How long does it take to get a school up and running?
Most schools are up and running in a few weeks — though part of the timeline is out of everyone's hands, including ours. Here's what to expect, and why the app store step is the one we can't put an exact date on.
Setup on our side (and yours)
While your app is being prepared, we'll help you complete the rest of your setup — payments, integrations, groups, screens, branding, and more. This part moves at your pace, and we're right there to guide you through it.
App store submission
Once your app is ready, we submit it to the Apple App Store and Google Play for review. This is the step we genuinely can't predict, because approval is entirely up to Apple and Google — not Onespot. We submit as soon as your app is ready, but we don't control if or when they approve, and neither store shares a firm timeline in advance. Having submitted hundreds of apps to the app stores, our best estimate is that this process can often take 2–4 weeks. To be on the safe side, we generally recommend signing up a month before you want your app to be live.
A few things worth knowing about how their review works:
- Every app is reviewed against each store's own guidelines before it can go live, and each store handles this on its own schedule.
- Review times vary, and some take longer than others depending on the store's queue and the time of year.
- Sometimes a store will flag something in the submission that needs to be adjusted before they'll approve it. When that happens, we work to address it and resubmit — and each resubmission goes back into their review queue, which can add more time.
A quick note on app access during submission
While your app is under review, you'll notice a banner in your app letting you know that admin privileges have been temporarily paused. This is intentional — we disable editing during the submission window so the version being reviewed stays stable and the process goes through smoothly. As soon as your app is approved and live, your full admin access is restored and you can pick right back up where you left off.
What to keep in mind
Your setup keeps moving the whole time, so the main variable is the app store review itself. If it runs longer than expected, that's a normal part of the process, not a sign anything is wrong — and we'll reach out if there's anything we need from you along the way.