Connected every step.
Real-time schedules, confirmed attendance and instant alerts in one calm mobile-first app — for schools, academies, churches, and the parents who trust them.
Free for your organisation · Two-minute setup · No card required
Built for organizations like
The problem
Running an organization shouldn't feel like air traffic control.
Today, schedules live in one place, attendance in another, and communication everywhere. The people who care most — parents, customers, members — are the last to know what's happening.
WhatsApp overload
Parents drown in group chats. Important updates get buried under stickers and side conversations.
Manual attendance
Paper registers, half-filled spreadsheets, missed marks. Nobody knows who showed up — until later.
Parents in the dark
Where is my child right now? Did they make practice? When does it end? Silence isn't reassurance.
The solution
One calm, mobile-first platform for everything operational.
Scheduling, attendance, communication, and automation — designed to be glanceable, tappable, and effortlessly fast.
Smart Scheduling
Recurring classes, one-off events, per-session exceptions, and staff assignment. Edit one occurrence or the whole series — changes flow to everyone affected.
Frictionless Attendance
One tap. Two seconds per child. Bulk-mark a whole group, then tweak the exceptions — built for busy hands on the move.
Real-Time Visibility
Parents see attendance the moment it's marked. No refreshing, no asking, no waiting.
WhatsApp + Push Alerts
Mark a child absent and the linked parent gets an instant push notification and a WhatsApp message — child, activity, and time, automatically.
Calm Communication
Announcements to the whole org or a single group, delivered as push notifications. A public org page and comms feed — no more WhatsApp groups for everything.
Automation & AI
Automated invites and absence alerts run today. Weekly summaries, escalation rules, and AI-generated parent reports are on the way.
Who it's for
One platform, configured for how you actually work.
Members or Students. Groups or Classes. Sessions or Periods. 8tend adapts to your terminology — and your branding — so it feels like it was built for you.
For parents
A calm timeline of your child's day.
No more refreshing WhatsApp. No more wondering. Open 8tend and see exactly where your child has been, where they are now, and what's next — confirmed by the people running the day.
- Real-time attendance the moment it's marked
- Instant push + WhatsApp alert if your child is marked absent
- Multiple children, multiple organisations — one app
- Designed for the parking lot, the sideline, the school run
For staff
Open. Tap. Done.
Attendance has to be effortless or it won't happen. We obsessed over the two-second mark — so you can run your day, not the app.
- Two seconds per child, large touch targets, big thumbs welcome
- Bulk-mark for the whole group, then tweak the exceptions
- Mark someone absent and their parent is alerted instantly — push + WhatsApp
- Installs like an app, built for one-handed use on the sideline
How it works
Up and running in under an hour.
Create your workspace
Set up your organization in minutes. Branding, terminology, schedule structure — yours from day one.
Invite your staff & members
Email, WhatsApp, invite links, QR codes. Bulk import members via CSV. Done in an afternoon.
Connect parents & go live
Parents join with a simple link. Real-time visibility starts the next session you mark.
Pricing
Start free for 14 days. Then choose who pays.
Every organisation begins with a 14-day free trial — full premium visibility for everyone, no card required. When it ends, you decide: let parents fund the premium experience, or cover it yourself so everyone uses it free. Same product, different funding model.
Community Hosted
Best for schools, churches, clubs, academies, and community organisations where parents and members value visibility.
- Organisation profile & public page
- Staff management
- Scheduling & attendance
- Communications & announcements
- WhatsApp + push absence alerts
- Parent/member invitations
- • Up to 10 staff members
- • Parent/member premium required for live visibility
Organisation Hosted
Best for businesses, academies, tutoring centres, and aftercare programmes that want to cover costs themselves. Includes 25 students / members.
- Everything in Community Hosted
- 25 students / members included
- Premium visibility for every parent
- No parent subscriptions required
- Priority support
The Unlimited plan covers any size of organisation. Bigger or more complex needs? Talk to our team →
FAQ
Questions, answered.
How does the free 14-day trial work?
Every new organisation starts with a 14-day free trial — full premium visibility unlocked for all staff and parents, no card required. When the trial ends you choose who pays: stay free with Community Hosted (parents fund their own premium), or move to Organisation Hosted (you cover it and everyone uses it free). If you don't choose, you stay on the free Community plan — core attendance and operations are never locked.
Is 8tend really free for schools and community organisations?
Yes — on the Community Hosted plan. Schools, churches, clubs, academies, and community organisations get the full operational platform free (up to 10 staff). Premium visibility for parents is funded by a R29/month per-child subscription paid by the families who want it.
What if our organisation wants to cover the cost instead?
Then Organisation Hosted is for you. Pricing is by students/members: R599/mo up to 25, R1,499/mo up to 100, and R2,999/mo for unlimited. Billing is monthly. Premium visibility is unlocked for every parent and member automatically — no individual subscriptions needed.
What happens as we grow past a tier?
You move up a band — and the Unlimited plan (R2,999/mo) covers any number of students or members, so you'll never be punished for growing. For bespoke needs, talk to our team.
Do parents get to try premium before paying?
Yes. On a Community organisation, the first time a parent reaches the paywall they get 14 days of premium visibility free across all their children and organisations — no card required. It's one-time per parent and starts only after the organisation's own trial ends, so the two trials stack rather than overlap. After it ends they pay R29/month per child, or fall back to the free tier.
How do absence alerts reach parents?
When a child is marked absent, 8tend automatically sends the linked parent both an in-app push notification and a WhatsApp message with the child's name, activity, and time. Invites and org announcements use the same WhatsApp + push channels — no SMS, no noisy group chats.
Can a parent have multiple children at different organisations?
Yes — and this is a core design principle. Parents link to members (students/children), not to organisations. One parent app, all your kids, all their activities, across as many orgs as you need.
How is this different from WhatsApp groups?
WhatsApp is for chatting. 8tend is for operating. Schedules, confirmed attendance, structured announcements, and real-time visibility — without the noise of stickers, side conversations, and 47 unread messages. We still use WhatsApp where it matters: targeted absence alerts and invites land directly in the right person's chat.
What about data privacy and POPIA?
Each organisation is fully tenant-isolated. Parents see only their own children. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and our infrastructure is hosted in South Africa for compliance with POPIA. See our Privacy Policy for the full detail.
Bring calm to your operations
Connected every step.
Join the schools, academies, and organizations using 8tend to give parents and customers the operational clarity they've been asking for.
No credit card required for schools. Set up in under an hour.