Top Hat vs enCourage UW
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Top Hat
Enhance your learning experience with interactive resources, in-class participation tools, and dynamic digital textbooks. Engage with professors and peers, and test your knowledge with quizzes and polls to improve comprehension and retention.
- Follow lecture slides on your device
- In-class response system
- In-app discussions with peers and professors
- Dynamic, interactive digital textbooks
- Take polls and quizzes
- Access graded and non-graded homework
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Top Hat is the perfect companion app to our comprehensive assessment platform that helps you learn better before, during and after class. Top Hat makes learning fun and engaging (seriously!) and sets you up for success, helping you connect with your professors, your peers and the content you’re learning in and out of the classroom. Here’s what Top Hat offers you: Compelling resources, delivered on your smartphone or laptop: • Follow your prof’s lecture slides on your own device • Contribute in class with an easy-to-use response system that’s always with you • Participate with your profs and peers using in-app discussions Content tailored to your course: • Experience dynamic, interactive textbooks loaded up with images, videos, audio clips and more • Read your digital materials from anywhere and keep them forever Quizzes, tests and polls that improve learning comprehension: • Challenge yourself by taking polls and quizzes on your own devices • Improve your knowledge retention with interactive assessment elements • Check for gaps in your understanding with graded and non-graded homework and short quizzes Thanks for using Top Hat. As you experience the app, we’d love to get your feedback: support@tophat.com or follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook @TopHat
enCourage UW
This application facilitates the creation of supportive and genuine learning environments. It is designed to foster authentic communities for educational purposes in various settings.
- Create supportive learning communities
- Foster authentic educational environments
- Applicable in any learning situation
- Designed for community building
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This app is designed to help you create supportive, authentic learning communities in any situation.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Top Hat at fortnightly against enCourage UW's every 28 months. Top Hat also leads on ratings volume (23K vs 3) and chart position (#210 vs unranked). enCourage UW's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.6) and iOS requirement (15.5 vs 17.0). 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.
enCourage UW holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Top Hat has 23K ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Top Hat ships an update fortnightly, enCourage UW every 28 months. The most recent releases landed on September 26, 2026 and September 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Top Hat | enCourage UW |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (23K ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 14.4% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 23K — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 28 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #210 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.5 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 162 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Top Hat Monocle | University of Wisconsin-Madison Shared Apps |
Customer experience
Top Hat
enCourage UW
Bugs and requests
Top Hat
Reported bugs
3 issues- Answers not registering correctly
- Slides not loading properly on mobile devices
- Inconsistent performance across platforms
Requested features
3 requests- Add page numbers and search functionality to ebooks
- Improve syncing between mobile and web versions
- Allow more flexible location settings for attendance
enCourage UW
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Top Hat
No in-app purchases
enCourage UW
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Top Hat free?
Is enCourage UW free?
Which has better reviews, Top Hat or enCourage UW?
Do Top Hat or enCourage UW have ads?
Which is updated more often, Top Hat or enCourage UW?
Other comparisons
