ClassDojo review

ClassDojo combines a classroom points system with a messaging app for families. Teachers award points for behaviours they choose, post photos and updates to a class feed, and message parents one to one or as a group. It is most common in primary schools, where one teacher spends the whole day with the same class and families want to see what their child did at school. The core product is free, and schools and districts can roll it out without a contract fee.

Who it’s for

ClassDojo suits primary teachers who want one app for both classroom behaviour and home contact. A Year 2 teacher can award a point for kind words at 10am, post a photo of the class science experiment at lunch, and answer a parent’s question about a missing jumper after school, all in the same app. It also works for schools that run positive behaviour programmes and want points to follow the same values in every classroom. Secondary schools, where students see many teachers a day, usually need something built for that timetable, such as Class Charts.

What it does well

Families sign up quickly. Parents join with a code or an invite, install the app, and start seeing posts the same day. Messages arrive as phone notifications, which most parents see sooner than a letter at the bottom of a school bag. Families with several children at the same school see every class in one app.

ClassDojo says messages translate automatically into more than 190 languages. In a class where a dozen home languages are spoken, that lets you write once in English and reach parents who would never read a school letter.

Quiet hours and mute controls let teachers stop messages arriving in the evening and at weekends. Turn these on in the first week. Our parent communication policy guide explains how to set expectations with families about reply times.

Class Story and School Story give families a running feed of photos and updates. For school leaders, ClassDojo’s district offer adds school and district announcements by app, text, email and voice, attendance alerts, a shared calendar, schoolwide points with a dashboard by school, grade and teacher, and daily rostering from the student information system with single sign-on. ClassDojo says all of this is free for districts.

Where it falls short

The points system has real critics, and they make fair points. Points are an external reward, and writers such as Alfie Kohn, in his book Punished by Rewards, have long argued that rewards teach children to behave for the prize instead of for its own sake. The bigger risk is public display. If you project the class point totals on the board, every child can see who has the fewest, and a child who loses points in front of the class every day learns little except that they are “the naughty one”. Parents also see points in close to real time, so a single “needs work” point can turn into an anxious message at 3:15pm.

You can reduce this. Award only positive points, keep totals off the board, and talk to families about what points mean before you start. Some schools drop points entirely and use ClassDojo only for messaging and stories, which works fine.

ClassDojo makes its money from an optional paid family subscription, so families will see offers to upgrade. The free features stay free, but some parents ask whether they need to pay. Tell them they don’t.

For secondary schools, the model of one teacher and one class does not map well onto a timetable of many teachers and subjects.

Pricing

ClassDojo is free for teachers, schools and districts, according to its own district page. The company earns money from ClassDojo Plus, an optional premium subscription for families that adds extras such as progress reports, homework help and books, and from DojoTutor, a separate paid tutoring service. Teachers never need to pay to use the classroom and messaging features.

Privacy and data

ClassDojo’s privacy policy says it will never sell or rent personal information, never uses student information for behaviourally targeted or third-party advertising, and does not place third-party ads in student logged-in areas. ClassDojo says it takes part in the iKeepSafe COPPA Safe Harbor programme and holds the iKeepSafe FERPA certification. It also describes its role under the UK GDPR. Accounts for children under 13 need parental consent, which a school can give on a parent’s behalf under US COPPA rules when it uses the service for school purposes. Students aged 13 and over can message teachers directly. Remember that anything you post to Class Story, including photos of children, goes to every family in the class, so check photo consent first.

Verdict

ClassDojo is the easiest way for a primary teacher to keep families informed, and the translation and quiet hours settings solve two real problems for free. Use the points system with care, or not at all, and keep totals off the classroom screen. Secondary schools should look at Class Charts, and primary schools that want learning portfolios more than behaviour points should compare Seesaw in our parent communication rankings.

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