If you own a yoga studio or are a yoga teacher offering classes, then it is inevitable that you will need to use a yoga studio software. You might have never given a second thought to a class booking software before. However, now you are expected to choose the right yoga studio management software from hundreds available on the market.
So, how do you choose the right yoga studio software? Choose a yoga studio software that provides the core functionality for running your business.
Ability to offer both offline and online classes
Branding the public class schedule
Selling class-packs and memberships
Taking attendance
Managing cancellations, waitlists and waivers
Managing your customers (CRM)
If you have never used a yoga studio management or class scheduling software before, this article will show you very clearly the key features and functions you should look for in a software. I will also explain why you need specific features. After you are done reviewing this article, you will be in a position to choose the right yoga studio software for your business confidently.
Ability To offer Online and Offline Classes
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2019/20 completely changed the way yoga studios and yoga teachers do business. Due to social distancing rules, in-person yoga classes could not happen.
Yoga teachers and studios began offering virtual (online) classes. Yoga teachers used platforms like YouTube Live, Instagram Live, and Zoom to conduct live online classes.
However, the majority of studios and teachers using booking software to run their studios found a fatal flaw in the software they were using. Most of these software providers had not built the software to support online classes!
Yes, you could offer your classes on Instagram live, Youtube or Zoom, but you were not able to link class-pack/membership purchases to online class attendance. Offering online sessions did not reflect into the yoga studio software. You could not utilize waivers, manage cancellations, or even take attendance!
So, the first feature to look for when evaluating yoga studio software is whether the software supports both online and offline classes.
You should make sure the software you choose has in-built integrations with either Zoom, YouTube Live, Instagram Live, or any other platform that you use to conduct online yoga classes.
Branding Public Class Schedule
The yoga industry is highly competitive. The rise of yoga teacher training has led to an exponential increase in the number of yoga teachers. Today, big cities have hundreds of yoga studios, and the consumer has innumerable choices (ClassPass, Fitness Studios, Full-Service Gyms, Yoga Studios, etc.)
In this consumer environment, creating your brand is vital to the success of your yoga business. One key area of your brand is the experience of your customers when they check your public class schedule, reserve classes, and buy punch passes and memberships.
Look for a yoga studio software that allows you to create your public class schedule and your purchase pages as per your brand. Most of the software will enable you to provide such public pages. Still, such pages have minimal customization (only allowing you to upload your logo) and do nothing positive for your brand.
A new breed of yoga studio software providers have understood the importance of branding and offer full-fledged sales funnels that incorporates your public class schedule and your purchase and checkout pages. They also provide several themes from which you can choose.
StudioGrowth is one such provider with a deliberate focus on helping yoga studios and teachers build a brand. When choosing a yoga studio software, make sure that you pay close attention to the branding capabilities and the mobile responsiveness of your client-facing pages.
Selling Class-Packs & Memberships
Selling class-packs and memberships is an essential feature that every yoga studio management software will have. There are different types of classes you can teach:
Group sessions
Private lessons
Workshops
Events
Teacher Training
For all these different types of sessions, you should have the ability to create class-packs or a class series or memberships. You should be able to assign the right start and end dates, or validity duration. You should be able to assign expertise level or any pre-requisites for taking specific classes.
All of this is managed by offering different types of class-packs, class series, and memberships. Look for software that allows flexibility in creating punch passes and memberships. It is one aspect where flexibility is crucial.
Most of the software on the market will provide you with what you need. Just make sure that the type of classes you offer are supported.
Look for software that provides different options to pay for classes/memberships: cash (on-site), debit, and credit cards. Look for an integration with "Stripe," a payment gateway, and a payment processor. This integration alone will enable you to take online payments.
Taking Attendance
Taking attendance is one of the most time-consuming tasks in a yoga studio. Before software wholly automated this process, yoga studios were taking attendance manually.
People would either sign a sheet by the reception or use punch cards when attending a yoga class. It was up to the yoga studio owner or yoga teacher to mark up the attendance, manually tracking the signatures or punch cards. Often this process was done towards the end of the month and often took weeks to complete.
Today, class scheduling software allows your members to sign into classes in a single click. You also have the option to mark attendance in a single click. The whole process is automated, and the process of taking attendance is a core feature that any studio software must provide.
Managing Cancellations, Waitlists & Waivers
One of the most significant time savings offered by the use of software in a studio is the time freed up from manually managing waitlists and cancellations.
If you don't use software to run your teaching business, then you probably manage cancellations and last minute drop-outs by phone, email, or SMS. Even worse is handling cover for your teachers manually. You will need to find every instructor you know to find a cover for a class.
Software completely automates the process of managing waitlists and cancellations. Your students can see which classes are full and how many spots are open for a specific session.
If they wish, they can even sign-up to be on the waitlist for full classes. In case there is a cancellation, a person on the waitlist automatically gets assigned to the session. This automation completely frees you up and is one of the key features you should look for in any class scheduling software.
Additionally, specific to yoga teaching is the requirement for waivers. Look for a software that allows you to save waiver templates online. Additionally, the software should also let your students/members view the disclaimer online and sign the waiver before taking classes.
Stay away from software that does not have cancellation, waitlist, and waiver capability out of the box. You will need this functionality, whether you are a big yoga studio with hundreds of students or a yoga teacher teaching a handful of students.
Managing Your Customers (CRM)
One of the critical functionality of your studio software is that it should be the system of record for your business. It should be the complete database of your customer activity.
The software should track how many members you have, which classes they attended, their waiver acceptance, emails they received from you, their birthdays, etc.
You should be able to go into any customer profile and see their entire history of business with you. This functionality is typically called the CRM (customer relationship management).
Make sure the software you choose for your studio offers the necessary CRM capability. Once a member signs up to your classes, they should have a profile page where they can see all their transactions with you, buy new classes/memberships, and manage cancellations and waitlists. And all this information must be available to you in the back-end.
Other Factors To Consider When Purchasing A Yoga Studio Management Software
If you take the advice offered here and choose a software that provides the listed core functionality, you will have made the right choice for your business.
If your business is further advanced, you can explore additional "good to have features" such as marketing functionality (email, SMS marketing), notifications, referrals, loyalty capability, and lead capture.
Another crucial factor to consider is the cost of the software. You will find several "free" yoga studio software on the market. However, this is simply a marketing tactic as such software providers charge you a percentage of the online booking fee. So every time your student books a class online, the software provider ends up taking 1-2% of the booking price.
You can expect to pay anything from $20 to $150 for yoga studio software based on your needs. My advice is to look for software that charges you based on feature sets you use rather than the number of students or teachers you have in your business.
Conclusion
Having the right yoga studio software can make or break your yoga teaching business. Choosing the right software for you can be a minefield, as every other software on the market seems the same, with the same features and messaging.
Look for software that provides the core functionality outlined in this article. Then look for software that allows you to build a strong brand by creating branded, easy to use purchase, and class schedule pages.
Look for essential functionality such as attendance taking, selling memberships/class-packs, managing cancellations, waitlists and waivers, and a customer CRM out of the box.
Look to pay anywhere between $20 to $150 per month for the software and stay away from supposed "free" yoga studio software.
Naz Ahm has 10+ years of experience operating and growing businesses in the wellness space. He is an avid yoga practitioner and is passionate about helping small to mid-sized wellness businesses succeed. Naz Ahm is the founder of StudioGrowth and holds an MBA from a prestigious business school.