If you're evaluating gym management software and Pike13 is on your list, you're probably a small-to-mid-size fitness studio that needs more than basic scheduling. Pike13 has been a solid option for independent studios for years. Mako CRM was built specifically for the same market — but with a tighter focus on member relationships and revenue retention.
This comparison breaks down where each platform excels, where each falls short, and which one fits different types of studios in 2026.
What Is Pike13?
Pike13 is a gym and fitness studio management platform designed for businesses that offer classes, appointments, and memberships. It covers scheduling, billing, client profiles, and reporting. Pike13 positions itself as a platform for "service-based fitness businesses" — gyms, yoga studios, swim schools, martial arts academies, and similar operations.
It's a mature product with a broad feature set. If you need a platform that handles complex scheduling logic — multiple staff, room assignments, waitlists, recurring appointments — Pike13 handles it well.
What Is Mako?
Mako CRM is built specifically for independent fitness and wellness studio owners: gyms, yoga studios, pilates, personal training businesses, and multi-discipline studios with one to three locations. Mako's core design philosophy is that your software should help you keep members longer, recover failed payments faster, and understand your revenue without running a dozen reports.
Where Pike13 leads with scheduling depth, Mako leads with CRM intelligence — member lifecycle tracking, automated communication, and financial visibility built into the same platform.
Feature Comparison
Scheduling and Class Management
Pike13 has deep scheduling capabilities. You can manage complex recurring schedules, handle room and resource assignments, run waitlists automatically, and give clients a clean booking experience on mobile and web. For studios with complex multi-room, multi-instructor scheduling, Pike13's toolset is mature and reliable.
Mako handles standard studio scheduling cleanly — class booking, appointment scheduling, recurring memberships, and waitlists. Where Mako differs is in how scheduling connects to the member picture. When a member drops from 3 classes a week to 1, Mako surfaces that change as a retention signal, not just a booking metric. Pike13 shows you attendance; Mako shows you risk.
Billing and Payments
Both platforms handle recurring billing, membership plans, class packs, and drop-ins. Pike13 processes payments competently and supports multiple payment methods.
Mako's billing layer is built around payment recovery. Dunning sequences, retry logic, and automated member outreach on declined payments are baked in — not add-ons. For studios where failed payments represent $2,000–$5,000/month in uncollected revenue, this distinction matters more than any scheduling feature.
Member Management and CRM
This is where the platforms diverge most clearly. Pike13 gives you client profiles, visit history, billing records, and basic notes. It's a functional record-keeping system.
Mako is a CRM first. Member profiles include engagement scores, retention risk indicators, lifetime value tracking, and communication history across every touchpoint — automated messages, manual notes, payment interactions. When a member's behavior changes, Mako flags it. When a member goes quiet, Mako prompts an action. Pike13 stores the data; Mako helps you act on it.
Reporting
Pike13 has solid standard reports: attendance, revenue, membership counts, staff utilization. You can pull the numbers you need. For studios that have a specific reporting workflow, Pike13 delivers it.
Mako's reporting is oriented around the questions studio owners actually ask: Is revenue trending up? Who's at risk of churning? Which classes are carrying the business? The dashboard surfaces those answers without requiring a reporting workflow. It's less configurable than Pike13 and more immediately useful for daily decision-making.
Automation
Pike13 supports basic automated messaging — booking confirmations, reminders, cancellation notices. It covers the standard communication needs for a scheduled fitness business.
Mako's automation layer covers member lifecycle events: re-engagement sequences for lapsing members, payment recovery flows, win-back campaigns, and milestone messages. These are the automations that directly affect revenue — not just class logistics. If setting up automations on day one is a priority, Mako's library covers the high-value use cases out of the box.
Pricing
Pike13 starts around $129/month for their base tier, scaling with features and volume. The pricing is transparent and reasonable for the feature set.
Mako CRM is priced as a single flat rate — no per-location fees, no per-staff add-ons. For a studio with one to three locations, Mako typically comes in competitive with Pike13's mid-tier pricing while covering more CRM and revenue recovery functionality.
Which Studios Should Choose Pike13?
Pike13 is a strong fit if your primary complexity is scheduling. If you run a swim school with lane assignments and instructor-to-student ratios, a martial arts academy with belt-level tracking, or a multi-room yoga studio where room conflicts are a daily challenge — Pike13's scheduling depth earns its place.
It's also a reasonable choice if your business is primarily appointment-based (personal training, private lessons) and you need a mature, proven platform without CRM complexity.
Which Studios Should Choose Mako?
Mako fits studios where member retention and revenue recovery are the primary business challenges. If you're losing 15–20% of members per quarter and want software that actively helps you stop it — Mako is built for that problem.
It's also the right choice if you want a unified picture of your business — scheduling, member engagement, billing, and revenue — in one place without stitching together multiple tools.
The Bottom Line
Pike13 is scheduling software with solid billing and client management. Mako is CRM software with solid scheduling and billing. The choice depends on where your biggest operational pain lives.
If you're filling complex schedules and need reliable booking infrastructure, Pike13 delivers. If you're trying to understand why members leave, recover more failed payments, and build a more predictable revenue base — Mako was built for exactly that.
Explore Mako's self-serve demo to see how the CRM and revenue recovery features work for your studio type.
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