Tutor Directory Reviews

Directory Name: First Tutors

Website: https://www.firsttutors.com/ Business Model: Finder’s fee

Cost: Free for tutors, £4.99 - £24.99 for students/parents to receive tutor details

Number of tutors: 60,000+

Trustpilot rating: 8.9/10

First Tutors first appeared online in 2005. To date, it’s one of the oldest directorystyle websites on the internet. The website was founded by an educational entrepreneur Anita Moss under the name EduNation Limited and was sold to U.S. tutoring company Varsity Tutors in 2017. As a result, the website has expanded into other countries and now operates in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, South Africa and Italy.

First Tutors has consistently good organic website rankings and appears in Google’s top positions for almost every local search term relating to private tutoring. The website does use some paid advertising but doesn’t really need to given its good organic search presence. With 60,000+ UK tutors registered on the site, competition within the platform can be high. Tutors who take the time to complete their profiles in full generally benefit from the most enquiries, subject to rate, location etc.

The website is relatively easy for students and parents to navigate and the directory set-up means all relevant tutors show up in local searches. First Tutors has a good reputation in the tutoring marketplace, which looks set to continue following its acquisition. The website currently has a rating of 8.9/10 from 3,478 on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: Tutor Hunt

Website: https://www.tutorhunt.com

Business Model: Finder's Fee

Cost: Free for tutors, £24 for students/parents to receive tutor details

Number of tutors: 50,000+

Trustpilot rating: 9.4/10

Tutor Hunt was established the same year First Tutors, in 2005. It’s one of the oldest directory websites online and is operated by a company called Irrox limited. It’s unclear who founded the site although Mr John Underhill is frequently named as the website’s point of contact on third-party websites. Tutor Hunt also has an international presence and currently operates in 22 countries, including Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, India and Brazil.

Tutor Hunt has consistently good organic search rankings and typically appears in Google’s second position (under First Tutors) for local search terms relating to private tuition. Traditionally, the website hasn’t made much use of paid advertising but has started to use Google’s ad services in the last couple of years, increasing its general online presence.

It’s unclear exactly how many tutors are registered on the website but an educated guess would be somewhere in the region of 50,000, similar to First Tutors. Given the large volume of tutors on the site, competition to attract parents is high. However, the site does have a lot of old or incomplete profiles on the site, so tutors who are active on the platform should do well.

The website isn’t as intuitive to navigate as First Tutors and searches often display tutors in completely different locations, possibly as a default when none match the search criteria. The website generally has a mixed reputation in the marketplace with some tutors reporting very good results and others highlighting a lack of service and transparency over who runs the site. Tutor Hunt currently has a rating of 9.4/10 from 1,171 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: Tutorful

Website: https://tutorful.co.uk/

Business Model: Agency model

Cost: 15-25% commission of hourly rate on every lesson

Number of tutors: 10,000+

Trustpilot rating: 9/10

Tutorful was established in 2015. The website changed its name from Tutora in 2017. Founded by a teacher, Scott Woodley and a technology analyst, Mark Hughes, Tutorful are one of the newer kids on the block. The company has secured significant crowd funding and has grown rapidly since its inception.

The website has a strong presence in organic search results and generally occupies Google’s third position in local search terms relating to private tuition. Tutorful has made increasing use of Google’s paid advertising since the website’s launch, which has helped to increase its reputation in the tutoring marketplace.

Tutorful has over 10,000 tutors registered on the site, which given its search rankings would imply that the site generates a significant number of enquiries for its tutors. Tutorful uses an agency business model, whereby it takes 15-25% commission on every lesson booked through the site. Tutorful’s algorithm works based on tutor reviews, with those with the highest scores appearing top in the platform’s searches.

The website is easy to navigate and well-designed, which helps attract students and parents. It generally has a good reputation in the tutoring marketplace and has close connections with UK universities. Tutorful has a 9/10 rating from 1,387 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: Tutorfair

Website: https://tutorfair.com

Business Model: Agency model

Cost: 20-25% commission of hourly rate on every lesson

Number of tutors: 2,800

Trustpilot rating: 5.9/10

Tutorfair was founded in 2012 by Andrew Ground, a former school governor and Edd Stockwell, an entrepreneur with three previous startups.

The website operates an agency-style model, whereby a 20-25% commission is taken on every lesson that’s booked through the site. The company also makes a small donation to their own foundation, The Tutorfair Foundation, which provides tutoring volunteers to UK students. To date, the company has given free tutoring to 9108 students, involving 991 tutors, over 42 schools.

There are over 3000 tutors registered with Tutorfair, which is significantly less than the two largest operators, First Tutors and Tutor Hunt. The website’s organic traffic has been steadily increasing in recent years and the site has reasonably good search placement, appearing around position 7 for local search terms relating to tutoring.

The website is reasonably easy to use and is well-designed. Finding a local tutor on the site is relatively easy. Tutorfair currently has a 5.9/10 rating based on 71 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: Superprof

Website: https://superprof.co.uk

Business Model: Finder’s fee

Cost: £29 introductory fee to contact tutors

Number of tutors: 6 million + (globally)

Trustpilot rating: 6/10

Superprof was founded in 2013 in Biarritz, France by Wilfried Grainer and Yann Léguillon. The website started operating in the UK in 2016 and is now active in 22 countries across the world.

In 2017, Superprof acquired the UK website The Tutor Pages, which had a good reputation in the UK tutoring industry. The acquisition was met with frustration from UK tutors as part of the deal was that tutors wouldn’t be informed of the takeover until after it happened. There were also issues with insecure passwords being sent to tutors and tutoring rates being lowered despite the tutors’ previous rates on The Tutor Pages. The somewhat controversial takeover was widely reported on social media and IT news websites.

The website performs fairly well in organic searches considering it has only been operating in the UK for 3 years. It currently occupies an average position of 8 in Google searches for local tuition. The site’s website traffic has been steadily increasing in the UK over the last couple of years. The site doesn’t currently use paid Google advertising in the UK.

The number of UK tutors registered on the site is unknown. The website is fairly easy to navigate and is well-designed. However, there is no mention of the student introductory fee anywhere on the site. Tutorfair currently has an average rating of 6/10 from 85 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: MyTutor

Website: https://mytutor.co.uk

Business Model: Agency

Cost: 37-57% commission on every lesson booked through the site

Number of tutors: Unknown

Trustpilot rating: 9.4/10

MyTutor is an online-only directory and was founded in 2013. It was one of the first successful online tutoring websites in the UK. Previously known as MyTutorWeb, the company selects tutors from UK universities and claims to interview every one, only accepting 1 in 7 applicants. To date, the site has secured £10 million of funding through angel investors.

MyTutor uses an agency model and takes a large 37-57% commission on every lesson – the largest in the industry. Tutors can’t set their own fees. Instead, they need to choose from seven different pricing tiers.

Although the website is exclusively for online tutoring, it still targets local searches in Google. It has an average position of around 23 for local searches relating to private tutoring. The website’s organic traffic grew quickly from February 2017 to February 2018 and has maintained fairly well since. The site has also started paying for google ads in the last year.

It’s unclear how many tutors are registered with the site although the company has been used by over 300 UK schools. The website is easy to use and is very well designed. MyTutor currently has an average rating of 9.4/10 from 398 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: childcare.co.uk

Website: https://childcare.co.uk

Business Model: Yellow Pages

Cost: £24.99 a month/£139.99 a year (Gold membership)

Number of tutors: Thousands (exact number unknown)

Trustpilot rating: 9.6/10

Childcare.co.uk was founded in 2009 and is operated by a team of entrepreneurs under the name International New Media Limited. The website provides free and paid access to childcare providers and private tutors in the UK. In 2013, Childcare.co.uk acquired the directory Tutors4You, which started its rise in Google rankings.

The website performs consistently well in Google searches and occupies the 8th position (on average) for local search terms relating to tutoring. The website generates a large amount of traffic, which peaked around 2017 and then started declining. Since January 2019, the site’s organic traffic has started to rise again. Childcare.co.uk used paid Google ads regularly when they first launched but have reduced their paid Google spending in recent years. The website advertises regularly on Television.

The website is relatively easy to use although its success rate is difficult to gauge. Childcare.co.uk currently has an average rating of 9.6/10 from 1278 reviews on Trustpilot.

Directory Name: Home Tutors Directory

Website: https://www.hometutorsdirectory.co.uk/

Business Model: Yellow Pages

Cost: £20 per year

Number of tutors: 1,000 (approximately)

Trustpilot rating: N/A

Home Tutors Directory was founded in 2005 and is run by biomedical scientists Jayne Thomas and Emlyn Price. The website is one of the few remaining directories that uses the Yellow Pages model of charging tutors a yearly subscription fee.

The website has relatively consistent website rankings, with an average position of around 30 for local search terms relating to private tutoring. The website’s traffic peaked around 2012 and has been in decline ever since. Home Tutors Directory doesn’t use paid Google ads.

The site has approximately 1000 tutors registered. It isn’t the easiest website to navigate and the design is in need of updating.