Momence - Best Yoga Studio Software?
Why Choosing the Best Yoga Studio Software was Vital.
As we started to lay the teak wood shala floor we knew the Opening of The Path Yoga Center was getting ever closer, and it was time to start getting our ducks in a row on the admin side of Yoga Studio. With previous experience in the hospitality industry, we knew the value of good software to do the technical and administrative heavy lifting for the business, but what did we need from this software?
We knew that trying to integrate new software or Migrate from an old one once the Yoga centre was open would be hellish and must be avoided at all costs. So with that in mind, we needed to look at what we needed now from the studio software and what we might need in the future as the Yoga studio grows and expands its offering.
The Initial needs from a Yoga Software would be…
Variety of Yoga Memberships & class packs
Calander booking system
POS (Point of sale software for our yoga shop)
Accounting including teacher salary tracking ( Who wants to do this manually)
Customer Database ( important to help build a customer base and community)
Analytics Dashboard ( It’s amazing what you learn about your business from this)
Marketing capabilities ( Discounts codes, etc)
The secondary needs from a Yoga Software as we grow would be…
Video course capability ( This would save us a lot of money in the future as we would not need another subscription.)
Retreat Sales ( Ready for our 200hr Yoga Alliance Certification )
Bonus Features for a Yoga Studio Software
Email Marketing ( Ideal, but could use Mailchimp)
Referral Link tracking
Gift cards
Finding the best software options on the market.
Ok, Where to start?
Looking through a bunch of review sites can lead you a drift, as they are more interested in which software pays them the most Income for advertising. Another factor for us to consider is that we are in Bali, Indonesia and need software that has our currency integrated and a payment gateway that will work for Bali.
So we bypassed the review sites and reached out to a number of Yoga teachers, studios and gyms on the island to see what they were using.
The result, Mindbody, GloFox, and a new kid on the Block ….. Momence !!
To ensure we didn't end up in a month-long meditation circle to help us determine our choice due to too many options we soley focused on these 3 Yoga Booking software options.
The Momence Intro
For open honesty, We got lucky at this point and it may of helped push on a certain path (no pun intended) but we were introduced to one of the Momence sales team so had in-person meetings where we could ask endless questions.
In this meeting, there were two comments which gave me a good feeling about Momence.
We are backed by Y combinator (This is Peter Thiel’s Tech Fund, always a good sign)
We have built this software from the ground up as we are new to the market, as opposed to having to constantly edit old software and become clunky.
let’s cut to the chase, as you can tell by now we went with Momence for The Path Yoga, but lets continue to layout the reasoning so others can make their own decision.
Momence vs Mindbody
No Factual data here, but it seems that Mindbody is the most commonly used scheduling software for studios and has endless mentions and reviews on the web.
As I read through many of the reviews I came across consistent Pro’s & Cons
Pros
The Software has many features and flexibility.
Huge partner and integration network (we assumed this wouldn’t be of much benefit to us in Bali.)
Cons
a lot of complaints about customer service support being bad, which when running one of this feature-heavy software in real-time, a little support goes a long way.
The pricing structure does not seem to be clear. From what we could gather, the sales team quickly upsells you with their features leading to your monthly overheads getting too high for what we had at least factored in.
Momence vs GloFox
A friend of Ours was actually using GloFox and we had a coffee together to discuss the app. We really liked the UX/UI Experience with the software, although our friend was considering switching to Momence, although the reason is a blur now.
Pros
The user interface is great
The Branded app looks awesome ( if I remember correctly is an additional $250 a month, maybe wrong though)
Its been shortlisted in best yoga studio software on some review sites.
Cons
Many reviews mention glitches around the reporting
Some mention of poor customer service. (A red flag for us)
Decision Made!!
Drum roll Please…
After looking at these 3 viable options on the market we decided to go with Momence for a few reasons…
Many of the studios we were chatting to had just made the switch ( A little sheep heard comfort)
The interface also looked very clean and simple to use
On-Demand Video was included in the subscription
24/7 Customer support was really quick and available by chat or call
So what was the cost of Momence?
There seems to be a bit of negotiation at this point, maybe one we were not great at, but in the end, we are Paying $270/Month
Seems a lot, but when you consider it handles all of our marketing in terms of emails, sms, discount codes & on-demand video all as an extra to being just a booking software, we are happy with that.
A small Grievance, the customer support chat has recently tried integrating AI as a barrier between us and the live chat, slightly annoying trying to get past that gatekeeper every time.
“Momence has been great for allowing me to not only see my schedule but also to organise my team, subtitues swaps and studio schedule all in 1 spot “ - BERND
We will write a second post soon, looking at how we use Momence inside The Path Bali.
If you are still stuck and would like to ask questions, please contact us and we will be happy to help
