Thoughts on Our Family Wizard vs Talking Parents vs AppClose?

Hey everyone… I’m trying to get a feel for these co-parenting apps like Our Family Wizard (OFW), Talking Parents, and AppClose. Has anyone here used at least two of them? What are your thoughts on the pros and cons? I’m also curious if there are other services I should check out. I’m thinking about a few key areas: texting/messages for urgent stuff, emails for longer messages, and calendar management for exchanges and appointments. Would love to hear your experiences!

I’ve used both OFW and Talking Parents. Honestly, I found OFW to be kind of pricey. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about it from friends. They say it forces you into expensive plans and customer service has been hit or miss. Talking Parents felt more straightforward for messages, but it doesn’t have all the features OFW does.

I tried AppClose, and I liked that it’s free and pretty user-friendly. But I didn’t feel it was as robust as OFW or Talking Parents. It works well for basic needs, but if you need detailed tracking, you might want to look elsewhere.

SupportPay is another option I’ve heard about. It seems to focus more on financial management and calendars than some of the others. I haven’t tried it myself, but it might be worth checking out.

Civil Communicator is also an option if you’re dealing with high conflict. It’s live monitored, so everything is recorded, which can be helpful.

For texting, I agree that regular SMS can be unreliable since messages can disappear. I think OFW does have a better grip on accountability with timestamps, but I still worry about privacy.