The scariest part of leaving Zoom isn't the software. It's the fear that somewhere between the old link and the new one, half your students will simply not make the jump. That fear keeps academies on a setup they've outgrown for years longer than they should. It is also mostly avoidable. Migrating well is a logistics problem, and logistics problems have checklists. Why students fall off during a move Students don't leave a migration because they've reconsidered the class. They leave because of a moment of confusion that nobody was there to catch — a link that didn't work, an app that wouldn't install, a login for a product they didn't recognise. Every one of those is a place where a busy parent gives up. The job of a good migration is to remove those moments, not to explain them away afterwards. Students don't leave because you moved. They leave because the move confused them for thirty seconds and nobody was there. Move to fewer steps, not more The migration is easiest to sell when the new thing is plainly simpler than the old. Leaving Zoom for a browser-based classroom is exactly that: nothing to install, no third-party account, a link that opens straight into a room with your name on it. If you are going to ask students to change one habit, make the new habit shorter: One tap into the browser instead of an app to update. A branded lobby they recognise instead of a generic login. The same always-ready room each week instead of a new link each time. Bring the records, don't leave them behind The hidden cost of a Zoom setup is everything bolted around it — the attendance spreadsheet, the payment links, the student list in a separate tool. A move is the moment to fold those back together. Rebuild each student as one record: their schedule, their attendance, their history, their assigned teacher. It is more work than copying a meeting link, and it is the work that means you never rebuild it again. Time the switch to the timetable Don't migrate mid-week, mid-topic, at 6pm with forty people trying to join a new thing at once. Move on a natural seam — a term boundary, a new month, the start of a fresh timetable. Set the recurring schedule up in advance so the sessions already exist when students arrive, and let reminders carry the new joining details before the first class, not during it. Run one class on the new setup first Before you move everyone, move one. Pick a friendly group, run a real lesson end to end on the new platform, and watch where they hesitate. You'll find the two or three points of confusion that would otherwise have hit your whole school at once. Fix those, write the joining instructions from what you learned, and only then send the wider announcement. A migration checklist Rebuild student records before you move the classes. Set the recurring timetable so rooms exist ahead of time. Pilot one real lesson and note every hesitation. Send new joining details through reminders before the first class. Switch on a term boundary, not in the middle of a topic. Handled this way, the move is undramatic — which is the point. Your students should notice that the new room is simpler and carries your name, and notice almost nothing else. The version of this that loses students is the rushed one. The version that keeps them is just patient.