Zen Planner Reviews

Pros

Great features, allows you to build features as you like, great tracking on clients.

Cons

Not intuitive to use - difficult to navigate features.

Pros

I love how simple this software made it to do everything our yoga studio needed. It was also user friendly for our students. We love it overall.

Cons

I do wish there was a cheaper option for small studios just getting started.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Customer support really is top notch. The on boarding team is fantastic and truly went out of their way to ensure we had every available resource for success. Any little quirky issue or question we have is answered quickly and professionally by the customer support team. They are fantastic.

Cons

The basics are great but it seems to go from "ok to use" to "I have absolutely no idea what to do here" the minute any complication arises. There does not need to be a "staff user" and a "kiosk mode" on the Ipads, it confuses everyone and wastes a lot of time. Converting reports to pdf feature should be a breeze, but doesn't convert the entire report and is useless. It should have a much easier pos system as well. No real way for instructors to leave notes for students, why not? Never use the mass email or text because its just too complicated-these things can be fixed if they gave it some attention.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zen Planner

Pros

Having automated billing, emails and scheduling. Being able to pull billing reports at a moment's notice to see where my finances are is a plus.

Cons

Having so many options for reports and automations. It can be very confusing at times and sometimes having two steps to accomplish a task isn't clear.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zen Planner

Pros

I really didn't like anything about it. It was overly complicated, redundant and the same glitches existed for years.

Cons

It was hard to maintain an idea of what our client base actually was. Some clients were counted twice. We had to check 3 different areas to make sure our billing was going through.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Zen Planner

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Zen Planner

Pros

Cost for sure, ease of use, the user experience for client is also very simple.

Cons

I can't say there are any other "cons" - If i'm being nit picky they could give a bit more time towards automatic PDF invoices. Some of their invoicing procedures don't have a simple suer experience.

Pros

I have been using Zen for 10 years. The program is so easy to use & I am always finding new things to do with it.

Cons

When creating reports for attendance or payment history for a client, I would love to have our business name show at the header.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Zen Planner

Pros

It makes it simple to manage the most important tasks at my gym without over complicating things.

Cons

a few auto emails could improve/be added

Pros

I found nothing but problems. The only useful thing I found for this, but yet it was very difficult to work, was the ability to add knowledge pieces to a person, per individual rank.

Cons

I don't even know where to begin with this company. The POS system is crap. It's very difficult to do discounts on anything. Their front house version of their software is crap. Their customer service is terrible, they basically tell you that there isn't a way to do what you are asking. Mind you, I'm not asking things that are really random, but things that most martial arts school owners need to do.

Then when you cancel, they require a 30 day notice and then steal one more month of cost but don't give you any service for that last month.

Pros

Send Planner really easy to use and their customer service team is great

Cons

Its comparability with SugarWOD compared to push press

Pros

Reporting is excellent, the best I've seen. I like the fact you can create your own reports. After learning how to use the system we have been able to create any reports we need. That is definitely not the case for Mindbody or Wellness Living. The Kiosk application is nice to have and our clients like it, but needs some improvement. The Front Desk and Kiosk Applications are easy to learn which is helpful as we have 10 teachers at the center.

Cons

The POS system does not work like all other online systems (choose what you want, put in user info, payment info then press complete or check out and credit card is charged), and works differently in their different interfaces. The Front Desk software does not allow for discounts (that is being addresses in a future release). The Dashboard processes the sale, then you have to process the payment separately in a different step. In the beginning we lost sales because our staff was confused. Many of my teachers are still unsure whether a sale goes through or not. When the Front Desk application can accept accept discounts and credit card swipes it will greatly improve the POS process.

The client kiosk does not include a form for entering info for new clients and signing a waiver. For some strange reason that is on the staff side of the application. We keep it on the staff application but it means after a client signs the waiver they could get to a screen that offers a free class, which we do not actually offer. I have a hard time understanding why that is baked into their software, it is not considered a best practice. We have found work arounds for these issues but would like to see an updated and more robust kiosk application.

The automated emails are very good and it integrates with Mail Chimp. You can also implement a retention process with tasks assigned to different people.

Pros

I can't think of anything I liked about it at this point.

Cons

The app for customers and employees was awful.

Pros

The software is easy to use and features important tools that simplify the operations of a company, such as integrated payment processing

Cons

Difficult to access the software on a mobile

Pros

Have been with Zen Planner since 2015, it is very user friendly. Costumer service was not bad up until something started to go wrong.

Cons

Unfortunately they have some flaws that for some reason sometimes they multiple charge my students or don't charge at all. It will happen once in a while and when that happen, their customer service become very slow and dismissive, they will send you to the processor and the processor will send you back to them. For instance, now, I have been asking to talk to a supervisor for days and they simply don't call and when I call to reach someone no one is ever available. It is very unfortunate because as I said the system is very user friendly, but they are not trust worth.

Following up:
Zen Planner gave me notice of cancellation after I refused to remove this review. Based on the problems I have had with them, I already had in mind and was searching for a more reliable system. Unfortunately I was forced to do it rushed, I have been trusting all my billing transactions and contacts to Zen Planner, and this transfer process does take a long time. one of the supervisors dealt with this situation very unprofessionally, focusing on make me remove my review rather then fix the real issue, treatned a few times and finally just gave me notice. I have never seen this before... I can't stress enough that you can't trust such important information for your business in such hands.

Pros

The customer service and ease of use, especially that everything you would essentially need is included with ZenPlanner, unlike MindBody or Triib. It's also cheaper because of PaySimple's merchant integration and I don't think most fitness businesses need the add ons that MindBody has and that you would pay for. I think being a good business owner, setting clearly defined roles and tasks for employees, and making sure they do them will lead to more sales than a email/text bot from MindBody.

Cons

I think the client facing side of signing up for memberships could be a little easier, for instance: you can't have a ACH only membership option, you do need an iPad or computer of which to then use ZenPlanner's Front Desk for, but I do know ZenPlanner is teaming up with PaySimple to possibly release a device to use instead of an iPad or computer.

Pros

How easy it is to use. Customer service is very accessible.

Cons

this is not applicable to me. There is nothing to dislike.

Pros

Reporting capabilities are immense allowing us to evaluate our business’ performance metrics and understand exactly what to focus on improving.

Customer service is the best out of any service our business uses.

Cons

It is very hard to learn how to use on your own. But, if you take the initiative to ask for help and training, the staff will teach you and save you hundreds of frustrating hours.

Pros

Zen Planner seamlessly integrates everything we need as a gym. Although there are still key features we would like, what is there works well and allows us to keep all customer data and interactions in one place, which makes our life easier. Perhaps most importantly, best customer service on the planet. No matter how small an issue, they respond immediately. And when we recently had an ENORMOUS problem, that was totally our fault, our rep worked on it over the weekend for us. He saved our sanity, and thousands of dollars. I can't imagine that kind of service anywhere else.

Cons

My only real gripes are things that don't exist and need to. I would like my members to be able to purchase retail items and check-in using their app. Both of these features exist in the staff app, but not the member app. Also, I would like an option to NOT have a gender field at registration. I find the gender binary pointless and it's offensive to our trans and nonconforming clients.

Pros

I went through their entire onboarding process and with each session discovered more and more things that did not work. At best they have nice color schemes to pick from... No one's selecting their software for the color schemes, so that is essentially the biggest pro there is to Zenplanner.

Cons

Extremely limited in use. You can't have more than one 'drop-in' on an account, you can't take a deposit for an appointment without becoming a member, you can't attach a waiver to an appointment despite the variety of appointments that may exist from a gym to a yoga studio to all the other 'fitness' businesses they boast being able to manage. You can't have a group membership, therefore every single person--children included have to go through a ridiculous process of that is in no way streamlined. It can't differentiate in membership options. The list goes on and on. Basically, they hired a good marketing company and told their sales team to 'make the sale' no matter what... The needs we stated for our business was simple and we were assured that Zenplanner could perform them. Going through the onboarding process was like repeatedly being told "no it can't do that" and "oh sorry, no it can't do that either". We ended up canceling before we even started and then they refused to refund the inital payment AND to the real treat: CHARGED ME FOR AN ADDITIONAL MONTH despite the fact that I had clearly been unhappy with the product. The point being they could care less about your satisfaction and so once you sign up--they've got you...

Pros

This software is easy to learn, implement and user friendly. Super easy integration and the customer service is outstanding! They are regularly updating and upgrading features and respond positively to feature requests and feedback. Easily have the best software on the market in my industry and I'm not sure why more people do not choose Zen Planner.

Cons

Some minor limitations such as color typology features on the mobile app have been limited and app functions such as calendar syncing and calendar default settings restricted.

Pros

Easy to use, support always available...

Cons

Some functionality is not perfect for our use. As an example, only one events registration page.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The customer support that comes with the software is so essential. While there are many features, the customer support team helps to navigate through it all. One can tell this team is efficiently trained because they do not skip a beat when it comes to walking you through the system.

Cons

So many features can be overwhelming. The webinar offerings are a good idea to tackle that obstacle.

Pros

It was a very cheap cost to have the application run so for that it was very good since the cost of the gym was so high.

Cons

It was very early in in the development so the functionality still seemed to be very basic from the UI point of view.