Comparison

SpacesEDU vs SM Home

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

SpacesEDU

This app facilitates portfolio-based assessment for educators and students. It allows for the creation and collection of student work in various formats, assessment of learning against standards, and communication of progress through visual reports. Students can engage in feedback and sharing within a dedicated digital space.

Highlights
  • Portfolio-based assessment tools
  • Assign and collect student work
  • Assess mastery of standards
  • Create visual report cards
  • Real-time feedback and messaging
  • Support for various media types
  • Group collaboration spaces
Features
Read full description

SpacesEDU makes it easy for teachers and students to capture, communicate, and celebrate the growth that’s happening in and out of the classroom. Based on feedback from 15+ years of educator insight, SpacesEDU Portfolio-Based Assessment (PBA) tools allow teachers to assign activities, collect evidence of learning in multiple formats, assess student mastery of standards and competencies, and create visual report cards. With SpacesEDU, student assessment progress becomes a two-way conversation. Students can ask questions, receive teacher feedback, peer review, and share work in an authentic and flexible way - all without leaving the SpacesEDU app. Provide real-time feedback on student work through commenting and messaging without leaving the app. Bring SpacesEDU into your classroom today and give your students their own space to learn, grow, and tell the stories behind their grades. Key Features • Activities: Easily create, track, and review activities to engage students in the learning process and provide a space for self-reflection • 1:1 Spaces: Create a safe one-on-one (teacher to student) space for your students to showcase their work in a portfolio, on topics, units, or self-reflections. Create 1:1 Spaces to better organize all of the work happening within your classroom and tie them to your own course objectives • Group Spaces: Spark collaboration with spaces for students to work on group projects, peer reviews, and more. Create your own groups or have them created for you • Space to grow: Add unlimited files to student or teacher accounts • Support for a wide variety of media types: Upload files (20 file types), capture content directly from your camera or microphone, add links from websites, or import from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. You can add up to ten media attachments to a post • Reporting Spaces: Think of it as a visual report card or summative portfolio. Teachers can easily bookmark exemplary artifacts of student learning throughout the year and add it to a Reporting Space. With Reporting Spaces, share student growth with family and/or students at the end of the year or at various progress points. Available only to schools and districts licensing SpacesEDU Pro Reporting Add-On • Proficiency Scales: A Standards-Based Assessment feature that makes it easy for educators to assess and report on student progress on learning outcomes and competencies using a 4 point scale (customize the scale with SpacesEDU Pro!) • Class Engagement and Read Receipts: Teachers can quickly view whether students or family have accessed the classroom or read specific messages • Technical support for teachers and students: We offer an unparalleled support experience, including live chat support for all users & personalized onboarding and support for schools and districts • Direct Messages: Have direct, real-time conversations with students, teachers, family members with messages (SpacesEDU Pro) • Drafts: Not ready to publish your post? Save posts as a draft so you can come back to them once you’re ready • Channels: With channels, you can send class announcements and communicate with all students, all family members, or both. You decide when and if to allow replies. (SpacesEDU Pro) • Family accounts: Family members can create accounts to view, comment, and celebrate their student’s work, engage with posts, and message with the teacher. (SpacesEDU Pro) • Advanced settings and notifications, including options to enable private or collaboration-focused workspaces • FERPA, COPPA, and PIPEDA compliant privacy standards: Protecting student privacy is foundational in the design of this product • Clever SSO: Users are able to signup and login using Clever • QR Codes - Allow students to use QR Codes to log into the SpacesEDU platform - making it even easier to get started. Teachers can access, share or print QR Codes for their students directly within their Classes. Available only to schools and districts licensing SpacesEDU Pro.

About

SM Home

Stay connected with your child's school. This app consolidates all school communications, including phone calls, emails, and SMS messages, into a single inbox. Manage your preferences, and optionally chat with teachers or report absences.

Highlights
  • Consolidated communication inbox
  • Manage communication preferences
  • Optional chat with teachers
  • Report student absences
  • Search, sort, and filter messages
Features
Read full description

For parents/guardians and students, the easy-to-use app allows users to quickly review any broadcast sent from the SchoolMessenger service (Phone/Email/SMS) in one place, manage your communication preferences and, optionally, Chat with teachers** or report absences.** Requires WIFI or data plan for internet access. Requires SchoolMessenger Communicate service subscription by the school or district. Note: SchoolMessenger Home is used for receiving SchoolMessenger Communicate messages sent by district or school personnel. If you are a school administrator or staff member looking to send messages, please download the SM Sender App. ** Chat and Attendance options may not be available depending on your School/District Here’s what’s new in v1 Inbox: All broadcasts sent from Communicate to you (Phone/SMS/Email) will also live in the app Inbox giving you one place to easily access all communications regardless of the delivery method. You can search, sort, filter and delete any of these communications My Profile: This is where you can see your students, manage your communication preferences, Access Help and Delete Your Account Chat**: Have one on one or class group conversations with teachers Attendance**: Report your students absent from school or respond to absences not reported to the school **Optional items and may not be available to all schools

Screenshots

SpacesEDU4 screens
SM Home4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is monetization model: SM Home at free against SpacesEDU's freemium. SM Home also leads on review sentiment (15% vs 7%). SpacesEDU's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs monthly). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 2.1 for SpacesEDU against 2.1 for SM Home. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 20 and 12 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 7% of SpacesEDU's written reviews are positive against 15% of SM Home's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SpacesEDU ships an update every 2 weeks, SM Home monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
SpacesEDU versus SM Home: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpacesEDUSM Home
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.1 (20 ratings)2.1 (12 ratings)
Positive reviews6.9% of reviews15.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings20 — better12
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreemiumFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better16.0
Further details — not scored
Size149 MB37 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDoublethink Inc.PowerSchool Group LLC

Customer experience

SpacesEDU

All ratings20 ratings
Positive25.0%
Neutral5.0%
Negative70.0%
Written reviews539 reviews
Positive6.9%
Neutral0.7%
Negative92.4%

SM Home

All ratings12 ratings
Positive25.0%
Neutral8.3%
Negative66.7%
Written reviews26 reviews
Positive15.4%
Neutral11.5%
Negative73.1%

Bugs and requests

SpacesEDU

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Login issues and inability to access accounts
  • Inconsistent performance and unexpected crashes

Requested features

3 requests
  • Improve app stability and responsiveness
  • Enhance user-friendly navigation and interface
  • Integrate more useful features for students and teachers

SM Home

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

SpacesEDU

No in-app purchases

None

SM Home

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SpacesEDU free?
SpacesEDU is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is SM Home free?
SM Home is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, SpacesEDU or SM Home?
SpacesEDU and SM Home are both rated 2.1 out of 5 on the App Store, from 20 and 12 ratings respectively.
Do SpacesEDU or SM Home have ads?
Neither SpacesEDU nor SM Home shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SpacesEDU or SM Home?
SpacesEDU ships an update every 2 weeks, and SM Home monthly. Most recently, SpacesEDU was updated on September 22, 2026 and SM Home on September 24, 2026.

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