Sawyer

Vorteile

1. I love that HiSawyer is specific to use for children activities and classes. I tried other booking plugins or websites that were a "one size fits all" (appointments for nail salon or doctor's office) and well... they didn't quite fit for my business.
For instance, HiSawyer allows the possibility to see the age and birthdate of the kids, having an "older sibling discount", adding semesters or multiple locations, specially because our class doesn't have only one location... Bookings are specific for a kid's class, and it's awesome.

2. Very easy to use! All what can be done in point #1, is very easy to set up!

3. Professional look. Some other plugins I had tried before look very outdated and amateurish. I love HiSawyer fresh and professional design.

It's exactly what I was looking for for months until I bumped into HiSawyer.

Nachteile

I really love everything about it. If I had to really look for perfection: it would be awesome if there was an app. It might be just me, but checking it from mobile can be a little bit frustrating sometimes. Nothing out of this world, not bugs or errors, just think about checking social media from a web browser in your phone.

But other than that, I love this!

Vorteile

Sawyer makes my business possible. I need a registration software that is easy for me and is easy for busy parents, and that's exactly what Sawyer provides.

Nachteile

Sawyer would be even more usable if I could sell tickets through it for events. Also, I'd love to be able to integrate Sawyer with Flodesk.

Vorteile

Easy to use for daily tasks and simple setip

Nachteile

Nothing, it works as it should, all the buttons and screens display what should be there and no added or unnecessary information.

Vorteile

Sawyer is easy to implement and their customer service is helpful at first.They might be good if your customers all use the same main stream web browser (whichever one happens to work that day) and they are registering kids for classes without parent involvement or too many details.

Nachteile

There is no option to add a second adult/parent to a family account.The program doesn't work with Duck Duck Go or many web browsers consistently.

Vorteile

The calendar widget interface is the best. I LOVE everything about Sawyer and I also am SOOOO appreciative that they continue to strive to improve and add more needed features.

Nachteile

I want to be able to edit parent info. MANY parent accidentally type in .con on thier email and I want to be able to go edit it quickly.

Vorteile

It does almost everything I need for camp registration, payments, coupons, payment plans, class descriptions, etc.

Nachteile

Very expensive. We are a small non-profit and need the functionality, but the price tag is difficult. In addition, our clients pay $1.99 for transactions. I wasn't aware of this at first. I had some upset customers.

Vorteile

Sawyer makes what we do to keep the business moving forward much easier. They have amazing support and desire to grow their product offering.

Nachteile

The ability to connect to my google calendar is very important but not yet possible.

Vorteile

The ability to set up events for automatic online registering and not having AR at the end of the summer, or at the end of a semester.

Nachteile

Inability to speak with someone, without buying some annual package. Why not offer technical "spot help" for a flat fee per instance? My IT guy can be reached almost 24/7 and he does alot of things over the phone or via remote connect to my laptop for $20 to $100 per whack.

Vorteile

I love that I can add and change my classes and transfer students easily. I also like that I can get paid within 24 hours of my clients purchasing my classes.

Nachteile

I wish I could also add adult classes to my options as well. I also would like to have an invoice option.

Vorteile

Its ease of use. Many concepts make sense. To be able to assign teachers and increase parent communication. *** Please add ability to attach files *** and please *** update your form software for custom forms - it is terrible right now ***

Nachteile

This summer Chefsville had over 30 camps. The normal training schedule for Sawyer didn't allow for us being out working those camps so getting trained was twice as hard for Mollie.

We actually had to test, play and figure it out until she advised us and we could follow.

I still have no idea of what an acknowledgement/registration confirmation e-mail looks like and have customers calling me asking when there next payment is due and what dates our programs are.

I have a great email that I use, but I can't use that when I am trusting your software to do it along with payment receipt.

We still are not trained and know that your software does more than what we know. Mollie has been out and schools started for us this week. So we are having to scramble to find information.

We still need help with our form, our form asks several questions that your profile automatically does. I need to find where and how to get this information, change our form so it asks only one time.

Website Widget - we have no control of it! I had to figure out the coding to modify the short code to show Semesters and not camps. I did ask for help, but by the time customer service got to me, many people passed our programs over because they couldn't see how to register by changing "Camps" to "Semesters". I think your clients need to have more controls on their WordPress.

Vorteile

My customers can learn about all of our programs in one place and register for them easily. I can track registration at a glance and make changes as needed.

Nachteile

Rosters are difficult to read when printed and it's an important part of our camps.

Vorteile

The ease of use and the customer support. I also appreciate the webinars.

Nachteile

The dashboard can be a little difficult to navigate. I do fine now but when I first started using sawyer it wasn't always clear where everything "lived", if that make sense. The website looks great though.

Vorteile

Sawyer is very easy to use and has a great support team. We use sawyer for our non-profit for registration and class management and it is very useful

Nachteile

I think there are some things that can be easier to do however i can always find a workaround.

Vorteile

It handles the administrative and financial aspects of my business.

Nachteile

It can sometimes be a little counterintuitive to use.

Vorteile

The thing I like most about Sawyer is all the information that is accessible without too much effort.

Nachteile

I really have no complaints about Sawyer.

Vorteile

"School is the factory of humanity" said Comenius. So Sawyer is a powerful brick for humanity and progress, evolution because it helps studenta, teachers and educational system.

Nachteile

Nothing like least about Sawyer because is very organized, useful for all categories.

Vorteile

The look of the user interface - everything is on one page with a photo.

Nachteile

We have many glitches which are never addressed. Also, you have to enter each class separately every semester - there is no cloning function. There is customer support but nothing has ever been done about ANY of the glitches or issues we have had.

Vorteile

We love using Sawyer! It is easy to set up our programs and registration for our programs. Parents love the UI and it is optimized for mobile, making it very user friendly and easy to register their children for our programs from their phones. We love that our coaches can easily check rosters from their mobile phones and are able to track attendance. Great product. Excellent support. Highly recommend!

Nachteile

I wish that Waitlisted participants would automatically get notified when a space opens up for a program, so that they could easily transfer from Waitlist to Enrolled and become Registered.

I wish that we could automate a welcome email to participants after they register for one of our programs.

Vorteile

What I like most is the teachers can access all of the students enrolled in their classes, their information in emergency contacts. I like that parents can most of the time figure out how to register online pretty easily.

Nachteile

We had several students want to add or delete days, or change their days attending the preschool. When we made changes, it really messed up the child’s attendance days. It registered them for days they were not coming and vice versa. We have a ticket in to Sawyer for this. It is a bug that has been popping up for the last six months while we’ve been integrating this into our program.

Vorteile

I like that it makes my business look professional. I have a lot more students in my classes since using Sawyer and I feel the look of the registration page is a big part of that. My parents have the confidence to register because I look organized.

The payment processing is another feature that has helped me save time and awkward asking for payment from my parents. It is set up online an I don't have to worry about non-payment. Its amazing!

Nachteile

I wish it didn't cost quite as much. I am a very small art studio with only 60 students for the whole semester. I find the cost is worth it since I have more students than I did without it.

Vorteile

if you are in the summer camp, kid business, class business this software makes your life so much easier. Easy to understand set ups and anything you need help with a tech is available to help guide you.

Nachteile

we have no complaints on software - honestly we love it and continue to find more ways to utilize it.

Vorteile

Let's start for the basic: It's a software specifically for booking children's activities, which is my exactly what my business does, so every single feature in Sawyer is just perfect for what we do.
I had tried 5 or 6 different software companies and all of them are for other industries (spas, gyms, consulting businesses), so they weren't ideal to use. I love Sawyer has children-activity-specific features such as camps, semesters, drop-ins, sibling discount, caregiver needed in the class, ages for the class, etcetera.

Also it supports different locations, gift cards, and most important for us: a widget to add the registration form to your website.

Nachteile

Sawyer keeps improving and adding new features, I've run into tech problems when they just launch a new functionality but I consider this normal and I appreciate they keep improving their product. Tech support always replies fast when there have been issues.

Vorteile

I loved working face to face (via zoom) with the Sawyer Team. It was nice being able to put a face with a name. [SENSITIVE CONTENT] was extremely helpful and eager to solve my problems. I appreciated that Sawyer did everything, including tidying up my website a little. All I did was answer questions and give approval and Sawyer did the rest.

Nachteile

I have a different class/session schedule than most outside educators. In order to make my sessions work for my clients we had to wiggle somethings around and call somethings different from the terminology I had previously been using. For example, All private lessons can only be found on my kids page, even if you're an adult, and there is no way to request a semi-private lesson for two people. I also have clients who only want to take one month of sessions confused when they have to go to the "Semester classes" page. I also wish there was a way for clients to pay Venmo or Cash without ME having to be the one that fills in their registration forms.

Vorteile

Ease of registration, ability to track clients & finances, reliability of having this online vs manual

Nachteile

I would like to be able to customize the reports we can draw from he software, there is critical info that we need to resort to manual methods for, which I know could be accomplished through our registration info. We would like to be able to customize some other aspect of the registration portal

Vorteile

As the [SENSITIVE CONTENT] of my business, I appreciate having support in the business end of things. Sawyer understands what parents/caregivers want when searching and register for programs for their children. Platform is easy for customers to use, and easy for me to learn to administer. Excellent support from Sawyer staff.

Nachteile

Sometimes I have trouble uploading photos to my account because they are in the wrong format.

Vorteile

The interface has strengths, easy to use but plenty of idiotic limitations

Nachteile

After a month, they “informed” me yhey would be adding a $2 fee for every transaction for their R&D efforts. Which is absurd, prices already are so high and they charge a fortune for their service. Also, they marketed other similar businesses via email to MY customers for birthday and special events. Places customers had been to once, they got emails once they were back on Sawyers radar. Onboarding customers is terrible. Work for your customers. Plenty of glitches too. Sawyer is out for 1 business, and that is themselves. Not you.

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Vorteile

- Very user friendly on the customer facing side.
- The interface on both the customer and admin side is clear and pretty easy to navigate.
- I love the ability to copy classes and semesters to more easily duplicate past schedules.
- Class widget is convenient, especially with recent updates.

Nachteile

- Appointments can only be made with minors, not adults, and they do not support small group appointments.
- Reporting features could be clearer/more accurate, we've had issues with bugs causing inaccurate financial reports.
- I wish there was a way to download registration reports for select classes all at once; the semester-wide registration report includes students who already withdrew, and going class by class is tedious and time consuming.
- Class attendance can only be viewed for one student at a time instead of seeing full class attendance across multiple instances. Also no option for attendance records for adults?
- I dislike that store credit/gift card balance is locked behind a higher subscription tier. This seems like a basic feature that should not be paywalled.
- No way to mass edit activity information currently.

Vorteile

We currently use Sawyer but are reconsidering our options given a massive issue.

Nachteile

We are a membership-based studio, and Sawyer allowed multiple members to continue renewing their memberships for MONTHS without flagging that their card on file could not be charged. It doesn't appear that Sawyer notified the members either. We only discovered this issue when we did an audit to see why we were missing funds. Now we have to have difficult calls with multiple members and attempt to collect back-owed membership fees going back months. Sawyer should notify a business and member IMMEDIATELY if a charge on a card doesn't go through. This is ridiculous.

Vorteile

Everyone at Sawyer was super helpful when I was first getting set up. Very easy to talk to, clear & concise communication. I couldn’t have opened up my studio classes without all of their help.
The reports helped me tremendously when I was doing my taxes.

Nachteile

It is expensive for a business as small as mine. Some months it’s difficult for me to be able to cover the cost of the website plus my rent.
I wish I could afford to pay for the Parties option. I think a lot more people would have been booking parties this whole time if they could have done it online.

Just recently, after I create an activity, unless it’s brand new, I am unable to add more images to the activity when I try to edit it. It just uploads a solid black image

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Vorteile

Customer Support and help. They are always available to help and address our concerns and special requests in a manner I have not experienced elsewhere.

Nachteile

Although their software is extremely versatile and they continue to improve it, it does not offer me (a one-man operation) the precise, simple, user friendly, efficient flexibility. However, they have offered me several alternatives to customize they services to my individual needs.

Vorteile

I love the flexibility in the scheduling.

Nachteile

I would like a more efficient way to see when we have waiting lists, would love if that were listed on student schedules and on class rosters. I also would love if when you click "upcoming", the first day of classes would pop up if we were not yet at that time block (example, when checking in May for September classes).

Vorteile

It is flexible in the option of weekly registrations and can be integrated with the teachers' roster.

Nachteile

It does not have CRM integrations or more complete profiles for tracking students or families. Additionally, orders processed by families must allow for late start in prorating and start date selection.

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Vorteile

I like the way it looks and functions. It's super helpful for our small company to be able to centralize all of our customer info, rosters and class listings.

Nachteile

It's pretty pricey. I know that I would spend a lot in admin to pay someone to do all of the work that the platform does, though. I do hope that it doesn't get more expensive. We will consider building our own registration system into our website if the price continues to climb.

Vorteile

Sawyer has been a blessing! It’s allowed the company to have all the registrations, tickets, forms and payment online. It’s great being able to see the finances all in one spot and create coupons, refund or cancel/transfer bookings. The classes and camps are easy to set up and modify. Clients do not have issues registering for events. There is an option to create financial reports and you can download email addresses for communications.

Nachteile

Only one very small con. I wish we had the option change some of the wording. For example: instead of classes/sessions it’s events

Vorteile

Great people to work with to get set up. Clean, easy to use interface on the client end. Fast responses when minor issues popped up. Reasonable price for the ease of mind of having a well-organized booking system.

Nachteile

Widget is very glitchy on phones and freezes while scrolling. It would be nice to be able to change Sawyer terms like "semester" to "quarter" or other terms that fit what I'm doing more appropriately. It would be nice to be able to separate and group classes for different customer groups more easily.

Vorteile

Customer service is great. Most aspects of the portal are easy to use.
I also love the fact that they know their clients.

Nachteile

It would be nice to have a way for parents to pay through their bank account so they and we are not charged a service fee. For a small business like ours and for our families, every little bit makes a difference.

Vorteile

Sawyer is the best tool in the game - I’ve tried them all from Square to Activity Hero, and this tool is the most streamlined and easy to use. Customers appreciate it and I can build kid-centered client accounts, robust scheduling and semesters, and easy checkouts.

Nachteile

By far the most expensive tool in the market and there was no free trial or setup window so the expense began before I had enrollees.

Vorteile

I like that the system streamlines my registration process for families. It's helpful to have the attendance lists generated from the registration process. I like that I can communicate with families individually, or as a class with messaging. I like that the system sends me confirmations of new registrations.

Nachteile

The wait period of receiving payouts, and not receiving payouts on the weekends.

Vorteile

Sawyer has been SO incredibly user friendly and has allowed me to confidently market my classes and confirm registrations so much easier than using my old method of Google forms.

Nachteile

I would love to see more email integrations!

Vorteile

For our company, Sawyer is critical for student enrollment, being private lessons, group classes or productions.

Nachteile

One thing that is not included is the ability to uncheck a student once it has been checked in.

Vorteile

It is user friendly and the customer support is great.

Nachteile

I haven't experienced any cons so far. We do not use all the features.

Vorteile

Easy to navigate. Clear and concise. Accuracy is a must for me. Your reports are always accurate and timely.

Nachteile

I am very pleased with Sawyer's services. No complains.

Vorteile

easy to use for providers. Helps with finding new customers

Nachteile

I would improve the calendar function, is not easy for parents who always ask providers the dates of classes.

Vorteile

It got me up and running fast. It is a really solid product.

Nachteile

I like the entire product; I do, however, wish they added a way to keep track of the acutallly content of class ( cirriculum ), and profile pics of students.

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Vorteile

Easy to use
Cost effecrive
Customer service

Nachteile

Add ons dont always line up with what we need

Vorteile

I absolutely love the ease of using Sawyer. We have a team that inputs the information when students register for camp. That information is very crucial to a successful camp. I like that all I have to do is check my participants in and then check them out each day. I also like that it allows the parents to contact me if necessary and vice versa.

Nachteile

I have no complaints to report as I love everything about Sawyer.

Vorteile

The reporting tools we have access to and how we are able to break down different information we look at monthly.

Nachteile

When creating a new class it is difficult to go back in and edit required information and make changes in general.

Vorteile

Online payment system. Classes can be duplicated. In system communication with clients.

Nachteile

Plug in within square space sometimes does strange things.

Vorteile

I like the process to integrate the parents to the classes. Easier and quickly!

Nachteile

They need to put also the Spanish option because we have many latin families.