Class booking software is the system that takes reservations for your classes, manages the waitlist when they fill, charges the client, and enforces your cancellation policy — and the last two are where platforms actually differ.
The booking part is solved. Everyone does it. If you are comparing options right now, you will find that every product page lists the same six features, and none of them tells you what happens on a Tuesday night when a class is full, two people cancel forty minutes out, and three more are waiting.
That is the part worth comparing. Here is the honest version.
| Entry price | Contract | Waitlist auto-promote | Late-cancel charging | Financial reporting | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mako | $39/mo | None | Yes | Yes, configurable window | Real-time P&L |
| Mindbody | Not published | Annual typical | Yes | Yes | Revenue only |
| Momence | Not published | Varies | Yes | Yes | Revenue only |
| Vagaro | Published, per-user | Monthly | Yes | Yes | Revenue only |
| WellnessLiving | Not published | Annual typical | Yes | Yes | Revenue only |
| Glofox | Not published | Annual typical | Yes | Yes | Revenue only |
Two things stand out before you compare a single feature.
Most of this category will not tell you the price until you take a sales call. We publish ours: $39/month for Starter, $149 for Team, $999 for Enterprise, 20% off annually, no contract at any tier. You can read the whole thing on our pricing page without giving anyone your phone number.
And almost nobody reports on profit. Every platform will tell you what you sold. Very few will tell you whether the 6am class is worth running.
This is the feature you use most and evaluate least.
Ask three questions of any platform you are considering:
Does the waitlist promote automatically, or does someone have to do it? If a spot opens at 5:40pm for a 6pm class and promotion is manual, that spot goes empty. Every empty spot in a full class is revenue you already earned and then gave back.
How long does the promoted person get to respond? Too short and they miss it. Too long and the class starts with an empty mat. A configurable window is the right answer; a fixed one is a compromise someone else made for you.
Does the promoted person get charged? Surprisingly often, the answer is no — the spot transfers but the payment doesn't, and you find out at the end of the month.
Most studios write a cancellation policy and then don't enforce it, because enforcing it means an awkward conversation. Software that charges the fee automatically removes the conversation entirely.
What to check: whether the cancellation window is configurable per class type (a 6am class needs a different window than a Saturday workshop), whether the charge happens automatically or needs approval, and whether the client sees the policy at the moment of booking rather than buried in a terms page.
One detail that catches people out: if a client's card fails when you charge a no-show fee, some platforms silently give up. Stripe's own revenue recovery documentation is worth reading on this — retry logic and card-updater services recover a meaningful share of failed charges, and whether your booking platform uses them is a real difference in money collected.
Here is the part nobody writes down.
Free platforms are not free. They move the cost to a per-booking or per-transaction fee, usually somewhere between 2% and 5% on top of standard card processing. That is genuinely cheaper than $39/month — right up until it isn't.
Run the arithmetic on your own numbers. If your average class booking is $20 and the platform takes 3%, that's $0.60 a booking. At 65 bookings a month you have spent $39. At 300 bookings a month you have spent $180 to avoid a $39 bill.
The crossover is lower than most people expect, and it arrives exactly when the business starts working. Free is the right choice when you are teaching two classes a week and testing whether this is a business. It stops being the right choice quickly.
Thin tools handle a weekly class. They break on the things that come after: a six-week series where the client buys the whole block, a class pack with an expiry date, a membership that includes four classes a month and charges for the fifth.
If you sell anything other than single drop-ins, test these specifically during a trial. This is the most common reason studios migrate a year in.
Every platform in the table will tell you that you sold 340 classes last month. Almost none will tell you that your Tuesday 6am costs more to run than it brings in.
The information is right there — you know the instructor's rate, you know the headcount, you know the room. Connecting them is the difference between a booking system and a business system. Mako calculates profitability per class as bookings come in, so the schedule decision gets made on margin instead of on a feeling about which classes seem busy.
That is the actual argument for consolidating. Not "one platform instead of ten." One platform that can answer a question the ten couldn't.
Check three things specifically: whether pricing and invoicing handle VAT correctly, whether the payment rail supports UK cards and bank payments without a US intermediary, and whether support hours overlap your morning. All three are easy to confirm on a trial and expensive to discover after migrating.
If you teach a handful of classes a week and take payment in person, start free and revisit at around 60 bookings a month.
If you run a schedule, sell packs or memberships, and employ instructors, pick on waitlist mechanics and cancellation enforcement — those two decide how much of your scheduled revenue you actually collect.
If you already know both of those work and you still can't tell which classes make money, that's the gap worth closing.
See Mako's pricing — published, no contract, no demo required.
