Zen Planner - Avis

I left for about four years because I felt like the software was missing some integral parts for my business.

Now I was needing something different and looked at Zen Planner again. The​ changes they have made over the past four years has been amazing.

This is not a company that sits idle and is content with the status quo

The system is a little complex but I believe it's more to do with the novelty of it and all of its features.

What I liked most about this software was the amount of things that it can do to not only help manage the numbers but keep the clients engaged and happy. I am also always amazed by the competence of the customer support team who I have called several times with questions I thought would be complicated but were not to them! I really appreciate this software and I really think my customers do again. I would recommend to anybody in the martial arts industry!

I couldn't think of anything in particular that I didn't like but if I had to say something it would be that I wish it would be more engaging with my actual website. The thing is that it probably can, I just don't know how to yet.

At first the software fit most criteria's that our business needed. They had great integration to our existing merchant. Great membership customization, billing, customizable charts, and belt promotion system.

Software had a bland, early 2000's look to it UI. Very outdated. Our member's portal lacked tons a features and many of our members disliked having to go into their app to setup or alter anything. Signing up a new student or trial lesson through the tablet was a mess. It lacks customization and the overall UI would not work well with our tablets. We reverted back to having our student's sign up on paper and later be added manually to the system through an administrator. Completely eliminating our paperless needs. I can keep going on about their very weak waiver system, email templates, customer support and lack of any regular updates, however, the overall reason we had to let go of the software as a whole was that they no longer supported our existing merchant. At the start of it all they were fine with us keeping our existing merchant. They charged a small $20/monthly fee for "maintenance" which I guess we were fine with paying. However, after a year or so of using we received a noticed that they were completely removing the option of us keeping our existing merchant unless we wanted to pay more than double our existing overall monthly bill. Not only were we not satisfied with the software, we were being charged more than double to keep it.

Overall we would not recommend this software. It seems as if the team behind it has lost heart for the program and isn't keeping up with the competition.

We like that we can track student count/growth, attendance, belt ranking, finances, and appointments all in one place.

The calendar is not easy to use and often leads to errors if you don't follow certain steps.

1) Ease of use;
2) Customizability;
3) Professional;
4) Excellent customer support.

1) Features to engage individual athletes.

This product can be customized in many ways to meet the specific operation of your business. The interface is slick looking and makes good use of screen real estate. The interface is fast and responsive. The universal search button lets you get to what you need quickly.

The mobile app features are quite lacking. Although it is customizable in most ways, there are some ways it is not, and when you mention these to support, they can't fathom why you'd want that. There is a feedback option to submit feature requests, and they always reply to them, but it seems the dev cycle is VERY long.

Reporting. It's easy. The front page overview of each member. I can quickly see the data I need. Love the alerts, notes and tasks. Very useful. Love the ability to email a template to a set of members with a click of the button. The configuration of the software is good. The help files are pretty good. I have found a few broken links - and some explanations seem to be a bit outdated. Love the dashboard. Love the ability to click in and get the relevant supporting data.

I wish "students" was changed to "members". It confused the hec out of our staff (who are 98% volunteers). I would like to see the support tickets be answered with the original support request data. There is no place for me to see what ticket number was written for - so if the email thread contained the original text - it would be easier. The new "Z" in the bottom right hand corner is always in my way. I have to make an effort to not touch it. When you have a LOT of members (>350) it's a pain to always click people or students - and do show all. I'm panicked about using keytags for this many members- but we need to track all usage of our fitness center and classes.

Great for keeping track of students, Billing and tracking ranking for all students, contact info for all prospects, email to all in database with different filters

Difficulty of getting proper fields to be in a report. Difficulty working with different age group migration (student moves to new group, conflicts and mistakes happen) Pricing is getting a bit high, gone up 50% in 2 years with no major improvements or features, and during covid, limited and slow response time for customer service, but....higher prices...

The customer service is stellar. Everyone I've spoken to is smart, friendly and efficient. [SENSITIVE CONTENT] did our transition to GAINS payment processing and I couldn't have asked for more warm, knowledgeable and efficient support. Her follow-up with me has been outstanding.

It's not great for use with membership under 18; we do a lot of programming for children and need a way to have both parents as primary email contacts, need a way to communicate both with parents and with the 13-18 year old group. Grading (movement between programs and belt levels) is difficult.

Could just be me not being computer savvy but it’s a pretty steep learning curve. It’s not intuitive at all imo but the customer service is excellent. It’s so good that’s why I keep ZP..without it I would have to find something else.

It’s too hard to use. Constantly need customer support which is fantastic

We are opening a brand new Jiu Jitsu academy and this has been a whole new experience for us. I’m not very computer savvy, but EVERYONE at Zen Planner has been so helpful and made this so easy for someone like me. I’m very happy with this company.

I have had nothing but good experiences with Zen Planner!

For existing members, once you have gone through the lengthy set up process, it processes payments automatically for you, but making changes is very difficult. It is easier to just use the payment gateway provider directly and use a manual system to track it.

They did have financial reporting - but I found them to be more trouble than they were worth, but I am a Chartered Accountant and might just have standards that are above minimalistic offering available on Zen Planner.

It is extreemley difficult for parents to book classes for their kids, especially for more than one child, for more than one day - as the calendar defaults to the parent -with no classes as they don't have a membership. They need to change to the first child then click on one class then reserve a place, then go back to the start for the next class & child.

Also for automations to work the child needs an email entered, and you can't use the same email as the parent, or link them to the parent. Apparently this change is too difficult as many members asked, but they won't fix it. When the automations don't work, parents think there is an error and start another registration, which creates many duplicate records in the database. Manually combining them, updating profiles, and manually sending the "automated" emails takes more time than just doing it manually.

The skill tracking system is also very badly designed, it is almost unusable, and takes a huge amount of time to enter if you want to record results against all the skills a martial arts student needs to know in a single session, such as a grading or pre-grading. Members can't even see what skills they need to pass if no results are previously entered, or a summary of their skills.

The service. I don't call in often but if I need help it's always there.

Changing password info every 3 months is my biggest gripe.

I love the easy to use back end and the app is something that my students absolutely love - it is so easy for them to book into classes. Plus it is great being able to do pay reports for my teachers through the back end.

I am a big fan of Zen Planner but I have to say the payment platform with who they partner with is absolutely terrible. EasyDebit/PaySimple really let's Zen Planner down with exorbitant fees, delayed processing (then they charge a big dishonour fee to my customers) and an archaic user interface. I really think it's time that Zen Planner ditched EasyDebit and switched to Stripe or another payment gateway with more reasonable fees, immediate processing and an easy to use app that makes for easy refund of customer money if needed.

Also can't make the reports as specific as I would like - e.g. see income per month for a specific income category which is frustrating.

I have used this program at 3 crossfit facilities and have enjoyed it for viewing WODs, signing up for classes, and storing workout information and PRs. I enjoy the leaderboard feature and the support you can give your gym mates.

I wish you could add features like workout videos for various exercises that are scheduled. I find some gyms do not utilize all of the features correctly, and that can make the app rather pointless. If you are not using this app to sign up for classes, log workouts, not using the leader board feature, you really aren't getting your money's worth.

This software makes it easy to track membership history, but the BEST thing about Zen Planner is their customer service. They're friendly, they answer fast and they ALWAYS know how to fix an issue.

Zen Planner is quite an advanced system, so it is easy to get lost. Luckily, the customer service is always there to save you (except for holidays and off-hours of course). The app sometimes crashes. It could use an update.

THAT IT MAKES MY JOB EASIER BY AUTOMATING PROCESSES

DOESN'T HAVE ALL THE FEATURES I NEED. ALSO TOO HARD TO LEARN ALL THE FEATURES SO I'M NOT MAXIMIZING IT'S FEATURES. THERE ARE LIMITED ON BOARDING SESSIONS SO WHEN THEY STOPPED, SO DID MY LEARNING

It does help you run your fitness business much more smoothly. I couldn't imagine running a gym without some type of software like this.

Very steep learning curve with all of the features - almost too many. I'm 5 years into using it and still learning new things I can do with it. It was very overwhelming when I started using it. The app is also pretty bad, although they do update it with new features.

It's ease of use. It is laid out in a simplistic format that is easy to navigate.
The customer service team is outstanding. They always go above and beyond to ensure my satisfaction with the platform.

The lack of text feature but that has now been rectified for Cdn customers.
The only other less than desirable thing about the platform is the tiered billing. Personally, I truly don't see a need to have different billing if I have 50 students or 75. It should be one flat rate straight across.

I liked how wonderful, helpful and prompt the customer support was. I found them very easy to talk to and easy to get ahold of.

I was calling customer support daily, I took over the business from someone else who left a very messy zenplanner for me to sort out. That could be the reason I was constantly calling, but another reason is that some of the features that I thought could have been easier to use were not. I ended up switching to a different system because we were having a lot of issues with the money, one time zenplanner held our money for 2 months, when we finally found out why, the process to reclaim that money was ridiculous.

Zen Planner has a lot of good features. Billing, client tracking, scheduling, and integration into our website are all pretty smooth.

As a gym, we cannot select which members see what programming. Example, if we have 2 different programs available, all members can see both programmed workouts. We have had some inconsistency in emails being sent out. Sometimes emails to our members don't send in a timely manner through their system.

Best Support Team!!! they seriously rock and has helped me trouble shoot all issues I've had over the phone or over quick emails. Anything i didn't know how to do they were super helpful and worked so hard to help me implement their software and making things very easy. Allows me to filter my classes, students and programs very easily. Beautiful Website integration (similar to mindbody but easier to use for customer) Keeps track of how much a client owes me and allows me to create a parole for my employees. I own a Holistic wellness center that does everything from Yoga and martial arts to acupuncture and energy work and zen planner allows us to manage everything smoothly while keeping track of all of our clients with ease. If your looking for a scheduling software i highly recommend this software. Has really taken a weight off my shoulders as a business owner and let me focus on more important thing.

The initial set up of the program is a little difficult, it was hard to navigate through at first but again, awesome support team that explained it very well.
Only other con is that the website integration is a little difficult and not as pretty on mobile.

The concept is good

It difficutl to use cause the training on using it is very laxed

Takes a little getting used to but works as advertised. Once you have it set up, makes day to day operations easy. Able to access on all platforms- PC, IOS, smart phones etc. We are using the virtual class set up to keep our students training during the pandemic.
This is an excellent member database

Not intentionally designed for martial arts studios but they are continually working to accommodate these needs.

Zan Planner makes it easy to sign up for crossfit classes. It is also a great way to edit payment, etc. I like the feature of being able to see who is specifically signed up for class as well. Extra motivation to attend class!

Sometimes it can be glitchy and somehow signs me out of a class I already reserved. It has happened 2-3 times in the past 6 months.