If you run a tutoring institution — a bijlesinstituut, tutoring center, or exam preparation school — you've probably discovered that general video conferencing tools aren't quite right for what you do.
The needs of a tutoring center are specific: small group instruction, multiple simultaneous sessions, teacher oversight of student work, and the administrative overhead of managing many students and teachers.
Here's a practical breakdown of what matters and how different platform categories handle these requirements.
What Tutoring Institutions Actually Need
Before comparing platforms, let's be clear about the requirements:
Breakout room management: Most tutoring sessions involve small groups. You need to create, manage, and monitor these groups efficiently. This is the single most important feature — and the one where platforms differ most dramatically. See our deep dive on monitoring multiple breakout rooms.
Teacher visibility: Teachers need to know what's happening across all their groups, not just the one they're currently in.
Student access control: You need to manage who can join sessions. Open link access invites problems — you want invite-only participation.
Session recording: Many tutoring centers record sessions for quality assurance or for students who miss class. Recording functionality should be straightforward and secure.
Administrative tools: Managing dozens of teachers and hundreds of students requires proper user management, not shared meeting links.
GDPR compliance: If you operate in Europe, data protection compliance isn't optional — especially when working with minors.
General-Purpose Video Platforms
Examples: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet
Strengths: These platforms are reliable, widely used, and require no explanation for students and parents. They work well for one-on-one tutoring or occasional group work.
Limitations for tutoring: As we discuss in our article on why Zoom wasn't built for education, these platforms treat breakout rooms as a secondary feature. Teacher visibility is limited — you can only see and hear one room at a time. Student access is typically link-based, which creates security concerns.
Best for: Tutoring centers doing primarily one-on-one sessions, or those willing to accept limited oversight during group work.
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Examples: Canvas, Moodle, Google Classroom
Strengths: Excellent for course materials, assignments, and asynchronous learning. Strong administrative features for managing students and content.
Limitations for tutoring: Most LMS platforms don't include their own video conferencing — they integrate with Zoom or similar tools, inheriting those limitations. The real-time teaching experience isn't their focus.
Best for: Institutions that need robust content management alongside live teaching, and are willing to use separate tools for video.
Education-Specific Video Platforms
Examples: Simpleclass, Class.com, Engageli
Strengths: Built from the ground up for education. Features like breakout room monitoring, teacher dashboards, and student engagement tools are core functionality, not afterthoughts.
Limitations: Smaller user base means less familiarity. May require explaining to students and parents. Feature sets vary significantly between platforms.
Best for: Tutoring institutions where small-group work is the core product and teacher visibility matters.
Key Questions to Ask
When evaluating any platform for your tutoring institution, ask these specific questions:
- Can I see all breakout rooms at once? Not just a list of names — actual visibility into what's happening.
- Can I hear multiple rooms simultaneously? Or am I limited to one room at a time?
- How do students join? Open links, or invite-only accounts?
- Where is data stored? This matters for GDPR compliance.
- What does recording look like? Is it built-in, secure, and easy to manage?
- How are users managed? Can you easily add and remove students and teachers?
Our Perspective
We built Simpleclass specifically for tutoring centers and similar institutions. Our focus is on solving the specific problems of small-group online education: teacher visibility across breakout rooms, secure invite-only access, and straightforward session management.
We're a European company with EU data hosting and a focus on GDPR compliance. Our pricing is simple: €8 per user per month, with all features included.
We're not the right choice for everyone. If you're doing primarily webinar-style teaching to large groups, a general platform might serve you better. If you need extensive LMS features, you might want a different solution.
But if your tutoring institution runs on small-group instruction and you want proper oversight without constant room-hopping, we're worth a look.
Try Before You Decide
Whatever platform you're considering, test it with real teaching scenarios. Run a session with breakout rooms and see how it feels to manage multiple groups.
We offer a 7-day free trial with up to 10 users. No credit card required. That's enough to run actual sessions and see if the workflow fits your institution.