Mindbody vs. Pike13 vs. Zen Planner

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.

Incentivized

Pike13 is well suited for a membership/subscription based service business, where invoicing is directly tied to a scheduled event. It is limited as a "retail cash register" for the sale of physical goods/merchandise with no readily available inventory system tied to sales.

Incentivized

I have used Zen Planner at 3 different Jujitsu schools. Every school that has used it, has had great success in keeping their attendance records straight for their students. This is great when promotions are coming up, or special seminars that need to reach everyone. I don't know that Zen Planner is a great product for places that don't need to communicate with their clients on a regular basis.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Scheduling
• Establishing purchasing platform
• Enrolling new clients and staff

Incentivized

• Easy to use interface
• Payment processing is easy for classes or for a small retail shop.
• The free integrated mobile website is great for everyone to check out the calendar and even sign and pay from within it.
• I can also send emails right from the platform when I need to connect with a student.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The ability of the reporting function is strong, but the interface is not user friendly.
• The payroll function would be more powerful if it was integrated with main payroll providers.

Incentivized

• The only thing I would like to see, is the ability to see my entire attendance from the app. I can view it on the desktop though.

Incentivized

No questions about that, I'm with Zen Planner for a while! They have everything I need and more.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Constant errors and TERRIBLE PRODUCT support

Fails at everything form availability to reliability.

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.

Incentivized

I haven't used the support at Pike13 directly. Our franchisor's IT department serves as an intermediary and seeks support at Pike13 on our behalf when required.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have not used similar products.

Incentivized

I have not used any product that are similar to Zen Planner in any way.

Incentivized

Constant errors and ZERO support from the company.

• 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.
• The app is good exposure.

• Reduced admin after implementation
• Great ROI

Incentivized

• Saves me time in using a paper attendance record sheet.
• Payments are automated, no need to request checks or payments from anyone. Emails are sent out if a payment fails.
• I can keep track of 10, 20, 30, or even 50 students using this platform.

Incentivized