Feature Spotlight
Jackrabbit Alternatives to Simplify Class Signup and Management
Your theater or music school originally chose Jackrabbit class management software because your friends over at the dance school said it worked for them. Now you’re starting to experience the frustration of:
- Features that are unnecessary or just not useful for you, like uniform management and staff time clock.
- Confusing options that create a repetitive and time-consuming process for completing a task.
- Labor-intensive waitlists that require a staff member to monitor the dashboard and email students when a seat becomes available.
- Fees charged for students who aren’t even enrolled in a class. Jackrabbit charges you for both active and inactive students at the end of each month.
The truth is that Jackrabbit is designed for dance and gymnastics classes, but even these programs sometimes get frustrated and start looking around for Jackrabbit alternatives.
The right class registration and payment software can transform the way you interact with your students and their parents. The best ones include all of the features you need, streamlined processes, and a clear fee structure that doesn’t charge you for registrations you’re not getting.
Here are five Jackrabbit alternatives that might be a better fit for your students, their parents, and your program as a whole.
Jackrabbit Class Alternatives:
Ready to try a Jackrabbit alternative that simplifies class registration and fits nonprofit budgets? Start your free trial of CourseStorm today.
#1 – CourseStorm
Coursestorm is the simple class registration software that automates tedious administrative tasks so you can focus on giving your students the best possible class experience.
Built for nonprofit and arts organizations, CourseStorm includes everything you need and nothing you don’t.
We make it easy for parents to register their children and themselves in your classes, while never charging you for students who aren’t actually enrolled.
Here’s why arts organizations, music schools, and theaters are choosing CourseStorm.
Marketing, Catalog, and Checkout Features You’ll Actually Use
Uniform management might be handy if you’re putting on multiple dance recitals a year, but for the rest of us it’s a useless feature that just clutters up the software. You’re looking for the features that will be most valuable to you and your program, features like auto marketing, a class catalog website, and cart-based checkout.
At CourseStorm, we’ve included all of the core features you need to market your classes and register students. Auto marketing emails make sure students and parents know about upcoming classes that may be of interest to them. Then course catalogs and cart checkout make registration seamless.
Picture this, a parent opens their email to find a message from you telling them about your upcoming summer theater session. They’re excited because their kids took a theater class with you over April vacation and absolutely loved it.
They click through and find your course catalog. They add the class to their cart, but figure they might as well explore your course catalog a bit more, since they’re already there. That’s how they discover that you’re also offering an adult improv class. They’ve always wanted to try improv, but never found the right time.
They add the improv class to cart and check out in one seamless checkout process. Just like that, you have two sign-ups for upcoming classes, all because you had the right features in place.
Edit All Your Forms From One Easy-to-Access Menu
Class registration should be easy and intuitive. Too many steps or irrelevant questions, and registrants won’t bother to finish the process. But ease for the customer shouldn’t come at the expense of frustration for you and your team.
You should be able to easily customize registration forms, move students between classes, and even issue refunds if you need to. With CourseStorm, you can do all that and more, without digging through dozens of menus or being a technical guru.
Take our registration forms for example. They’re fully customizable and easy to change. You can make global changes that affect all registration forms by clicking “for all classes.” If you need to change the form for a group of classes you can choose “specific classes” or you can edit one form at a time for maximum customization.
No more sifting through a huge list of options to find the one or two questions you need to ask. Just type the question, choose what type of answer you expect, and view a preview of the result. It’s that simple.
Automated Waitlists That Keep Your Classes Full Without Extra Effort
You shouldn’t have to stare at your course management dashboard all day to notice when a spot becomes available in a waitlisted class. And you shouldn’t have to waste time calling or emailing potential students until you find one able to fill the seat.
In fact, you shouldn’t have to directly manage your waitlists at all. With CourseStorm, advanced Waitlist management ensures that your classes stay full without any extra effort from you. When a spot opens up, the software automatically notifies people on the waitlist. There are no buttons to push, no emails to send, and no notifications to monitor. It all just happens.
Sometimes it’s a busy Monday, when you have meetings to attend and work to do and you don’t open your course management dashboard all day. With CourseStorm, you won’t come in on Tuesday morning to find a notification waiting letting you know that a seat for a class has been open since yesterday. Instead, you’ll see that a student canceled and another took their place, all without any action from you.
Clear and Transparent Pricing Tied to Actual Enrollment
Jackrabbit says they charge based on the number of students, but the truth is a little more complicated. Actually, they charge by family whether or not all members of that family are actually enrolled in a class. That means that if Luis, Isabella, and Sofia all sign up for violin lessons, but Isabella and Sofia pause their practice in the fall because they’d rather play intramural soccer, you’re still paying a monthly fee for all three potential students.
Not at CourseStorm. At CourseStorm you’re only responsible for the students who actually sign up for any given class. If Sofia doesn’t sign up, you won’t pay for her.
Her parents can still register her anytime using the information stored in their group account. So it’s still easy for her to start up lessons again in the winter. But your overall cost goes down when she’s not enrolled.
Experience the ease and simplicity of CourseStorm class registration and payment software. Start your free trial now.
#2 – Sawyer
Sawyer is a common Jackrabbit alternative because it is also focused on kids’ classes. They’re model is a little different. In addition to listing classes on your own website, you can also list directly on theirs. That’s great for visibility, but does pit you head-to-head against other programs in your area.
Like some other options, their pricing seems straightforward, but gets complicated when you look closer. Your monthly fee does not include the marketplace fee charged for signups that come through the Sawyer website. Those registrations can incur a fee of up to 30% of the registration price. Custom forms and waitlists are also premium options that require a higher monthly subscription fee.
Features and functions:
- Robust marketplace
- Focused on kids’ classes
- Easy to use
#3 – RegFox
If you offer classes for both kids and adults, you might consider RegFox. This event registration software was designed for conference registration management, but also offers services for classes and camps. As a result, their features are well-targeted to even planners, but may miss the mark for some course providers.
They offer support for merchandise and product sales, social incentives, and editing and upgrading of existing orders. So, by all means, if you’re putting on a conference, choose RegFox. For arts and education programs offering classes, you might want a different solution.
Features and functions:
- Event focused
- Merchandise and product sales
- Social incentives for registration
#4 – Regpack
Regpack is another option designed for a different audience that has made its way into course registration. Initially focused on billing automation, Regpack offers tons of features related to payments and billing. They’re a good fit for subscription-based programs, where students pay a monthly fee for unlimited drop-in classes.
The main concern on customer review sites seems to be the customer support. Users complain that they can’t get the help they need and that the response time is slow. If you’re already a technical expert, that might not be a problem.
Features and functions:
- Automatic course billing
- Discounts and variable pricing for learners
- Centralized registration database
#5 – Jotform
Programs looking to simplify their registration system sometimes turn to Jotform. It’s a good solution for making fillable online documents that can take payments. However, it lacks the features that make registration and marketing seamless.
You can’t email all of the students in a specific class, manage waiting lists, or automate marketing. Registrants can’t update or change submitted information and there are no group or family profiles. Jotform is form customization software, but class registration is about so much more than a form.
Features and functions:
- Form building and customization
- Simple interface
- Integrates with third-party payment processing
Test Your Jackrabbit Alternative
We hope that this list has given you the information you need to start exploring Jackrabbit alternatives. The best way to tell if a solution is right for your program is to give it a test drive. If you’re ready to see the difference for yourself, start your free trial of CourseStorm today.
Greg Shula
Greg has spent a decade analyzing business and marketing performance metrics of the companies he has worked with. He uses his analytical mind and investigative skills to find trends and simple answers from complicated data sets. Greg is also an amateur photographer who loves to capture nature from new perspectives.