A martial arts school is a membership business with a curriculum attached. Almost all of the revenue is recurring, which makes failed payments the single most expensive thing the software does or does not handle. Almost all of the retention is rank progression, which makes attendance and belt tracking the second. Score those two properly and the rest of the feature list is a tiebreak.
Products martial arts schools commonly shortlist, and what to make each one show you
Not a ranking. Siftvo publishes no score of its own and no vendor pays to be named here. The order is alphabetical and the line after each name is the thing to make that vendor show you in a demo, scored on your own sheet.
- Kicksite: martial arts specific with published pricing: ask to see rank eligibility and the students who have stopped attending
- Martialytics: built around attendance and grading: score the check-in at the door on a busy evening
- Zen Planner: membership billing across gyms and schools: ask for the declined payments queue and the automatic retry sequence
Recurring billing and the dunning sequence
Agreements with a term, autopay on a schedule that is not always monthly, family plans with several students, and what happens automatically over the two weeks after a card declines. Ask to see the declined payments queue and the messages that go out without staff intervention. In a school with two hundred members this one screen is worth more than every other feature combined.
Attendance, rank and the reason people stay
Check-in that takes seconds at the door, attendance counted against a rank requirement, and a view that tells an instructor who is eligible to grade and who has stopped coming. The second half matters more: a student who has missed three weeks is a cancellation you can still prevent, and a product that surfaces them without somebody running a report is doing retention work for you.
Agreements, cancellations and what you promised
Membership agreements signed digitally and stored against the member, a clear record of the term and the cancellation terms, and a cancellation flow that does what the agreement says. Automatic renewal carries obligations about how clearly the terms were disclosed and how easily a member can get out, which is your responsibility rather than the software's, but the software has to make honouring it easy.
Questions people ask about best martial arts software
Do we need martial arts specific software?
The billing is generic; the rank and curriculum tracking is not. If your retention depends on grading, weight that block heavily and a general gym product will usually score badly on it.
What should we ask about failed payments?
Show me the declined queue, the retry schedule, and the messages that go out with nobody touching them. Then ask what recovery rate schools of our size see.
Do you rank martial arts software?
No. No ranking, no vendor score, no paid placement. Score the shortlist on your own dunning and rank requirements.