Martial Arts School Software: What Eight Platforms Cost, the Two That Won’t Say, and the Three Built for Somebody Else
Martial Arts Professional Directory · Software
Eight platforms that martial arts schools, BJJ academies and MMA gyms actually run on, with the price each one publishes on its own website — and, more usefully, the five different ways they charge. Then the two long-established martial arts platforms that publish no price at all, and the three general business platforms a growing number of schools run instead.
Why this page exists
Search for the best software to run a martial arts school and almost every comparison you find is published by a software company. PushPress, Wodify, Gymdesk, Spark Membership and several smaller vendors all rank for the term with their own “best martial arts management software” round-ups. Each one is a real page written by real people, and each one is also a sales asset written by a company that sells the thing being ranked.
That is a gap in the trade press, not a scandal. This page fills it: the same comparison, published by the journal rather than by a competitor, with every figure taken from the vendor’s own pricing page on a stated date and the method published underneath.
What the eight platforms publish
| Platform | Published price | How it is priced | Built for martial arts | What the headline price excludes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kicksite | $49 · $99 · $149 · $199 per month | Four bands by active student count: 0–25, 26–50, 51–100, 101+ | Yes | Annual discount offered on request rather than published |
| Martialytics | From $69 per month | Per active student, with volume discounts as you grow. $69 covers 50 students; leads and inactive students are not counted | Yes | Nothing hidden in the price, but your bill moves every month with your active count |
| Spark Membership | $199 per month ($99 promotional, 12 months) |
One all-inclusive plan, flat regardless of size | Yes | The $99 rate is a 50% introductory offer; $199 is the list price |
| Member Solutions | $99 per month billed annually ($199 monthly) |
Flat rate, explicitly not per member. A higher tier at $399/$499 adds website and digital presence | Yes — martial arts billing heritage | Positioned as a billing and payment-recovery service, not only software |
| Gymdesk | $75 – $200 per month | By active member count, on a published slider. First location included; each additional location $50 per month | No — general gym software, heavily used by martial arts schools | Door access $100/mo, branded member app $100/mo, both optional add-ons |
| Zen Planner | From $99 per month | Base platform plus paid extensions | No — general fitness | Website extension $99/mo, Engage marketing automation $249/mo, branded app $39/mo — all separate |
| Pike13 | $139 · $195 · $249 per month billed annually ($159 · $225 · $286 monthly) |
Three tiers by business size, from solo studio to multi-location | No — general studio and fitness | Annual billing is the cheaper column; monthly costs 15–20% more |
| Clubworx | Free · A$109 · A$149 · A$169 per month | Free tier up to 20 active members, then three feature tiers | No, but martial arts aware — grading events are a A$10/mo add-on | Prices are Australian dollars; grading module is extra |
Take your current active student count and your average monthly student value, then price every platform at that count rather than at its headline rate. A per-student platform and a flat-rate platform cross over somewhere, and where they cross is the only comparison that matters to your school.
Five pricing models, not eight prices
The platforms above do not differ mainly in what they cost. They differ in how they charge, and that determines what happens to your bill as the school grows.
Banded by student count — Kicksite, Gymdesk
You pay a fixed amount inside a range, and the price steps up when you cross a threshold. Predictable, but a school sitting at 51 students pays the same as one at 100.
Per active student — Martialytics
The bill tracks the roster continuously. Fair in both directions: it falls in a bad quarter and rises in a good one. Worth modelling at your twelve-month growth target, not today’s count.
Flat rate — Spark Membership, Member Solutions
One price whatever your size. Expensive for a school of forty; the cheapest option on this page for a school of four hundred.
Base plus extensions — Zen Planner
The entry price buys the core platform. Website, marketing automation and a branded app are separately priced. A school that needs all three is looking at a materially different number from the advertised one, so price the bundle you would actually buy.
By business size — Pike13
Tiers described by the shape of the business — solo, growing, multi-location — rather than by a student number. Read the feature list rather than the label, because the tier boundaries are drawn around features you may or may not need.
The two that publish nothing
Two established martial arts platforms are absent from the table above for one reason: neither publishes a price anywhere on its website. Both are named here rather than quietly omitted, because a school owner researching this category will meet both, and “not in the table” should never be mistaken for “not worth considering”.
ATLAS Martial Arts Software
ATLAS is the software product of AmeriNational Management Services, the Orlando billing company that also runs the AMS tuition billing service, school websites, merchant accounts and the AmsKIDS after-school platform. AMS states forty years serving martial arts schools, and ATLAS describes itself as built by school owners for school owners on more than forty years of school experience.
The feature list is one of the widest published by any vendor on this page: student management and attendance, testing and rank promotion, integrated billing on either a full-service or a self-managed basis, ProShop and inventory, staff management, marketing automation with social integration, a campaign library, lead-generation websites, the after-school platform, and US-based multilingual live support. There is no pricing page and no figure anywhere on the site; the only published route is a demo request.
That breadth is the thing to weigh, in both directions. ATLAS is the clearest example in this market of the single-vendor bundle — software, billing, website, after-school programme and coaching from one supplier. The convenience is real and so is the concentration: the cost of leaving is the sum of all five, not one, and a school owner should establish before signing what an exit looks like across the whole bundle rather than across the software alone. Its billing arm is covered separately in who collects your tuition. This journal does not evaluate the business coaching that ATLAS bundles, for the reason set out in the directory’s standing note on coaching.
Champion’s Way
Long established and specifically built for martial arts, with the smallest search footprint of any platform tracked on this page. It publishes no price either, and on the same basis it is named here rather than dropped.
Nothing about quality — some of the best-regarded products in this market quote rather than publish, and a quote can be cheaper than a rate card. What it tells you is that you cannot compare before you talk to someone, and that your price may not be the same as the school down the road’s. Ask directly what a school of your size pays, and ask whether that is a standard rate or a negotiated one.
The other option: platforms not built for martial arts at all
A growing number of school owners run their front end on a general business platform — a CRM and marketing automation system built for any small business — either alongside a martial arts platform or instead of one. Usually they arrive at it through a marketing agency or a coaching programme that already runs on it. These three publish their prices, and the numbers change the conversation.
| Platform | Published price | What it is actually for | What it will not do for a school |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoHighLevel This magazine’s publisher runs on it — see disclosure |
$97 · $297 · $497 per month ($970 · $2,970 · $4,970 annually) |
Sold to marketing agencies, not to businesses. $97 Starter gives three sub-accounts; $297 gives unlimited; $497 adds SaaS mode so an agency can resell it under its own brand. Unlimited contacts and users on every tier. White-label mobile app is a separate $497/month | No attendance, no rank or belt progression, no testing cycle, no mat scheduling. Most school owners meet it resold by an agency or a coaching programme, in which case the price you pay is that reseller’s, not the one above — ask which you are buying |
| Keap | $299 per month ($2,988 annually) | Small-business CRM, automation and sales pipeline. Two users included, additional users $39/month. 500 text messages and 100 voice minutes included, further messaging tiers from $24/month | Same vertical gap. Keap also states that implementation services are required rather than optional, so the first-year cost is higher than the subscription |
| HubSpot | Free tier · Starter from $20/seat/month list ($7 promotional on annual commitment) · Marketing Hub Professional from $800/month annually ($890 monthly) · Enterprise from $3,600/month | The most capable marketing platform on this page by a wide margin. Free covers 2 users and 1,000 contacts. Professional includes 2,000 marketing contacts and 3 core seats, extra seats $45/month | Professional carries a mandatory one-time $3,000 onboarding fee; Enterprise, $7,000. Nothing martial-arts-specific at any price. The free and Starter tiers are genuinely usable by a small school as a lead CRM |
What the numbers say
Read the two tables together and the picture is blunt. HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional, at $800 a month plus a $3,000 onboarding fee, costs more in its first year than four years of the most expensive martial arts platform on this page. Keap at $299 a month is above every martial arts platform listed. Only GoHighLevel’s $97 Starter competes on price, and that tier exists to let an agency run three clients — it is not designed around a single school.
What the money buys is real, though. These platforms do lead capture, pipeline, email and SMS sequencing, appointment booking and reporting better than most vertical martial arts software does, because that is the entire product rather than a module. What they do not do is know what a belt is. No general CRM tracks attendance against a curriculum, drives a testing cycle, manages a family plan or a freeze, or tells you which students are three classes from a stripe.
So there are three honest positions, and one expensive mistake
- Vertical platform only. Accept marketing automation that is adequate rather than excellent. This is the right answer for most schools under a few hundred students, and it is the cheapest by a wide margin.
- General platform only. Viable for a small school or a startup academy that is mostly selling and has few students to administer. You will outgrow it at the point rank, testing and attendance start costing you real front-desk time.
- Both, deliberately. A vertical platform for operations and a general platform for the funnel, with a defined integration and someone responsible for it. This is what most multi-location operators actually do. Budget for both subscriptions and for the integration work, and be honest that you are running two systems.
- The mistake: buying both by accident — a martial arts platform whose marketing module you have already paid for, plus an agency’s CRM you are paying for again, with student data drifting apart in the middle. Before adding a general platform, list what it does that your current platform genuinely cannot, and check whether the answer is a feature you already own and have not switched on.
What to check before you sign
- Payment processing. The subscription is not the whole cost. Ask what card and ACH rates you will pay, whether the platform marks up the processor’s rate, and whether it takes any percentage of your collected revenue. Martialytics makes an explicit public argument that some competitors do; ask each vendor directly and get the answer in writing.
- Contract length and exit. Monthly, annual, or a term? What happens at renewal?
- Data export. Can you take your student records, attendance history and billing data out in a usable format, without paying for it? This is the single most expensive thing to discover late.
- Bundle exit. If the vendor also supplies billing, your website and an after-school programme, establish what leaving costs across all of them.
- Per-location pricing if you run more than one, or plan to.
- What “active” means. Vendors count differently — leads, on-hold students and cancelled members may or may not be billable. It changes the price materially.
- Mandatory onboarding or implementation fees, which two of the three general platforms carry and none of the martial arts platforms publish.
- Migration. Who moves your existing data, and is it included?
Measured reach
Search footprint is not market share, but it is the only independent measure of scale available without vendor cooperation. These are estimated US organic search sessions per month for each vendor’s own domain.
| Platform | Organic sessions / month | Ranking keywords |
|---|---|---|
| WellnessLiving | 61,526 | 264,650 |
| Gymdesk | 59,827 | 23,246 |
| Pike13 | 17,359 | 8,343 |
| Zen Planner | 11,014 | 10,513 |
| Spark Membership | 7,525 | 2,788 |
| Clubworx | 2,630 | 1,269 |
| Kicksite | 2,259 | 1,063 |
| Member Solutions | 1,371 | 856 |
| Martialytics | 617 | 465 |
| Champion’s Way | 27 | 5 |
Two of the platforms with the smallest search footprints — Martialytics and Champion’s Way — are among the most specifically built for martial arts. Reach and fit are different questions, and a school buying software should be answering the second one.
Methodology
Prices were read directly from each vendor’s own published pricing page — the martial arts platforms on 8 September 2026, the general business platforms on 9 September 2026 — not from third-party round-ups and not from the vendors themselves. Where a vendor publishes a promotional rate alongside a list price, both are shown.
The main table requires published pricing, which is why it runs to eight platforms rather than twenty. Vendors that publish no price are not silently dropped: ATLAS and Champion’s Way are named in their own section, with everything their sites do publish, and the absence of a figure is stated as a fact about the vendor rather than treated as a disqualification.
ATLAS, GoHighLevel, Keap and HubSpot were added at the request of readers. Each was then researched from its own website only and is reported as found.
Search figures are Semrush estimates for the US database, reported as published with their known limitations stated in the table caption.
No vendor was contacted before publication, given advance sight of this page, or invited to review it. Vendors who believe a figure here is wrong should write to the editor; corrections are published under our editorial policy, with the date and the change noted.
This page is updated as prices change. It is a directory entry, not a ranking: no platform is scored, rated or placed first, because the right platform depends on your student count, your pricing model and whether you need the extensions.
Disclosure
One relationship on this page has to be named. NAPMA, this magazine’s publisher, and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, the coaching company founded by NAPMA’s CEO and Chairman, both run their own operations on GoHighLevel and make it available through their programmes. GoHighLevel is listed here because school owners genuinely encounter it, and its row is written to the same standard as every other — including the note that most owners meet it resold by an agency or a coaching programme at that reseller’s price rather than the published one. That is precisely the arrangement being disclosed, and readers should weigh this page’s treatment of it accordingly. No fee was accepted for its inclusion, and neither organisation receives a commission on anything a reader buys as a result of this page.
Beyond that, Martial Arts Professional has no advertising, affiliate or referral relationship with any platform listed on this page, and receives no commission on anything a reader buys. No fee was accepted for inclusion or for position in the tables, which are ordered by pricing model rather than by preference.
The magazine is published by NAPMA, the National Association of Professional Martial Artists, whose CEO and Chairman, Grand Master Stephen Oliver, also founded Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, a coaching company for school owners. That is why this page reports what ATLAS bundles without evaluating the coaching inside it, and why the directory does not carry a business coaching category at all. If a commercial relationship ever exists between any of those organisations and a vendor listed here, it will be named in that vendor’s row.
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The Martial Arts Professional Directory · Who collects your tuition · The martial arts business glossary · Editorial policy and corrections