Zen Planner reviews

Very Helpful Customer Service!!!

Opmerkingen: Zen Planner software has enabled our company to introduce a program to our customers in a seamless fashion. Their customer service was vital in helping us with this process.

Pluspunten:

The software is very slick and versatile!

Minpunten:

There was a lot to learn that I wasn't familiar with.

Perfect for managing a martial arts studio

Opmerkingen: I was really impressed on how well they understand how martial art schools work. The software takes into account everything you need to keep your school running - from scheduling out classes students reserve for, to taking payments and setting up merchant accounts, to desk check-in software, to students having their own portal to track their membership and status. Customer support was very helpful during the onboarding.

Pluspunten:

You can tell this software was designed for martial artists. One of my favorite things you can do is designate belt rankings to students, and design your system in a way that when a student is ready to test for the next belt, whether its the amount of time they've been training with the studio, to achieving certain skills required, Zen Planner notifies you and helps you plan belt testing. I loved that they recognize how important it is for martial art schools to know where students rank. I was able to plan out all my belts, what skills are required and minimum of time with the school they need to have to test. Most gym software don't recognize all the small nuances that martial art schools need to track where their students stand.

Minpunten:

The apps for desk login can be a little buggie sometimes and require an update or reset the iPad to get the software to work.

Used it for three years - feature rich but hard to use

Opmerkingen: We switched from Mindbody to Zenplanner and used it for three years. Zenplanner is chock full of features (other than membership discounts, as mentioned above), but it's so full of features that it becomes clunky and hard to use. I could do just about anything from my admin account, but my fellow coaches who spent less time in it had a harder time working with it. Customers also struggled a lot. We have now switched to Upper Hand, and while it has fewer features and the reports aren't as good, our customers are actually booking their own classes instead of making me do it.

Pluspunten:

I was the primary account administrator, and I could fix just about anything retroactively. Once you really know your way around, it's got almost everything you could think to want. There are a lot of customization options for emails you can send your customers, and it was easy to check which emails an individual had opened. The reports were great. Best reporting I've seen, and it's pretty much the only thing I'll miss. Support was good - very responsive, with multiple ways to contact them. I also appreciated the discounts they gave businesses at the start of the COVID shutdowns.

Minpunten:

The software was very difficult for customers to use, so much that about half of our parents (and a couple of our coaches) just wanted me to do everything for them. Doing so on my end was time-consuming. Zenplanner offers some options to integrate with our existing website, but it didn't work in every circumstance. What customers could do from our primary domain was pretty limited, and it wasn't easy to switch back and forth between our site and the ZP site. Zenplanner does not offer automatically-applied membership discounts, so we had to have customers use offer codes. Membership discounts (such as on retail or private lessons) are pretty standard in fitness businesses and not having that option was a major pain. There was no way to easily see which coaches had availability at which times.

Finally Found the Right System

Opmerkingen: This software has made this much more simple and allowed us to enhance our customers experience in our facility!

Pluspunten:

-Set up was detailed step by step process and had video reviews that our staff could go back to -Customer service is the best that we have seen -Hotline always has a person you can talk to (have answered every question we have had and has taught us how to solve the problem should it ever come up again) - Hotline is available 7am-7pm -Email (you can send a detailed email and have it answered within one business day) - Our on-boarding assistant fallowed up with us after a month to make sure everything was running - Has easy quick reporting - Great schedule (imbeds into website so you do not have to leave company page) -Great point of sale (imbeds into website so you do not have to leave company page) - Mobil app is simple for customers and makes scheduling simple

Minpunten:

online mobil site cannot work with out cookies which most smart phones automatically disable so we needed to send out an email with instructions on how to enable them

You can't beat their support team!

Opmerkingen: I am love the people at ZP. There isn't one person I've come in contact with that hasn't been helpful, positive, encouraging, understanding and cheerful. I went to their office because I was starting a new program and wanted help with the set up of the program and the membership. They set me up with one person to be my helper that day. Now what company will do that? I can tell you that no other software company I've used would've offered me that. Also, love the Zen Academy. I learned about so many more things the software could do for me that I wasn't either using or doing in a google spreadsheet . So now ZP is helping me save more precious time and I'm learning more about my business in the process. Thank you reports and automations!

Pluspunten:

Honestly, their customer support! However, I don't have to call often as the on boarding team set me up wonderfully to begin with. But the support articles answer almost all my questions so I don't have to call. I am a small studio and don't have a front desk staff but ZP does it all for me (well, allows my clients to do it all for me). It is super easy to use on all fronts.

Minpunten:

I have't run into anything that I don't like. I use ZP on my laptop in a web browser and I've found it confusing to try the staff app on my phone or tablet. This old dog struggles with learning new tricks :) So we can't blame ZP for that.

Poor Tech Support during COVID-19 Crisis

Opmerkingen: Up until the COVID-19 crisis, we were big fans of ZP. However, since the crisis began their Tech Support team has been dismissive and unhelpful. This comes at a particularly bad time for us because we are building a new website and our web designer needed to have a phone conversation with a "live" staff member. ZP has refused to do so, which leaves us in a very had position because our designer could easily make technical errors that will cost us a lot of money to fix in the future. When we consider that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, we had almost always been able to get through to ZP’s Tech Support within 2 days, we can only assume that the company is now experiencing significant internal difficulties. We don't have an answer to that question because ZP has not offered any explanation as to why its Tech Support has plummeted. For this reason, we are currently considering switching to a ZP competitor. Finally, like many in the fitness industry, ZP might be going through a tough time right now. If they had simply been candid with us, we might have been willing to overlook this situation as an aberration. As it stands, however, they don't seem to care that they've left us in a bad situation and their is no ed in sight.

Pluspunten:

Zen Planner is intuitive and easy to navigate. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, it's Tech Support staff were professional, knowledgeable, friendly and available by phone from Monday to Friday. We were generally able to get through to Tech Support within 2 days.

Minpunten:

Before COVID-19, we probably called ZP's Tech Support once or twice a week. beginning on or about March 16, 2020 it became impossible to reach Tech Support. We're currently encountering the following Tech Support experience challenges from ZP: (1) We have a question or problem and call ZP Tech Support. We wait on hold for 10 or 15 minutes. A recorded message instructs us to leave a voice message and ZP will call us back. (2) ZP does not call us back. (3) We email ZP with our request, but ZP’s email response is never fast enough to be of use. Then, when we finally get an email answer, it is often unresponsive.

Customer support is outstanding

Opmerkingen: I'd give it a B- on a grading scale. The customer support is outstanding but any time you want to go beyond just keeping track of how many students you have, things become way too complicated.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Keeps me organized

Opmerkingen: I'm not the most organized person and doing all admin, billing as well a coaching my clients, Zen Planner helps to keep the back end of my business organized and running smoothly. The automations are great if they're set up correctly. Their customer support is amazing!! Not much waiting time and my issues are always resolved. When I started, they're pricing was pretty competitive. Although, they've gotten much pricier over the past year.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Amazing

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

Excellent product with futures that are practical, easy to use, and visually appealing

Opmerkingen: Endless , independence and function. Being a small business owner it allows me to run and automate many things such as financial reports, workouts, attendance. Reservation, automations of emails for customer retention , sales funnel , customer support, technically forward thingkong woth use of apps for iPad and iPhone to allow me to function on the run , away from the office, in the field, and manage coaches.

Pluspunten:

I love zenplanner. They started out with few features and no apps but they promised to improve regularly and they deliver. In the short 4 years I have been using they have incorporated a staff app for the iPhone, a users app to reserve, keep track of workouts , PRs, billing and much more. an app for the front desk to use as checking in, reserving, adding new clients at ease. On each of these products they improve and incorporated new needed features faster than any software I have ever used. Their customer service is truly second to none. Helping you not only in the set up stage but anytime you need help and they work to resolve your problem immediately. The software not only is packed full of great functions for financial, workout writing and publishing, emailing automation, reports of attendance, finances , and mass email intervention but it does it with a sleek appearance that is not only visually appealing but with an easy of use that it's simple and powerful.

Minpunten:

Software is still growing and some features , not many anymore, can be improved. This is truly the worse thing I can think off as I have tried many many others do never been so satisfied and impressed with them delivering a great product and on a regular bases truly adding features to improve it without making it more complicated for the user.

Worst customer service possible

Opmerkingen: Zen Planner is absolutely the worst. I decided to go with a different program and half way through the porting process we thought it would be simpler to simply stay with Zen Planner. Nope, they never called us back.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Zen planner does an ok job

Opmerkingen: Would not waste my time with this software, they don't deliver on their promises, invent fees to access your data, don't follow through with their support. It took me 3 months to get them to finish my cancelation as they kept sending emails to students saying they owed because their payments failed AFTER I switched to another system. Very unprofessional and rude.

Pluspunten:

It was quite a bit less per month then any of the other software I checked into at the time. It did an ok job for doing parents nights out.

Minpunten:

On the surface it looks like it will do a good job but in reality it is buggy, poorly implemented and just didn't deliver on the promises it was supposed to.

Best Customer Service On The Planet

Opmerkingen: Sanity.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Workhorse

Opmerkingen: zenplanner does exactly what you need a CRM tool to do most, it manages your current customers. Sure it integrates well for other uses such as lead capture, retail purchases, payroll, etc. Bit what I love is that it never fails at what we really need it to do, allow our service to be used by our customers, collect payments and evaluate customer data, allowing us to retain more members.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

It's significantly lacking in options for subscription membership software.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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...

Best Customer Service I ever experienced

Opmerkingen: I run all my programs, classes and appointments. I also use it to bill my customers and record all my expenses. It is a perfect solution for a gym of sport facility, we are a fencing club with over 100 active members.

Pluspunten:

It covers all my needs, but the best part of it is the Customer Service. They helped me for every step over the implementation and they have always been available over the 3 years I have used the SW to solve all my questions. It is not only about issues but also about functionality questions. They are super friendly and useful.

Minpunten:

The SW is very good, sometimes I would have preferred a few things to be organized differently but it is not a good deal.

The best customer service crew on the planet!

Opmerkingen: Every (and I mean EVERY) time I contact customer support, I am astounded at not only the response speed, but in the quality and thoroughness of the help I get. Their support techs are incredibly helpful and friendly. I am always blown away at the level of service and support I get from them.

Pluspunten:

I like that it is very easy to set up and use. From the daily dashboard to the automated messages and prospect funnel, the system is set up to save time (and $$). The website integration is also very easy and I have yet to discover the limits of their robust reporting system.

Minpunten:

That there is so much available that I probably only use a small percentage of its functionality.

Outstanding customer service as always.

Opmerkingen: It helps me automate and streamline my systems and processes. I only wish it had the capacity for me to plop in all my expenses. Then, It would be golden! I would be able to replace my accounting software and have everything all in one place.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Ok but not great

Opmerkingen: I can do a lot with this software. Apparently does everything that Front Desk offers in their middle tier of pricing - for half the cost. I manage staff payroll and reserving classes, too. I can do analytics and reports. They have always been very nice on the phone (if unable to help.) On the down side, it's buggy and painfully slow. Plus it doesn't work very well on mobile, either for clients, coaches, or the business owner. My athletes often say they can't reserve class on their phones. Everyone wants to do everything on their phones but ZP does not accommodate this! The workout tracking was painful to use - they keep adding features like this but I wish they would just make the ones they have work better. Their much vaunted software improvements were a disappointing thin skin over the same stuff. Despite my annoyance I have learned to work around the bugs and stuck with them for many years. I will probably continue to wait for software improvements. Not a ringing endorsement by any means, but the software is functional and the price is right.

Customer Support

Opmerkingen: Customer support is why I'm writing this review. Everyone I have talked with has been so respectful, patient, professional and knowledgeable. Plus, quick to resolve any issue I was having.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

Way less complaints than other owners

Opmerkingen: It’s been positive. It’s better than previous software, I’d like more, but from other conversations I’ve had and things I hear about other apps I am not sure that there is much better.

Pluspunten:

It’s makes a lot of sense to use. Some things aren’t obvious necessarily at first, but once you get there it all makes sense.

Minpunten:

It feels pretty limited in reporting. Not because it actually is, but more because the options for them are too specific. Workout tracking is kind of a joke. It hasn’t been updated since it premiered and it’s not “fun” for members to use at all. We’ve since switched workout tracking to sugar WoD.

Needs a better app

Pluspunten:

Support team is great, and really helps in the on boarding process. They are very fast in response time and give many options for helping solve situations.

Minpunten:

Scheduling ahead of the current week is a little confusing. The calendar keeps jumping back to the current week whenever a new appointment is added ahead. Also cannot add appointments within the day. A little confusing and not the most efficient. The app is terrible. No ability to schedule clients (at least as far as I have been able to do) and is pretty overall useless to me.

Zen Planner...SMH

Opmerkingen: As someone who isnt great in the deep magical world of computers...Zen planner was supposed to make things easier.
My first appointment... the person was late for the on boarding (teaching me how to use software). They were also late for the second on but notified me this time.
There were small billing issues and the support I recieved to correct situations was beyond useless.
The relationship ended by them canceling my account out with only an email and refusal to get on the phone with me to explain themselves.
This sounds disgruntled ... I know. There are a few people I know who have had the same experience.
The company has a great base but didnt personally deal with me very well. My gym will close now because I have no way to bill my customers that dont come in daily

Pluspunten:

The concept is good

Minpunten:

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

Payroll is terrible - that's a HUGE part of my job that I am now doing manually!!!

Opmerkingen: Switched from MindBody in October and I wish I hadn't. Mind body was unwieldy and cumbersome, but I could do everything I needed. Mind body is easier to use by my clients and it's great for collecting money, but it's TERRIBLE for doing payroll. I have a martial arts school and fitness center. We also do private training. I am now having to figure out private training by hand and I am still struggling to accurately pay my fitness people from NOVEMBER because I can't run the reports I would like. I don't pay out on pre-purchased packages until the classes are used, and we pay our staff on a per person rate, and there is literally NO WAY I can get an accurate report for this. So it's great for managing clients, and the client portal is good, and I can easily collect money, but after that, it's absolutely useless. I've called them about it and I've basically been told that yes, payroll is awful, no, there are no immediate changes to this, but hopefully if enough people complain they'll make it a programming priority.

Frustrating, super buggy, unfulfilled potential with good customer service

Pluspunten:

The customer service reps are very nice and helpful. Unfortunately you will get to know them on a first name basis.

Minpunten:

This is the buggiest software I have ever used. There is always something going on making what you can potentially do a hassle. It actually increases what you have to do relative to not being able to use the functionality and having to constantly call in to customer support. Not to mention having to put out fires with your members when the bugginess effects them.