keep getting kicked out, reset password process goes round and round, and even asks me to log in as a parent of a school my children no longer go to! The app was bad enough when I was logged it, it’s less than useless when my kids can’t even see their timetables!! ### 1/5 — sucks *2026-09-01, version 38* app is rlly hard to use and school is bad ### 1/5 — Locked out AGAIN *2026-09-01, version 38* Infuriating app. Locked out of one of my schools, I have tried everything to troubleshoot. I access to this every week, sometime’s daily! Please get this sorted 🙏🏼 ### 1/5 — I can't even update !! *2026-09-01, version 38* I can't even update !! ### 1/5 — What a disaster *2026-08-31, version 38* I would give this minus stars if I could. What an earth possessed these schools to use such a disaster of an app? Logs you out constantly then rejects your password. Change it, still says it’s wrong. This is constant. You end up having to use the internet version which isn’t the same. Ridiculous ### 1/5 — Disgusting app *2026-08-31, version 38* Giving me english form and then english right after is an attack towards me and my mental health. Do better. ### 1/5 — Never works consistently *2026-08-31, version 38* One moment I log in the next it doesn’t recognise the log in. It’s basic clunky and quite omitted as apps go. Would rather revive emails from the school and do bank transfers it would be more reliable than this app which picks and chooses the days it wants to work ### 1/5 — Not fit for purpose *2026-08-29, version 38* I cannot purchase any snacks or swimming or meals. Have emailed arbor, they’re not interested and the school can’t sort it out either. Completely useless app ### 1/5 — Awful *2026-08-28, version 38* I hate school, ok. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — So much better than competitors! *2026-01-08, version 28.5* The school my son goes to had 3 previous apps before they found Arbor and what a sigh of relief, because the previous apps were absolutely awful to navigate and extremely tiresome especially loading in lunches. Arbor is much more user friendly and efficient! ### 4/5 — Unbelievable *2026-07-13, version 34* After last update app is unusable. Not recognising old password. Tried resetting it and that doesn’t work either. What’s the point in updating if you’re going to break it? ### 4/5 — Good app *2026-01-16, version 28.5* Not sure why you have such bad reviews, the app is versatile and has lots of options for parents to view about their child’s education progress. However, our school has just switched to manage meal payments via the app and it is a biggest gripe for me that there is no possibility to add reminders when the balance runs low. Can you add this functionality? ### 4/5 — Rahab said shush *2025-11-14, version 28.5* So do it ### 4/5 — Good app when doesn’t kick us out *2025-09-18, version 28.5* the apps great and fit for purpose easy to use too! but sometimes it boots u out completely and even with correct password won’t let us in but works again later some how so apart from that it’s good ### 4/5 — The app is really good *2024-09-26, version 28.4* I think the app is really good because it is so clear you can see how much money your child has in your account , positive log , negative logs and more. But when your child gets a positive or negative log it doesn’t tell you what subject and it needs to fix that ### 4/5 — Useful app and helpful support *2020-01-03* I installed this app to check the progress of my kids at the school. The app gives an up to date info about where are my kids now, their behaviour etc. I can also see messages from the school which is mega useful, the app also pings me when a new message is there - so I don’t miss them. I know that I can pay for meals from the app, but I haven’t tried it yet. There were some issues when I was logging in for the first time. So I contacted my school and they sorted everything four with the app support. It was so quickly. I like the fact that I have about my kinds in my phone, it makes me closer to them when they are at school. ### 3/5 — Notifications *2026-07-04, version 33* Why have notifications stopped no push sounds or banners so im missing all messages Im not logging in everyday on the off chance there is a new message this needs sorting as as a parent the app is pretty useless without it ### 3/5 — No notifications *2026-06-29, version 33* I no longer receive notifications from the app so have missed a ton of urgent stuff recently from school, I have checked all the settings on my phone and they are on as normal. There are no app settings in the app to see if it is an issue there, tried to contact support but the AI bit said contact school, this is something they can’t sort!!???? ### 3/5 — Notifications *2026-06-24, version 31* The app usually works really well but last week it signed me out and then I had trouble signing back in. Since I have signed back in, I’m not getting notifications for messages. I can see them if I go into the app but I’m now missing the messages. All setting are set to receive messages. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-09.*