Is Remind going away?
Not for individual users. Remind's own transition page says that Remind Chat continues to be free to use and available to new users, and that Remind Chat and Remind Hub both remain available. What is changing is the school side. ParentSquare acquired Remind and is offering Remind Hub customers, meaning the schools and districts on the paid product, paths to move onto ParentSquare. Several districts have publicly announced that switch for the 2026-2027 school year, among them Zachary Community School District. If your district is switching, your classroom communication moves with it. If the roster is your own, you are not part of that migration, and as of today nothing is being switched off for you.
So why read the rest of this? Because "still available" and "still the right tool" are different questions. For over a decade the default answer to "how do I text all the parents?" was Remind. It was free, it hid your personal number, and a class code got everyone on the list in a week. A lot of group leaders are re-examining that choice this summer, either because their school is moving to something else or because the thing they actually need was never a broadcast. Here is the honest map.
The people the migration leaves out
Remind's quiet superpower was that it never required a school. Anyone could create a class: the JV soccer coach, the private tutor, the scout leader, the youth group volunteer, the piano teacher with thirty families, the room parent running the carpool list. Those rosters belong to individuals, not institutions. Nobody is buying district software for them, and nobody is migrating them.
The products in this category are sold to administrators. ParentSquare, Bloomz, and ClassDojo are all good at what they are built for, and what they are built for is the school. If you are an independent group leader deciding whether to move, you are shopping for the first time in ten years.
Option 1: ParentSquare, if your school buys it
If your district signs with ParentSquare, use it for your classroom. It is the sanctioned channel, the office manages the roster, and parents will already have it for everything else. The catch is the same as its strength: it is your school's tool. Your travel team, tutoring clients, or troop are not on it, and you cannot bring them.
Option 2: ClassDojo or Bloomz, for the classroom itself
Both are strong classroom community apps: portfolios, photos, behavior tools, translated announcements. If what you miss about Remind is classroom engagement, they are real answers. The trade-off is shape rather than access. They are organized around joining a class and following an ongoing feed, rather than around a single question that needs an answer from every family by Friday.
Option 3: the group chat
GroupMe, WhatsApp, or a plain group text costs nothing and takes two minutes. For a small, chatty group it is genuinely fine. For a roster, the difference that matters is where the replies land. In a group chat every reply goes to everyone, so forty people watch twelve conversations happen and the one answer you needed scrolls away under reactions. On a roster tool the replies come back to you, lined up against the list of names. A group chat is a room. A roster broadcast is a checklist. Some group chats do offer an announcement-only mode, which narrows the gap without closing it.
Option 4: Cronote, for the broadcast that needs answers back
Cronote is the narrow tool in this list, and that is the point. It does not try to be your classroom feed or your school's official channel. It does one job: send a message to your whole roster by text and email, ask a one-tap question, and show you exactly who answered and who still owes you one.
- Import your roster as a CSV from any spreadsheet: a league signup sheet, a PTA list, a team roster. Phone numbers and emails both work, in the same list.
- Parents install nothing. The message arrives as a normal text or email with a web link, and they answer with one tap. No app, no account, no class code.
- The answers land on one roster view, name by name: "Can you make it? Confirm or Need to reschedule" or "Signed slip back? Done or Not yet."
- You set a no-answer deadline. If someone has not answered by then, Cronote notifies you, so your follow-up goes to the three families who actually need it instead of all thirty.
- Your personal number stays private. Messages come from Cronote, not your phone.
- Free to start. Email delivery costs nothing and you get 10 free text credits. After that, texts come from one-time credit packs starting at $5 for 100. No subscription.
For transparency: Cronote is our product, and Cronote is not affiliated with Remind or ParentSquare. There is no automatic account transfer. You bring your own roster and import it yourself, which in practice takes about five minutes.
Remind competitors at a glance
- ParentSquare: your school's official channel. Best when the district buys it, and the roster is managed for you. You cannot bring an outside group onto it.
- ClassDojo or Bloomz: classroom community, photos, portfolios, translated announcements. Best when you want an ongoing feed for one class.
- Remind vs GroupMe: the practical difference is where replies land. GroupMe is a shared room, so every reply goes to the whole group. Remind keeps the exchange between you and each family, and keeps your number private. If you are collecting answers rather than hosting a discussion, that difference is the whole decision.
- WhatsApp or a plain group text: the same shared-room trade as GroupMe, with one extra detail. A plain group text hands your personal number to everyone on the list.
- Cronote: one message out by text and email, one-tap answers back, and a per-name view of who has not replied yet. Recipients install nothing. Weakest fit if what you want is a chatty community feed.
- Staying on Remind Chat: as of today it is still free and still open to new users. That is the honest answer for a leader whose group is happy and who mostly announces rather than collects answers.
How to choose
Ask one question: is this roster mine or the school's? If it is the school's, wait for the school's answer, which is probably ParentSquare, and use it. If the roster is yours, decide what you actually send. If it is community and conversation, a classroom app or a group chat will serve you well. If it is announcements that need answers back, permission slips, RSVPs, who is coming Saturday, then pick the tool built around the answer, not the feed. If you lead a congregation or a volunteer team rather than a class, the same question applies, and we wrote it up separately for texting a congregation and volunteer team.
Whatever you pick, keep your own roster
One piece of practical advice applies to everyone, including people who stay: keep your own contact list somewhere safe, outside any messaging platform. One honest caveat about getting it from Remind: a teacher's export is a list of participant names (a PDF, emailed from the web version), and Remind deliberately keeps phone numbers and emails private from class owners, so your real roster source is wherever you first collected those families. The full step-by-step, including what Remind will and will not give you, is in our guide to getting your roster out of Remind. Contact lists are the thing people lose in any platform change, and they are the only part you cannot rebuild in an afternoon.