OnMat vs Zen Planner: Which is a better fit?

Ross A.: Hi, I'm Ross. I'm the owner. I'm giving Zen Planner a one out of five. For more reviews like this, click below. Okay. I was using a program called Studio Organizer, which was an offline option. I wanted to switch over to using something that was going to integrate with our emailing lists, our billing, and just make everything work better. Zen Planner had promised to do all of those things, and I checked out a bunch of the different options. At the time they looked like they were going to be the best fit because they were about half the price of everything else. Okay. I initially chose Zen Planner because on paper, everything looked like it was going to be a good fit. They were offering the automations. They were offering to make my billing a lot easier. They looked like the class attendance and management functions were all going to be there. Their reports were there. It looked like it was going to do everything I wanted it to do. Okay. When we first started using Zen Planner, the transition was very easy. They were very helpful in the beginning on setting up and importing the data over. Training was a little bit lackluster as far as using some of the different features of it, and the documentation was not quite all there. It took over a year before they told me that instead of going from email support for everything, that they did actually have a phone number we could call in. None of that was communicated in. So there was a very large learning curve and hurdle to get over as far as how to set everything up. Okay. Like I said, originally on paper, they sounded like they were really good. However, once I got into using the software, there was very little support. There was lots of bugs. We had a bug that persisted for more than six months that they wouldn't even acknowledge. When I went to switch over to using another software platform because they just weren't performing, they held my data hostage. I could get the records out one at a time individually, and it took over five minutes per record. In order for them to do a dump and just give me a list of everything, they wanted to charge me an exorbitant fee. They would not answer the emails. They were very snarky in their comments back. Anybody who's thinking about using this software, do not do it. On paper, it looks great. They say that they offer all these functions and features. They do, sort of, but if you actually want it to work, look for a different product because nothing quite works right. It'll sort of work, but it's not there. And then when you call them on that and you ask them about it, "Well, we'll get to that. We'll fix it." And then the fix it just never comes. Overall, if I could give them a negative review, I would.