Martial Arts Industry Directory
Martial Arts Professional
The industry directory: the companies martial arts schools, BJJ academies and MMA gyms buy from, covered editorially — what each one charges, how it charges, and what to check before you sign. All seven categories are now published.
What this is
Almost every “best software for martial arts schools” comparison on the web is published by a software company. The same is true of billing, insurance and marketing services. That is a gap in the trade press rather than a scandal, and it is what this directory exists to fill: the same comparisons, published by the journal instead of by a competitor, with the method and the disclosures on the page.
Nothing here is ranked or scored. The right vendor depends on your student count, your programme mix and what you already run, and a directory that pretends otherwise is a sales asset wearing a masthead.
Categories
School management software
Eight platforms with published pricing and the five pricing models they use, the two long-established platforms that publish nothing, and what GoHighLevel, Keap and HubSpot cost a school that runs a general business platform instead.
Finding: HubSpot Marketing Pro costs more in year one than four years of the most expensive martial arts platform here.
Published
Billing and payments
Six companies, five completely different ways of getting paid, and what actually happens to a failed card.
Finding: the only company publishing a full rate card is the one that was never built for martial arts.
Published
Insurance
The most searched purchase in the industry and the least transparently priced. Who publishes a number, what the cover actually includes, and why one long-remembered name is no longer somewhere a school owner can buy at all.
Finding: three providers publish a starting price. The specialty houses that have written this class for decades publish none.
Published
Marketing, websites and AI ad tools
Ten companies selling websites, advertising and lead generation, the three public price anchors that exist, and the arithmetic for judging a proposal without a benchmark.
Finding: every “AI advertising” product in this industry is a layer over automation Meta and Google include with ad spend.
Published
Uniforms and equipment
Wholesale terms read from fourteen suppliers’ own sites: discounts, minimums, qualifying documents, freight and custom work.
Finding: all fourteen sell the same goods direct to your students, and not one publishes a custom embroidery setup fee or minimum.
Published
Associations and rank organisations
Business associations and governing bodies separated properly: what membership, academy registration and dan certification cost, and which bodies make your registration a precondition for your students to compete.
Finding: the sport federations publish their fees. The business associations mostly do not — including this magazine’s own publisher.
Published
Safeguarding
What the federal statute actually says, where your reporting duty really comes from, what screening and training cost, and the abuse-cover insurance election most owners get wrong. Alongside NAPMA’s Safe Training Environment work.
Finding: the SafeSport Act does not cover an unaffiliated commercial school — which means nobody is setting your standard for you.
Published
How entries are compiled
Every figure is read from the vendor’s own published page on a stated date — never from a third-party round-up, a review site or a competitor’s comparison page. Where a vendor publishes no price, the entry says so rather than estimating one. Where a vendor’s own website refuses automated access, the vendor is named and the gap is stated rather than filled in from somewhere else.
A vendor that will not publish a price is not excluded for it. Earlier editions of this directory required published pricing for inclusion; that rule now governs the comparison tables, while vendors who publish nothing are named in their own section with everything their sites do publish. “Not in the table” has never meant “not worth considering.”
Nothing is ranked, scored or placed first. Readers who believe a figure here is wrong, and vendors who want a term corrected or a price added, should write to the editor; corrections are published under the editorial policy with the date and the change noted. Several entries have already been extended at readers’ request.
Disclosure
No vendor pays for inclusion or for position, and no link in this directory is an affiliate link. Where a commercial relationship exists between Martial Arts Professional, NAPMA or Martial Arts Wealth Mastery and a listed vendor, it is named in that vendor’s entry. Two are currently named: NAPMA and this magazine have endorsed a provider listed in the billing entry, and NAPMA’s own safeguarding work is covered in the safeguarding entry.
NAPMA itself is listed in the associations entry on the same terms as its competitors, and the finding recorded against it there is not a flattering one. A directory whose standard bends around its own publisher is worth nothing.