6 Squarespace Scheduling Alternatives for Class-Based Studios

Squarespace Scheduling is Acuity Scheduling now, and Acuity is built around appointments rather than recurring class rosters. Before you shortlist anything, run the 3-Number Quote: your bookable calendar count, your monthly active clients, and your monthly card volume. Those three numbers, not feature checklists, decide which of the six alternatives below is genuinely cheaper for you.

Disclosure: Zatrovo publishes this blog and sells studio-management software, so we compete with the platforms below. We have represented every competitor as fairly as we can. Pricing is taken from vendor websites as of 2026-08-19 and linked below.

Is Squarespace Scheduling still its own product?

No. Squarespace has folded its rebranded scheduling product back under the Acuity name, so the tool you are shopping against is Acuity.

Squarespace bought Acuity in 2019 and for several years sold a rebranded version to Squarespace customers. The Help Center now routes scheduling articles to Acuity, and the Acuity pricing page is the authoritative source for what your account costs. Nothing broke for existing accounts, but it changes how you shop: comparison articles written against "Squarespace Scheduling" feature lists are stale.

The practical detail most owners miss is the plan gate. Acuity's tiers are counted in bookable calendars, not clients: one on the entry tier, up to six on the middle tier, up to 36 on the top tier. Text reminders, memberships and packages do not appear until the middle tier. If you run nine instructors on a six-calendar plan, you are not slightly over. You are on the wrong plan, and the schedule will fight you every week.

What breaks when a class studio runs on appointment software?

Appointment tools model one client meeting one provider. Class studios model one instructor meeting 22 people, with a waitlist, a credit ledger and a substitute teacher.

Here is the specific failure most operators hit. On appointment logic, a 6:00 am class with a 12-hour late-cancel window means the real cutoff is 6:00 pm the night before, and members do not think in those terms. They cancel at 9:00 pm, get charged, and email you at 6:30 am. On class logic you set the window per class type, so early-morning sessions can run a 6-hour window and evening sessions run 12.

The other break is the waitlist. A waitlist that only notifies is not a waitlist. You want auto-promotion with a hard stop: promote from the waitlist until 2 hours before start, then freeze it and release remaining spots as walk-ins. Promoting someone 15 minutes before a 6:00 am class produces a no-show and an angry text. Test that timing rule in a trial before you commit.

Demand is not the constraint. The Health & Fitness Association reports roughly 81 million US fitness facility members in 2025, up about 5.2% on 2024, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 12% job growth for fitness trainers and instructors from 2024 to 2034. Your roster is going to get bigger, which means your calendar count is going to get bigger.

How do you price a switch before you shortlist anything?

Run the 3-Number Quote first. Write down bookable calendars, monthly active clients, and monthly card volume. Every vendor prices on one of those three.

Bookable calendars means people who need their own schedule. Vagaro's own definition excludes front desk and admin staff, which is worth reading carefully, because studios routinely over-count and quote themselves an inflated price. Monthly active clients is TeamUp's unit, and it counts a person once per month regardless of how many classes they take. Card volume is the unit that matters for any platform charging a percentage.

Write the three numbers on one sticky note before you take a single demo call. When a salesperson asks "how big are you," give all three. It cuts the demo in half and it stops you being quoted against the flattering number.

Which six Squarespace Scheduling alternatives are worth a trial?

Six platforms cover the realistic range for class-based studios, from flat-fee simplicity to multi-location. Published pricing differs enormously in structure, not just in amount.

Sources for the table: Punchpass, TeamUp, Momence, Arketa, Mindbody and Vagaro. If you want the Acuity-specific teardown rather than the studio-wide view, we cover it separately in our Acuity Scheduling alternatives breakdown, and Arketa gets its own treatment in our Arketa alternatives comparison.

How do the pricing models compare for a 12-instructor studio?

Take a real shape: 12 instructors on the schedule, 240 active clients a month, $38,000 a month running through the card reader. The published rates diverge sharply.

Punchpass's top published tier is about $149 a month, flat, whatever your volume does. Acuity's top tier is about $49 a month on annual billing and covers up to 36 calendars, so 12 instructors fit comfortably. Vagaro's ladder starts at about $23.99 for a single bookable calendar and climbs with each one added, so a 12-instructor roster sits near the top of it. TeamUp bands its pricing by active customers, around $189 a month in the 101 to 200 band, so 240 clients puts you on the next band up.

Now the percentage plans, using their own published rates. Momence's free tier carries a platform fee of about 5%, which on $38,000 is $1,900 a month. Its mid tier is about $60 with a fee of about 2.5%, which is $950, so $1,010 all in. Its top tier is about $199 with no platform fee, roughly $800 a month cheaper than the free one. Arketa's published solo plan is about $49 billed annually with a transaction fee of about 3% on top of Stripe, which is $1,140 on the same volume; studio tiers are quote-only, so get one in writing.

What should you test in the trial that a demo will never show?

Run the Friday 6:00 Test. Book your busiest real class, fill it, overfill the waitlist, then break it deliberately and watch what the software does.

The procedure takes 40 minutes. Recreate one actual Friday 6:00 pm class with its real cap. Book it to capacity using test clients. Add four to the waitlist. Then, in order: cancel one booking 90 minutes before start and confirm the waitlist promotes and sends; cancel one 30 minutes before and confirm it does not promote; swap the instructor and check whether the confirmation email that goes out names the substitute; mark two people no-show and see whether the credit is consumed or refunded.

That last one is where platforms quietly differ, and it is the setting your front desk will argue about for a year. Also check what the no-show creates on the client record, because the whole point of tracking it is feeding your at-risk member detection later. A no-show that leaves no trace is a no-show you cannot act on.

How do you migrate class packages without giving away money?

Use the Two-Ledger Migration. Package credits and recurring memberships are different objects with different failure modes, and mixing them in one spreadsheet is how studios lose revenue.

Ledger one is outstanding package credits: client, credits remaining, original purchase date, original expiry date. Import them with the original expiry dates. The common mistake is letting the new platform stamp everything "expires 90 days from import," which either hands back credits people had already run out of time on, or clips credits they paid for last week. Both generate emails you do not want.

Ledger two is active recurring memberships: client, amount, next bill date, payment method on file. Ask your outgoing and incoming platforms, in writing, whether stored card tokens can be transferred between processors, and give that request 10 business days. If tokens cannot move, you need a re-entry campaign, and re-entry is where you leak members, so plan it like you would plan an abandoned checkout recovery sequence rather than a single announcement email.

Cut over on the 8th of the month. The 1st billing run has cleared, the mid-month run has not started, and you have a clean window to reconcile.

What happens to your Squarespace site and booking links?

Nothing, if you plan it. Your Squarespace website and your scheduling tool are separate purchases, and you can change one without touching the other.

Every platform on the list gives you a hosted booking page plus an embed you can drop into a Squarespace code block. Keep the marketing site exactly where it is. What matters is the old links: your booking URL is sitting in two years of confirmation emails, your Instagram bio, your Google Business Profile and probably a printed window sign. Redirect the old booking path for at least 30 days, and update the Google Business Profile booking link the same day you cut over, not the week after.

Test the embed on a real phone on cellular data, not on desktop and not on studio Wi-Fi. Booking widgets that render fine at 1440px routinely clip the class time picker at 390px. If you need the schedule pulled into a custom page or a member app instead, that is an API question, and it is worth reading how booking API integrations actually work before you assume your chosen platform exposes one. On Acuity, custom API access sits on the top tier.

How do you keep auto-renewals compliant during the switch?

Auto-renewing memberships are regulated, and the rules moved recently. A billing migration is exactly the moment a sloppy cancellation flow becomes a legal problem.

California's AB 2863 applies to contracts entered into, amended or extended on or after July 1, 2025. It requires cancellation in the same medium the member used to sign up, an annual renewal reminder for annual agreements, and notice between 7 and 30 days before a price change takes effect. Several other states, including Colorado, Minnesota and New York, have tightened their own automatic-renewal statutes.

Federally, the picture is unsettled rather than relaxed. The Eighth Circuit vacated the FTC's click-to-cancel rule in 2025, but negative-option marketing is still enforceable under ROSCA and Section 5 of the FTC Act, and the agency has signaled further rulemaking, so check the FTC's current guidance rather than a 2025 summary. Practical translation for a studio: if members can join online in 30 seconds, they need to be able to cancel online, and "email the studio and we will get back to you" is the flow that gets you a complaint. None of this is legal advice, so run material changes past your own counsel.

When you migrate, treat any change to price or terms as an amendment and send the notice. Do it 14 days ahead, in writing, with the new amount stated in dollars.

What does the front desk actually do in cutover week?

Run a T-14 / T-7 / T-0 / T+7 runbook and put it on paper at the desk. Cutover fails at the counter, not in the database.

T-14: export everything from the old system and store it somewhere that is not the old system. Clients, attendance history, outstanding package balances, active memberships with next bill dates. T-7: run both systems in parallel for one week, booking every class in both, and reconcile the head counts on Sunday night. Any class where the counts differ is a configuration bug you found for free.

T-0: cut over on a Tuesday, never a Monday, and never before a holiday weekend. Staff two people at the desk for the first evening block. T+7: pull the no-show and failed-payment lists and work them by phone, not email. Call no-shows within 2 hours of the missed class, not the next day, because the reason is still fresh.

Print a one-page card with the five things the desk does most: check in, book, cancel, sell a package, fix a failed payment. Five steps each, no more. If your team runs treatment rooms as well as classes, the same runbook applies with different vocabulary, which we cover in beauty studio scheduling.

Which alternative fits which kind of studio?

Match the platform to your dominant unit. Solo and small teams should optimize for flat fees; growing rosters should optimize for calendar economics; multi-location should optimize for reporting.

If you run under six instructors, sell mostly packages, and want the bill to be the same every month, Punchpass or staying on Acuity's middle tier both hold up, and Acuity is genuinely cheap at around $27 a month on annual billing. If you run courses, terms and progression-based programs with a large roster, TeamUp's active-customer model is honest about what you are buying. If you are a yoga or pilates studio with heavy on-demand content, look at Arketa, but get the studio tier quoted in writing because the published solo price is not a studio price.

If you are multi-location with a marketing team, Mindbody's marketplace is a real acquisition channel and the reason people pay for it. If you run classes alongside treatment rooms or a retail counter, Vagaro's per-calendar model can be cheap, provided you count only staff who genuinely need their own schedule.

The wrong reason to switch is a feature you saw in a demo. The right reason is one of the three numbers moving: you crossed a calendar tier, your roster outgrew your plan, or your percentage fees passed your subscription cost.