We like these products. Here's the honest fit: every claim about a competitor below is a direct quote, linked to the page it came from.
Otii is a real, well-built inspection-readiness platform: SEND register, an AI assistant, curriculum documentation, an inspection-day mode with auto evidence packs, custom reporting, offline mobile, alongside its own compliance tools. If you want one system to run the whole readiness picture, it's a fine choice.
Your nursery management app, Famly, eyworks, Nursery In a Box and others, already runs your day: registers, parents, billing, sometimes curriculum. Some bolt on real staff-compliance tooling; some bolt on very little. We've quoted each one directly below rather than guess.
NurseryGuard does one job: the staff file that's ready when Ofsted asks, plus the two records almost nobody else keeps. If that's the job you have, we're built for it, and priced for it, £39 a month against £119–143 for Otii, per setting either way.
Every "Otii" and "management app" cell below is either a direct quote (numbered, linked in Sources) or a documented absence from a full crawl of the vendor's site.
| NurseryGuard | Otii | Your management app | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | One job: it keeps the compliance evidence, nursery-only. | A 7-hub inspection-readiness platform: SEND register, AI assistant, curriculum documentation, inspection-day mode, custom reporting, offline mobile. | Runs your day: registers, parents, billing, sometimes curriculum. Staff-compliance depth varies a lot by product. |
| Price | £39/mo per setting, everything included. Free 30 days, no card. | £119/mo (annual) to £143/mo (quarterly), inc VAT, per setting, unlimited users.45 | Famly £79–£209/mo excl. VAT (tier-dependent)7 · Nursery In a Box £149–219/mo excl. VAT9 · eyworks HR module from £20.99/mo, modular, scales by children. |
| DBS & certificate expiry alerts | ✓ DBS, safeguarding training, first aid and references: chased for you. | ✓ "DBS and certificate expiry alerts — staff and setting"2, and it goes wider than staffing: "Certificate expiry alerts — DBS, first aid, gas, fire."10 | eyworks: ✓ "automated reminders flag expiring training before it lapses."6 Nursery In a Box: "you can monitor certification status", storage, not chasing8, with "DBS Checks" as a bare pricing-page line item.9 Famly: no DBS/expiry language found on its pricing or staffing pages. |
| Single Central Record | ✓ One record per person, always current. | ✓ "Live Single Central Record (SCR)."3 | eyworks: ✓ "Keep your single central record up to date with automated reminders."6 Not found on Famly or Nursery In a Box's own pages. |
| Room-ratio evidence, timestamped | ✓ 15-second Room Check: a plain answer, saved with a timestamp. | Not found anywhere on Otii's site, including its Children's-welfare hub. | Not documented on any of the three. |
| Menu-derived allergen matrix | ✓ Upload your menu; AI drafts a 14-allergen matrix dish by dish; your cook confirms every row. | Not found: a full crawl turned up zero "allergen" or "menu" mentions. | Nursery In a Box lists "Allergies & Dietary Needs" as a bare pricing line item9: not derived from a menu. Not found on Famly or eyworks. |
| Published customer proof | Early access: we're not going to pretend otherwise. | No published customer logos, counts or case studies: only unattributed quotes from "settings … who've seen Otii in action." (Real launch covered by Nursery World, Nov 2025; Innovate UK grant-backed.) | N/A |
"Your management app" isn't one product: it's whichever of Famly, eyworks or Nursery In a Box you already run. We've quoted each by name rather than average them, because their staff-compliance depth is genuinely different.
Chasing DBS and certificate expiries isn't ours alone: Otii does it, and so does eyworks, properly, with a real single central record and automated reminders across a claimed 2,000+ UK settings. If you want a platform that does the chasing and curriculum, SEND, inspection-day mode and custom reporting, Otii is a serious option at £119–143 a month.
What we haven't found anywhere else, on Otii's site, on Famly's, on eyworks', on Nursery In a Box's, is a timestamped room-ratio snapshot or an allergen matrix generated from your own menu. Those two live in NurseryGuard alone, nursery-only, at £39 a month.
If you already run a full platform and it's working, keep it. If you want the one job, the staff file, ready before anyone asks, plus the two records nobody else keeps, done sharp and at a third of the price, that's what NurseryGuard is for.
SEND register, an AI assistant, curriculum documentation, inspection-day mode with auto evidence packs, custom reporting and offline mobile: Otii builds all of this in. If you want one system for the whole inspection picture rather than a compliance tool alongside your existing app, that breadth is real and worth paying for.
One job, done for a third of Otii's price, with the two records we couldn't find built anywhere else: room-ratio evidence and a menu-derived allergen matrix. See the full feature list or the pricing page.
Free for 30 days, no card. £39/month after, about an hour of agency cover.
Start free, no card