How parents are actually using doris

Last updated: 02/02/2026

When we introduce doris to a prospective partner school, they often ask us the same question: “How many parents are actually using your platform?”

That’s fair enough: as all marketing and admissions professionals working at international schools know, it’s very hard to catch parents’ attention. In a noisy market where the number of schools keeps growing and sifting through endless ads is a regular part of the search process for parents, attention comes at a premium.

Before signing up to doris, schools rightfully want to understand who is using the platform, whether parents meaningfully engage with it, and, most importantly, if it does what it promises to do: connecting the right families to the right schools.

Rather than just putting big, six-digit numbers on our website, we want to be fully transparent and show you that yes, parents use doris in growing numbers, the engagement is real, and give you a snapshot of where they are coming from.

How the doris audience is growing

Since the inception of doris, 142,000+ parents have used doris to find the right international school for their children. 

While doris was founded in late 2024, we only started meaningfully promoting it to parents in Summer 2025 by advertising it on Google and Meta, publishing content optimised for SEO and AIO (AI optimisation), and engaging with parent communities.

What you’re seeing in the graph below is that growth over time. Back in August, around 2,000 unique parents were using doris each month. By January, that number had grown to 21,000 - that's a 10x growth in less than six months. 

Where does the traffic come from?

A mix of paid advertising (Google Ads and Meta), organic social, and SEO and AIO-optimised content. The proportion of organic traffic is getting larger overtime, and has grown by 10% in the last three months as we produce more unbiased, informative content for parents.

We're also finding that doris is getting increasingly mentioned in AI overviews, "people also ask" AI recommendations, and in ChatGPT searches. 

Where parents come from 

doris is used by parents all over the world to search for the right international school for their children. A big slice of them are Western expats planning a move abroad, but the platform is also used by local parents who want to help their children excel academically.

This chart shows the top 15countries where parents using doris are based while they explore and research school options. It’s worth clarifying that this demographic spread has been influenced by a few factors:

• The platform is currently available in English, although this will change soon as we introduce four additional languages.
  
  
• doris initially launched in Southeast Asia, and the first countries supported were Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

We’ve recently expanded into East Asia, with the Middle East coming next, so we expect the makeup of the audience to shift over time as doris becomes available in more markets.

Which markets are parents looking into

Conversely, the chart below shows which key markets are the most popular among doris’ parent users based on schools profiles viewed. 

Unsurprisingly, the markets showing the strongest traction are those where doris launched first. Since expanding into East Asia in early January 2026, Japan and South Korea have gained a few positions, with schools there now receiving a few hundred profile views each week.

The kinds of actions parents take

Having more than 142,000 parents visit doris since launch is all well and good, but schools also want to know what happens once they’re there. Are parents actively using the platform to explore and compare options, and are they taking steps that move them closer to enrolment?

This first chart gives an overview of actions that signal intent, things like shortlisting schools, clicking through to school websites, downloading prospectuses, booking tours, or starting an application. Parents usually don’t do this unless a school is already on their radar and feels like a possible fit. Seeing these actions happen at scale shows that doris is being used beyond the early stages of discovery, as parents get closer to making a decision.

Note: The rows in light blue are actions that require parents to leave their contact details, which are passed on to the school as leads.

This second chart shows that, just as importantly, these actions aren’t evenly spread across time but are increasing month on month. This means that partner schools can expect even more value from doris as it grows. 

What this means for schools

Taken together, these charts give a pretty clear picture of how doris is being used during the discovery journey. Parents land on doris, find it useful, spend time exploring and comparing schools, and take steps that often take them out of the platform and put them directly in contact with schools.

For schools, this usually means doris shows up earlier in the process, while parents are still figuring things out and forming opinions about fit. By the time they click through to a school website or book a tour, they have a much clearer idea of what they’re looking for and why that school might work for them.

A final note to say that while the data shown here refers to global usage, we have region-specific insights too. If you want to know more about how parents are searching for schools in your market, let us know by scheduling a chat with us. Nik, our founder, will be happy to talk you through it.