Comparison
BeehiveKin and Baby's Days, for childminders in England
Baby's Days is the older, broader system: over 100 features, built for childminders, nurseries and pre-schools alike. BeehiveKin does less on purpose, publishes its price, and is built only for England. Which of those two sentences sounds better to you is the whole decision.
BeehiveKin
£20 a month, or £200 a year
up to 12 children. 14-day free trial, no card. No VAT charged.
Baby's Days
Not published
Baby's Days asks you to book a free demonstration or choose a package rather than listing a price. Figures for it appear in comparison tables written by competitors; we have not been able to verify any of them at source, so this page quotes none.
Both read from the companies’ own pages on 27 October 2026. Prices change; check before you buy.
Where Baby's Days is the better choice
Breadth, and years of it
Over 100 features by their own count, updated monthly at no extra cost, and used by childminders, nurseries and pre-schools. If you want one system that does nearly everything, that is a real argument.
No limit on connections
Their site says there are no restrictions on how many connections you can have at once, so a large family list is not a pricing problem.
It serves nurseries as well as childminders
If you may grow into a nursery, a system that already serves both saves a migration. BeehiveKin cannot add a second staff login yet, which rules it out for that plan.
Where BeehiveKin is
The price is on the website
£20 a month, £200 a year, up to 12 children, no VAT charged. You can decide whether it is worth it without booking a demonstration or speaking to anybody.
Fewer features, and the paperwork ones done properly
Contracts with e-signatures, the six statutory consents with withdrawal recorded, a register that logs corrected arrival times, and the journey as one PDF. Not 100 features, and these four are not bolted on.
England only, and specific about it
EYFS consent set, an Ofsted URN at signup, records held in the UK and Ireland. The trade-off is that we cannot serve Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland at all.
Side by side
| BeehiveKin | Baby's Days | |
|---|---|---|
| Published price, better in BeehiveKin | £20/month, £200/year | Not published, demo required |
| Children included, better in them | Up to 12 | No stated limit on connections |
| Breadth of features, better in them | Deliberately narrow | Over 100 by their own count |
| Serves nurseries too, better in them | Not yet, no second staff login | Yes |
| Childcare contracts with e-signatures, better in BeehiveKin | Yes | Not stated on the home page |
| Statutory consents, with withdrawal recorded, better in BeehiveKin | Yes | Not stated on the home page |
| Register with corrected arrival times, better in BeehiveKin | Yes, every change logged | Not stated on the home page |
| Try it without talking to anybody, better in BeehiveKin | Yes, 14-day trial | Free demonstration offered |
The highlighted cell is the one we think wins that row, including when it is not ours.
What BeehiveKin does not do
The same list on every one of these pages, because you should not have to find it out after you have moved your records.
- No invoicing. Fees, funded hours and consumables are on the roadmap and not in the product today.
- No occupancy tracking.
- No in-app parent messaging. It is built and switched off until the parent app ships.
- The mobile apps are not in the stores yet, so the first cohort uses it in a browser.
- Accounts are opened by hand, so there is a form rather than a signup button.
Most of that is being built. What is coming, and in what order, is below.
What is coming next
In the order it is being built. No dates, because a date on a page like this is a promise, and the order is the part we can keep.
- 1Invoicing, funded hours and feesThe largest gap, and the one being worked on first. Funded hours, private fees and consumables, built from the register rather than retyped.
- 2Parent messagingAlready built and switched off, because a provider arriving on the promise of in-app chat should not find nobody on the other end. It turns on with the parent app.
- 3The apps in the storesToday the first cohort uses BeehiveKin in a browser, which works on a phone. The iOS and Android listings follow.
- 4A second login for your assistantOne account per setting today. Staff logins are what will let an assistant, or a nursery room leader, have their own access.
- 5OccupancyA real picture of your week rather than a headcount. Later than the rest, and listed here so nobody is surprised by its absence.
Moving your records in
There is no automatic import from another app, and building one that handled every system properly would take longer than doing it by hand at this size. So we do it by hand, with you, free, before you pay anything.
Children, guardians and contact details
Send us your export or your spreadsheet and we load it. This is the part that takes an evening if you type it yourself, and it is the part we would rather do for you.
Contracts and consents
Signed again through BeehiveKin, by link, from the parent’s own phone. That is not laziness about importing: a signature captured in another system is that system’s evidence, and a fresh one with its own audit trail is worth more to you at inspection.
Learning journeys
Export them from your current app as PDFs and keep them, or hand them to families. We can attach them to each child so the history sits beside the new entries.
A term boundary is the easy moment
Most settings move at the start of a term and start the register fresh. It is less work than mid-year, and nothing is lost either way.
If you are already on Baby's Days
If you are happy with a system that does more than you need, and you know what you are paying for it, there is no reason to move. If you would rather pay a published £20 for a smaller tool, send us what you can export and we will load the children, the guardians and the contact details by hand, keep your old journeys as PDFs against each child, and have you running before the next invoice.
Sources
- Baby's Days home page, read 27 October 2026