For Tom

Otii, or build our own

What Otii gives you, how hard to push them on price, and an honest look at why building our own is a different beast.

Arrow keys, or swipe

What Otii does

The compliance layer, in seven working parts

Start by being fair to it. Otii is a capable, finished product. It sits alongside Famly and holds everything an inspector grades, across seven areas, each a live part of the day rather than a filing cabinet.

Safeguarding. Log a concern with a full trail, record injuries with pattern alerts, a clear escalation path, and DSL records in one place.
Inclusion and SEND. A live register with the graduated approach tracked from start to finish.
Children's welfare. The daily checks that keep a setting safe, recorded as you go.
Curriculum. Your EYFS practice documented and ready to show.
Staff. Single central record, training, inductions, supervisions and CPD in one view.
Policies. Every policy in one library, current versions, staff sign off tracked.
Reports and evidence. Reports built in advance and evidence packs on demand.

Where the value is

Ready for the inspector, announced or not

Two modes. With notice, it builds your action list and evidence pack and briefs the team. With none, every record is one search away.
A live readiness view across all seven areas, so you see a gap before an inspector does.
Proof in a click. Everything tagged and trackable, so evidence takes a moment, not a hunt through folders and inboxes.
The whole team, not just the manager. One price, unlimited users.
Live within a day. Records imported in the first few. No IT project.

So the product is worth having. But what is it really, once you look past the marketing?

Under the bonnet

What it actually is, once you look past the marketing

We took it apart properly. Here is what Otii is underneath.

An organised evidence store. Documents, records and checks, tagged and mapped to the seven Ofsted areas, with a readiness dashboard and an audit trail over the top. Soundly built, and they have done it well.
The software is the ordinary part. A store, tagging, permissions and a dashboard are standard building blocks. The cleverness is not in the code.
The value is the knowledge inside it. Someone has read EYFS, the Ofsted toolkit, the safeguarding guidance and SEND, and turned them into the checks, prompts and templates you see. That is the real product.
It only holds up if it is kept current. It runs as its own web app beside Famly, with AI helping to draft and a person accountable for each output, and your data in their systems.

That knowledge has to be kept current for as long as you use it, so it matters a great deal who is doing the keeping.

The company behind it

A young business. That is your leverage

Get Otii Ltd was registered in 2026. Small team, and the praise on their site is early pilot feedback, not long standing references.
That hands you the stronger position. They need credible customers and reviews more than you need them.
Push hard on price, and offer to be an early reference or case study in return. A group of seven settings is worth a great deal to a business this new.
Get it in writing. The group price and what it includes, how you get your data out if they fold, whether it is a real link to Famly, and exactly what their insurance covers for an abuse claim and a data breach.

It assists. It does not remove your duty. You remain the registered person, responsible either way.

The other path

We could build you one instead

A compliance tool is never finished. Its whole value is that it stays current, and the rules do not sit still.

You asked whether we could just build our own instead. The software, yes, easily. It is the ordinary part we just looked at. But the knowledge inside it is never finished, and that is what makes it a heavier thing than it looks. Here is what it would take.

What building would take

The setup, and the yearly cost

Staying current is not free, and it is not a one time job. Building it would mean taking all of this on.

Form a company. A limited company to sit behind the tool and hold the contract and the insurance.
Specialist insurance, and it is the expensive part. Cover that will handle children's safeguarding data, realistically £2,300 to £4,700 a year. Standard software policies exclude abuse claims, exactly the risk here, so specialist cover is needed.
A solicitor drafted contract. A one off cost at the start, so responsibility is clear and capped.
Build the content, then keep it current. Turn the frameworks into the tool and maintain them for as long as you run it. Data registration and hosting add a few hundred a year on top.
Deploy in your own systems, so your data stays with you.

The honest problem with building

These costs are real, and they do not shrink for one setting

The real cost of building is the insurance, the upkeep and the legal cover behind it. That is money every year, not a spend you make once.
And it does not get smaller because the tool is only for you. It costs much the same whether it serves one group or twenty.
So an ordinary build for Naturally Learning alone would carry a full product's running costs on a single customer. Done that way, it is no cheaper than buying.
Spread across many settings, those same costs make sense. On their own, for one group, they do not.

The rules also keep moving. The Ofsted framework changed in November 2025 with another version due in September 2026, and the safeguarding guidance was reissued in 2026. Even Otii's own site still cites the old 2023 guidance, which shows how quickly a tool falls behind.

Side by side

Buy Otii, or build our own

	Buy Otii	Build our own
Ready when	Now, live in days	Built over weeks, then maintained forever
Keeps pace with the law	Otii's job	Ours, for as long as you run it
Your children's data	Held by a young supplier, so check their exits and cover	Held in your own systems
Insurance and liability	Carried by Otii	Specialist cover, the same cost for one setting or twenty
Makes sense	For any setting or group, now	Only as a product for many settings, not for you alone
Rota and ratios	Not covered	Not covered here, that is the separate tool we are building

If you did want your own

Three ways it could work

Buy Otii, at a better price. Fastest, and they carry the risk. Push hard given they are new.
Build it inside Naturally Learning. If the tool is built and run within your own setup rather than bought from an outside company, the liability and the data stay with you. That removes most of the insurance cost, and it is the route that makes building stack up for a single group.
Build it as a product for many settings. Where the fixed costs spread across everyone. A bigger venture, and a separate decision.

Which of these fits is a conversation for us, not a slide.

Where this leaves us

Do not rush. Use this to get a better price

Building your own is not the cheap option it looks. A company, specialist insurance and constant upkeep can add up to about what buying costs.
So do not pay full price, and do not rush to build. Go back to Otii and press for a real discount. They are young, they want a group like yours, and you now know exactly what building would cost. That is your leverage.
If you do want your own, there are smarter ways to structure it than a standard build. That is a proper conversation, not a quick decision.
And it keeps us free for the rota and ratio tool, which no one else does and which is genuinely worth building.