Studio Director is a solid mid-market option. Studios who leave usually do so because they've outgrown the interface, need a better family portal, or want more modern software at a similar price point.
I'm James. My wife and I run a dance studio; I built the software you're reading about. Here's what leaving actually looks like.
Studio Director works fine for a lot of studios. If your team knows it, your parents are happy, and your billing runs smoothly, don't switch. The cost of a migration is real.
Reasons studios leave Studio Director:
If those resonate, keep reading. If Studio Director is working, stay put.
Reports → Family Reports → Family Contact List and Student List. Export to CSV/Excel. Together they cover primary contact, email, phone, address, DOB, family relationship.
Reports → Class Reports → Class Listing. Filter to active classes for your migration season. Includes instructor, room, day, time, tuition, capacity.
Reports → Enrollment Reports → Class Roster. This is the student-to-class mapping. Filter to active enrollments for what's moving.
Only if you're migrating mid-season with outstanding balances. Cleanest approach is to cut over at a season boundary with everyone at zero.
Fastest path — one CSV with a row per student, family fields duplicated. Presently deduplicates families automatically.
Weekly and date-specific classes both supported. Rate groups set on class types so tuition structures are shared across classes that bill the same way.
Matches by name/email. In-app resolution wizard handles ambiguous matches once and remembers your choices for the rest of the batch.
For a 200-student studio:
Studio Director's tuition is per-class. Presently uses class types with shared rate groups. Spend an hour up-front: which classes belong in which group?
Sibling and multi-class discounts get set once on the rate group and apply automatically. Map your existing Studio Director discount rules explicitly during setup.
Cards don't migrate. Families re-add payment methods on Presently's family portal. Send a heads-up email so first invoices aren't a surprise.
Don't try to migrate everything. Studio Director stays your archive for old attendance, transactions, and past seasons. Only migrate what's active going forward.
Two-week heads-up before cutover so families know the portal URL is changing and a magic link is coming.
A 200-student studio on Studio Director typically pays $99-$149/month.
Presently Professional is $99/month. With every add-on ($9 each for event management, costume management, and live chat) you top out at $126/month.
Savings are modest — often $0-$50/month. The real value here isn't the cost delta; it's the modern UX and the direct line to the person building the software.
Email me at hello@usepresently.com. I'll walk through your Studio Director setup, help plan the migration, and be on-hand during cutover.
Or start a free 30-day trial and evaluate on your own first.