Doodle is appointment scheduling software from the Swiss company of the same name.
$15
per month per seat
Mindbody
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
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.
Doodle is great when you need to coordinate dates among a group and don't want to send a bunch of group emails or texts. It allows a number of dates to be proposed and the group can easily see those dates that are most preferred. If you need to do something more complex than that it may not be your tool.
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.
Doodle allows you to view multiple meeting times simultaneously. I may never have 100% of my team available, but I can see that I have three other options with 90% availability.
Doodle is a free resource that doesn't require users to create an account or exist in a network. I simply send the link and see the responses.
Doodle notifies you as people respond, making the scheduling process quick and easy. Also, you can confirm a time through the software!
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.
I wish that it offered more options in backgrounds, characters and props without having an additional cost, but that is to be expected.
I would like an easier way to add my own fonts, characters , props etc, because I am a new learner this may not be an issue as I get more familiar with the software.
I don't like all the sales emails I received trying to upgrade or add to my purchase.
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.
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.
Doodle has customer service support available as needed, but honestly, it is so easy to use that I have rarely had to seek support. They are always a click away and responsive to resolving any need or to clarify the next best step to using Doodle to meet my needs.
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.
For the same reasons noted previously, Doodle allows for the organizer to ultimately select/accept the time that works for them. Many competitors only allow you to show available times and the appointment goes directly into the organizer's calendar. I typically prefer to have a bit more control over that. Also, visually Doodle is more intuitive in how you schedule appointments than Calendly. I think Calendly tries to get a bit too cute with their interface instead of sticking to a more standard, familiar calendar interface when setting an appointment.
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.
Improved efficiency by avoiding the slow and inefficient process of emailing back and forth to set meeting dates and times.
Allows for more informed decisions regarding meetings or making decisions, as all options can be laid out visually in a way that isn't possible in an email.
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.
