Comparison

SmartTeach vs Rugs alive™ Plus

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

Head to head
About

SmartTeach

This app helps early childhood educators streamline daily classroom tasks. It simplifies documentation, classroom management, and family communication with easy-to-use tools for online and offline use.

Highlights
  • Create documentation and share insights
  • View and teach from daily schedule
  • Communicate with families
  • Save and share photos/videos
  • Assess from curriculum resources
  • Track attendance and care routines
  • Conduct health screenings
Read full description

The SmartTeach® app by Teaching Strategies offers early childhood educators an easy and efficient way to quickly complete essential daily tasks on the fly, online, or offline. The SmartTeach app simplifies teaching, documentation, classroom management, and family engagement throughout the day, enabling teachers to make the most of every moment with easy-to-use tools right at their fingertips. The SmartTeach app is accessible to Teachers and Administrators using Teaching Strategies products such as GOLD®, The Creative Curriculum® Cloud, Kickstart LiteracyTM, and Tadpoles®. Download SmartTeach by Teaching Strategies to access our new and improved features & functionality. SmartTeach offers early childhood educators a single app to support all essential classroom tasks, including: Create documentation and share insights with families View and teach directly from your daily schedule, curriculum, activities, and care routines Communicate with families Save & share photos, videos, and other media across devices View & assess from resources like Intentional Teaching Experiences, Skill Development Cards, and Mighty Minutes®* Identify Infant and Toddler children’s developmental level with the Entry Screener to dynamically populate individualized support for each child* Take attendance, move children or staff, and complete name-to-face checks* Track care routines and share Daily Reports with families* Conduct health screenings for children and/or staff* *Feature availability is dependent on which Teaching Strategies products your classroom licenses.

About

Rugs alive™ Plus

This app uses augmented reality to bring educational rugs to life in 3D. Students can interact with zoo animals, practice letter and animal identification, and engage in collaborative learning activities. It's designed to enhance classroom engagement and introduce early STEM concepts.

Highlights
  • 3D Augmented Reality animal animations
  • Alphabet and animal identification
  • Habitat matching games
  • Virtual animal placement
  • Photo capture of AR animals
  • Supports collaboration and communication
Features
Read full description

Our colorful and vibrant classroom alphabet/habitat rugs come to life in 3D Augmented Reality with help from the Rugs alive™ Plus mobile app. Not only are our rugs perfect for practicing upper and lowercase letters, animal identification, and animal/habitat matching, they also have 26 zoo animals that spring to life right in your classroom! Teachers and early learners love the interaction! Your students will be challenged to match a Habitat Card with an animal that lives there to be rewarded with that animal joining the class through the magic of 3D Augmented Reality. The Rugs alive Plus app allows placement of the animals virtually anywhere in your real world environment! Alive Studios’ rugs and the Rugs alive Plus app can also be utilized for increasing student collaboration, building relationships, and effective communication as well as early concepts of STEM and problem solving. The Rugs alive Plus app allows users to take photos of the zoo animals, which may or may not include other people. The photos taken are automatically saved locally into the device’s photo section, if permitted by the user. Rugs alive Plus does not require user accounts or logins, nor does it collect user data.

Screenshots

SmartTeach4 screens
Rugs alive™ Plus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Rugs alive™ Plus at 100% against SmartTeach's 24%. Rugs alive™ Plus also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs monthly) and rating (5.0 vs 4.8). SmartTeach's advantage is ratings volume (1.2K vs 3). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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

Rugs alive™ Plus holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SmartTeach has 1.2K ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 24% of SmartTeach's written reviews are positive against 100% of Rugs alive™ Plus's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SmartTeach ships an update monthly, Rugs alive™ Plus every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
SmartTeach versus Rugs alive™ Plus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSmartTeachRugs alive™ Plus
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (1.2K ratings)5.0 (3 ratings) — better
Positive reviews24.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings1.2K — better3
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.012.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size103 MB326 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTeaching Strategies, LLCAlive Studios, LLC

Customer experience

SmartTeach

All ratings1,190 ratings
Positive95.3%
Neutral1.6%
Negative3.1%
Written reviews25 reviews
Positive24.0%
Neutral12.0%
Negative64.0%

Rugs alive™ Plus

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

SmartTeach

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Screener not working when clicking plus sign
  • Inability to log in through app, but able to log in on website
  • Delayed or failed message delivery
  • Uploaded documentation still showing in app, causing confusion

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add ability to select and apply objectives to multiple pieces of documentation at once
  • Add ability to select and delete multiple photos/videos at once
  • Add ability to change date on add documentation page
  • Add landscape mode support for easier typing
  • Improve translation and communication features for ESL families

Rugs alive™ Plus

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

SmartTeach

No in-app purchases

None

Rugs alive™ Plus

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SmartTeach free?
SmartTeach is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Rugs alive™ Plus free?
Rugs alive™ Plus is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus?
Rugs alive™ Plus is rated higher. SmartTeach averages 4.8 out of 5 from 1.2K ratings, while Rugs alive™ Plus averages 5.0 from 3 ratings.
Do SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus have ads?
Neither SmartTeach nor Rugs alive™ Plus shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus?
SmartTeach ships an update monthly, and Rugs alive™ Plus every 3 days. Most recently, SmartTeach was updated on October 12, 2026 and Rugs alive™ Plus on September 23, 2026.

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