Pricing
$199 a month. Flat.
One price per studio. No per-student tiers, no per-staff seats, no SMS surcharges, no branded-mobile upsell, no Stripe markup. The math is the marketing.
- Unlimited students
- Unlimited staff seats
- Branded mobile app — no $1,800/year add-on
- SMS included — no per-message billing
- Stripe Connect on your own account — no 1% middleman
- Owner dashboard, front-desk homepage, parent portal — one system, not three logins
- Recital seat sales + costume distribution — no spreadsheet reconciliation
- Sub-coverage routing + auto-freeze workflow — no more chasing subs by text
- Email + push + in-app + SMS, one composer
- All features as we ship them — no upgrade tiers
Why in-house wins
Run your studio without it running you.
Every studio owner we’ve talked to describes the same pattern: the software promises to save time, then quietly hands it back — a parent ledger that doesn’t match what you see, a “auto-pay” that isn’t automatic, a branded app that’s really someone else’s product wearing your logo. One flat price only means something if everything it covers actually works together.
“The way the parent transactions look on their end looks nothing like what I see on my end... nothing is in order... it causes me the biggest amount of parent confusion, conflict.”
Mike, studio director — Pirouette discovery interview — 2026-07-03
“On DSP, it doesn't actually auto-pay... we have to go in and hit a button that says auto-pay and it will charge everybody... anybody who already prepaid, it charged them twice.”
Mike, studio director — Pirouette discovery interview — 2026-07-03
“When a parent registers for a class from the comfort of their home, they have to automatically pay... when they come to the front office and I manually put them in, it says payment is not due until the start of class.”
Mike, studio director — Pirouette discovery interview — 2026-07-03
“The reporting structure in DSP is awful. It's impossible to know anything in there.”
Mike, studio director — Pirouette discovery interview — 2026-07-03
“On DSP, when you click on menus, you don't know where you go. You can never get back to where you came from — you have to just keep going forward.”
Rick — Pirouette demo feedback — 2026-09-12
“I know that we're paying all those extra fees. So if I had everything included for a price point of $250, I know it's value and reasonable.”
Mike, studio director — Pirouette demo feedback — 2026-09-12
From public reviews
“Parents can not easily set up auto pay! ...collecting money as easy as pressing a button. This is not.”
January W. — Capterra review of Dance Studio Pro — 2022-12-22 source
“The fact that customers have to make an account before selecting classes to enroll in ...was a barrier that ultimately made us leave the platform for our child/teen classes.”
Cassidy P. — Capterra review of Dance Studio Pro — 2024-12-12 source
“With payment processing if clients use a bank account it automatically says it's been accepted...most of the bank account's were denied and the money was removed without any notifications.”
Gabriella V. — Capterra review of Jackrabbit — 2026-03-26 source
“The inability to tie and schedule fees to classes is a challenging one for us and would be the reason we would ever leave.”
Darylle J. — Capterra review of Jackrabbit — 2026-05-21 source
“We will be switching to another service.”
Andrea D. — Capterra review of The Studio Director, after a 3-week billing breakdown — 2024-06-06 source
“The organization outgrew Studio Director.”
Miranda O. — Capterra review of The Studio Director — 2024-03-28 source
“The cost is out of line with the overall value and functionality it provides. For example, there is a new app that can be used with the software, however it can only be used if your company uses their payment processing, not just the gateway.”
Doug L. — Capterra review of iClassPro — 2019-10-01 source
“They will try to lock you into using them a credit card processing provider at fees that are not so competitive.”
Ryan S. — Software Advice review of iClassPro — 2021-01-15 source
What you’re actually paying for
Every dollar, accounted for.
What’s included, what costs extra, and who actually built it. No demo call required.
| Pirouette | Dance Studio Pro | Jackrabbit | The Studio Director | iClassPro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mobile app(2) | |||||
| Who builds the app | Native, in-house | In-house (standard apps) | Outsourced — Mobile Inventor | Outsourced — Mobile Inventor | In-house |
| Branded app cost | Included | Extra — $69/mo + setup + your own Apple account | Extra — ~$58+/mo | Not published | Extra — ~$202/mo |
Pricing structure(2) | |||||
| Pricing model | One flat price | 3 tiers | 6 tiers by size | 8 tiers by size | 3 tiers |
| Feature paywalls | |||||
Communications(4) | |||||
| Automated call reminders | Included | $0.10/call (Robo-Dialer) | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Email broadcasts | Included | Free (Robo-Mailer) | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Push notifications | Included | Free (Robo-Push) | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| One composer for every channel | Not published | Not published | Not published | ||
Recitals & events(1) | |||||
| Recital/event ticket sales | Included | $1/ticket (Ticket-Pro) | Not published | Not published | Not published |
Messaging(1) | |||||
| 2-way SMS included | Unlimited, included | Elite tier only | Not published | Not published | Never included |
Payments(3) | |||||
| Processor | Stripe, your own account | Stripe, DSP's own rate | Jackrabbit Pay | PaySimple | Native processor |
| Extra fee to keep your own account | None | +1.35% tech fee | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Markup on processing | $0 — pass-through | Undisclosed* | Undisclosed* | Undisclosed* | Undisclosed* |
Figures pulled from each platform’s own pricing pages, September 2026. Where a platform doesn’t publish a rate, we say so instead of guessing.
*Vertical-SaaS platforms typically retain a 0.3%–1.0%+ margin on processing (2026 industry benchmarks) — none of the four disclose their own number, so we don’t either.
Want the full story behind a row? Pick a competitor for the full teardown.
Cost estimator
See what you actually pay today — fees included.
That advertised price is rarely the whole story. Messaging, a branded app, card processing — they add up, and most platforms don’t show you the real total until you’re already locked in. Tell us what you’re on and how much tuition you collect, and we’ll show you exactly what you’d pay — using each platform’s own published rates, not guesswork.
What are you on today?
What do you pay for Dance Studio Pro today?
Elite — $165/mo
Monthly tuition you collect
$8,000/mo
~100 students, at the industry-average tuition rate
Dance Studio Pro
$602/mo
To match what Pirouette includes free
- Subscription
- $165/mo
- Branded mobile app (MyApp-Pro)
- $91/mo
- Keep your own Stripe account (DSP tech fee)
- $108/mo
- Card processing — Stripe-powered — DSP's own negotiated rate1
- $238/mo
Texting — 3,000 texts/mo pooled studio-wide, then $0.02/msg (Robo-Texter)3 — not in the total above.
Pirouette
$461/mo
Subscription + processing, combined
Pirouette subscription
$199/mo
Flat, per studio, per month — includes the branded app, unlimited SMS, call reminders, email, push, and recital ticketing. No per-student or per-staff surcharges.
Card processing — Stripe2
$262/mo
You’d save $141/mo — about $1,690/yr. Plus everything lives on one screen — no separate app for texts, email, calls, and push.
- 1 Software platforms on Stripe Connect typically retain a 0.3%–1.0%+ markup over their negotiated processing cost as a revenue line (2026 vertical-SaaS payments benchmarks) — not a platform-specific disclosed figure. Processing rates can also change over time; some competitor customers have reported rate increases via account notices — confirm your own current statement for your exact rate.
- 2 $0 Pirouette markup — Stripe’s own rate passed through at cost. We don’t resell processing as a revenue line.
- 3 Texting/SMS overage is the platform’s own published rate, shown for reference only — not multiplied into the total above. No dance-studio or comparable- industry benchmark exists for how many texts a studio actually sends per student per month, so estimating a dollar impact here would mean inventing a number. Pirouette includes SMS at every studio, no per-message billing.
- 4 Estimates only, from each platform's own published rates as of September 2026, matched to the tier/add-ons needed for feature parity with what Pirouette includes by default (messaging, branded app). Dance Studio Pro, Jackrabbit, The Studio Director, and iClassPro figures are independently sourced from their own pricing and payment-processing pages; "Something else" uses a typical-incumbent estimate. Your actual bill depends on your plan, add-ons, and negotiated processing rate.
Pricing questions
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We'll walk through your current bill, your DSP migration timeline, and what the cutover week looks like.