SchoolMessenger vs SpacesEDU
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SchoolMessenger
Stay connected with your school or district through this app. It provides a unified inbox for notifications and messages, allowing for two-way communication between teachers, parents, and students. Manage your notification preferences and receive alerts for important updates.
- Unified inbox for notifications and messages
- Two-way teacher-parent-student communication
- Scrollable notification history
- Customizable notification preferences
- Push notifications for alerts
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The new SchoolMessenger app gives busy parents, students, and staff a powerful way to stay engaged with their school or district, and connect to each other. App Features: - Easy-to-read inbox that captures all SchoolMessenger notifications, and now two-way teacher-parent-student messages (if enabled by school or district) - Scrollable notification view to review all phone, email, and text content in a single place - Detailed preference control allows adjusting notification settings - Push notifications are available for alerts when school or district sends a message Requirements: - For notifications, school or district has SchoolMessenger notification service subscription with SchoolMessenger app enabled - For notifications, valid email address on file with your school or district - WiFi or data plan for internet access - iOS 14+ Note: SchoolMessenger app is not for sending broadcast messages. If you are a SchoolMessenger Communicate notification customer looking to send broadcast messages, please download the SchoolMessenger Admin sender app.
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.
- 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
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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.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: SchoolMessenger at 53% against SpacesEDU's 7%. SchoolMessenger also leads on rating (4.5 vs 2.0) and monetization model (free vs freemium). SpacesEDU's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 2 months). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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.
SchoolMessenger holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SchoolMessenger has 802 ratings behind it against 21, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 53% of SchoolMessenger's written reviews are positive against 7% of SpacesEDU's.
SchoolMessenger ships an update every 2 months, SpacesEDU every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 29, 2026 and September 27, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SchoolMessenger | SpacesEDU |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (802 ratings) — better | 2.0 (21 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 53.2% of reviews — better | 6.9% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 802 — better | 21 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 43 MB | 149 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | PowerSchool Group LLC | Doublethink Inc. |
Customer experience
SchoolMessenger
SpacesEDU
User reviews
SchoolMessenger
From 802 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Easy to use
- 🚀 Convenient for reporting absences
- 📢 Helpful for staying informed about school events
- 💡 Consolidates all school communications in one place
Room to improve
- 🐛 Messages still show as unread after being read
- 🔍 Difficult to mark multiple messages as read
- 🔄 Frequent log-outs and need to re-login
- 🔔 Excessive and repeated notifications for the same message
- 📱 Small text size and poor formatting in the app
SpacesEDU
From 21 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Helpful for student portfolios and communication
- 🚀 Efficient for tracking assignments and reflections
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and performance issues
- 🤯 Confusing navigation and user experience
- 😩 Adds unnecessary stress and workload for students
- 🔌 Missing basic features like dark mode
Bugs and requests
SchoolMessenger
Reported bugs
4 issues- Inability to report late arrivals or early departures
- Attendance reporting not working for some users
- Syncing issues between app and school records
- Verification emails not being delivered
Requested features
4 requests- Add option to mark all messages as read
- Improve navigation and message management
- Implement dark mode and accessibility features
- Allow parents to initiate messages to teachers
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
In-app purchases
SchoolMessenger
No in-app purchases
SpacesEDU
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is SchoolMessenger free?
Is SpacesEDU free?
Which has better reviews, SchoolMessenger or SpacesEDU?
Do SchoolMessenger or SpacesEDU have ads?
Which is updated more often, SchoolMessenger or SpacesEDU?
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