Talk to us
Bring the awkward case, not the easy one
There is no form on this site, no trial to start and nothing to buy. What there is, is a conversation with the people building it — and the useful version of that conversation starts from the thing you are worried about rather than the thing that already works.
Bring one of these
The family who said no. Tell us how you currently handle a room photograph where one family has withdrawn, and we will tell you what this does instead. You may not like the answer — it withholds the whole picture — and that is a better thing to find out now.
The teacher who will not stop using her phone. This is the real adoption problem in early-childhood settings and no software solves it by itself. Tell us what she does and why it is faster, and we will be straight about whether this is close enough to compete with the thing already in her hand.
The enrolment page you need to fill. If your plan for this system was to source marketing images from it, we should establish in the first five minutes that it will not, and then talk about the enrolment gallery you could actually build.
The pictures from three years ago that you cannot find. If you have an obligation to produce something and cannot, that is a records problem rather than a photography problem, and it is the clearest case for changing anything.
What we will say in the first ten minutes
Three things, and we will say them before you ask, because all three have ended conversations for us before and we would rather they ended early.
Your children’s photographs cannot go on the open web from here, with or without a parent’s agreement. Families cannot buy anything today, because live payment is not turned on. And a room photograph is withheld from everybody when a single family in it has said no.
If any of those three is a deal-breaker, that is a legitimate outcome and it costs you ten minutes instead of a term. We would rather lose a centre at the start than have one discover the third rule in November.
What we would need from you, if it goes further
Not much, and none of it before you have decided you are interested. Setting this up for a real centre needs three things and they are all things you already have.
Your room list. The children, the rooms they are in, and the families they belong to. Whatever you keep it in now is almost certainly fine; this is the thing everything else hangs off, and it is why the first useful step is never about photographs at all.
Your own position on publication. What your enrolment agreement actually says about photographs, and what you have been telling families at the door. Those two are frequently not the same sentence, and finding that out is worth the exercise on its own.
One person who owns it. Usually you. Systems that belong to nobody in a small centre become systems nobody uses by November, and we would rather ask about this early than watch it happen.
Questions about the conversation itself
Is there a trial?
Not a self-serve one, because setting this up against a real room list is a piece of work rather than a signup. A demonstration happens against your own rooms after somebody has spoken to you, which is slower than clicking a button and produces an answer you can actually act on.
Will we be put onto a mailing list?
No. This site collects nothing from you: there is no form on it, no address to hand over before you can read anything, and no reason for you to identify yourself in order to look around. If you get in touch, that is a conversation you started and can end.
How long does the first conversation take?
Twenty minutes, most of it spent on the three things above. If one of them is a deal-breaker it takes ten, and that is a good outcome rather than a wasted call.
Do we have to decide anything at the end?
No, and there is nothing to decide about money because there is nothing to buy. The platform is free to the centre and the intended income is a family store that is early access with live payment not turned on. So the decision at the end of a first conversation is only whether there is a second one.
What if we are already using something else?
Tell us what it is and what it does well. Most centres are using a combination of a messaging app, a shared drive and a photographer, and the useful question is not whether to replace all three but which single one is causing you a problem you cannot currently answer.
Where the conversation happens
Through the platform’s own front door at homeroom.software, which is where a person at Stanley Studios picks it up. This site deliberately collects nothing from you: no form, no tracking of who you are, no address to hand over before you can read anything.
What happens next is a conversation, not a sales sequence. If it goes well, the next step is a demonstration against your own rooms, which is a real piece of setup work rather than a slideshow — and it happens after somebody has talked to you, never before.
There is nothing to buy at the end of it. That is not a soft close; it is the actual state of the product.