SmartTeach vs Rugs alive™ Plus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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.
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.
- 3D Augmented Reality animal animations
- Alphabet and animal identification
- Habitat matching games
- Virtual animal placement
- Photo capture of AR animals
- Supports collaboration and communication
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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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
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.
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.
| Parameter | SmartTeach | Rugs alive™ Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (1.2K ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 24.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1.2K — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 103 MB | 326 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Teaching Strategies, LLC | Alive Studios, LLC |
Customer experience
SmartTeach
Rugs alive™ Plus
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
SmartTeach
No in-app purchases
Rugs alive™ Plus
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is SmartTeach free?
Is Rugs alive™ Plus free?
Which has better reviews, SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus?
Do SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus have ads?
Which is updated more often, SmartTeach or Rugs alive™ Plus?
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