Comparison

School Gateway vs BoomReader Parents

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

Head to head
About

School Gateway

This app streamlines communication and management of your child's school life. It allows parents to receive messages, make payments for school items, manage dinner money, book clubs, and view academic reports and attendance. All your children's school information is consolidated in one place.

Highlights
  • Receive school messages
  • Make school payments
  • Manage dinner money
  • Book school clubs
  • View reports and timetable
  • Monitor attendance
  • Update contact details
Read full description

School Gateway, the easiest way to interact with your child’s life at school. Designed to support schools in achieving outstanding parental engagement, School Gateway helps you manage school communications, payments, clubs, dinner money and more all in one simple, easy to use app. Key features: • Receive push notifications and in-app messages from your school • Easily pay for items using your preferred payment method • Top-up your child’s dinner money and select meal choices • Book before and after school clubs • View your child’s timetable and end of year reports • Monitor attendance • Update the contact details your school hold for you • All your children across multiple schools in one account Things you need to know: • Your school must be subscribed to School Gateway before you can use this app • Your school controls the information shared with you • To register/login, your school must have your email address and phone number on their system. If you can’t log in, please check these details are up to date at your school • Your account will automatically display information for multiple children /schools as long as the schools use School Gateway. Please check that your email address and mobile number at all your schools match • You must turn on push notifications for the app to receive messages and updates from your school

About

BoomReader Parents

This app digitizes home reading records, replacing traditional diaries. Parents can easily log books, track reading progress with detailed notes, and view a complete history. It also includes a reward system for children and reminders to encourage a consistent reading routine.

Highlights
  • Digital reading diary
  • Easy book and log addition
  • Detailed reading logs with notes
  • Activity feed with reading events
  • Complete book history
  • Automatic rewards for reading
  • Reading reminders
Features
Read full description

BoomReader is the digital reading record used by thousands of parents as a way to log home reading. Say goodbye to lost or ruined reading diaries. Never again will your child's reading record be left on the bus, at home on the table or in the car during the busy school run. Easily Add Books and Logs You can easily add any book you or your child are reading with seamless search through the thousands of titles already added. Detailed Reading Logs Simply enter the page number you and your child read too. Of course, you can add more information including comments and any words or sounds your child struggled with. Complete Activity Feed The new activity feed allows you to scroll through or the reading events for your child including reading band changes, reviews and of course the reading logs. Depending on the settings chosen by the school, you may also be able to see when your logs have been viewed or liked by the class teacher. Complete Book History You can view, search and filter the complete history of the books your child has read. Rewarding Reading BoomReader automatically rewards children for reading by awarding Gems. Your child can swap Gems for reward cards. For younger children, you can use our one-click magic button to jump into your child's account so you can help them to spend their Gems. Set Reminders You can also set daily reminders to help keep that vital reading routine and guarantee some quiet parent and child time as you enjoy reading to each other. Please note - your child’s school needs to purchase BoomReader in order for you to be able to access the app.

Screenshots

School Gateway4 screens
BoomReader Parents4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is monetization model: BoomReader Parents at free against School Gateway's ad-supported. On price, review sentiment, update cadence 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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

School Gateway ships an update every 2 months, BoomReader Parents every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
School Gateway versus BoomReader Parents: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSchool GatewayBoomReader Parents
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.5 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews15.7% of reviews16.7% of reviews — better
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 6 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationAd-supportedFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS13.0 — better13.4
Further details — not scored
Size14 MB26 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperISUZ LimitedAxe Edge

Customer experience

School Gateway

All ratings2 ratings
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%
Written reviews108 reviews
Positive15.7%
Neutral15.7%
Negative68.5%

BoomReader Parents

Written reviews42 reviews
Positive16.7%
Neutral4.8%
Negative78.6%

Bugs and requests

School Gateway

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

BoomReader Parents

Reported bugs

23 issues
  • Cannot login without email
  • App doesn't carry over data
  • Cannot create new account
  • Invalid parent login code error
  • App doesn't recognize books
Show 18 more
  • Predictive text issues with author names
  • Book titles longer than 20 characters not readable
  • Cannot edit book titles
  • Removed "completed book" feature
  • Manual page counting required for books without page numbers
  • Latest update removed "to the end" option
  • Barcode scanner feature removed
  • Cannot access second child's reading log after update
  • App not working on iPhone since new update
  • Blank white screen on launch
  • App is very slow and unresponsive
  • App won't login after update
  • Keyboard not appearing on iPad
  • Cannot minimize keypad to progress on login screen
  • App shows error or loading with white screen
  • App won't open, shows white screen with 'Error'
  • Cannot minimize keyboard to click enter on login screen
  • App won't open since logging in

Requested features

6 requests
  • Add barcode scanner back
  • Add option to type ISBN
  • Bring back flexibility for logging non-book reading
  • Bring back "completed book" feature
  • Add dark mode option
Show 1 more
  • Improve search functionality for books

In-app purchases

None

School Gateway

No in-app purchases

None

BoomReader Parents

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is School Gateway free?
School Gateway is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is BoomReader Parents free?
BoomReader Parents is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do School Gateway or BoomReader Parents have ads?
Neither School Gateway nor BoomReader Parents shows ads.
Which is updated more often, School Gateway or BoomReader Parents?
School Gateway ships an update every 2 months, and BoomReader Parents every 6 weeks. Most recently, School Gateway was updated on November 6, 2026 and BoomReader Parents on November 7, 2026.

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