Choosing Class Registration Software To Make Things Easy For You and Your Customer
Our clients who offer after school classes, camps and other enrichment activities use a variety of class registration software systems. These platforms help business owners manage their class offerings/schedule, registration, students and instructors, payments and more.
Some class registration software is industry-specific, such as MindBody, which is the leader in the yoga/studio industry. Jackrabbit Class is used by many gymnastics, dance and swim schools, including our client, Tom Dolan Swim School in Northern Virginia.
Integration with WordPress
Since these class registration software platforms are proprietary, they run on their own servers. This means that the interaction between the customer who is registering and paying for classes does not happen on your website, but on your account pages on the class registration company’s website. This is a pro and a con. On the pro side, you can be sure that the provider’s systems are set up to handle secure transactions and to handle traffic spikes and customer management. This saves you development and maintenance costs. On the con side, this means the data is not fully yours, since you do not control the servers. If the provider goes out of business, the site goes down, or they triple their pricing, you are stuck and can lose your data.
It is possible to display some class information on your website. Since we specialize in WordPress websites, we work to integrate this information into WordPress websites. Some providers have WordPress plugins, which create an easy connection between your website and the class management website. Others provide some code you can embed in your website to display classes. In some cases, custom development using a connection called an API allows the customization of data, as we have done for Tom Dolan Swim School.
When the Register button is selected, the user is then taken to the Jackrabbit website to complete the transaction. The user needs to create an account on that site or login to their existing account.
Upcoming Reviews of Top WordPress-Integrated Class Registration Software
We have done some testing to compare different class registration and management software systems, specifically those that offer easy integration with WordPress to create the best user experience.
In the coming weeks, we will share our results to help you choose the best option for your organization if you are looking for a class management solution that will work well with your website.
We will review:
Are there other providers you would like us to review? Let us know and we’ll check them out for you and compare them to others.
Signup for updates in the form on the upper right to be notified when we release our first review of Sawyer Tools soon!