Class Manager or DanceBiz: Which Dance Studio Management Software Is Better for Your Studio?
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6 min read
Struggling to decide between Class Manager and DanceBiz for your dance studio management software? Both handle scheduling, enrolment, registers, invoicing, and parent messages. However, they are laid out and used differently.
The single biggest difference: DanceBiz is a program you download and install on your computer. Class Manager runs in a browser tab.
The short answer: Class Manager suits studios that want the system on any device with nothing to install, one app for staff and parents. DanceBiz suits studios that want a phone number answered by a person, that teach a lot of siblings, and that are happy running admin from a desktop.
What Is Class Manager?
Class Manager is class management software that runs in your browser. There is no monthly subscription, no per-student cost, just easy-to-use software to support your business. The only charge is 2.7% + 20p on payments taken online. Cash, cheques and bank transfers can be recorded manually in the system and cost nothing.
Because it is browser-based, there is nothing to install and nothing to update. Skill tracking, Chats, student notes and attendance are all part of the base product. Staff and parents use the same free app, signing in with one login that opens the right view for whoever they are.
What Is DanceBiz?
DanceBiz is made by ThinkSmart Software, an Australian company founded in 2007. They say it is trusted by over 2,000 businesses worldwide, and they sell into Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. British studios get prices in pounds and a UK landline, which their Australian origins might not lead you to expect.
Their pricing works differently from almost everyone else's. You pay by customer rather than by student, and they explain why in plain terms: a school "may have 200 students in total, but have 150 customers because many parents have multiple children receiving classes". For a sibling-heavy dance school that can drop you a whole tier. No other platform we have looked at prices this way.
They are also well liked. DanceBiz scores 4.7 out of 5 from 87 reviews on Capterra UK, with sentiment recorded as 99% positive.
Class Manager vs DanceBiz: How They Compare at a Glance
Class Manager charges no subscription and takes 2.7% + 20p on online payments, with everything included. DanceBiz charges £31.90 to £113.85 a month depending on how many customers you have, and eight features are paid add-ons with no published price. Both cover the daily work of running a dance school well.
Factor | Class Manager | DanceBiz |
|---|---|---|
Best for | Studios wanting no installs, one app, and everything in the price | Sibling-heavy studios that want phone support and are happy on a desktop |
Pricing | Free, no monthly subscription | £31.90–£113.85/month by customer count |
Setup fees | None | None, and data import is free |
Transaction fees | 2.7% + 20p, all-in. | Not published. Card processing is a paid add-on |
Key features | Chats, skill tracking, notes, attendance, automated billing, class scheduling, Xero & QuickBooks data exports. | Scheduling, skill tracking, event planner, POS, Xero and QuickBooks |
Geographic focus | UK, US, Australia and beyond | Australia, New Zealand, UK, US |
Support | Email, live chat, knowledge base. | Free phone and email support on every tier |
Mobile app | One app, one login, three views. Free | Paid add-on. Fewer features than the desktop version |
The headline takeaway: you can work out exactly what Class Manager will cost you before you sign up. With DanceBiz, you can work out the subscription, and not much else.
Pricing and Cost Structure
DanceBiz runs five UK tiers, from £31.90 a month for up to 50 customers to £113.85 for up to 1,000. Above that, you ask for a quote. There are no setup fees, data import is free, and you get 14 days to try it.
One line sits underneath those prices: "Please note: Some add-on features may incur additional charges." It does not say which features. Their features page does, and the list is longer than most buyers would guess.
Eight DanceBiz features carry the label "This is an add-on feature… Additional charges may apply":
Customer Portal: the parent account for enrolments, payments and absences
Smartphone App: the staff and customer app
Online Class Registration: parents enrolling through your website
Online Bookings: parents booking and paying online
Payment Gateways: Stripe card processing
Direct Debiting: Ezidebit and Worldpay
Texting: SMS to parents
ThinkSmart Check-in App: tablet self check-in, Android 13 or earlier only
No price is published for any of them. Neither is the card processing percentage. A studio that wants parents to book and pay online, and teachers to take registers on a phone, is buying at least four add-ons on top of the tier price. One reviewer put it plainly in an otherwise five-star review: "There really aren't any cons, except the additional cost for text messaging."
What that means for a real school
Take a UK school with 150 customers, around 200 students, taking £60,000 a year online and invoicing termly.
Class Manager: no subscription, 2.7% of £60,000, plus 20p on each of 450 invoices. £1,710 a year, all in.
DanceBiz: the Biz250 tier at £63.25 a month. £759 a year, plus card processing, plus five add-ons.
We cannot finish their sum because they do not publish the missing parts. As an illustration only, Stripe's own published UK rate of 1.5% + 20p would add about £990, taking the known total to roughly £1,749 before a single add-on is priced. That figure is Stripe's, not DanceBiz's, and DanceBiz may charge more or less.
One structural difference worth knowing. We charge per transaction, so a studio taking no payments in August pays nothing in August. A subscription is due whether your doors are open or not.
Winner: Class Manager, for one reason only: you can find out what it costs. On raw price, DanceBiz may be cheaper for a smaller studio that does not need the online extras.
Platform and Access
This is where the two products genuinely part company.
DanceBiz has a download page. You fetch an installer, 20 MB on Windows, 32 MB on Mac, and run it through a setup wizard. Their pricing page says you can "install DanceBiz on as many devices as you wish" and that "automatic software upgrades" are included.
Read those two lines together, and you have the shape of the working day:
Every computer holds its own copy, and each one has to be kept current
Updates arrive as downloads that install while you are trying to work
A new member of staff needs an install before they can do anything at all
The studio desktop and the laptop at home are two separate installations
None of that is unusual for desktop software. It is a category of small interruption that browser software simply does not have.
To be precise about it, since this gets muddled elsewhere: DanceBiz is not offline software. Their data is hosted, and staff can sign in from other places. The difference is the client on the computer, not where the records live.
Class Manager has no installer. You open a browser and sign in. When we ship an improvement, it is simply there the next time you load the page, on every machine at once, with nothing to approve and nothing to wait for.
Because we can imagine there is nothing more annoying than when you log onto DanceBiz with the aim to do one thing, and then have to wait for an update to install. A 5-minute job has just turned into a longer one…
On a phone
DanceBiz's app is a paid add-on rather than part of the subscription, and it does less than the desktop version. Their own customers say so. One vice-principal, writing about the Mac release, added: "It would be good to see the iOS app have the same full functionality as the Mac and PC app." Others describe it as limited, or ask for features the desktop already has.
Their app is also genuinely well liked, and several reviewers call taking registers on a phone the thing that saved them the most time. The criticism is not that it is bad. It is that it is a smaller version of the real system, and you pay extra for it.
Class Manager is one app, one login, three views. A teacher, an admin, and a parent all download the same free app and see what belongs to them. There is no second app to install and no wrong app to download by mistake.
Winner: Class Manager. Nothing to install, nothing to update, and full access from whatever device is nearest.
Features and Functionality
Scheduling and enrolment:
DanceBiz includes a visual scheduler, make-up classes, waiting lists and an event planner that reviewers repeatedly single out at concert time.
Class Manager handles term and season scheduling, waitlists, trials and sibling billing, with timetables you can copy from term to term.
Billing and payments:
Both automate invoicing and chase what is owed.
Class Manager bills termly, monthly, weekly, or per class, and takes Apple Pay and Google Pay. As well as offering a shop to purchase from.
Attendance and skill tracking:
DanceBiz includes skill tracking in its base price, with printable progress reports for parents; so does Class Manager. Class Manager also has a self-check-in kiosk feature, where families can self-check in for classes.
Communication:
DanceBiz includes email on every tier and charges extra for texting.
Class Manager includes Chats, one-to-one in either direction, group and broadcast messages filtered by class or season, with push notifications and AI-suggested replies, at no extra cost. As well as a range of email templates, automated emails and email communications.
Class Manager vs DanceBiz: Which Should You Choose?
Go with DanceBiz if you want a person on the end of a phone more than you want anything else, if you teach a lot of families with two or three children each, or if your parents enrol on paper and you have no plans to change that. Their base tier is cheap, their support is better evidenced than ours, and 87 reviewers rate them higher than ours rate us.
Go with Class Manager if you want to open the system on a laptop at home, a desktop at the studio and a phone in the car park without installing anything. If you would rather your parents book and pay online without that being a line item. If you want to know the whole bill before you commit, and no bill at all in the months you are closed.
The question underneath all of it is a simple one: how much do you want to know what you are paying before you start? We publish one number that covers everything. They publish a subscription and eight features that cost more than it says on the tin.
Ready To Make The Switch To Class Manager?
If moving over sounds like the right call, our team can walk you through it and bring your existing data with you. Book a demo and we will show you the parts that matter to your studio, or create a free account and have a look around yourself.
Still weighing it up? Our guide to the best dance studio software in the UK puts six platforms side by side on real, checked prices, and our dance studio software page covers what the system does for dance schools specifically.
