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. That era is ending. ParentSquare acquired Remind and is moving Remind's school and district customers onto the ParentSquare platform, with migrations announced through 2026.
To be clear about the facts, because a lot of coverage is not: Remind is not shut down today. If your school or district signs with ParentSquare, your classroom communication will be migrated for you, and you do not need this article. This article is for everyone else.
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 absorbing Remind's audience 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, you are shopping again for the first time in ten years. Here is the honest map.
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-offs: they are built around parents installing an app and joining a class, and they are organized around an ongoing feed rather than 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 it has two structural problems. First, everyone gets everyone else's replies, so forty people watch twelve conversations happen. Second, the one question that matters, who is coming Saturday, scrolls away under reactions and memes, and you end up counting thumbs-up emojis against your roster by hand. A group chat is a room. A roster broadcast is a checklist. They are different tools.
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 Remind's export or any spreadsheet. 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, with unlimited email delivery and 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 export your roster and import it yourself, which in practice takes about five minutes.
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.
Whatever you pick, export your roster now
The practical advice that applies to everyone: while your Remind class still works, export your roster and keep the CSV somewhere safe. Contact lists are the thing people lose in platform transitions, and they are the only part you cannot rebuild in an afternoon.