Mindbody

Vorteile

I can not state more clearly that Mindbody is the leader in what they do. They have their faults because of the way it was designed originally but they are working on those every day but no system on the market is better. I have a feeling that a couple years from now, they be much larger than what they even are now.

Nachteile

the old design structure of the base platform could use some updates, which they are aware of

Vorteile

I like that it has an app and that our clients can easily sign up. Also, the billing makes it easy for a small business like ours.

Nachteile

We have been using MINDBODY for the last 3 years. I just think it is okay and think there are so many other products out there that have come out that might be better. My biggest gripe is the cost. I wish it scaled more with how big our fitness business is. We have a small business and don't do a lot of volume but in order to get the marketing features we have to pay a huge premium. I also was bothered that that they just increase costs by a lot after we used it for a year and never gave any training about the new features that we HAD to pay for. I don't like that their actual internal network and app don't help get new clients. DON'T ever pay for that feature as it takes a percentage from the sale. You are much better off doing your own sales and marketing.

Vorteile

Before the virus hit, I loved Mindbody. The high monthly fee was worth the expense because the software automatically links up with 3rd party vendors like Class Pass and gym pass. Plus nearly every studio is using this software so it's easy to pick up traveling clients or sales via their dynamic pricing option. In short, the subscription is super high but in normal times you get a lot of it in return. This is not the case at the moment. They did offer 1 month subscription relief and 2 if you commit to 2 years but I don't know if we will make it? Most of the support staff is super friendly and helpful.

Nachteile

Given it's many features, the software is sophisticated and not easy to use. Could never figure out the private yoga feature or how to show the studio was being rented so for us not to be able to do this - it was very expensive. Also we were one of the first studios to live stream so we got set up prior =however not all mb reps could accurately advise how to set up. We paid for adverting on fb and google, got many clicks and zero conversions- people kept getting tripped up in mb. A survey indicated over 30% of users had a hard time booking, paying for or accessing live stream classes on mb. I literally spent all day every day troubleshooting with mb reps, instructors and clients. I wonder ho many people we lost that got turned off? We decided to move our live stream and on demand off he platform.

Vorteile

Excellent admin management. Wonderful for managing appointments and worth the money based on this alone. You pay more as your business grows. I have found the support to be excellent. I'm not sure why so many people here are complaining about the support. Everyone I've talked to has been really knowledgeable and helpful.

Nachteile

No way to book appointments directly on your own website. This is a pretty big one for me obviously. The booking page for the customer is stark, confusing, and unnecessarily cumbersome. There needs to be a way to make the integration more seamless and pretty. I guess it's just very disappointing because the software and company are otherwise very good. This seems like such a no-brainer and I feel like I'm losing business because of it. This needs to be addressed.

Vorteile

Integrated billing/scheduling/contractor & staff payroll. Automated email messaging. Automated customer billing. A large variety of services thought to improve retention and conversion. Tech support is very knowledgeable, professional and helpful.

Nachteile

We've been using MB for over 7 years. It was affordable when we started, but has continued to increase in cost. It is now very expensive, by comparison to other offerings. The billing system is extremely complicated to set up and is difficult to train. It's really built for yoga studios, etc., and is not a good solution for music schools. The vast majority of the add-on products they promote are not useful to those that only book recurring appointments, like music schools do. They seem to be designed for pushing individual appointment booking, which is the opposite of what we need. There are constant "improvements" which always add more page loads - when we first started, you could go to any page on the site within 2 clicks. The daily tasks you need are now, all, at least 3 page loads away, if not more. In other words, their improvements always slow us down and don't add any value that we can perceive. The reason we're going to move to something else was cemented this week: On Apr. 1 our Auto-Pays ran like normal. On Apr. 2 they sent us an email informing us that 20% of what they owed us was being held to protect our clients due to changes from the COVID-19 pandemic. We were left scrambling for cash to cover checks we had already written. There was no warning that they were going to short us. They claimed that the "entire processing industry" was doing this, but I can find no evidence that that is true. It looks like they were holding back our money to protect themselves.