Resource Description
ABCmouse is an online preschool-kindergarten curriculum that teaches letters, letter sounds, counting, math, art, science, music and phonics. The child starts out at the level that you choose and progresses through various areas by working virtual puzzles, singing songs, visiting the zoo and farm, reading books, virtual coloring, etc. A fun bonus is that the child gets tickets when they complete each simple lesson that they can use to "purchase" things for their virtual room. Cost is under $10 a month but you can try a month for free. Up to 4 children can use this at one time.
Website: ABCmouse
(52 Reviews)
Before investing in any homeschooling resources, please read "How to Choose the Best Homeschool Curriculum."
Contributor Reviews
Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor.
Cons: sneaky subscription practices
Grades Used: preschool -1st/2nd grade
ABC mouse is good from ages 4-6.
Beware of the payment policy however.
It is a subscription that renews automatically. Also, beware of the “parent assessment” add on. Costs $40/yr (in addition to yearly fee), which I clicked inadvertently at time of free trial. This fee continued yearly at renewal even though never used. Very difficult to get refunds!
Cons: Billing
Worst company experience ever tried to cancel their service for 4 plus years got the run around until they were sued by the ftc but they will not refund the previous years in witch they automatically renew and up charged my card without permission
Absolute waste of money I can't even log on, I only have one email and one password, but it tells me both are incorrect. NO CUSTOMER SERVICE AT ALL.THEY SUCK. I got a message saying my email doesn't exist but I can email them. !!!!!
Cons: keep charging you after you cancel
Grades Used: kindergarten
ABC mouse is a waste of time and money. My daughter is in kindergarten and it did nothing to help her.
Cons: Kid isn’t learning
Grades Used: K,2
Why are all the kids featured white?
Cons: Don’t learn anything but get you wear glasses in a year
Grades Used: Preschool
I downloaded ABC mouse app for my 3 years old daughter in 2017 because it is free try out. Then I found out it was more like a game than educational purpose, so I canceled it. And I told my toddler that she can’t use it any more. Recently I just found out that my credit card has been charged $445 from ABCmouse. Somehow by mistake my account was not canceled and I have been charged $9.95 each month for all three years. Now I requested a refund from this company. They only refunded me $59.70 for six month. I never received any reminder or alert from this company until I pull out my credit card report last week. They are playing a trick to steal your money. Don’t fall into this kind of shady apps. No wonder they have so much money to heavily advertise everywhere!
Cons: Billing
So I barely made an account for my 4 year old, and already I’m having problems. The app won’t let me create a profile. We were able to select an avatar, hamster, but we can’t go to next after choosing a fish, So I turned to the internet for advice. Most of the reviews were about billing issues that prompted me to check my account, and YEP!!! They charged my account 3 times!!! Now what do I do????!!!! I can’t use the app and it charged me several times???!!! Worst app experience ever.
Cons: Disturbing Gender Separation
ABCmouse has been a great experience for my kids. They love to change their avatar, save up for pets or other items. They enjoy every bit about it. My only struggle and, actually one of my daughters is annoyed by this as well, is that there is a "boys" store and a "girls" store. I do not understand why there can not just be a store. My daughter enjoys the boys clothes as much as she enjoys the girls clothes. Boys can't even wear leggings!? Girls can have short hair so the costumes do not need to be customized AT ALL!
But not including that one issue this has been a great game for my kids.
Cons: Disturbing Gender Separation
Abc Mouse has been a great game for us. My children enjoy changing their avatar and reading books in the library. The art the kids can do is very cute and again, creative. The only thing that really bothers me and also, actually, one of my kids is they way they separate girls from boys. There is a "boys" store and a "girls" store. Why can there not just be a store? My daughter likes some of the clothes from the boys store and she does not think of them as "boys" clothing. Overall this is a great game for beginning learners.
Cons: they illegally use your credit card.
I bought a year subscription about a year ago. My kids became quickly bored with it so I went in and cancelled it. I had paid for a year so there is nothing I can do about it. They contacted me this week saying that my card was not going through. This is because the cared expired. I contacted them and told them I cancelled almost a year ago. Their response was to push the card through with no expiration date. THAT IS RIGHT. Me informing them that I cancelled it almost a year ago was a single to falsely push through a credit card. They went from maybe a simple mistake to illegally charging my card. VERY HORRIBLE COMPANY. NOT WORTH THE RISK DOING BUSINESS WITH.
Cons: Owners of ABC Mouse are scam
Grades Used: 1, 2
My child has stopped using ABC mouse since August of 2019. I stopped the subscription then, however, I just saw a charge of $59.99 on my PayPal account. When I went back in the account, it showed active. I canceled the subscription again but the message attached to the cancelation was that I will be charged until September 2021 for services stopped in 2019.
Parents, please carefully look at your account statement concerning ABC Mouse because even after you stop ABC Mouse, you are being charged for almost 2years after your subscription stops.
The ad for ABC Mouse states that you can cancel any time but that statement is not true when you are being charge for the year that you did not use ABS Mouse and the year after.
ABC Mouse operators are scam
Cons: difficult to cancel
Grades Used: prescool
I suggest to stay away from ABC mouse. It is very difficult to cancel their substription. But if you cancel they will charge you with triplr mounthy fee. Maybe it is in their policy... but what i am saying is their policy is not friendly to user. Their idea is get from you money no matter how satisfied you are.
Cons: Kid got bored, they stole extra fees from me
Grades Used: K
ABC mouse charged me for the ABC Mouse twice last year - both on September 9 2019. I just discovered this after I was billed again this year for 87.09. I had ABCouse for one year and my child did not like or use it. I cancelled well before my subscription ended, or so I thought. I ONLY should have been charged 87.09 ONCE for ONE 1 years subscription. I only have one account. I cancelled the renewal before it was time to renew but apparently, ABC Mouse charged me for installing on both my child's and my own Apple device although I only have one account and one child. I requested a refund for 87.09 for the extra charge in 2019 and 87.09 for the charge made to my account for a renewal.
Cons: subtle racism and sexism in the content
Grades Used: pre-K, kindergarden
My preschooler really enjoys your app. However, I will likely delete this app due to subtle messages of sexism and racism in the app. There are some videos where almost all characters are white. Today, my daughter watched the music video about the "Letter B". All the male characters in the video were fully dressed and playing instruments/music. The female characters had little bras and revealing clothing and were baking. I don't want my daughter to get these kind of messages.
Cons: Very repetitive and redundant (my kids love repetition so it’s not an issue for us, but I can see how it can get old for the average kid)
Grades Used: 2 years old to present (4 years old)
My kids love it. (I haven’t tried canceling my membership yet, but I’ll keep everyone’s suggestions in mind for when I do). My kids have been using ABCMouse since they were 2 (they are now 4). We don’t own a TV, so they have no other electronics besides their tablet so they do migrate to ABCMouse quite a lot. Granted if you give them the option of watching cartoons or ABCMouse, they’ll choose the cartoons almost every time. There are some exceptions where they’ll stop watching cartoons to go to ABCMouse. My kids love repetition, so they do not get bored doing the same thing over and over such as coloring (the same exact picture every single day; they literally spend like 30 mins coloring one picture and talking about it), putting puzzles together, watching videos (the same exact videos from ABCMouse 50 million times). I know some kids have different attention spans and like variety, my kids like routine and familiar things. ABCMouse did get my kids interested in the skeletal system and have memorized names of the bones like phalanges, femur, radius, patella etc. (I had to look that information up and teach them, but they got interested by watching a video on ABCMouse about the skeleton.). They do like buying a lot of stuff for their hamsters and their “room” so they do spend a lot of time there, but they are still learning. ABCMouse helps keep their interest of reading by reading books to them and highlighting each word as it is read. (They learned to read thanks to Preschool Prep Company —which their videos are “slow and boring” to the average kid, but to my kids they are awesome and entertaining). I recommend finding a friend who will let you use their ABCMouse subscription for a month and letting your kids test it out rigorously before subscribing; it’s not for everyone and it can get old quick for the average kid.
Cons: Poor customer service; very difficult cancellation process
Grades Used: Pre-K
Do not sign up for annual subscription. Continued to be billed for annual subscription for 2 years following confirmation of several cancellation. Online cancellation instructions result in intentional loop that doesn't allow you to actually perform such; instead taking you to download page. Requires navigating along path to find either chat or email links. Representative via chat refused to reimburse for initial cancellation cancellation request and intentionally disconnected from chat when asked to speak with supervisor.
When canceling I had to contact my bank so they could do something on their end so I wouldn’t keep getting billed. It is true what they say about nearly impossible to cancel. Contact your financial institution to put a stop to the credit card payments.
Cons: Cancellation policy, not interesting for my son
Grades Used: Pre-K
Shady dealings with the company due to their cancellation routine. You have to continue to click buttons that you want to cancel and even after multiple pages of choosing to cancel and them trying to get you to click on a lower cost yearly subscription or other offerings, you must choose all of the correct promps or it will not go through.
I cancelled my subscription last year but either their website was not working properly at the time (as we all know often happens) or I simply didn't hit one of the many clicks to cancel. They continued to bill my account and would not refund as they state there is no "proof" of cancel, although activity clearly shows that we have not used the site a single time since I report that I attempted to cancel.
As for the content, my son did not find any of the games or activities interesting or appealing. We did not find ABCmouse to be worth the money, hence the attempt to cancel.
Be VERY careful about cancelling if you don't want them to charge you for another year. You don't get a warning or notification that they're about to re-charge your credit card. They don't respond to e-mail. Save proof (screenshots, emails) because they will take your money and run.
There are many other options! Your hard earned money is going towards the cult of scientology if you purchase. A ten minute internet search will certainly educate you !
it is not interesting for my children, easily crashed, slow, assessment service is questionable
no way to cancel my card, information says go to parent section but goes back to billing section,
its been billing me for 3 months now, no answer from customer support to cancel my card.
Cons: No refunds
Grades Used: Kind & 1
Terrible customer service. Automatically charge it to you then no refunds. I cancelled the day I got notice of the charge. 1 day after charged and no refund. It’s very hard to find where to cancel also. Jump through hoops first.
Cons: I wish my kids chose Abcmouse above other activities!
Grades Used: 3 year old, k5
My time of using ABCMouse was a little disappointing but not because of the games or anything that I disliked, but because I thought my kids were going to go straight to Abcmouse before other things! That doesn’t mean Abcmouse isn’t great but I will say that I felt a little bit misguided by the testimonies on television which made it seem as if the kids migrated to Abcmouse on their own because they just loved Abcmouse! That never happened for us, but I will say that I am a firm believer in having no cartoons or other distractions during school! My son who is not yet in school will try to use playing on Abcmouse as an excuse to do something school related, but it was never his desire to just want to play Abcmouse on his own! I’m not sure why that is but I still do really love the activities. I just wish my kids wanted to play on it all the time like others say their kids do! Maybe I just misunderstand what it is to be used for! Some use it as a curriculum and some just for recreation so maybe I’m using it wrong! Not sure!
Cons: No Refunds
Grades Used: Pre K
Beware, no refunds. We bought a one year gift subscription for our great niece. She didn't like it so I called for a refund. They wrote back, didn't you read the refund policy, NO Refunds. I plan on sharing this with all of the reviews to let people know the poor customer service, after the sale, from ABCMouse. Be careful in buying from this company.
Cons: system crashes, no customer support at all
Grades Used: preK
No customer service!! We were going along fine, but the system crashes and you get no help. Also games are very repetitive. Im going to cancel and then watch my credit card