by
Imed Bouchrika, Phd
Running a tutorial service can come in different shapes but they share common pain points: missed appointments, no-shows, chaotic data, unwieldy or misplaced lesson materials, lack of visibility of students’ progress, overdue payments, and so on.
All these are easily addressed by tutoring software—and more. Whether you are an individual or a company, tutoring software helps you focus on the business, nurturing client relationships for long-term revenues.
This guide is a good starting point for your product research. We have listed the best tutoring software for 2022 and presented their value propositions, including their ability to adapt to different teaching models like mastery learning. Additionally, we discuss their key features and pricing. The product descriptions, while not extensive, aim to help you to shortlist the most-fitting apps based on your requirements.
Despite the economic downturn in discretionary services due to the pandemic, the revenue of online tutoring services in the United States has been adjusted to have increased by 6.6% in 2020 (IBISWorld, 2022). Two years hence, the online tutoring services market in the U.S. in 2022 is valued at $1.5 billion. Tutoring services have remained stable during this time with students transitioning to remote learning due to lockdowns.
But stable may not be painting the picture accurately, as a Technavio report showed a 10% CAGR for the industry from 2019 to 2024 (Business Wire, 2020). While the market is fragmented, more than half of the growth (64%) is expected to come from test preparation services, according to the report.
Source: Technavio, 2020
Designed byBut in terms of revenue, the subject tutoring segment dominates the market. This sector accounted for 79.5% of the global revenue share in 2021 (Grand View Research, 2022).
Source: Grand View Research, 2022
Designed byFurthermore, as a prime market outside the U.S., Asia-Pacific will see an 18.2% CAGR for online tutoring services from 2022 to 2030 (Grand View Research, 2022). In 2021, the market size was reported to be $1.7 billion in this region.
No doubt, tutoring services are only glad to ride on a general trend towards virtual learning.
COVID-19 isn’t the only factor driving online tutoring services. In the U.S., the Department of Education is exploring virtual learning and online tutoring avenues as career paths, notably through technical certifications, to help low-income families circumvent the high cost of higher education (Business Wire, 2020).
Source: Hanson, 2021
Advances in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), internet connectivity and collaborative tools like interactive whiteboards and audio-video apps are improving the quality of online learning, which includes online tutoring; thus, the industry has been gaining a positive outlook as a viable alternative to in-person learning (Business Wire, 2020).
Source: IDC Worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide
Customized, personalized learning as a flexible way to manage one’s class schedule is also driving the growth of tutoring services (Grand View Research, 2022). Combined with real-time analytics, online tutoring software provides instructors with a way to track a student’s progress without needing to commit to a structured schedule. This setup is helpful to working students.
Source: Klein (2019)
Oases is an online tutoring management system that helps you manage staff and student schedules and admin tasks. It consists of modules for sales and marketing, scheduling and tracking, and accounting, making it ideal for any session-based businesses offering tutoring, instruction or boot camp services. Further, it suits different instructional design models, such as ADDIE, Gagne’s and Bloom’s. An Oases MarketPlace storefront allows you to sell your services on your website, while three built-in invoicing modules let you bill customers using the system.
ClassFolios is designed specifically for tutoring businesses. It features communication tools, session tracking and invoicing, as well as automation to help you focus on your core services. As an all-in-one system, ClassFolios covers the gamut of scheduling, enrolling, communicating and payment tracking. It also has a feedback mechanism to help you identify improvement areas and a marketplace where you can sell your services.
TutorBird is a tutor management software that aims to help you reduce no-shows, get paid on time and, essentially, grow your business. Designed for single or multi-tutor services, private tutors, test prep centers, and tutoring services, TutorBird helps you to schedule appointments, manage students, bill on time and conduct online tutoring.
TutorCruncher is a management software that adapts to different types of tutoring business, from small business to market leaders. It features payments, tutor management, and scheduling tools that are accessible from one platform. Utilizing the system helps you get paid on time, increase revenues, automate scheduling and empower your tutors.
ConexED is a student services management system with remote features, making it suitable for on-site and online tutoring services. A kiosk feature helps standardize learning engagement for in-campus and remote students. With ConexED, you can establish an organized process for different engagement types.
Tutor Platform bills itself as an all-in-one teaching and learning platform developed for private schools and universities. You can build an interactive educational website that links to an LMS with Tutor Platform. You can also automate admin and recurring tasks, develop online educational content and manage teaching workflows within the platform. The system also features tools for finance management and promotional mechanisms.
Fusion is a tutoring system that provides you with tools for managing virtual classrooms, online tuition and homework and tasks. You get to utilize webcams, whiteboard, chat, breakout rooms, link sharing, recording, and more to run virtual classes, nuturing collaboration, among students. The platform supports over a hundred languages, which helps you to offer global tutorial services. Likewise, it integrates with popular communication and collaboration apps such as Google Drive, Zoom Meetings, Microsoft Teams, and DropBox, making the platform easily accessible.
eduflow focuses on social learning, helping you to create engaging courses in minutes and promote peer review, group work, and active discussions. While it is used for corporate training, eduflow also targets higher education as a collaborative learning experience platform for universities. The system scales to thousands of users and works on any device via a web browser. You can set up prerequisites and deadlines for a ladderized learning process and create personalized learning paths.
VEDAMO Virtual Classroom is a simple collaborative web conferencing app featuring a whiteboard, screen sharing, breakout rooms, and other tools that make live online teaching possible. It is intuitive enough for kids and non-tech users, making it ideal for freelance tutors, language teachers, kindergartens, and even corporate trainers. It integrates with key EdTech systems like Moodle, Canvas and Google for Education.
LearnCube is a virtual classroom suited to live online education. You get the standard tools like an interactive whiteboard, audio & video features and video recording. Likewise, uploading lesson content to the platform is easy, where you can also access multi-media materials from a single location. LearnCube allows for white labeling the platform for branding. The whiteboard and virtual classroom are sold separately but can be bundled together for a custom plan.
Pearl is an enterprise tutoring platform designed as an all-in-one solution to help educators to leverage a hybrid learning environment post pandemic. It provides hybrid tutoring programs to tutoring companies and state and district agencies. It scales to the needs of educational organizations with advanced features for data management, user management and schedule management.
Teachworks helps you to manage students, scheduling, invoicing and other aspects of a teaching business. Tutors and teachers can plan their schedules on a single platform that is accessible to students. In this way, schedule conflicts, missed appointments and emergency schedule swaps are easily visible to all parties. Automatic reminders are also sent to the right party so you get to collect payment on time. Likewise, you can embed a booking plugin on your website and expand your market at scale.
TutorRoom is a tutoring management system featuring virtual classroom, scheduling, and billing to help you run an online teaching business. It suits both a single proprietor and larger organizations looking to deploy a customized online teaching portal. Among other key features, you can organize your courses by lesson cover, credit cost or booking button. Students can also preview the lessons with PDF samples. TutorRoom also offers custom EdTech solutions for organizations.
Yo!Coach provides an online platform for tutoring and consultation services, such as health & fitness, law, and business management. You get to deploy live video engagement, whether for one-on-one or group class. It comes prebuilt with interactive tools like audio-video chat, whiteboard, textpad, screen sharing, and workspace where teachers and learners can engage with each other.
Pinlearn is an online tutoring marketplace system with features for live classes and self-paced courses that fit a self-directed learning approach. Intuitively designed, it does not require design or development skills for you to launch a a tutoring marketplace. With Pinlearn, you can offer Udemy-like courses and set commission sharing with course sellers. The platform also allows for 1-on-1 live videos or group webinars.
Learnyst provides an end-to-end learning environment with interactive course content, quizzes and certifications. Interactive game-based learning has been found to result in superior learning performance and motor skills among K-12 students (Hsiao & Chen, 2016).
With built-in marketing tools, Learnyst allows you to promote your courses and test materials online. The system also integrates with key third-party apps to extend your online learning capabilities.
LearnSpeed is a fully integrated tutor management system with scheduling, billing, payment and communication features. Furthermore, it has CRM functions, helping you to keep track of prospects and assigning leads to the right person. It is designed to grow online tutoring businesses, including test preparation centers, SPED providers, music schools, counseling services, and professional session-based agencies.
Planubo is a tutoring system you can customize to manage tutors and students, as well as schedule classes. Its intuitive user interface requires little technical know-how, if none at all, to set up the booking page. You get an overview of tutors’ schedules and assign courses based on availability. Similarly, students can opt for private or group lessons and sign into a student portal to view their calendar of sessions and access online materials. Planubo integrates with key apps like Google Meet, Zoom, and Stripe.
Penji suits college tutoring, mentoring and counseling. It is developed as an add-on to on-campus centers’ programs to help them boost outputs and processes. Likewise, a mobile app makes it smooth and efficient to schedule sessions, browse courses, and meet online. You can also offload admin tasks by allowing the software to automate mundane and repetitive tasks.
Curipod helps teachers to create interactive lessons that spark creativity, critical thinking, and reflection. A prebuilt online editor lets you integrate activities like brainstorming, formative assessment, and Socractic questions, while participants vote and collaborate from the convenience of their own devices. Curipod adapts to in-person, remote and hybrid learning environments.
As you may have noticed, there are tutoring software products with end-to-end features. They cover all the essential functions as a marketplace, course builder, student portal, virtual classroom, file storage, billing, payment, etc. to a point that they resemble an LMS for school. But you may already have some of these functions covered by other apps, like accounting software for payment or cloud storage for your files. In this case, getting a lightweight tutoring app makes more sense so you avoid paying for duplicate functions.
So, the first step to getting the best tutoring software for you is to audit what you have and identify the gaps. You should also consider your teaching model. For instance, if you have a physical tutoring center, consider blended learning. A tutoring software with a student kiosk may fit into this scenario. Students can access the kiosk in-campus and the app off-campus, while their data are kept in sync. You may also consider getting some of the best online proctoring software as part of your tech stack to further reinforce your learning programs.
With a good knowledge of your needs and situation, you can quickly shortlist which products on the list meet your needs.
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by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
