Do you need booking software before you have any clients?
You need it before your first client books. You do not need to be paying for it while the flooring is still going in, and the industry's standard pricing quietly assumes you will be.
This question comes up in every new-studio group, and the answers are usually either "yes, set it up now" from people selling software or "a spreadsheet is fine" from people who have not yet had to run a waitlist by hand. Both are half right.
What you genuinely need, and when
| Stage | What you need | What you do not |
|---|---|---|
| Fitting out, no opening date announced | Nothing. A phone and a notebook. | Anything with a monthly fee attached |
| Opening date announced, taking interest | A page people can look at, and a way to hear from them | Class scheduling, packs, payments |
| First classes on sale | A booking page, a schedule, card payments | Waitlists, automations, reporting |
| Twenty or thirty regulars | Packs, reminders, a waitlist | Multi-location, staff rotas, an app |
The useful line is the third row. The moment you put a class on sale, doing it without software costs you real money: bookings you did not see, spots you sold twice, clients who paid by transfer and then did not come, and an evening a week you spend reconciling it.
Why the subscription model gets the timing wrong
Most platforms in this category charge a flat monthly fee that begins on the day you sign up. Prices vary and several will not tell you theirs until you have sat through a demo, but the shape is consistent: a fixed cost per month, regardless of whether you took one booking or four hundred.
For an established studio that is perfectly reasonable. For a studio three months from opening it is a cost with no matching revenue, at the exact point in the year when your runway is at its thinnest. So new owners do the sensible thing and delay: they announce an opening date, take bookings by WhatsApp for the first two months because the software would have cost them €400 by then, and start on the back foot with a client list in a phone and no record of who paid.
What we did instead
Reformer Pilates Booking is free until your studio takes €1,000 in a month. Not a fourteen-day trial that expires while you are still waiting on the electrician, and not a stripped tier: the whole product from day one, including the parts you will not need for six months.
- Your own booking page, with your name, colours, photos and web address on it
- Your weekly schedule, class types and capacity per reformer
- Packs, memberships and single classes, paid by card
- Waitlists that promote the next person automatically when a spot opens
- Reminders twenty-four hours ahead, so people turn up
- Refi, which answers your clients' questions in your tone of voice at nine at night
Above €1,000 a month we take 2.5%, and only on the part above €1,000. A studio taking €1,400 in a month pays 2.5% of €400, which is ten euros. We also never take more than €250 in a month, however good the month is. The free €1,000 resets on the first of every month, and so does the ceiling, so neither is an introductory offer that quietly ends.
Stripe's card processing is separate and goes to Stripe, roughly 1.5% plus €0.25 on European cards. Your clients pay into your own Stripe account in your own name, so we never hold your money and there is nothing for you to invoice or chase.
So: set it up now, or wait?
Set it up when you announce your opening date, which is usually four to six weeks before you open. That gives you time to get your schedule and packs right without pressure, lets people book the first classes the moment you announce them, and means your client list starts in the right place instead of being migrated out of a phone six months later.
The only reason to delay is cost, and that is the reason we removed.
Set your studio up in under an hour and pay nothing until your clients start paying you.
Start for freeCommon questions
- Can I take bookings on WhatsApp when I am starting out?
- You can, and plenty of studios do for the first few weeks. It stops working at around twenty regulars: you lose track of who paid, you double-book spots, and you have no record to migrate when you eventually move. It is a reasonable bridge and a bad destination.
- What happens if I set up and then do not open for three months?
- Nothing, and it costs nothing. There is no contract, no card on file and no trial clock. If your studio takes no money in a month, you pay us nothing that month.
- Do I need my own Stripe account?
- Yes, and connecting one takes about two minutes. It matters because it means you are the merchant of record: payments land in your account in your name, refunds are yours to issue, and we are not sitting in the middle of your money.