Now that I have used both Talking Points and Remind to communicate with families through messaging, I'd probably recommend Remind to other people.

Here's why.

Talking Points main advantage is a BIG one: It automatically translates messages for non-English speaking parents. But I've had several parents report that the translation quality isn't great. Remind allows parents to translate messages when they receive them if needed.

It is also WAY easier to find new messages from parents in Remind than it is in Talking Points. In TP, you see three new messages on your landing page after logging in -- but if you have received more than three messages, you have to scroll through your whole class to find them.

The other hitch with TP is that when you get a message from a family, it doesn't give you the actual name of the contact. Instead, it just tells you "Mother" or "Father" or "Parent." If you want to reply with a name, you have to look that up -- which is an extra step.

Those simple hiccups take extra time -- and right now, I'm looking for tools that save me time!

Now, you can't REALLY go wrong with either tool.

Communicating with parents is a MUST in remote/hybrid environments and both tools make that possible.

But after tinkering with both for a long while, I think Remind is the more polished of the two.