The No-BS Guide to Class Registration Software: 14 Tools for Every Business Model

So, we're doing this differently. This is the most exhaustive, honest guide on the internet, organized not by features, but by your actual business model. Find yourself. Find your tool. Let's get you organized.

The Business Model Framework

• The Community & Rec Center: You offer a wide variety of classes to the general public. (Think: art studios, yoga classes, swim lessons, adult education).
• The Professional Development & Training Pro: You sell high-value workshops, certifications, and corporate training.
• The Solo Creator & Online Course Guru: You sell your expertise through online courses, webinars, and digital products.
• The K-12 & Higher Education Campus: You're a formal educational institution managing complex academic schedules and student records.

Category 1: The Community & Rec Center

Your mission: Make it incredibly simple for your community to discover and sign up for a diverse range of classes.

1. Amilia

• The Good: It’s purpose-built for community centers, park districts, and sports clubs. It handles everything from class registration and facility booking to memberships and merchandise sales.
• The Bad: The interface can feel a bit complex because it does so much.
• The Ugly: It's not designed for selling simple, one-off online courses. It’s for managing a physical community hub.

2. Sawyer

• The Good: A fantastic tool specifically for kids' classes and camps. The interface is incredibly parent-friendly, and it has great features for managing schedules, rosters, and waitlists.
• The Bad: It is 100% focused on the children's activity market.
• The Ugly: If you're not selling classes to parents, this is absolutely the wrong tool for you.

3. Pike13

• The Good: It's a powerhouse for boutique fitness studios, yoga studios, and gyms. It combines class scheduling with client management, staff payroll, and point-of-sale in one clean package.
• The Bad: It's very fitness-centric. An art studio might find the terminology and workflow a bit strange.
• The Ugly: The per-location pricing can get expensive if you expand to multiple studios.

4. Droplet

• The Good: It's the ultimate flexible solution. You can build a beautiful, custom registration form for any type of class in minutes. Need to collect t-shirt sizes, allergy information, and payment all at once? Easy. The data automatically flows into a clean, visual database to track your rosters.
• The Bad: It's not a full-blown "studio management" software. It doesn't have built-in membership billing or staff payroll features.
• The Ugly: Its power is its flexibility. If you want a rigid, pre-built system that dictates your process, this isn't it.

Category 2: The Professional Development & Training Pro

Your mission: Sell high-value training to businesses and professionals. You need powerful ticketing, invoicing, and a professional look. This is where a streamlined purchase order system for corporate clients becomes critical.

5. Eventbrite

• The Good: It’s a household name, which lends instant credibility to your training event. It’s great for public-facing workshops where you want to maximize visibility and leverage their marketing engine.
• The Bad: The per-ticket fees can eat into the margins of your high-ticket workshops.
• The Ugly: It’s not great for private, corporate training. You’re building on their brand, which can feel less premium.

6. Cvent

• The Good: It's the enterprise-grade solution for managing large, complex training events and conferences. It can handle everything from multi-track session registration to travel and hotel logistics for attendees.
• The Bad: The complexity and cost are massive overkill for anyone running a simple one-day workshop.
• The Ugly: The user interface can feel dated and clunky. It's powerful, not pleasant.

7. Arlo

• The Good: Arlo is a training management system, purpose-built for companies that sell professional development. It handles public courses, private in-house training, and online learning, all in one platform.
• The Bad: It's a specialized, premium tool, and the pricing reflects that.
• The Ugly: If you're not a dedicated training provider, this platform will be far more than you need.

Category 3: The Solo Creator & Online Course Guru

Your mission: Sell your knowledge at scale. You need a platform that connects your course content, marketing, and payment processing.

8. Kajabi

• The Good: It's a true all-in-one platform for knowledge entrepreneurs. It hosts your website, your online courses, your email marketing, and your checkout process. It’s the "Apple" of online course platforms—it just works.
• The Bad: The all-in-one nature means you're locked into their ecosystem. If you don't like their email marketing tool, too bad.
• The Ugly: The price. It's a significant monthly investment, and there is no free plan.

9. Podia

• The Good: A more affordable and user-friendly alternative to Kajabi. It allows you to sell online courses, digital downloads, and webinars, all from one simple platform. Their customer support is fantastic.
• The Bad: The features are not as deep as Kajabi. The website builder and email marketing tools are more basic.
• The Ugly: The "free" plan has a high 10% transaction fee, which pushes you to upgrade quickly.

10. Teachable

• The Good: It's one of the most popular and user-friendly platforms for creating and selling online courses. It’s very easy to get your first course up and running.
• The Bad: It's a course platform, not a full marketing suite. You'll likely need to integrate it with a separate email marketing tool.
• The Ugly: Like Podia, the free plan comes with high transaction fees.

Category 4: The K-12 & Higher Education Campus

Your mission: Manage complex academic schedules that need to integrate with a Student Information System (SIS) and other campus-wide platforms. These are true enterprise resource planning workflows.

11. Jackrabbit Class

• The Good: A very popular management software for children's activity centers like gymnastics, dance, and swim schools. It combines class management with billing and parent portal features.
• The Bad: It's highly specialized for these specific types of businesses.
• The Ugly: The interface can feel a bit dated, but it's a reliable workhorse for its user base.

12. Destiny One

• The Good: It's a comprehensive student lifecycle management platform for non-traditional education (continuing ed, professional development, etc.). It's designed to integrate with major university systems.
• The Bad: It's a massive, enterprise-level system designed for large universities.
• The Ugly: The implementation process is long, complex, and very expensive.

13. CourseStorm

• The Good: It's designed to be an incredibly simple registration system for community and after-school education programs. It has a great, user-friendly interface for both admins and parents.
• The Bad: It lacks the deep studio management features of a tool like Pike13 or the academic rigor of an enterprise SIS.
• The Ugly: The pricing is based on a per-registration fee, which can get expensive for high-volume, low-cost classes.

14. Ellucian Banner

• The Good: If you work at a university, you've probably used Banner. It's a comprehensive student information system that is the backbone of many higher education institutions.
• The Bad: It is famously complex, clunky, and difficult to use for both students and administrators.
• The Ugly: It's an enterprise behemoth. You don't "choose" Banner; your institution chose it 20 years ago, and now you're stuck with it.

The Bottom Line: Don't Buy a Tool. Buy a Business Model.

Stop looking at features. Start by looking in the mirror. Who are you? A community art studio? A corporate trainer? A university? The right tool for one is the wrong tool for the others. Pick your category. Demo the top two contenders. Trust your gut. That's how you find the right fit.

Ready to build a completely custom registration form that works for any class, workshop, or event you can dream up? Our team can show you how Droplet's flexible, secure forms and automated database can become the perfect registration engine for your business. Schedule your no-pressure tour today!