Comparison
BeehiveKin and Tapestry, for childminders in England
If what you want is a learning journal and nothing else, Tapestry is cheaper and has been doing it for longer. If the paperwork that keeps you up at night is contracts, consents and the register, that is what BeehiveKin is for.
BeehiveKin
£20 a month, or £200 a year
up to 12 children. 14-day free trial, no card. No VAT charged.
Tapestry
Plans start from just £5.67 a month
Tapestry says every subscription includes all features. Its childminder page does not say whether that figure is per child or per setting, or whether it needs paying annually, so ask before you compare it with anything.
Both read from the companies’ own pages on 27 October 2026. Prices change; check before you buy.
Where Tapestry is the better choice
It is the one every early years practitioner has heard of
Tapestry has been in English settings for years. Your local authority adviser knows it, other childminders can help you with it, and that is worth something real on the day you are stuck.
The learning journal is its whole purpose
Observations, assessment and sharing with parents are what it was built to do, and it does them deeply.
The entry price is lower
If the number is what decides it, £5.67 is less than £20, and no honest comparison pretends otherwise.
Where BeehiveKin is
Contracts and consents are the product, not an add-on
Build the contract from the child’s details, the parent signs on their own phone, you counter-sign, both of you get the PDF. The six statutory EYFS consents are captured at the same time, with a record if one is later withdrawn.
A register that records when the child actually arrived
Drop-off was 8:00 and you got to your phone at 9:30. You set the real time, and every correction is recorded, so the register is accurate and defensible rather than a timestamp of when you pressed a button.
Parents need no account at all
They sign from an emailed link on their own phone. Nothing to download, no password to reset for them, and nothing for you to chase.
Side by side
| BeehiveKin | Tapestry | |
|---|---|---|
| Published price, better in them | £20/month, £200/year | From £5.67/month |
| Children included, better in BeehiveKin | Up to 12 | Not stated on the childminder page |
| Learning journal, EYFS-linked, better in about equal | Yes, with next steps on every entry | Yes, its core product |
| Childcare contracts with e-signatures, better in BeehiveKin | Yes | Not offered |
| Statutory consents, with withdrawal recorded, better in BeehiveKin | Yes | Not offered |
| Daily register with corrected arrival times, better in BeehiveKin | Yes, every change logged | Not offered |
| Parents need an account, better in BeehiveKin | No | Yes, parents log in |
| Invoicing and fees, better in about equal | No, on the roadmap | Not on the childminder page |
| Whole journey as one PDF, better in about equal | Yes, one button | Export available |
| Free trial, better in about equal | 14 days, no card | Yes, length not stated |
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 Tapestry
Two years of observations in Tapestry is a real reason to stay, and we will not pretend otherwise. If you do want to move, you will not be doing it alone: export the journeys you want to keep as PDFs, send us the children and guardian details, and we will set the rest up with you before you pay anything. Most settings pick a term boundary and start the register fresh from there.
Sources
- Tapestry childminder app page, read 27 October 2026