Comparing Digital Reading Diaries: Pageticker vs BoomReader vs Learning with Parents

In today’s digital-first education landscape, schools and parents are increasingly turning to digital reading diaries to track student progress, boost engagement, and streamline communication. With several options on the market, it’s essential to choose the one that best meets your school’s needs. In this blog, we’ll compare three popular platforms: 

• Pageticker

• BoomReader

• Learning with Parents Digital Reading Log 

  
  

Let’s explore how they stack up in key areas such as user experience, features, and value for money.

User Experience (UX) Comparison: Pageticker vs BoomReader vs Learning with Parents

Pageticker: Intuitive and easy to use

Pageticker excels in its user experience with a clean, intuitive interface that minimises the learning curve for teachers and parents. 

For teachers: Key features are accessible within a single-page view, allowing teachers to log reading progress, view insights, and communicate without unnecessary clicks. Single-click ‘nudges’ and ‘likes’ are a handy time-saving way of boosting engagement. Teachers have reported mastering the platform’s core functionalities in just 10 minutes, making it a breeze to onboard staff.

For parents: The handy mobile app receives push notifications to remind parents to log reading. Logging reading is a breeze for parents - again, a carefully thought-through UX helps here. An attractive feature is the use of book covers in the app, which helps with the visual appeal to parents and children.

BoomReader: Visually engaging but cluttered

BoomReader offers a visually engaging design, although the interface can feel cluttered, and key actions such as logging books or accessing reports can require navigating multiple screens. 

For Teachers: That said, it does have a dashboard for teachers and a free app for parents to log reading. The teacher dashboard presents data in a ‘tile’ format which works well on an individual basis, but makes it difficult to get a whole class overview to see who does/doesn’t need to read, for example. This adds complexity and reduces usability.

For Parents: The app gets mixed reviews from parents, who value the ability to set reminders but ultimately don’t enjoy the clunky interface for logging reading, particularly when it comes to switching between multiple children.

Learning with Parents digital reading log: Simple but basic

While Learning with Parents focuses on simplicity, its interface lacks the polish and modern design of its competitors. Some users have found the experience too basic - ultimately, parents can only log reading by logging into the website every time, and the number of steps required to do this for each child means the uptake by parents is low.

For Teachers: Focused on simplicity, the interface lacks polish, and the log-in process can be cumbersome for parents.

For Parents: Parents are required to log reading via the website each time, resulting in low uptake due to the number of steps involved.

Winner: Pageticker

Pageticker offers the best user experience with its simple, intuitive interface, ease of setup, and seamless integration for teachers and parents.

Key Features: Pageticker, BoomReader, and Learning with Parents

All three platforms offer similar features in terms of logging and tracking reading, but different platforms excel in different areas. For ease of comparison, we’ve only listed each product's unique features here.

Pageticker features

• Push notifications: Teachers can send push notifications direct to the parent app.

• Smart book suggestions: Pageticker leverages previous reading data to suggest new books tailored to student preferences and ability

• Comprehensive Data: Logging beyond just pages - with Pageticker you can collect data on fluency metrics, such as accuracy, rate, comprehension and expression.

• Integration with Book Titles: Integration with a vast catalogue of book titles.

BoomReader features

• Reminder Alerts: Ability to set reminders directly within the app.

• Data Dashboard: Available at an additional cost, the dashboard allows for comparison between different groups of readers, for example, pages logged by pupil-premium vs non-pupil-premium.

Learning with Parents Digital Reading Log features

• Photo and Audio Uploads: Ability for parents to share photos and audio clips of their child reading.

  
  

Winner: Dependent on needs

It’s hard to state a winner outright here, as it depends on the features each individual school feels it requires.

Ease of implementation: Setup and onboarding

All three products offer the ability to connect to a school’s MIS, but only Boomreader and Learning with Parents offer the ability to upload classes by .csv file too. Pageticker’s explanation for not allowing this is in order to protect the integrity of its data in the long term.

Pageticker

• Automated Setup: Implementation is largely automated - schools upgrade directly on the platform through online card payment once they are satisfied with their free trial (which is also self-served). MIS connection is done through Wonde, and once this is established, it’s largely plain sailing thanks to its intuitive interface and in-product tours

• Chat Feature: If a demo is required, then there is a useful 10-minute video that can be used to introduce Pageticker to staff, and in the event of support being required, teachers are referred first to the help section of the website, and from there to the support team.

BoomReader

• Demos: BoomReader used to offer regular online live product demos. When a school wanted to trial the platform, they could book a call with one of the sales team, and further CPD can be booked if necessary. However, schools can now trial BoomReader free for 1 month by following the steps on the website. A nice feature is that schools can download reading certificates from the BoomReader website.

Learning with Parents Digital Reading Log

• Simple Setup: When getting set up with Learning with Parents, the steps to getting it working aren’t always clear. However, once set up, its simple feature set means adoption by staff is easy. When a school wants to trial the platform, they can book a demo with one of the sales team, and when rolling out to staff, another demo can be booked for onboarding.

Cost Comparison: Which platform offers better value?

Pageticker pricing

An annual, whole-school subscription to Pageticker costs:

• £99 for up to 75 pupils

• £199 for 76-225 pupils

• £299 for 226+ pupils per year.

BoomReader Pricing

• BoomReader costs from as little as £1.49 per pupil per year for a whole school, plus an additional £1 per pupil per year for the data dashboard.

Learning with Parents Digital Reading Log Pricing

Learning with Parents can be purchased on a per-class basis, at a cost of:

• £45 per class per year.

Winner: Value for Money

All three platforms are realistically priced with school budgets in mind. For a single class, Learning with Parents may work out more economical, but otherwise, Pageticker’s pricing is both simplest and most affordable.

Conclusion: Why Pageticker Stands Out for Schools

When it comes to digital reading diaries, Pageticker emerges as the top choice for most schools. Its intuitive design is key in making onboarding and adoption quick and easy and rendering lengthy staff training unnecessary. Additionally, its advanced features (particularly when it comes to its book suggestion engine), and strong focus on parental engagement make it a standout solution.

Unlike BoomReader and Learning with Parents Digital Reading Log, Pageticker combines ease of use with powerful tools that genuinely save teachers time whilst enhancing reading engagement across the school.

If you’re looking to simplify reading tracking, boost parental involvement, and empower teachers with actionable insights, Pageticker is the clear winner.