Acuity Scheduling for Yoga Studios, Personal Trainers and Fitness Classes

Why studios and trainers book on Acuity

Yoga and Pilates studios, personal trainers, dance schools, martial arts and sports clubs all sell the same mix: classes, private sessions, packs and memberships. Acuity handles every one of them on one booking page, with capacity limits, waitlists and automatic payments ^[1]. It suits small and mid-sized studios best. This guide is for independent instructors, boutique studios with a few teachers, personal trainers, dance and fencing schools, and sports camps. Large gyms with hundreds of members should compare a full gym suite, because Acuity leaves out the access control and branded app those businesses rely on.

Which plan a studio needs, and what it costs

Acuity charges per account and caps calendars, so the count of instructors and locations that take bookings picks the plan ^[2]. A solo trainer fits Starter, and the yoga page says the Starter plan is built for solopreneurs. A studio with two to six instructors, or one that sells packs, memberships and gift certificates, needs Standard. Seven to 36 instructors or locations need Premium. Most studios land on Standard. Starter costs $192 a year on annual billing. A trainer selling packages and memberships needs Standard at $324, still one account price, and texts carry no extra fee.

What a small studio pays

Three instructors and two rooms fit Standard at $27 a month on annual billing, because rooms become resources, not calendars. Premium at $49 a month adds the AI assistant and more calendars. The software is a small line in a studio budget. A studio running 12 classes a week with an average of ten students at $25 takes in about $3,000 a week, by our arithmetic, so Standard's yearly price is a fraction of a single week's class revenue. A second location adds calendars and possibly resources. Standard covers six calendars and Premium 36, and one weaving studio opened its second location on the same system.

Building the timetable

Classes and capacity

A class has a maximum number of participants, and the default is eight ^[3]. Classes can be free or paid, and when one fills, it closes to new sign-ups. Set capacity to the room, not the default. A studio with twelve mats that leaves the maximum at eight turns away four students per session, which at $25 each is $100 a class and about $5,200 a year for one weekly class, by our arithmetic. You can also hide how many spots remain, for classes, services or both. Some studios show low counts to create urgency, while others hide them to avoid empty-looking classes. Look busy does not apply to classes unless it is set to 100%.

Series, recurring classes and privates

A class series sells a course as one booking at one price for all sessions, and clients see the full schedule and are enrolled in the whole series. Series close once the first class passes, so courses, teacher trainings and camps fit here. Recurring weekly classes are added to the calendar once and repeat, which one writing teacher says takes seconds and handles admin for months. Private sessions run alongside classes as regular appointment types with their own length and price, and staff can book recurring privates up to 52 times for a client. One limit matters. Clients cannot book recurring appointments from the classes template, so weekly regulars use packs or memberships instead.

The classes template, and when students book

The classes template lists sessions by date for studios whose public offering is all classes. It requires every public appointment type to be a class and no packages on the general scheduler. Mixed studios use the monthly template. When you plan the timetable itself, Acuity's fitness data helps: weekday bookings peak around 6:00 PM and weekend bookings around 10 AM, Tuesday is the most popular day and March the most popular month. Lunch-hour bookings rose 38% year over year. A studio adding classes should test a noon session before another early-morning one, because that is where demand is moving.

Instructors, rooms and locations

Give each teacher a calendar so clients can choose between them during booking. Teachers can sync their Acuity calendars with personal Google, iCloud or Outlook calendars, and each instructor sees their own schedule in the app. Contributors without calendars can manage records. Rooms and equipment are handled as resources: reformers, mats, courts and lanes can all be resources, each group class uses one resource while it runs, and resources stop two classes from claiming the same room. Locations work the same way. Calendars with the same address group together on the scheduler, and a New York weaving studio runs two locations with different calendars for each.

Workshops and online classes run on the same account. A workshop is a one-off class or series with its own price and capacity, and one dance studio sells private event tickets through Acuity. For virtual classes, Zoom, Google Meet or GoToMeeting create the link, and all class attendees share one link. The yoga help page suggests Zoom and GoToMeeting for teaching remotely. Above 100 video meetings a day, Acuity advises another provider than Zoom.

Selling packs, memberships and drop-ins

Packs and memberships

Class packs are where studio revenue gets predictable. Acuity tracks remaining classes automatically. A ten-class pack at $200 works out to $20 a class against a $25 drop-in, by our arithmetic, a saving large enough to move regulars onto packs while the studio collects the money on the first day. Memberships charge automatically and need Stripe or Square. A studio with 60 members paying $120 a month collects $7,200 every month before a single drop-in, which is why memberships decide whether a small studio covers its rent in a slow month. For a student who comes twice a week, that $120 membership costs about $14 a class, undercutting both the pack and the drop-in.

Drop-ins, intro offers, gift certificates and coupons

Drop-ins are a single paid class. Acuity's own study found Pilates drop-ins average $27.60 in Seattle, the best value among its top ten cities, and in Atlanta most studios offer introductory deals. A first-class coupon or a cheap intro pack converts trial visitors. Gift certificates for classes or privates sell from the booking page, and holidays drive most sales. Coupons can be limited per client or in total, only one code applies per booking, and package coupons can stack a discount on an already discounted pack. Keep promotions simple. Price privates higher than group classes, and show the pack saving on the booking page.

Keeping classes full: prepayment, policies, reminders and waitlists

Most studios take full payment for classes at booking, and Acuity can also require deposits. A dog training center says requiring payment at registration made a real difference. Prepaid students show up. Cancellation policies are presented and accepted at booking, and a pottery studio uses online payment to hold people accountable for canceling before 24 hours. Set a limit and a policy checkbox, and late cancellations then forfeit the class credit. Text reminders come with Standard and above, alongside email confirmations, and one text per class is free on Standard. A dog agility school sends weekly class reminders to keep multi-week series full.

Waitlists fill the gaps. For a reformer class with eight machines that usually fills, a waitlist that texts the next student when someone cancels keeps every machine paid, which over a year of weekly classes recovers dozens of empty spots. The limits are specific. Class waitlists work per session, not for a whole series, and cannot be enabled in the app, while push alerts work only for service waitlists. Parents and friends can also book several spots in one class, and each spot can be canceled separately. Family classes need it.

Forms, waivers and student notes

Intake forms collect experience level, health history and preferences, and you attach them per class type. Asking about injuries, pregnancy and experience level lets an instructor plan modifications before class starts. Waivers are the gap. They need a third-party signature tool, linked from the form, because a simple checkbox cannot cover the legal side on its own. Camps and youth programs lean on the same setup: class series for weekly terms, and intake forms that collect emergency contacts and allergies from parents. Client profiles keep the full class and session history, so instructors can check a student before class, and notes record modifications and progress.

At the front desk and on the go

Students pay online through Stripe, Square or PayPal, and the front desk takes drop-in payments in the Admin app with Tap to Pay or a reader in the US. Subscriptions need Stripe or Square, and receipts go out automatically. The iOS and Android app comes on all plans with push notifications for new bookings and cancellations. One surf school owner runs the business from the beach on it.

Getting found is mostly about links. A QR code by the door books next week's class and works on all plans. Connect Facebook and Instagram so followers book from your profile without leaving social media; one dance studio's Instagram link goes straight to its scheduling page. ClassPass sync pushes your calendars, services and availability into ClassPass, and its bookings appear in Acuity. ClassPass fills spare spots at a lower rate. It is a third-party integration.

How it fits each kind of studio

Yoga and Pilates

Yoga studios combine drop-ins, packs, memberships, workshops and teacher trainings, and Acuity covers each with capacity limits and waitlists. Large membership studios may want a branded app elsewhere. Reformer studios need resources for the machines and strict capacity, while mat classes run larger. Pilates is growing fast. Acuity's study estimates 12.9 million Pilates participants in the US, mat Pilates bookings grew 114% year over year, and higher-intensity formats grew 27%. In the most saturated city there are 35.6 studios per 100,000 residents, so a new studio should expect to compete on intro offers and booking convenience from its first month.

Personal trainers

Trainers sell privates, multi-session packages and subscriptions, with custom discount codes. Saved cards cover no-shows, and the app tracks session notes and rescheduling on the go. Starter or Standard covers most trainers. A trainer with 15 clients on twice-weekly sessions books about 1,560 sessions a year, so selling sessions in packages of ten and saving cards for no-shows matters far more to income than any difference in software price.

Dance, martial arts and sports clubs

Dance studios sell class cards, privates, workshops and event tickets, and classes can carry different prices for children and adults. At The LOFT New York, owner Donie Burch says "The feature that saves me the most time is the packages feature" about running her studio. Big Apple Ballroom sells any five group classes for the price of three, an effective 40% discount. Fencing, martial arts and swimming clubs book recurring lessons and group sessions; belts and grading need other tools. Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club, with about 150 students, cut admin time by at least 10 hours a month. "With Acuity, we booked 5 months of lessons in 2 hours. Not 2 hours a month. Just 2 hours" is how the club puts it.

Where Acuity falls short for gyms

Acuity has no access control, branded member app, payroll or commission tracking ^[4]. Its waitlists are per session, and its membership tools are simpler than gym suites. Small studios rarely miss these. A gym with door access control, hundreds of members and a branded app would need several extra systems around Acuity, which is when a dedicated gym suite becomes simpler, even at several times the price. Mindbody starts at $79 a month per location and adds a client app and marketing. WellnessLiving appears on Acuity's own list at $69 a month, and Square Appointments handles classes and is free for one location. Our Acuity vs Square Appointments comparison covers that choice.

Teacher pay is manual. Reports show appointments, revenue and tips by instructor, plus intake answers, and package value is spread across the classes used. To pay teachers, you export appointments by instructor to CSV and multiply by your rate; studios with complex pay rules need payroll software. Imports take files of up to 500 rows, and packages cannot be imported, so honor old packs by hand when you switch. Back up monthly.

A five-day setup plan, and the mistakes to avoid

A yoga studio can go live in a working week, then test a booking from a phone. The most common mistakes are leaving capacity at the default eight, selling packs without expiration, using the classes template and then wanting recurring bookings, forgetting waitlists, and running memberships through PayPal, which cannot store cards. Each one costs students or money. For seasonal timetables, temporary hours and overrides revert on their own when they end, and class series fit seasonal terms. The full walkthrough lives in our guide on how to use Acuity Scheduling.

• Day one: class types, capacity and instructor calendars.
• Day two: the timetable and recurring classes.
• Day three: packs, memberships and drop-in prices.
• Day four: Stripe or Square, policies and waitlists.
• Day five: forms, reminders and social links.

The bottom line

Acuity fits yoga and Pilates studios, trainers, dance and sports schools that want classes, packs, memberships, waitlists and online payments in one affordable account. It lacks gym access control, payroll and a branded app. For studios with a handful of instructors, Standard is enough. Before you buy, answer a few questions: how many instructors and rooms you have, whether you sell classes, privates or both, whether you need packs or memberships, whether you need a branded app or access control, and whether you sell on ClassPass. Those answers decide between Standard, Premium or a gym suite.