What Mindbody gives a gym or studio
In short
Mindbody sells a fitness or wellness business its front desk as a product: class and appointment booking, payments, reporting, a website with booking built in, and a listing on the Mindbody app. The higher plans add room management and marketing campaigns, and a branded mobile app as an add-on.
Mindbody sells three plans, named Starter, Accelerate and Ultimate. Its pricing page says Starter covers booking, payments and basic reporting, with branded booking widgets for your website, a website for the business and a listing on the Mindbody app. Accelerate adds room and resource management, promo codes and Client Pick-a-Spot, so a client can choose a place in the room when they book. Ultimate adds automated email and text campaigns and a built-in sales pipeline.
The website comes with the plan. Mindbody's pricing post, updated on October 2, 2026, calls it a done-for-you customized website powered by Playlist, Mindbody's parent company, and its Customized Websites page says Mindbody's team designs it from the business's own logo, colors and content, then hosts and maintains it, with the booking built in. A branded mobile app, where clients book and buy from their own phone, is not part of Starter; the pricing page lists it as an add-on to Accelerate and Ultimate.
For a studio still running on a paper sign-in sheet or a spreadsheet, that is a whole front desk on one monthly bill. Nothing in this guide argues for skipping it.
How Mindbody charges
In short
Mindbody charges by the location each month, not by the staff login, and takes a fee on the first purchase of a new client its app sends you. Card processing is a separate line, and you may use Mindbody's own processing or another company's.
Mindbody says its subscription price rises when you add a location, not when you add staff at a location you already have, and that it charges no fee for additional users of the software. A studio with many part-time instructors pays the same plan price as one with a few, while a second studio pays for a second location.
The Mindbody app has terms of its own. The listing is free. For a client the app finds who was new to you, Mindbody takes a share of that client's first purchase, up to a cap, and every booking after the first carries no commission. The pricing page says existing clients carry no fee, and neither do people who came through your tracked referral link or who name your business as how they found it.
Payments are a choice. Mindbody says it does not require its own payment processing and that a third-party processor can be used instead, though some of its promotional offers include Mindbody Payments as part of the package. Its contract depends on the plan and the billing terms a business signed up for, and cancelling may need advance notice, so read your own agreement before you plan a move.
| What it is tied to | Worth knowing | |
|---|---|---|
| The plan | Each location, each month | Adding staff at a location you already have does not raise it |
| The Mindbody app | The first purchase of a new client the app delivers | A share of that purchase, with a cap, and none on existing clients or tracked referral links |
| Card processing | Each payment | Mindbody Payments is optional, and another processor can be used |
| The branded mobile app | An add-on | Offered on Accelerate and Ultimate, not on Starter |
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Where your own booking site fits
In short
A site of your own does not have to replace Mindbody. It can sit on your own domain in front, with the schedule and the payments still in Mindbody behind it. Building the booking itself pays only when the way you sell does not fit the product.
Start with what the included website leaves out. Mindbody's Customized Websites page says the business cannot make its own edits and can ask for them before launch and every quarter after, while schedule and staff details entered in Mindbody show on the site by themselves and urgent changes are handled case by case. It says the sites carry no animations or video and offer no full design freedom, and that Mindbody cannot offer one to a business with prenatal, children's or medical services. A site of your own is built to the design you choose, video included, and changes come through a care plan's monthly hours or any developer you hire, since the code is yours.
Someone new to a studio wants to know what a class feels like and which one suits a beginner before they book. A site of your own can answer that on a page for each class type and each instructor, each with a Book button that sends the visitor on to book in Mindbody. With us, that is a Growth site, whose hook sends each trial request or question to the tool you already run, confirmed in the written plan. A studio that needs only a few pages can start smaller, with a Launch site. Projects start at $2,500.
The link matters as much as the page. Since Mindbody charges no app fee on people who book through a tracked referral link, the people your own site, your posters and your Instagram bring in should book through your link, not through a search inside the app. Mindbody's Branded Web Tools page offers widgets too, which show the schedule on a studio's own pages once a snippet of text is pasted in. Your domain also stays the address they remember if you ever change booking products: Mindbody says it can help connect a domain you already own to the site it builds, and that a domain it bought for you is registered in your name if you leave.
Some studios outgrow the product's shape: a membership with rules of its own, a waitlist that works another way, or member accounts you want in your own system. That is app work, a larger build than a site because it takes payments and holds member accounts, and many studios never need it. Either build is priced in a written plan after a short call, by the pages and the tools it has to hold.
| Where people book | What you run | What it costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindbody alone | Mindbody's website, its widget or its app | Everything inside Mindbody | The plan for each location, plus card processing |
| Your site in front of Mindbody | Your domain, then the Mindbody schedule | Your pages and your domain, with the schedule and payments still in Mindbody | A Growth site, priced in a written plan, plus the Mindbody plan |
| A booking system of your own | Your domain, start to finish | The schedule, the payments and the member accounts | App work, priced in a written plan, a larger build than a site |
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A worked example (hypothetical)
In short
A pilates studio with two rooms that books on Mindbody keeps it and puts a site of its own in front. The booking stays where the staff already work, and the site does the explaining.
Picture a pilates studio with a reformer room and a mat room, eight instructors and an intro offer for newcomers. Its classes fill with regulars. The people it loses are first-timers who open the schedule, cannot tell a reformer class from a mat class, and close the tab.
The studio keeps Mindbody for the schedule and the payments. A Growth site gives each class type and each instructor a page, shows a short video of each room, explains the intro offer in plain words, and points every Book button at the studio's own tracked Mindbody link. If it later wants a membership with rules the product cannot hold, that is a separate piece of app work, quoted on its own.
What this means for a small business
In short
Keep Mindbody if it runs your schedule well, and put your own domain in front of it. Build a booking system of your own only when you can write down what the product cannot do for the way you sell.
Put your own domain on everything you print and post, and let the Book button behind it point at Mindbody. The address your members learn is then yours, and it keeps working if you move to another product.
Before you decide, ask the front desk which questions first-timers ask before they book, and which bookings the staff fix by hand each week. Questions are a website problem: the site Mindbody builds can carry answers that rarely change, and a site of your own suits answers that change often. Fixes the product cannot avoid are an app problem, and the one good reason to build the booking yourself.