Jackrabbit Class has been the default for youth activity businesses — dance, gymnastics, swim, cheer — for a long time, and it earned that position by understanding how these programs actually run: session enrolment, family accounts, siblings, waitlists, and the annual recital cycle. Mako is the business platform underneath a studio or program: booking, payments, staff pay, retail, and profit reporting. Both are real options; the cost picture takes a minute to assemble properly.
Jackrabbit Class: Published, scaled by active student count. Class from $49/month, Plus from $93/month, and Enterprise around $245/month. There is a one-time setup fee of about $169, and a custom branded app runs around $331/month — that last figure is not a typo and it is worth reading twice before you agree to it.
Mako: Pulse is free. Basic at $139/month — the complete platform with three team members. Team at $249/month — fifteen team members, extra locations at $75/month each, advanced reporting, QuickBooks sync. Enterprise at $999/month — unlimited students. Roughly 20% off annually, no contract, no setup fee.
Realistic totals: a small program on Jackrabbit's entry tier is $49 plus $169 once — genuinely cheap, and cheaper than Mako. A mid-size studio on Plus is around $93. Add the branded app and you are at $424/month, which is more than Mako Enterprise territory for a single studio. The app is where this gets expensive, not the platform.
Session and family enrolment structure. Multi-child families on one account, sibling discounts, term-based enrolment, class-level skill progression, and the recital and costume workflow that dominates a dance studio's year. Jackrabbit models all of this natively because it was built for it.
Mako handles memberships, credits and class scheduling well, but it does not have a purpose-built family-account and term-enrolment structure. If your business is fundamentally "families enrolling children in terms," that is a real gap and you should weigh it heavily.
Family accounts, siblings, term enrolment, skill levels, and recital management. Purpose-built and mature.
$49/month for a small program is well under any general business platform.
A great many dance and gymnastics parents have used a Jackrabbit portal before. Familiarity reduces support calls.
Decades in this market, and it shows in the edge cases it handles.
Profit per class and per program after instructor pay and studio time, cash-flow forecasting, unit economics, LTV. Jackrabbit tracks enrolment and billing thoroughly; it does not tell you whether the Tuesday intermediate ballet class covers its own costs.
Per-class rates, splits, tips, timesheets and payouts — native, and calculated at the rate that applied on the day.
Shoes, leotards, costumes, and merchandise with stock levels, low-stock alerts, and margin per item — rather than a costume order spreadsheet in March.
Nothing up front and month-to-month throughout.
A branded app at roughly $331/month is $3,972 a year. Consider carefully whether your parents need an app or just a booking page that works on a phone.
Pick Jackrabbit Class if:
Pick Mako if:
Your studio is a business. Not a hobby, not a side project, not a calendar with a cash register. It deserves software that treats it accordingly. If your platform cannot tell you whether you are financially healthy, it is not doing its job. And in 2026, you have better options.
See Mako in action — no sales call required
Mako is built for independent studio owners who would rather spend their time teaching than on demo calls. Open the live demo, poke around, and see exactly how booking, payments, and financial intelligence come together in one place.
Try the demo: https://app.makocrm.so/demo
Self-serve. Instant access. No forms, no calendars, no "talk to sales."
