MINDBODY is business management software for gyms and spas, as well as fitness and yoga studios built around appointment scheduling and online bookings and calendaring, from the company of the same name in San Luis Obispo, California. Notably, the platform also contains marketing automation to maintain club member engagement, and enrollment.
$129
per month
Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace company
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Acuity Scheduling is an appointment management platform developed by the company of the same name in New York and acquired by Squarespace in 2019.
Reviewers of both MINDBODY and Acuity Scheduling often use these platforms in service-based industries such as health, wellness, and personal coaching, among others. Users note that both products have been utilized to handle appointment scheduling, client management, and payment processing. Customers of both solutions highlight their effectiveness in automating these tasks, resulting in time saved and increased efficiency.
However, a notable difference between MINDBODY and Acuity Scheduling is their respective areas of strength, as perceived by users. For businesses with a heavy focus on class or group session scheduling, MINDBODY has reportedly provided more robust functionality. Its facility for managing class schedules and pass packages has been particularly appreciated by users in the fitness industry. On the other hand, Acuity Scheduling users, especially those offering individual appointments, find its easy and intuitive scheduling interface coupled with flexible calendar view options more useful.
Furthermore, how users interact with the two products also differs. MINDBODY users acknowledge that the software has been a bit complex to set up and requires some time to understand fully. In contrast, users of Acuity Scheduling generally reported that this tool is easier to set up, with a more straightforward, user-friendly interface. This factor could influence potential users looking for ease of use and quick setup in a scheduling solution.
MINDBODY excels in areas that rely on the "bread and butter" of its design: scheduling, member management, and payment processing. Overall as a fitness center management solution, MINDBODY is by far the best product we have used and they have evolved their capabilities in good alignment with our needs as well.
I think any business can benefit from Acuity Scheduling. In my experience, however, and maybe I just haven’t found the correct settings yet, it’s been difficult to manage 4 business schedules with multiple employees and varying hours that change day-to-day and week-to-week. So I definitely would recommend it to more simple business models with set hours, as it seems like it would have all the functions one might need. I still would recommend to more complex businesses like mine as well, but also include discussion of some of the potential drawbacks.
MindBody does a great job of sending out reminder emails to clients so they do not miss a class.
MindBody does a great job at giving instructors a fast and easy way to check in clients and to see who is all signed up for their classes for the week.
MindBody has a great payroll feature. All you have to do is set the dates and it generates a nicely laid out PDF of all the classes you taught during that time period and what you have made from them.
Clicking on the link opens up my calendar, which has an uncluttered look, making it easy for my prospects and clients to review their options and make their choice.
I am able to customize my schedule, the types of appointments I want to offer, and even decide how many appointments I want in a day. There are so many details that I can customize.
I can customize how my calendar and emails look for my prospects and clients so that I come across professional and coordinated. I want the look of my business, website, etc. to have a polished, cohesive, and interesting presence.
I love that there is a workshop/class/series option for my workshops. My attendees reserve their place and pay upfront. I can duplicate these events or add future dates. It's wonderful. This saves us a lot of time and is so convenient.
I haven't had any trouble with my scheduler. It works flawlessly, so I don't have to take time out of my day to fix, troubleshoot or call customer service.
I love that I can add questions for my prospects to answer right away before booking a call. This means 3 fewer steps for me. 1. They answer these questions without an email from me. 2. They make their reservation and get a follow-up email, right away. 3. I customized the follow-up email with more details and actions to take to prepare for our call.
There is so much functionality and not enough accountability. I wish there were more tracking of all transactions done on the clients or operations end to be able to review history and learn from mistakes.
The MINDBODY branded app connection needs more attention.
Please add a covid vaccination checker to the application (not just to use in the web browser). It has taken way too long to get this feature.
Acuity Scheduling has been very reliable. If you don't believe me, check out their status page here. They do a pretty decent job maintaining their app. To be fair, it's a pretty simple tool so they shouldn't run into too many hiccups given it doesn't feature near as many options as other applications on the market run.
Settings are often buried, user interface rules vary depending on whether it's a newer feature or an older one. From daily usage, people learn how it works and get used to it, but it's not something someone could just pick up without any training or hand-holding.
It's just very intuitive once you get the hang of it, which won't take long. They try not to make complex things very complex and they provide explanations for everything with a greyed-out question mark icon next to the function. Also, I love that they encourage people to just get live help when they need it.
MINDBODY support takes forever to get back to you via email in my experience. The process is not as simple as it was back when they had the chat feature. I really wish they would bring that back! Most items are normally some weird glitch that they can fix in minutes but you have to wait days now.
Every time I had a question on how to do something or had any issues with Acuity Scheduling, mainly in the very beginning, when I was learning the platform, customer service was excellent. They were prompt to respond, friendly, and very helpful until I had the right solution.
MINDBODY is really the only system of its kind that is widely used by fitness and yoga studios. Its app is the industry standard for looking up and signing up for classes, so most students rely on it exclusively. If there were another viable alternative it would have to promise more ease of use and intuitive backend.
In the case of Schedulicity, the system was awesome (very easy to set up and had some nice features) but did not offer the functionality and flexibility that AcuityScheduling does. In the case of SimplyBook.me, they offer lots of functionality but the interface is extremely complex and you pay a la carte for features so you're going to pay exponentially more for the same set of features as compared to AcuityScheduling. Their customer service was also lacking, in my opinion.
I've had agents help me set something up that ended up costing time and money because it was done wrong. [In my experience], less senior agents need to stop guessing or going with "I think so" and talk to a senior agent to make sure what they are telling the client is correct.
