Guide · choosing a booking system
Online booking system for classes and workshops
An online booking system lets your students see the free places, book and pay without messaging you on WhatsApp.
Most are designed for appointments (hairdressers, clinics) and struggle with classes. If you sell classes, choose one that speaks that language out of the box.
Write to us and we'll reply within one working day. Please note that Aforo works in Spanish: the dashboard, your booking page and the emails your students receive.
The fork in the road
Appointments or classes?
An appointment is a slot for one person with one professional; a class is shared capacity. Everything else follows from that, and getting it wrong here is the mistake that costs a year of workarounds.
Drag the table to the left to see the examples.
| Your business | What you need | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 appointments | A diary of slots for each professional | Clinic, hairdresser, physiotherapy |
| Classes and workshops | Shared capacity, courses, class passes, memberships, waiting list | Pottery, painting, jewellery, sewing, paint & sip |
| Both | One calendar with all four ways of booking at once, which is what Aforo does | Studio with classes + open wheel time by appointment |
When you try to run classes with an appointment program, you end up faking them: you create eight identical slots at the same time, or one service per place, and every change has to be made eight times.
What to check before you sign
Six questions to ask any program in the demo (ours too), before you load your whole catalogue and find out in October.
- 01
Real capacity per resource
If there are 6 wheels, it should sell 6 places, not 12 and hope nobody complains.
- 02
The four ways of booking
Drop-in class, full course, regular weekly spot and one-to-one session, in the same calendar.
- 03
Proper class passes and memberships
With an expiry date, a reminder, a monthly receipt and arrears in plain sight. A notebook doesn't remind anyone.
- 04
Payments with no commission
The money should go to YOUR Stripe or Redsys account, without the system taking a bite out of every booking.
- 05
Your own cancellation rules
You decide whether there's a refund, a make-up class or nothing, and the system applies it by itself.
- 06
Your data, exportable
If you leave one day, you take your customers and history with you. No hostages.
In short
What it is, how it differs from an appointment scheduler and what to check.
An online booking system for classes lets your students see the free places, book and pay without messaging you.
Most are built for appointments, meaning one person with one professional, and they struggle with classes, because a class is shared capacity. Six questions separate the ones that work.
If there are six wheels, does it sell six places or twelve?
Does it handle the four ways of booking in the same calendar: drop-in class, full course, regular weekly spot and one-to-one session?
Does it have class passes that expire and memberships with a receipt and arrears in plain sight?
Does the money go into your Stripe or Redsys account with no commission for the software? Does it apply your cancellation rules by itself?
Can you export your customers and history the day you leave? In Spain, as of 21 August 2026, there are three built for creative studios: The Ceramic App, Agendatia and Aforo.
For fitness and wellbeing there are more, and they fit better.
Frequently asked questions
What apps can I use to manage classes?
The useful question before choosing any of them is whether you sell appointments or places, because that splits the market in two.
For appointments between one person and one professional, generic scheduling tools do the job: Reservio, Bookitit or SuperSaaS, which are cheap and flexible.
Classes with shared capacity need things that a scheduling tool doesn't model: group places limited by a real resource, and courses of several sessions that are sold as a whole.
They also need waiting lists that move by themselves, class passes with an expiry date and monthly memberships with arrears in plain sight.
In Spain, as of 21 August 2026, there are three built for creative studios: The Ceramic App, Agendatia and Aforo.
And if yours is fitness or wellbeing, look at Zenamu, Timp or bsport before you look at us: they're made for that and they'll suit you better, even if it doesn't pay us to say so.
How much does an online booking system cost?
In Spain, between €0 and around €200 a month, depending on the size and what it includes.
But the real cost sits under the price tag, and there are three things worth looking at before you sign. The first is the commission.
Some programs keep a percentage of every online payment, and on a turnover of €3,000 a month, 3% is €90 that doesn't appear on any price list.
The second is what's billed separately: text messages, extra calendars or a price per professional that multiplies as you grow.
The third is whether the price is public: of the eleven programs we compared between 20 and 21 August 2026, three don't publish a single figure and make you ask for a quote.
Aforo costs €29, €49 or €69 a month, plus VAT and with no commission per booking.
How long does it take to switch systems without closing the studio?
Usually a week of overlap, and the studio doesn't stop for a single day.
The order that works is this: first we bring over your data and set up your catalogue, your timetables and your rules while you keep selling where you sell today.
Then you check that the coming weeks are set up correctly. And only then does the booking link change.
Anything you've already sold for two months from now moves across with its date, its place and whatever has been paid, so nobody is left out of a class they bought.
Active class passes come in with the sessions they have left, and current memberships with what's owed on them.
On the day of the switch, don't turn your previous program off at the same time: if your provider allows it, leave it read-only for a while in case something needs checking.
Is it worth it if I only teach four classes a week?
It depends on how much time the admin side is costing you today, not on the size of your studio.
With four classes a week the schedule fits in your head; what doesn't fit is the half-used class passes, who owes this month's membership and the three people who asked about the October course.
If you already keep track of that in a notebook and it works for you, you don't need to change anything yet.
Aforo's entry plan costs €29 a month excluding VAT and has no cap on bookings, so for four classes with eight places each it's more than enough.
The sum that helps is this one: look at the hours you spend sorting out bookings and payments in a month and put your hourly rate on them.
If they don't add up to €29 a month, wait another year and do the sum again.
If you've already narrowed the list down to two or three names, here are the comparisons: Aforo compared with Reservio, Aforo compared with Bookitit, all eleven compared and what changes if yours is an academy with seasonal groups.
And how Aforo handles it, feature by feature: the calendar and its rules, payments with no commission and all 58 features.
See it with your own classes inside
A 20-minute demo with your classes, your prices and your capacities. If you're coming from another system, we'll bring your data over. No minimum term and 0% commission per booking.
Write to us and we'll reply within one working day. Please note that Aforo works in Spanish: the dashboard, your booking page and the emails your students receive.