--- title: "Top Hat Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Top Hat. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Top Hat is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/top-hat-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Assessment Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/hr/assessment-comparison/) / [Top Hat](https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/top-hat-profile/) / Top Hat Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/top-hat-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/top-hat-profile/alternatives/) # Top Hat User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 3.8/5 - Total reviews: 41 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.9/5 - Customer support: 3.8/5 - Value for money: 2.9/5 - Functionality: 3.8/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 18 reviews (44%) - 4 stars: 10 reviews (24%) - 3 stars: 5 reviews (12%) - 2 stars: 4 reviews (10%) - 1 star: 4 reviews (10%) ### Most mentioned pros - Fairly intuitive for users; flexible; offers a lot of functionality in one application; responsive development team that frequently updates (new functionality and fixes) - It is very user-friendly and bery accessible to learners for its mobile app feature. ## Top Hat customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 41 (page 1). ### Great App For Any College Course. Can Be Used For Attendance and Engagement. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jesse Z. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It is overall a great app for any college course to integrate. Not only can you take attendance, you can also ask questions and post poll questions for students. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The mobile app is very user friendly and it is easy for your professor to use to take attendance in class without passing a sign in sheet around. Also, the poll questions on this app are very interactive and make class engaging. #### Cons There are times that Top Hat requires you to reauthenticate through your university. This is frustrating when you just opened the app when class started and can't immediately enter the code. --- ### Engaging Audience response system (and more) - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Fairly intuitive for users; flexible; offers a lot of functionality in one application; responsive development team that frequently updates (new functionality and fixes) #### Cons Development has had a pretty narrow view of the use cases; they didn't seem to anticipate all the different scenarios that might occur in a Higher Ed environment. #### Reasons for choosing Top Hat Most versatile functionality for the best price #### Reasons for switching to Top Hat Turning was outdated and the cost to students was too high for the functionality they were receiving. --- ### It works, but isn't the most cost effective solution - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Students answer questions in real time and the percentages of what answers were chosen can then be displayed. #### Cons As a student who had to use the software, the cost can be annoying. You have to pay based on how long you think you'll need the software, which you won't always know if you're not sure whether future classes will use the software. For example, you might decide to pay for 1 years use because it's "cheaper" over time, but you only ended up having a class use it for 3 months. So you wasted money paying for the rest of the subscription and the company gets more money from struggling college students. And of course, the opposite could happen where you pay for 1 quarter, then another classes uses it and you'd have to pay for it again. Before Top Hat came along, iClicker was the more commonly used tech and does the same job. With iClicker, you only had to pay one time for the remote and then you could sell the remote to another student, which was much more cost effective for students. --- ### Excellent for its purpose in education - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Vaidas L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I have had positive experience with the platform and I would encourage educators to at least take a look and decide if it suits for you. There is no 'one size fits all' approach in higher education. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I have used the platform for years. Started using it to take attendance, but then transitioned to a more inclusive approach. What I like the most is that you can setup your lecture flow with PowerPoints, include quizzes/assessment points throughout, include videos (or other multimedia), and export grades/attendance at the end. There are a lot of small features that can be catered to individual faculty needs, such as types of questions, integration, etc. Their tech support is excellent! They helped me transition my course to tophat in no time. #### Cons I liked everything about the platform as it suited my needs. My only issue is the pricing model where the students have to pay for access individually. Not all of my students have the means to pay for access (which can really impact their grade if they don' use the platform). However, there is a discount if the platform is used in multiple classes. I also think they have site licenses, too. --- ### Top Hat Student Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Shaylynn W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It has helped me so much with this class. It has given me a new way to go about grasping the material and I would highly suggest it to other people. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros I used it in my economics class, and we had embedded questions within our chapters. It really makes you slow down to understand and grasp the concepts. #### Cons We had problems with being able to go back and view which questions were answered correctly or incorrectly. I also wish there were more functions like notes and bookmarks along with the highlighting. --- ### Oh the frustration - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Maybe it's because it was a 12pm physics lecture and no one wanted to be there, including the technology, but Top Hat was a hit-or-miss most of the semester. I cannot speak for the professor in this case, but this was my experience as a student. We used Top Hat for attendance, poll questions, and short quizzes between slides. Attendance tracking utilizes location to some extent, but if you have the code and time, you can check into class without being there. Our professor caught people checking in remotely; but we also found out that there were dead spots where people in the very room could not check in. That led to tons of handwritten attendance sheets. Also quizzes within the slides often glitched out and had to be restarted or they randomly deleted the annotations. The lecture hall was 200~220 people. #### Cons Glitchy with large amount of people; Attendance not always accurate --- ### Use a different platform if you can - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Jonathan R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Similar in functions and features as other learning platforms once you can figure it out. I personally don’t have any other pros for this product. #### Cons I wouldn’t recommend Top Hat I feel like there are other learning platforms that are easier to use for both the instructor and student. I had top hat as a learning platform in a few of my university courses and I never got the hang of using it. --- ### Easy to Use Learning Tool - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Top Hat is a wonderful asset to have, and I'm glad my professors have been utilizing it. It has increased the regularity and clarity of communication between myself and my professors. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros When it comes to student/professor education software, I have found, as a student, that my favorite software programs are ones that professors are able to access and utilize with ease. The reason for this is that when professors utilize the functions available on education software, my life gets easier. Instead of dealing with streams of AOL emails, I get succinct and clean information and communication through a user-friendly platform. My professors who use Top Hat are VERY comfortable with it and seem to maximize its potential. Top Hat is easy for me to use, and it's evidently really easy for my professors to use. It's clean, sleek, and really user-friendly. Also, I like how Top Hat is device-friendly; their mobile app is great. #### Cons I've been using it for a few months and have not yet run into anything that I have a problem with. Everything's been great so far. --- ### When free options are available on the market, it is a shame that this company swindles instructors - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Jim C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The customer service, in my limited experience, has been great. However, I really hate that I had to pay for something like this when it was in no ways innovative and when so many free competitors exist. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Simplistic design that is easy to navigate #### Cons The cost is insane for something that is essentially an iClicker. The location-dependent attendance code input has consistently been terrible. This company swindles instructors into forcing their students to buy the product, by making it a required component of the course marks. --- ### Top Hat is at the Top of its class - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Primary/ Secondary Education - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Out of all of the educational programs I have used, Top Hat is by far my favorite. It is easy and allows students to text in answers as well as answer on the app. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is easy to use and input answers in. It also has phone number that can be texted, which makes answering questions easier. #### Cons Sometimes the software lagged or delayed. This made answering difficult questions harder because time might expire more quickly. --- ### TopHat - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Aashna O. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Hospital & Health Care - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Easy to use and navigate. Love the top hat questions feature. Customer service is quick. #### Cons Had a few technical errors which can be annoying --- ### Absolute mess of a service - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Dylan S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Awful service, awful and sassy customer service, overall just disappointed. Sad I had to pay for this through my wallet and my GPA. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Nothing. I guess you could say it costs less than others. #### Cons It's broken all the time. It's not intuitive. It leaves students no clear way to access the service, let alone study materials or even tests and assignments. There's nothing this service can do that free services like Socrative can't do. --- ### Top Hat Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Landon F. - Industry: Veterinary - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: January 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, I liked using this program to take the quiz's I needed to take for Veterinary School. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I liked that it made it so I can pass my class with added quiz points. I also liked the format and layout of the program. It laid it out for each class so it was easy to find the questions and answers. #### Cons Honestly, there wasn't anything I disliked about this software. --- ### Review Title - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Sarah H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Cosmetics - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: October 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Pretty impressed so far but would like to see some small changes in the future #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It’s easy to use. Support is there when you need it. #### Cons The cost. They should lower the cost for this software --- ### top hat for organic chemistry - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Anitha G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have been using Top Hat for last 3 years, it makes my in-person and online quizzes and exams go smoothly. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is very convenient to design online quizzes and exams using top-hat. I use this for my organic chemistry classes, it is easy to draw the chemical structures #### Cons students complaint little bit about pricing, honestly it is not that expensive, otherwise it is user friendly software. --- ### Top Hat - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Sidney S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, Top Hat is easy to use and seems to make life easier for professors. However, it is not the most cost effective for students who must pay out of pocket for the service each time their classes require it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Top Hat is easy for both me and my professors to use. It's clean, sleek, and extremely user-friendly. Top Hat is also device-friendly and I've had a great experience using the mobile app on my iPhone. I like that my professors are able to embed questions within our lectures, which aids in my learning and makes sure I am understanding the material being presented in the lectures. #### Cons As a student, my least favorite thing about Top Hat is the pricing. Although my classes require Top Hat, the cost is not covered by university tuition and class fees. In addition, Top Hat makes you pay based on how long you will need the software. You can pay for an entire year, which would end up cheaper if most of your classes use Top Hat. However, you may end up paying for the entire year when you only need it for 3 months if only one of your classes requires it. --- ### Easy to Use - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Ella W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: June 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Easy to use and great way to learn with question along the way. The app did not have all of the functions as the textbook did online. Overall, it is engaging when available. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Very clear sections, questions, and due dates. I love that it would tell you what the correct answer was, that ay you are learning rather than wondering what part was wrong. Being able to read aloud and highlight text made it a great learning resource. #### Cons Submitting answers where the rest of the class could see was uncomfortable. I found that most students skipped those questions to avoid the social anxiety of being wrong in front of everyone. It prevented people from learning and checking their knowledge on concepts. --- ### Could be great, but app has persistent bugs - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Eric P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered My overall opinion is that the app may be useful for classes that do not involve mathematical symbols, but if you are teaching CS or math courses, I strongly recommend finding another tool. I tried using the app for two years, letting the developers know about the bug, but since they have no plans on fixing the bug and don't say anything about it in the documentation, only use if you don't mind wasting a lot of time messing around with unicode characters (or you don't plan on using commas in any questions!). #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros The gradebook is very well-designed and students have mostly enjoyed the tool. #### Cons There is a persistent bug in the app that I have been asking them to fix for almost 2 years. When creating questions using LaTeX code, you cannot use commas. There is a hack-y fix requiring you to use a unicode comma, but it often doesn't work and adds a lot of extra time when creating questions. But, the responses for the company suggest that they have no plans on fixing the bug. --- ### Easy to use and helpful features - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: SB S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: October 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall I am pretty happy with Top Hat. It would definitely fall in the upper end of programs I have used. The students also seem to enjoy it as well. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros I was able to log into Top Hat and immediately start using it without any training. It’s a pretty intuitive site. Seeing the grades and attendance is straightforward and has been easier to edit than other programs that I have used. #### Cons When students are submitting their quizzes or comments there is major lag time and I am not sure if that is because of the software or internet connectivity. I am never entirely sure if I know how many people have turned in their questions. Until about 3 minutes after the questions is over. Also, I wish there was a way to edit slides when they are posted into Top Hat because when I upload sometimes the slides become distorted and I need to make the text smaller or rearrange it so that it fits on the screen and can be read. Also, sometimes the link to videos do not work. --- ### Nice platform for class - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Harshkumar P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: June 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Nice and engaging platform #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Nice way to make classroom environment interesting. Student can actively participate in poll and instructors can know how many people participated in the class. Effective way to track class #### Cons Need some time to used to it. Instructors need to first understand how to operate this platform. Not effective for the instructors who has limited technology skills for classroom --- ### Testing my students - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Graham G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I could not run in class quizzes without this software. It has made this part of the course easy to administer. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros This software has made giving in class quizzes very easy. I use it every semester and have had a great experience with administering the quizzes and grading them. It has made it easy to go over material and to provide immediate feedback. #### Cons I would like them to add a feature that allows for grading of word answers. I have to look at all the different spellings of a word. It would be nice to have a wild card or contains option for answers --- ### Terrible - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: April 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Terrible #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros Has a nice built in quiz option when doing readings. #### Cons The app would crash over and over again or it would not show entire articles/readings and instead would show me a blank screen. Other times, it wouldn't let me submit work. My professor says she can't program the app to put in correct due dates either making us confused. --- ### Top Hat "On Top" of my List - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Michael Vincent B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Top Hat is a great application for teachers in managing quizzes. It is a user-friendly app for learners where in they can go through their lessons with ease. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Top Hat is an excellent software! I could easily give quizzes to my learners and give ratings to them easily. It is very user-friendly and bery accessible to learners for its mobile app feature. #### Cons Going back to view questions which were answered correctly and incorrectly were quite difficult. I wish this app would have commands like bookmarking and highlighting notes on it. --- ### Easy way to participate in class - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I wish it were easier to view past questions or that there were some way to access the information presented with tophat at a later date, but overall is has been a very useful tool. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like the fact that this software allows you to answer anonymously in class, so I am not worried about getting an answer wrong and I am more likely to participate. The app itself is also very user friendly. #### Cons I have noticed a few glitches with using this software, but nothing to keep me from not using it. --- ### Used as an Assistant to the Professor - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I like that it is an easy and accessible way to share books, assignments and other content with the class. It's much easier then trying to share everything via email or printout. #### Cons My only issue that I've had is that when the professor is doing a presentation I am unable to go in and do anything else on the class page even though she is presenting from a separate computer. #### Vendor response Thanks for the Top Hat review, I will pass this on to the team. Replied February 2019 ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/top-hat-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Top Hat Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice