Secure, Privacy-First Creche Website Design with Parent Portals
The "Digital Window" Parents Look For
A creche or Montessori school is judged on its website long before a parent walks through the door. Parents want to feel connected to their child's day, and at the same time they are wary about where their child's photograph ends up. A brochure site does not answer either concern. What does is a site that is open about how you run the place and careful about what it publishes.
We build websites for the Irish childcare sector, for providers balancing regulatory obligations, scheme administration and parent expectations. The site takes the repeated admin questions off your staff so they can be with the children.
Why Use a Secure Parent Portal?
Stop answering the same questions about lunch menus and holiday dates. A password-protected parent area gives you one place to put:
- Weekly Newsletters & Menus (accessible only to current parents)
- Photo Galleries (safe spaces without exposing children to the public web)
- Policy Documents (instant access to Tusla compliance forms and sickness policies)
Explaining the Funding Schemes
Explaining the National Childcare Scheme and ECCE to parents eats hours of phone time. We build a funding page that sets out how the schemes work, what a parent needs to do and in what order, and links to the official source for current rates — so it stays right when the figures change, and parents arrive already half-informed.
Privacy Taken Seriously
Children's data deserves more care than a business site. SSL throughout, EU-region hosting, and a deliberate choice about what is public and what sits behind a parent login. You remain the data controller, so we build to whatever your own data protection advice requires.
How do parents choose a creche?
Usually in a hurry, and usually while pregnant or already back at work. The search is intensely local and intensely practical: "creche near me", the name of an estate or a village, "full day care" plus a town. What they are trying to establish in the first minute is not your philosophy. It is whether you have a place, for their child's age, starting the month they need it, at a price they can carry.
Most childcare websites answer none of those four. They open with a welcome message from the manager and a photograph of a play area, and the parent leaves to ring somewhere that published a fee. Availability by age band, your fees and what they include, your hours and closure weeks — put those where they can be read in fifteen seconds and you will be on more shortlists than settings with far better facilities.
Then comes the second read, which is slower and more emotional. Who leads the room. What qualifications your staff hold. How you settle a child who is distressed. What happens at lunch. This is where a plainly written page about your approach does more than any amount of design, because the parent is trying to picture leaving a one-year-old with you. If you are not appearing in that first local search at all, the causes are usually mundane — see why your business is not showing up on Google.
Can we put photos of the children on our website?
This is the question that should be settled before a single page is designed, and our answer is more cautious than most web designers will give you. On the public site: no identifiable children. Not because a parent will necessarily object, but because of what "public" means technically — an image on an open web page can be indexed, cached and copied within hours, and no amount of goodwill puts that back afterwards.
The consent point matters more than people realise. Consent for a child's image has to be specific, informed and freely given, and a parent is entitled to withdraw it later. If your website is built on the assumption that consent is permanent, you have designed something you cannot honour. If it is built so that images live behind a login for current parents only, withdrawal is a five-minute job.
That still leaves you plenty to show. Your rooms, your garden, your equipment, your staff — photographed properly and without children in frame — communicate a well-run setting perfectly well. Where children add something, images taken from behind, or of hands and activities rather than faces, do the job. Your setting is the data controller here, so agree the approach with whoever advises you on data protection, make it match your consent forms, and we will build to that.
What should be on a creche or Montessori website?
Six things. A parent deciding whether to ring you is looking for all of them.
Age groups and actual availability
Which rooms you run, the age bands, and whether there is space or a waiting list. It is the first question every parent asks and the one most creche websites never answer.
Your fees and what they include
Full day, part time, what meals and nappies are covered, deposit and notice terms. Parents are budgeting to the euro and will ring the creche that published a figure.
Hours, term dates and closures
Opening and collection times, late collection policy, which weeks you close. Working parents are planning annual leave around this.
Your team and your approach
Who leads each room, their qualifications, and whether you follow Montessori, Aistear or your own blend. This is what a parent is really weighing.
Policies available to download
Sickness, behaviour, safeguarding, complaints. Publishing them signals a well-run setting and saves emailing the same PDF twenty times a year.
How to arrange a visit
A short enquiry form asking the child's age and the month care is needed, so you can answer with real availability instead of a back-and-forth.
Should we explain the funding schemes on our website?
Yes, and it is probably the single biggest saving of staff time available to you. Most parents ringing a creche for the first time are confused about which scheme they qualify for, what they have to register for, and in what order. Your staff end up explaining the same sequence several times a week to people who have not yet decided to enrol.
But there is a right and a wrong way to do it, and the wrong way is publishing the numbers. Subsidy rates and thresholds are reviewed and changed, and a page carrying last year's figures is worse than no page at all — parents will quote it back to you, and you will spend longer correcting the misunderstanding than you saved. We have seen settings lose a family over a figure that was accurate when it was written.
So the funding page explains the mechanics, which are stable: what each scheme is for, who administers it, what a parent needs to have in hand, what you need from them, and the order it happens in. For current rates it links to the official source. Then it does the thing only you can do — sets out your own fees and what they include, so a parent can work out the actual figure. That page tends to become one of the most-read on the site.
Do we actually need a parent portal?
Less often than the people selling them suggest. If you already run a childcare management app for daily updates, sign-in and messaging, a portal on the website duplicates it, splits where parents look, and gives you two systems to keep current. In that case the honest advice is to link to what you already have and spend the budget on the public pages that actually fill rooms.
Where a portal earns its place is as the quiet home for everything that is not daily: newsletters, menus, term calendars, policy documents, consent forms, the fee schedule. Things you currently email out repeatedly and then re-send to the parent who cannot find it. One password-protected area, always current, and staff stop being a search function. It is also the right place for photographs, for the reasons set out above.
It is custom work rather than a plan feature, quoted from €1,500 plus €125/month, because a login area needs to be built and maintained properly rather than bolted on. Most settings we speak to are better served starting with a strong public site and adding the portal in a second phase, once enrolments are where they need to be. If you want to see how a current site performs first, our free speed test is a reasonable place to start. Settings with similar duties around personal data — GP practices and counselling practices — are handled the same way.
What does it cost?
Published prices, nothing to chase. We build your homepage design first — you pay nothing until you approve it.
Most popular
Starter
€0 upfront
then €70€50/monthAutumn offerPay it over 12 monthsEnquire before 1 November. New customers pay €70/month from that date.
5-page site, hosting, domain, SSL, security, one content update a month and Google Business Profile setup. 12 monthly payments, then €15/mo optional.
Own it outright
Own It
€849€599 onceAutumn offerEnquire before 1 November. The price is €849 from that date.
Free hosting year 1, then €15/mo
The same 5-page site, owned by the setting. Care plan covers hosting, domain and small edits, month-to-month with no minimum term.
Rooms, funding & policies
Bigger Brochure
€1,199€900 fromAutumn offerEnquire before 1 November. The starting price is €1,199 from that date.
one-off, optional care plan
Up to 10 pages — a page per room, a funding page, downloadable policies, a news section and local SEO basics.
A password-protected parent area is custom work, quoted from €1,500 plus €125/month. Full detail on our pricing page.
What Our Clients Say
"Their support is fast, reliable, and always helpful. A fantastic team for any web project!"
ICPF Ireland
Trustpilot
"Transparent in pricing and kept me informed every step of the way. Quality exceeded expectations."
Benjamin Holbrook
Trustpilot
"The entire process was seamless and extremely professional, surpassing my expectations."
Aidan Mangan
Trustpilot
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a creche website cost in Ireland?
€0 upfront and €50 a month covers a five-page site with hosting, domain, SSL, security, one content update a month and Google Business Profile setup, for 12 monthly payments — then it's yours. To own it outright it is €599 once, with the first year of hosting included free and an optional €15/month after that. A larger site with room pages, a funding page, downloadable policies and a news section is the Bigger Brochure plan, from €900. A password-protected parent area is custom work from €1,500 plus €125/month. See the pricing page.
Can we put photos of the children on the website?
On the public site, our strong advice is no — or only images where no child is identifiable. Photographs of children are personal data, consent has to be specific and freely given, and a parent can withdraw it at any time, which is very hard to honour once an image has been indexed by search engines and copied. Where parents want to see their child's day, that belongs behind a login, shared only with current parents. Your setting is the data controller, so agree the approach with whoever advises you on data protection and reflect it in your consent forms.
What if a parent withdraws consent for photos?
You have to be able to act on it quickly, and that is exactly why the public-site-versus-portal distinction matters. Removing an image from a members-only area is straightforward. Removing one that has been public for a year, cached and possibly copied, is not something anyone can fully undo. Designing on the assumption that consent will sometimes be withdrawn is what keeps this manageable.
Should we explain NCS and ECCE on our site?
Yes — it saves a great deal of phone time, because most parents arrive confused about which scheme they qualify for and what they have to do first. What we would not do is publish the rates. Subsidy levels and thresholds change, a page with last year's figures is worse than no page, and parents will hold you to whatever number they read. We explain the process and the sequence, then link to the official scheme information for the current detail.
Do we need a parent portal, or is a good public site enough?
Many settings do not need one. If you already use a childcare management app for daily updates and messaging, a portal duplicates it — better to link to what you have and spend the budget on the public pages that win enrolments. A portal earns its place when you want one home for newsletters, menus, policies and term calendars without emailing them out repeatedly. It is custom work, quoted from €1,500 plus €125/month.
Is the site secure enough for children's information?
The public site holds none — that is the point of the design. It is static files with no database and no plugin stack, so there is nothing to breach and no admin login to attack. Where a parent area exists, it is separate, password-protected and EU-region hosted. We build to whatever your data protection advice specifies rather than telling you the result is compliant, because the setting is the controller and that call is yours.
How do we get found by parents in our area?
Parents search by area and age — 'creche Rathfarnham', 'Montessori near me', 'full day care Douglas'. That means the site has to name your area plainly and your Google Business Profile has to be claimed and accurate, which is included in every plan. The usual reasons a setting is invisible are covered on this page.
We have a waiting list — is a website still worth it?
Waiting lists move, and the site is what keeps the list full without your staff fielding calls. It also does the work when a room opens unexpectedly. Just as importantly, parents who found you through word of mouth still look you up before they commit, and what they find at that moment decides whether they join the list at all.
Related guides
- Driving instructor booking sites
Another business run entirely off a booking diary, where the site's job is to stop the diary living in a phone.
- Online appointment booking
How scheduling and consent are handled when the person booking is acting for someone else.
- Small business websites
The standard package a service with one location and a waiting list usually ends up on.