Comparison

Digital hall-pass tools, compared honestly

Four products a school will actually shortlist, one column for the tool we make, and a footnote on every cell. Where a vendor has not published something, the cell says so; we do not fill gaps with guesses or with what a sales rep told someone once.

The table

Criterion	SmartPass (Raptor)	Securly Pass (was e-hallpass)	Minga	5-Star Students	EduQueue †
Owner / since	Raptor Technologies, 10 Dec 2024; Raptor itself backed by Thoma Bravo and JMI at the time^1,2	Securly, Inc.; e-hallpass came in with Eduspire Solutions and its URL now redirects to securly.com/pass¹⁰	Minga (independent as far as published)¹⁴	5-Star Students (independent as far as published)¹⁵	Asan Digital LLC, New Jersey
Scale claimed	“over 3,000 K–12 schools” (Dec 2024); “2 million+ Educators and Students” (site)^1,3	not stated on the product page¹¹	“over 2,500+ Schools and 750 Districts”¹⁴	not published	One district (~11,500 students) and one municipality in production
Pricing model	Per student, three tiers (Lite, Standard, Pro); quote-only; public record $3.15/student/yr^4,6,7	Quote-only; third-party range $3–$5/student plus a $1,000 set-up fee (competitor-sourced, unverified)^13,16	Basic / Plus / Premium; quote-only¹⁴	Published: $1,400–$2,650/yr renewal by enrolment band, $2,300–$3,850 first year¹⁵	Per building per year; first building free, no card
Contract term	3 years + optional 2 (one public record)⁷	not published	not published	1-year subscription¹⁵	Annual; free tier has no term
Rostering / SIS	Clever, ClassLink, Google, CSV⁴	not named on the product page¹¹	“MingaSync” from the SIS, daily; systems not named¹⁴	not published	PowerSchool nightly roster sync
Attendance to the SIS	Activity attendance “exported to the SIS”⁵	not published	not published	not published	Late-arrival outcome carries the district’s attendance code; posts to PowerSchool (details and caveats)
Privacy / retention	Compliance badges; the privacy link resolves to Raptor’s website policy, which excludes school services; retention not published^3,9	Deletion within 30 days of contract end; no sale, profiling or ads; FERPA school-official role¹²	not published where we looked	policy pages linked; retention not stated on them¹⁵	Export on request; deletion at contract end on request
Kiosk mode	Yes, Standard tier and up; iOS kiosk app^3,5	“Pass Kiosk”¹¹	Yes¹⁴	Barcode scanning; kiosk not described¹⁵	Yes; the late-arrival kiosk is the main use
Offline mode	not published	not published	not published	not published	No
Parent visibility	Parent Accounts on Pro⁵	not published	Weekly email summary¹⁴	None (the add-on is student-facing only)¹⁵	None built in; the SIS does it once the code posts
Pass limits	Per day, week or term⁴	By individual, group, grade or school¹¹	Daily cap; restroom-specific cap¹⁴	not published	n/a
Meeting / encounter prevention	“Encounter Prevention”; AI “Detected Encounters” on Pro^4,5	“Contact Control”¹¹	“Automated Meetup Blocking”¹⁴	not published	n/a
Room capacity	Room limits⁵	“Location Pass Limits”¹¹	not published	not published	n/a
Appointment / scheduled passes	“Schedule Passes”⁵	“Appointment Pass” with reminders¹¹	not published	not published	Visitor appointments, not student passes
Tardy handling	Missed-class-time tracking on Pro⁵	“Tardy Management”¹¹	“built-in tardy management”¹⁴	not published	Outcome assigned by scan time window; report type “Late to School”; daily emailed report
Student ID cards	“ID Cards FREE”⁴	not published	Part of the wider platform¹⁴	Barcode-based¹⁵	Scans the district’s existing ID barcode; prints a badge on some outcomes
Visitor management	Sold separately by Raptor⁵	Listed on the Pass page as a feature¹¹	not published	not published	Core; registry screening; the free tier is a visitor product
Building exchange (shared campus)	not published	not published	not published	not published	Yes: students who move between two buildings check out of one and into the other, with a system close-out

† EduQueue is not a hall-pass app. Its cells are our own claims about our own product and carry no footnote; treat them with the same scepticism as any vendor’s. Newer flat-fee entrants (Hallwise publishes $999 per school per year)¹⁶ exist too; we have not evaluated them and list the figure only because it is public.

When to pick which

SmartPass (Raptor)

Right if: you already run Raptor Visitor Management or Dismissal, or you want the deepest pass feature set (encounter prevention, room capacity, iOS kiosk) and can budget per student.^4,5

Ask at renewal: which tier the features you need sit in (kiosk and approvals are Standard and up; parent accounts and missed-class-time are Pro),⁵ and for the services privacy policy in writing, since the public link lands on the website policy.⁹ Expect a multi-year term; Frederick County’s was three years plus two.⁷

Securly Pass

Right if: you already use Securly filtering or wellness tools, or you want the clearest published data-retention promise of the four.¹²

Ask: which SIS and rostering connectors are supported (the product page names none),¹¹ and whether a set-up fee applies. The 30-day post-contract deletion clause is the kind of thing to copy into your own contract with whoever you choose.¹²

Minga

Right if: passes are one of several things you want from one platform (ID, rewards, check-ins, communications) and a weekly parent summary matters to you.¹⁴

Ask: which tier hall passes sit in, what “MingaSync” supports for your specific SIS, and the retention policy, none of which is on the public pages.¹⁴

5-Star Students

Right if: you want a price you can read before you call, and passes are a modest part of an activities-and-recognition program.¹⁵

Ask: what the pass module actually does (limits, meeting prevention and kiosk are not described publicly), and whether the SIS roster can be imported without the $2,500/day on-site training.¹⁵

Paper, deliberately

Right if: your corridor problem is small, your staff are consistent, and you would rather spend the money at the door.

Our free tools page has a print-ready pass log and a policy template. Nobody needs to buy software to run a fair pass system; they need to run one. See Do you need a hall-pass app?

EduQueue (with or without any of the above)

Right if: late arrival, early dismissal or a shared campus is where your attendance and safety data leaks, and you want the attendance code assigned at the door and posted to PowerSchool.

Not right if you need passes. It does not do them. The free tier is a visitor product for one building; the campus features are the district edition — ask for the 15-minute kiosk demo and we will say plainly what fits.

Sources (all fetched 4 September 2026)

Raptor Technologies, “Raptor Technologies Acquires SmartPass”, 10 December 2024: SmartPass is “a digital hall pass + student accountability solution that replaces traditional hall passes”, “supporting over 3,000 K–12 schools nationwide”; “The integration of SmartPass with Raptor’s product portfolio will provide the most comprehensive unified platform for schools to manage daily operations”. No pricing or bundling statement. raptortech.com
EdWeek Market Brief, “K-12 Dealmaking: Raptor Acquires SmartPass; zSpace Raises $10.8M in IPO”, 12 December 2024: terms not disclosed; SmartPass previously raised seed funding from Reach Capital and Edovate Capital; Raptor backed by Thoma Bravo and JMI Equity; follows Raptor’s April 2023 purchase of SchoolPass. marketbrief.edweek.org
smartpass.app home page: product now styled “Raptor SmartPass”, “Now a Raptor Technologies Company”; “Smarter Movement for 2 million+ Educators and Students”; “Manage Virtual Queues, Room Capacities, and Pass Limits”; iOS app with kiosk mode; COPPA and SDPC badges; “All SmartPass products are compliant with data protection regulations and standards”. smartpass.app
smartpass.app/hall-pass: “Limit the number of passes students can have per day, week or term”; “Prevent 2+ students from being in the hallways at the same time. They are automatically blocked and notifications are sent to teachers”; kiosk at the main office or in classrooms; rostering via Clever, ClassLink, Google, or CSV; tiers named Lite, Standard, Pro; no dollar amounts. smartpass.app/hall-pass
Raptor, “SmartPass Digital Hall Pass System” product page: plan matrix with “Kiosk Mode” and “Passes Need Approval” at Standard and above, “Parent Accounts”, “Missed Class Time Tracking”, “Emergency Mode” and “AI-powered Detected Encounters” at Pro; “Attendance can be taken and edited directly within activities, then exported to the SIS”; presented within Raptor’s “Campus Movement” suite alongside visitor and dismissal products. raptortech.com
smartpass.app/pricing is a demo-request form with no prices, tiers or terms. smartpass.app/pricing
The Frederick News-Post, “Schools can purchase digital hall pass system starting in July”, 14 May 2025 (republished by Raptor): Frederick County Public Schools, MD, awarded Raptor a SmartPass contract at $3.15 per student per year, July 2025 through June 2028 with one optional two-year extension, on a 3–2 board vote. raptortech.com (reprint)
Gothamist, Jessica Gould, “New digital hall passes track bathroom breaks, gather data in NYC schools”, 24 March 2026: NYC education department spent $368,000 on SmartPass contracts in 2025 and $120,000 the year before; 167 schools; student Shokhjakhon Samiev: “It’s taken micromanaging students to a whole other level”; NYCLU’s Johanna Miller: “It’s just creepy”; DOE’s Onika Richards: “all approved tools must meet established privacy and security standards”; ~1,400-signature petition for an AI moratorium. gothamist.com
smartpass.app/privacy returns HTTP 301 to raptortech.com/privacy-policy/ (last updated July 2026), which states it “does not apply to any information we collect pursuant to agreements to provide services to our customers, including schools” and refers to a separate services privacy policy we could not reach at a public URL. A student-data retention period for SmartPass is therefore not published where we could find it. raptortech.com/privacy-policy
eduspiresolutions.org/e-hallpass/ returns HTTP 301 to securly.com/pass. Securly’s blog announced that Securly and Eduspire (e-hallpass, FlexTime Manager) had “joined forces”, quoting Securly CEO Bharath Madhusudan. blog.securly.com
Securly Pass product page: “Live Dashboard”, “Student Pass Limits”, “Contact Control”, “Auto-Pass”, “Appointment Pass”, “Location Pass Limits”, “Pass Kiosk”, “Proxy Pass”, “Tardy Management”; “All data in Securly Pass is encrypted and protected using industry standard security practices”; data collected is names, school emails, optionally ID number and grade. No integrations or prices named on the page. securly.com/pass
Securly Privacy Policy, effective 19 January 2026: Student Information deleted “when it is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected and in any case, within thirty (30) days after the School’s agreement with us ends”; “Securly does not: Sell Student Information; Build Student profiles for commercial purposes; or Use Student Information for advertising”; acts as a FERPA “school official”. securly.com/privacy
securly.com/pricing is a demo-request page with no prices; sales contact only. securly.com/pricing
Minga, “Digital Hall Pass”: “Daily Hall Pass Limits: Prevent ‘frequent flyers’ by capping the number of passes per student”; restroom-specific limit example “3 per day”; “Kiosk Mode”; “Weekly Parent Summaries: Parents get a weekly email summary of their child’s behavior and missed class time”; “Automated Meetup Blocking”; “built-in tardy management”; rostering from the SIS via “MingaSync”; tiers Basic, Plus, Premium, prices on request. minga.io/digital-hall-pass; scale claim “over 2,500+ Schools and 750 Districts” from minga.io.
5-Star Students, Pricing: per-school annual subscription including hall passes; secondary schools by enrolment — under 300 students $2,300 start-up / $1,400 renewal; 300–1,000 $2,850 / $1,850; 1,001–2,500 $3,350 / $2,250; 2,501–5,000 $3,850 / $2,650; student-communications add-on $250–$1,000; on-site training $2,500/day. 5starstudents.com/Pricing; hall pass and barcode-scan features from 5starstudents.com.
Hallwise (a competing hall-pass vendor) publishes a comparison page claiming SmartPass at “$2.50–$5 per student” and e-hallpass at “$3–$5 per student … plus $1,000 one-time setup”, and states “Neither vendor publishes a price list; both quote on request.” Competitor-authored; we cite it for the range and the quote-only point only, and the one primary figure we can verify is note 7. hallwise.com/compare
Raptor blog, “Student Visibility Isn’t Surveillance. It’s Safety & Accountability.”, 1 May 2026: “Contrary to popular belief, digital hall passes aren’t designed to track students in real time. There’s no live location monitoring.” raptortech.com
Securly blog, “3 Digital Hall Pass Myths Debunked”, March 2024: “Securly Pass is not a tracking and surveillance device. It does not use GPS … It only knows the student’s intended destination.”; principal quoted that hallway numbers “gone down by 30-40%”. blog.securly.com
ACLU, press release for “Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling”, 3 October 2023: 87% of 502 surveyed students aged 14–18 report surveillance technology at school; 26% concerned about data privacy; K-12 spending on security products estimated at $3.1 billion in 2021. aclu.org; coverage with the 32% “always feel like I’m being watched” and 40% “safe” figures: K-12 Dive, Anna Merod, 6 October 2023, k12dive.com.
U.S. Department of Education, “Chronic Absenteeism”: “typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days, or approximately 18 days in a year, for any reason, excused or unexcused”; national rate about 31% in 2021–22 and 28% in 2022–23. ed.gov
Nat Malkus and Sam Hollon, “Need Not Be a Surprise: Early-Warning Systems for Chronic Absenteeism”, American Enterprise Institute, 14 October 2025 (updated 27 May 2026): models built on routinely collected absence counts predict chronic absence at roughly 90% accuracy; “Waiting to intervene until midway through the year will certainly make it clearer which students are on track to become chronically absent, but by only a few points of accuracy.” The report models absence counts, not tardies. aei.org