Key Takeaways
- A free plan’s real cost often shows up in payment processing rates, not the software subscription itself
- DojoTrack’s free tier caps schools at 50 students and limits billing to manual collection, with automatic payments requiring an upgrade to its $95-per-month tier
- PushPress Core Free charges 4.99% + $0.30 per credit card transaction, meaning a $100 tuition payment costs $5.29 to process
- One pricing model skips software fees entirely but applies a $49 monthly processing minimum instead
- Testing attendance, belt tracking, and family account workflows before switching platforms can prevent costly surprises later
Choosing software for a small dojo often starts with a simple search for anything free. That search turns up real options, but the sticker price of $0 rarely tells the whole story. Student caps, booking limits, and payment-processing rates can turn a free plan into a monthly expense that catches owners off guard.
Free Isn’t Really Free
A $0 subscription fee sounds like the end of the story, but it is usually just the starting point. Software companies have to make money somewhere, and when they are not charging for the platform itself, that revenue tends to come from payment processing, add-on features, or a paid tier waiting just past the free plan’s limits. For a dojo owner comparing options, the real question is what it costs to run a full month of tuition collection on a given plan, not whether that plan is labeled free.
This matters more for martial arts schools than it might for other small businesses, because dues collection is the heartbeat of the operation. A missed automatic payment, a clunky manual billing process, or a processing fee that eats into monthly revenue all add up over a year. HotGlue has built its pricing model around this exact tension, structuring fees around payment processing rather than a flat software charge, which makes it a useful case study for understanding how these costs actually work.
The goal is to find the plan that fits a dojo’s actual student count, billing habits, and payment volume, so the total monthly cost stays predictable, rather than chasing the plan with the lowest advertised price. That requires looking past the homepage and into the fine print of student limits, feature gates, and processing terms.
Three Free Plans Compared
Three free plans stand out for small dojos, and each one makes a different tradeoff between features, limits, and cost. Understanding what each plan includes, and where it draws the line, makes it much easier to match a plan to a specific school’s needs.
50-Student Cap With Manual Billing Only
DojoTrack’s free plan supports up to 50 students and includes the basics a dojo needs to stay organized: student profiles, family links, memberships, and core management tools built around martial arts schools specifically. For a school under that student count, this can feel like a complete package.
The catch is billing. The free plan handles manual billing only, which means automatic payment collection is not included. Owners who want dues to run themselves each month will need to upgrade, and DojoTrack’s first paid tier runs $95 per month for up to 100 students. The free plan also caps leads at 25 and limits website forms to one, so a school in active growth mode may bump into those ceilings before it bumps into the student cap.
No Monthly Fee, But Card Fees Add Up
PushPress Core Free takes a different approach, offering memberships, billing, scheduling, check-ins, digital waivers, and a member app without charging a monthly software fee at all. For a dojo that wants a fuller operational toolkit without a subscription, this looks appealing on the surface.
The real cost lives in payment processing. Credit card transactions run 4.99% plus $0.30, while ACH transactions run 2.89% plus $0.30. That means a single $100 tuition payment made by card costs $5.29 to process. Multiply that across a roster of paying students each month, and the processing fees can quickly outweigh what a modest software subscription elsewhere would have cost.
50 Bookings a Month Limits Growth
SimplyBook.me’s free plan is built for booking, not full dojo management. It allows 50 bookings per month, one provider, one custom feature, basic email reminders, and a booking widget, making it a reasonable fit for a solo instructor handling private lessons or trial classes.
That booking limit becomes a real constraint fast if it is used to track attendance. If every class attendance counts as a booking, 10 students attending twice weekly would use about 80 bookings in four weeks, already exceeding the free plan’s monthly allowance. This plan works best as a narrow booking tool rather than a stand-in for student, membership, and rank management.
Where Payment Fees Hide
Once a free plan’s feature limits are understood, the next step is digging into how each platform actually charges for moving money. This is where the real cost differences between plans tend to show up, often buried far from the main pricing page.
Card vs. ACH Rate Differences
Card payments and bank transfers are rarely priced the same, and the gap can be significant. Card transactions typically carry a percentage-plus-flat-fee structure, while ACH payments, which pull funds directly from a bank account, tend to run noticeably cheaper. A dojo that can encourage families to pay by bank transfer instead of card may reduce its processing costs considerably over the course of a year, especially on a plan where card rates sit close to 5%.
This difference is worth discussing with families directly. Some parents default to card payments out of habit, not preference, and a short conversation about ACH options can shift a meaningful share of a dojo’s payment volume toward the cheaper method.
The $95-a-Month Upgrade Trigger
Free plans are often designed to nudge a growing school toward a paid tier right when that school needs more capacity. DojoTrack’s jump from a free 50-student cap to a $95-per-month plan covering up to 100 students is a clear example. A dojo sitting at 45 students today should think ahead to where enrollment will be in six months, because crossing that threshold means absorbing a new monthly software cost on top of whatever payment processing fees already apply.
The $49 Processing Minimum Model
A different pricing structure skips the monthly software fee entirely and instead applies a processing minimum. HotGlue’s Advantage Plan advertises $0 software fees and unlimited students, with no card-processing fees charged directly to the school under its customer-funded pricing structure. Schools build processing costs into their listed tuition prices, and customers who pay by bank transfer receive a lower price than those paying by card. ACH payments under this model carry a 1% fee.
The detail worth understanding is the $49 monthly processing minimum. This is not a second software subscription stacked on top of the free plan. If qualifying processing fees for the month reach $49, there is no additional charge. If those fees only total $30, the school pays the $19 difference to meet the minimum. Owners considering this kind of model should get written confirmation of exactly which fees count toward that minimum before signing up, since the definition can vary and directly affects the real monthly cost.
Questions Before You Switch Platforms
Moving student records from one system to another is not something to rush, especially for a dojo with years of belt history and family accounts built up over time. A short checklist before committing can prevent a lot of frustration later.
- Can the platform record a belt system, stripes, and promotion requirements accurately?
- Can parents manage multiple children under one login without creating duplicate accounts?
- Can attendance be taken quickly during a busy, high-energy class?
- Can student, attendance, and billing records be exported if the school ever needs to switch again?
- What will the monthly cost look like once the free plan’s limits are exceeded or automated dues become necessary?
Answering these questions honestly, ideally by testing the free plan with real data before fully committing, helps avoid a mid-year scramble to migrate records a second time.
Matching the Plan to Your Dojo Size
The right free plan depends heavily on where a dojo stands today and where it is headed. A school with under 50 students that can manage billing manually, or collect payments through a separate processor, has a strong starting point with DojoTrack’s free tier. A school that needs dues collection to run itself from day one should test PushPress Core Free, but only after running the processing math against a realistic monthly payment volume. A solo instructor focused mainly on private lessons or trial bookings may find SimplyBook.me’s limited free plan sufficient, as long as it is not asked to double as full dojo management software. A growing dojo that wants to avoid student-count-based pricing altogether, and is comfortable with a processing-minimum structure, has reason to look at a model like HotGlue’s Advantage Plan. These are starting points, not universal rankings, based on which limitation, student caps, manual billing, or booking ceilings, matters least to a specific school’s day-to-day operation.
Compare Total Cost, Not the Price Tag
The most reliable way to choose among free martial arts software plans is to build out a realistic monthly scenario: current student count, expected payment method split between card and ACH, and any features the dojo cannot operate without. Running that scenario against each plan’s actual terms, rather than its advertised price, reveals which option truly costs the least once a full month of tuition collection is accounted for.
A subscription price of $0 can still result in a real monthly bill once processing fees, upgrade triggers, and add-ons are added in. The smarter approach treats the software fee, the processing rate, and any minimums as three separate line items that need to be added together before a decision gets made. For dojo owners ready to compare these costs side by side before switching platforms, free martial arts school management software options are worth reviewing with this full-cost lens in mind.
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