PingPing

In development · Early access open to schools

Ping for schools

The class circle the school opens and the family controls.

Ping is a messenger built for children aged 6 to 12: approved contacts only, no public profiles, no phone number for the child, no ads, no data selling. Ping is live and used by families every day. We are now building the school layer with the first schools: a web dashboard for classes, feature settings at class level, and a licence that makes Ping free for the families taking part.

See how Ping works

The class group forms anyway

By year three it exists: the group where the children arrange the park, ask about homework and organise the birthday party. Usually on an app that was never built for nine-year-olds. Nobody chose it. It just happened.

Adult apps in children's hands.

Open contact by phone number, an ad-funded business model, features no primary class needs, and no way for the school to set the ground rules.

Children without a phone are left out.

A child with no smartphone or no number ends up outside the class conversation, and hears about the afternoon plan last.

The school gets the fallout, not the controls.

What happens in the group at ten at night is settled the next morning in class.

And schools need something they can actually assess

When children's data is involved, a school needs clear answers: where it is hosted, who processes it, what is kept and for how long, and who is responsible for what. Most consumer messengers were never designed around those questions, which leaves schools recommending nothing and hoping for the best.

Ping is not a replacement for the platform a school already uses to talk to parents. It is the thing the class group is missing: a closed space for the children, opened by the school, activated by the parents, and documented well enough to put in front of a data protection officer.

How it works

1

The school opens a class.

A teacher or administrator creates a class in the web dashboard and sends out invitations. No app to install on the school side.

2

Parents activate.

A parent accepts the invitation, sets up the family account and adds their child. No child account exists on Ping until a parent has completed that step.

3

The child joins the class circle.

They can message the classmates whose parents have also joined, plus the contacts their own parents add: grandparents, a cousin, a friend from football. One app for school and home.

4

The school sets what the class can use.

Photos, voice messages, group chats, quiet time and other features are set at class level. Parents can go tighter for their own child.

Who controls what

One principle runs through the whole product.

The school

Can: Decide who is in the class. Set which features are available to that class. See who has joined and who has not.

Parents

Can: Decide who their child talks to beyond the class. Switch features off further. Block an individual contact. Withdraw their child at any time.

Nobody

Can: Read the children's messages.

Two things follow from this that are worth being explicit about.

The school sees the class and only the class. A teacher cannot see that a child also talks to their cousin, their swimming coach or a friend from a different school. The family's wider circle is not visible in the dashboard.

Class membership is set by the school, so it is not a switch in family settings. A parent who does not want their child in the class can withdraw the child from Ping, and a parent who is dealing with one difficult classmate can block that contact without leaving anything.

What each side gets

School leadership and teachers

  • A web dashboard for classes and features, with no app to install
  • A class invited in minutes, and a clear view of who has joined
  • Something you can recommend at a parents' evening without opening the usual debate

Parents

  • No cost while their child is in a participating class, no ads, no data selling, no phone number for their child
  • Control over their own child's contacts and settings, inside and outside school
  • An account that belongs to the family, not to the school

Children

  • A chat built for how children talk: stickers, drawings, voice messages, walkie-talkie, photos where parents allow it, and text
  • Their class, their grandparents and their best friend in one place
  • No feed to scroll, nothing to compete over, nobody to impress

Safety without surveillance

The next question a school leader asks is the right one: what happens when something goes wrong?

Ping does not answer it by giving teachers a window into private conversations. It answers it earlier. Children can only reach people inside approved connections, there is no search and no way for a stranger to appear, and every conversation sits inside a circle an adult has already agreed to.

When something does go wrong, children can report or block from inside the app. Reports go to the child's own parents and can be escalated to us, where accounts can be restricted. Whether a school should be told, and at what point, is one of the questions we are working out with the first schools, because monitoring every class chat is not the answer and neither is leaving a school in the dark.

Safety without strangers. Privacy without surveillance.

Privacy and the documentation for your review

Ping is built by SafeCircles GmbH in Germany and runs on European infrastructure. Privacy is not layered on afterwards, it is how the app is put together.

Data minimisation from the start.

Children need no phone number, no email address and no password. There are no public profiles and no user search.

Parent activation before anything exists.

A school invitation is an invitation. Until a parent accepts it and sets the account up, there is no child account.

No advertising, ever.

No ad networks, no behavioural tracking, no profiling, no data passed to third parties. Ping is funded by subscriptions and licences only.

Documentation for your assessment.

We provide what a school needs in order to review Ping: data flows, processors, hosting, retention and deletion, technical and organisational measures, and the processing agreements appropriate to how responsibilities are split in the arrangement.

What it costs

While a child is in a participating class, their Ping account is covered by the school licence. The family pays nothing, sees no ads and is asked to buy nothing. That includes the contacts the parents add themselves, so the child's grandparents are covered too.

If a family leaves the class, or the licence ends, nothing is deleted. The account, the contacts and the messages belong to the family, and they can carry on with the regular family plan if they want to. Siblings who are not in a participating class are covered by the family plan in the usual way.

We are setting licence pricing together with the first schools rather than publishing a number we would have to revise. Tell us the size of your school and you get a straight answer.

Help shape Ping for schools

We are building the first version with a small number of schools, and they get to decide the open questions. Among them: how safety notifications should work when a class is involved, what should happen when a child changes class or school, and which systems Ping needs to sit alongside in a school day.

Tell us what matters most to you and we build in that order.

Frequently asked questions

When can we start?
Ping is live on iOS and Android and in daily use. The school layer, with the dashboard and licences, is in development and opening first to a small number of schools. Tell us about yours and we will talk about timing directly.
How long does it take to build?
The app already exists, so the school layer is a focused piece of work rather than a new product. The pace is set by the schools we build it with. You get a realistic date in the conversation, not before.
Does Ping replace our school platform?
No. Ping is a messenger and nothing else. It is not a learning platform, a homework system or an administration tool, and it does not compete with the platform you already use to reach parents. Ping is the children's class chat.
Can teachers read the messages?
No. Adults decide who a child can talk to and which features are available, not what is said.
What does it cost families?
Nothing while their child is in a participating class. No ads and nothing to buy.
What happens if a child reports a message?
Reports go to that child's parents and can be escalated to us, where an account can be restricted. Children can also block a contact themselves. What the school should see, and when, is one of the questions we are working out with early schools.
What if some parents do not want to take part?
That is fine, and it should be. No account is created without a parent accepting. A class runs with the families who join, and others can join later.
Does every child need their own phone?
No. Ping runs on phones and tablets, including a shared family tablet. A child needs no phone number and no email address.
What happens when a family leaves the school?
The account belongs to the family. Their contacts and their child's messages stay theirs. The class connection ends and they can continue on the family plan if they want to.
Which languages does Ping support?
English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Portuguese (Brazil).
Who is behind Ping?
SafeCircles GmbH, a German company based in Teltow, Brandenburg.

Request early access

We are talking to schools now. Tell us about yours and we will come back to you personally.

Running an after-school club, sports team, youth group or music school? We would like to hear from you too.

What matters most to you (optional)

We use what you send us only to answer your enquiry about Ping for schools. We do not add you to a mailing list and we do not pass your details on. See our privacy policy.

Build this with us.

Ping is already in the hands of families. The school layer is being shaped now, by the schools that ask for it. Tell us what yours needs.

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