Kaymbu for Families Reviews

Needs to be a way to clear all unread messages. Our family joined a school here recently mid semester and Kaymbu shows a red dot on our messages icon. I’m assuming this indicates we have “new” unread messages. I’ve read the messages sent to us since our joining the school, but what I don’t need to read and scroll through is every single message sent to the class in the past year prior to us enrolling. The red dot indicating new messages is pretty much pointless as currently configured as unread messages prior to us joining are irrelevant and keep the red dot indicator illuminated falsely showing a new message/s.

I contacted the developers over a month ago about Kaymbu not working even though I use a popular model iPhone, have updated my OS and reinstalled and updated Kaymbu , and confirmed that my account information works on other devices. They have been non-responsive and have offered NOT A SINGLE FIX OR EVEN SUGGESTION. I miss updates and messages every day about my 21 month old daughter and they don't seem to care.

App is great but it updates Families way too late. Whenever a teacher or an announcement is made, it usually takes a few hours before it actually is applied to Kaymbu where people can see it.

Daycare switched for no reason and i hate Kaymbu. Constantly getting email and push notifications for everything. Cant mark vacations easily. I don’t find the interface intuitive at all.

Tried it multiple times and reinstalls. Keep getting black screen after entered phone number or email.

I can not even login to Kaymbu. My OS is up to date and my phone isn’t ancient (it’s an iPhone X).

When Our child’s daycare center switched to this app, it appeared like Kaymbu was made by a kid who just learned HTML. Turns out it really is just a wrapper around a bad website. Digging deeper, I quickly found out that there was no thought put into how the site was made, or how families would use it. All of the data about your child is stored on publicly accessible URL’s. Any data added by your school/childcare center, including child’s location, pickup/drop off times, photos, videos, and anything else your school uploads, is accessible on the web without a password. Security by obscurity for your child… Furthermore, upon leaving the center, I requested all data to be exported, and removed from this app servers. The childcare center also made this request, as somehow they have all of the rights to your child’s digital data when using these apps. this app has not exported the data, and is now ignoring all follow-up requests to do so. (2 months after both parties requested).

Update to developer response: the security of the URL’s was brought up to the childcare center in July 2021 to which the members of your team responded “the engineering team is actively looking into this and they are hoping to have a clear answer for you soon”. The issue was quietly “resolved” many months later with no update. I put “resolved” in quotes because I’m speculating that the URL’s are now just hidden from parents, but still universally accessible. This would make sense since there has been no change to the authentication process, which would likely be needed to secure the URL’s.

Even if the issue was resolved, my point still stands that the initial implementation of Kaymbu did not take security or the end-user’s privacy or usability into account.

As far as my data deletion request goes, it has now been “resolved” after several months of emailing your team almost weekly. And as a side note: somehow they were able to re-gain access to the deleted data (they forgot to export it prior to “deleting”) after confirming it was completely removed from the servers. I have zero confidence that the data has actually been removed, or any changes have been made to Kaymbu (website) that would change my original review in any way.

Great idea, love the immediate notification of pics. Would like to be able to access the daily notes at any time during the day (eg if I access it at 12pm, I should see all the information on my child entered until that time). Needs a calendar view, so I can pick a timeframe and see the notes/pics from that day or week, etc. Also, need to be able to use the info in the same manner as any of the multiple baby tracker apps available, so I can see trends and pattens with the food/nap/diaper info recorded. Would be great to have parents be able to leave brief daily or weekly notes for the teacher as well, such as general directions (feed bottles every x hours, solids 2x per day, use diaper cream today, other relative picking up today, etc.). Wish I could give it 2.5 stars, but went up to 3 since the UI is simple and clean.

When I first started using this app, I loved that parents didn’t have to do anything but check their email to get all of the photos and anecdotes about their child’s learning. With the addition of Kaymbu for the family, it is really nice for families to have a choice of viewing in their email and on Kaymbu . Kaymbu allows families to see all of the phtotos in one spot and return to reflect on what they wish easily. Getting messages in email, gives families small chunks of information and updates about their child. Depending on the family, sharing this option is great!

Love that everything is in one place without having to open separate texts/email. Daily notes, photos, messages all in one place. With two kids, it’s great to have an all in one!

The following updates on design should be considered.

1. Messages within Kaymbu should specify the child’s room like the email messages do. I have two children in daycare and can’t tell which child the messages are meant for.

2. Notification settings don’t seem to work. I have the setting set to None but still receive emails and texts for every notification. I’d prefer to only see messages within Kaymbu .

Love the idea of Kaymbu. I get personalized updates about my children in preschool, along with easy to download photos.

There seem to be a few bugs with Kaymbu - my notifications are glitchy, and I can’t click to “read more” on Kaymbu ’s posts. Luckily I can open the email notification and read the post in full.

This is a great idea! Looking forward to it getting even better!

Each teacher uses a different app every year, so we have used many of these types of apps. This one is by far the worst. I don’t receive notifications consistently. Sometimes I get them, and other times they come the next day.

My youngest is in preschool. The teacher likes to send pictures of the kids throughout the day. Each picture uploads as a separate file. No preview or anything. When you click the individual files each one opens a new tab in your default internet browser. It takes FOREVER to go through the pictures. There definitely needs to be some sort of in-app picture viewing.

The layout is clunky and outdated. This whole app needs an overhaul.

If you’re an educator save your students/parents the headache and use one of the other hundred of these style apps available.

They offer to let you buy a yearbook at the end of the year of all your child’s pictures and you can get a digital and hard copy. Ordered both and only received the digital copy. I’ve emailed and they stated most have gone out but they’d check status of mine. Never responded so had to follow up again. Then it was oh the publisher had delays caused by Covid but my order would go out in a couple of days. Still received no tracking. Sent multiple follow ups and still no response.

I really like the idea of Kaymbu but it really needs an update to be compatible with the iPhone X and newer. Things like “read more” and load more pictures don’t work in Kaymbu . I wouldn’t have a problem with the sizing problems really if everything worked but with video not loading in app and not being able to read the entire update from the teacher this really needs some help.

It’s a great app to all the teachers. We can share pictures and view all comments made by families on Moments, parents can see News letter and lesson plans from the teachers, communicate parents easily through messages and also daily notes that includes meals,nap time, activities on that day, check in and check out times, incident reports.

For some unexplainable reason, the this app app isn’t optimized for iPhone X (or iPhone XS or iPhone MAX or iPhone XR). It’s literally the one app on my phone that isn’t optimized. To give you some context, as of July 2018, Apple has required developers to support iPhone X’s and newer, which means that Kaymbu hasn’t been updated since then. Idk if the developers feel like they can phone it in because parents are effectively forced to use their app, but seriously, devs - just update it.

Overall I love Kaymbu! It’s been great to receive updates about my son’s day, both during the day and after. However, videos never come through with sound. I have to open it up in a web browser to hear the audio. My spouse has the same issue. I would love for this to be fixed.

Love getting pictures and info from the daycare through Kaymbu but it needs a little sprucing up. It’s not updated for iPhone X. The red notification dot should only be there if I have unread messages. It’s always on even if all messages are read. This makes it hard to know if I actually have unread messages or not.

Not sure if it’s just my phone, but Kaymbu interface is slow to respond, and placement of the top menu functions when you are in media file or a message are too high, nearly impossible to click. When I try to close a window or save a photo I have to tap at least 20 times to get Kaymbu to respond.

When my child’s daycare switched to this app I was really confused why they didn’t get an app with a live feed. We were sold on better usability but I don’t see a point of an app without a live feed. If I’m just getting a report at the end of the day then I can get it on paper. It needs to be clear to parents that this is a messaging app first and a daily log second. For me personally, I don’t care about a messaging app but I DO want a live daily log. Maybe the developers can make that improvement. Otherwise I find Kaymbu pretty pointless.

Please add a way for parents to view live updates to daily sheets throughout the day! This is currently only available if teachers push the daily sheet out at the beginning of the day, which is a hassle, and results in multiple daily sheets cluttering up the feed. It would greatly improve the user experience if the daily sheet was automatically pushed out when a child was checked in and closed at the end of the day, without another copy being pushed out.

Please have a “mark all messages as read” button. Also, I never get push notifications when I get messages. Just an email. Also I’m seeing updates from previous years that have nothing to do with my child’s current school year so I’m seeing updates about other people’s children and their pictures. Seems a bit violating of their privacy.

Our daycare recently changed from Kid Reports to this app and I am finding it to be difficult. this app’s “daily sheets” are not clear when naps start vs stop, it just says for how long and one time stamp. So you don’t know if it started or stopped at that time. Also the photos load in a feed, and you can view them separately in a gallery. And our daycare has to send several versions of a sheet in a single day. The feed is overwhelmed by many sheets for one day. Overall, I’m very disappointed.

Our daughters school recently switched from KidReports to this app and it has been awful. The reports that get sent are out of order, the accuracy of the information is awful and we were told that administrators manually have to push updates to families so you can go hours without any update. Truly terrible. If this was my child’s first year in daycare I would be so anxious due to the lack of information and disorganization of Kaymbu.

I have had 4 other apps for my kids daycare and this is by far the worst. You can’t save any pictures till the end of the week when you get the “digest” and even then if the picture was tagged on anything in their day you can’t save it. You have to download it as a zip file and still no picture.
No desktop web page.

Truly a bad app

- parents cannot turn email notifications
- parents cannot turn off text notifications
- educators cannot send in-app notifications unless they’re marked urgent, so the parent gets a text, email, and an in-app notification. Parents want the opposite: the bloody option for in-app notifications only!!!
- parents cannot clear unread messages
Get with the program, this app!!!

App permanently says there are unread messages even if all are read. There is no way to clear messages for the school’s other grades and it is hard to sort and understand what applies to my child’s grade. We have messages from last years class which seems to be a privacy concern.

I presume this apps is works for it’s purpose however, the interface is uninviting and the features are limited - it would be nice if the parents could upload profile photos also. Desktop access is also preferred but it isn’t even an option.

New update requires that you give Kaymbu access to all of your pictures just to be able to save pictures from Kaymbu . Never a requirement in the past. Don’t understand why this access would be necessary

I don’t like that the days are lumped into 1 long paragraph which is frustrating when your child is not full time at preschool.

There are no pictures which makes me feel so disconnected to my child’s day!!

We have used the this app App for five years now at our Montessori School. Our infant parents loved the videos and photos so much, that as their children grew older, they asked if we could use this app in our toddler and pre-primary classrooms. We use these school wide photos and videos to reach out to people on Facebook, Insta and Twitter also.
It’s an amazing app that there is no downfall to. Your school will love it!

The daycare switched apps to this one and I have no idea what happens with my LO until I pick her up and they release the daily sheet.
I do not like Kaymbu at all, I miss getting updates of my LO throughout the day.

My son’s daycare uses Kaymbu. All the pictures they post in the storybook mode come out so tiny and unclear on the parent’s side. I try to click on them to enlarge or zoom in or look on my computer and it’s the same quality. If they post announcements/documents in the storybook mode, I can’t read anything because it’s so small and blurry. Because of this, I can’t save any photos. Very frustrating. My former daycare used Brightwheel, which was much more user friendly.

This recent update requires access to my entire photo library for me to download photos FROM Kaymbu . This is not normal as compared to other classroom apps and an unacceptable breach of privacy. Please change this.

My provider changed to Kaymbu from Tadpoles, and as bad as Tadpoles was, this is worse

Our daycare uses this. We have to give this app access to our full photo library to be able to save photos. Other similar apps have ‘add photos only’ or limited photo access options. It’s ridiculous that it requires you to share so much information just to obtain the basic functionality of saving a photo.

This application is okay; it works for the most part and gets the job done giving me updates of my child’s school.

However, when I try to download images of my child, the application requires access to my photos. While I'm fine with that, granting limited access doesn’t work. Instead, Kaymbu only gives me the option to access settings or cancel.

When I access settings and grant limited permission, as suggested by the iOS documentation, Kaymbu loops me back to the same photo permission prompt. This prevents me from downloading photos unless I give full permission, which is not required according to the iOS documentation. It appears the product team overlooked this capability, making it an all-or-nothing solution.

Hi! Until last week (November 10) we were able to download the pictures posted, now we can’t anymore……please update that!!!

It is not user friendly, update lags and not liking the delayed approval process to see daily update. Can’t look back at old logs, only showcases photos and no data or daily information

Kaymbu is just okay, it mostly serves its purpose. My biggest issue is I have no sound on videos! One time it suddenly worked and I was able to watch all the old ones with sound but it has never happened again since. I’ve rebooted, I’ve updated, I’ve tried it all. Please fix this issue!