Could Pembee be the Vagaro alternative you have been looking for?
Pembee is a class and course booking platform for activity providers, from $45/month — with no contracts, no per-calendar pricing, and a 30-day free trial.
| Feature by Features | Pembee | Vagaro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | |||
| Monthly fee | From $45/month (Standard plan) | From $25/calendar — cost scales with team size | |
| Credit card transaction fees | From 0.59% + Stripe fees | 2.75% + $0.20 (integrated Vagaro Pay)* | |
| Free trial | 30 days — no credit card required | 30 days | |
| Payment Options | |||
| Credit/Debit card | Included | Included | |
| Cash/Bank Transfer | Included | Included | |
| Session passes / Class bundles | Included | Included | |
| Activity Settings | |||
| Sell add-on items | Included | Included | |
| Activity pictures and attachments | Included | Limited | |
| Customize activity listing page | Included | Template-locked | |
| Discount options | |||
| Multi attendee discounts | Included | Workaround via package pricing | |
| Multi session discounts | Included | Included | |
| Discount codes | Included | Included | |
| Bookings | |||
| Customizable intake forms | Included | Basic — limited field types | |
| Terms and Conditions agreement | Included | Included | |
* Based on rates published on vagaro.com/pricing as of April 2026.
Introduction
Vagaro is a genuinely affordable and well-reviewed platform — for solo practitioners and appointment-based businesses like salons, spas and massage therapists. If you run classes, courses, terms or camps, Pembee is built for exactly that shape of business, with a flat subscription instead of Vagaro's per-calendar pricing that climbs as your team grows.
As of April 2026, providers on Pembee have processed over 900,000 bookings and £40M+ in transactions, with a 4.9/5 rating on Capterra (versus Vagaro's 4.7/5). This page lays out where the two platforms overlap and where they diverge for group-class businesses.
How does Pembee's pricing compare to Vagaro's per-calendar model?
Pembee charges a flat Standard plan fee of $45/month with up to five admin users included and no per-room or per-instructor uplift. Add a coach, open a new hall, or take on a holiday camp — your subscription doesn't move.
Vagaro also positions itself around one-to-one appointments. Group-class management exists but is retrofitted, and features like multi-session courses, terms and structured programmes are either absent or worked around through package pricing. Pembee is purpose-built for recurring programmes: terms, blocks, family accounts with multiple children, reusable medical and consent forms.
“Clean and crisp front end for parents — easily operated back end for staff. We tried 2 others before this and both were heavily flawed.”
Feature deep-dive: Pembee vs Vagaro for class-based businesses
Below is a side-by-side look at the areas that matter most when you're running recurring classes rather than one-off appointments.
Pricing
Flat vs per-calendar. Pembee Standard is $45/month with no uplift per instructor or room. Vagaro starts at $25 per calendar, so a studio with three teachers and two rooms pays five times the headline rate.
Transaction fees. Pembee charges from 0.59% on top of Stripe's published rates. Vagaro's integrated Vagaro Pay is 2.75% + $0.20 per transaction. On a £30 class, a ten-week term for twenty families is roughly £18 in savings per term, per class — and that compounds.
No contracts. Pembee is monthly or annual with 2 months free on annual. Cancel any time. Full 30-day free trial, no credit card required.
Admin and automation
Registers built for classes. Pembee generates a register automatically from bookings, supports paperless check-in and check-out, and carries attendee data forward term-to-term so parents don't re-enter it every season.
Automatic confirmations and reminders. Email confirmations, balance reminders, and reminder emails before each session cut down manual follow-ups. Premium plan users add abandoned-cart recovery for bookings that stall at checkout.
Clone classes and terms. Duplicating a successful term is one click — useful every September, January and April.
Customisation
Activity pages you control. Vagaro's customer-facing pages are largely template-locked. Pembee lets you shape each activity page with photos, descriptions, Google Maps links, attachments, and a configurable set of filters so parents can narrow down classes by age group, location or day.
Custom intake forms. Collect the medical, consent and dietary information you actually need — reusable per child, not per booking. Vagaro's form builder supports basic fields only.
Payments
Stripe-integrated. Pembee uses Stripe for card payments and supports Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna out of the box. Offline payments (cash, bank transfer) carry no transaction fee on either platform.
Subscriptions and class packs. Sell monthly memberships, multi-session packs, and trial tickets without needing a separate product.
Engagement
Family accounts. One parent, multiple children, one checkout. Medical info lives on the child, not the booking — entered once, reused every term.
Marketing built in. Discount codes, multi-child and multi-session discounts, trial tickets, and Meta Pixel support on the Premium plan. Vagaro supports codes but multi-attendee discounts are a workaround via package pricing.
Insights
Dashboard and reports. Sales reports, class sales breakdowns and monthly revenue reports are in the admin dashboard. See the full class booking system for the complete feature set.
Conclusion: the right choice for class-based businesses
Vagaro is a strong tool for salons, spas and solo appointment businesses. If that's what you run, Vagaro probably fits you well. But for studios, clubs, camps and schools running group classes — where every extra coach or room means another Vagaro calendar on your bill — Pembee is designed to stay flat as you grow, and to model terms, families and registers the way you actually run them.
Wandsworth Preparatory School switched to Pembee from a legacy booking tool and reported a 20% increase in bookings and a 50% reduction in admin time — the kind of gain that makes the switching friction worth it.
If you're weighing up Vagaro and Mindbody, it's worth reading our Pembee vs Mindbody comparison as well — most studios evaluating one are evaluating both. Or see how Pembee compares to other booking tools.
Try Pembee for free by signing up here — 30 days, no credit card, no contract.
Testimonials
Trusted to handle thousands of bookings each day
“Using Pembee for my event bookings and registration has cut down my admin time immeasurably. I had got to a point where I felt swamped by the volume of paperwork created by my small but busy business and Pembee has saved the day!”
“Fantastic. Easy to use, support is incredible and we have much happier users.”
“I am blown away by the level of support and service from Pembee, the team have helped me set up the app and tweak it to get it working exactly as I want it. I can't fault any step of the process.”
“So easy to use, great for customers and staff. Clean and crisp front end for parents - easily operated back end for staff. We tried 2 others before this and both were heavily flawed with by support or quality - this system has both.”
“Just absolutely fantastic. I am super impressed with their system and also their customer support.”
“Such an amazing piece of software after trialling a few, Pembee is very easy to use and has solved a problem that we encountered!”
“Amazing app for my business. Helpful and easy to use, plus the online support is amazing from the team.”
“Amazing. Not only a great and easy to use platform but brilliant customer service. Pembee has been a game changer for me. From using a previous booking system, my workload has been cut in half - more than half! Cannot recommend enough.”
“Our previous booking system was going offline and we needed a replacement, Pembee worked with us to ensure their system could offer everything we needed to continue the smooth running of our business. Pembee customer support is second to none. Setting up the system was straightforward and there was always someone on hand to help with any queries we had.”
- Bookings processed
- 900K
- Transactions processed
- $50M
- Total Users
- 230,000+
- Sessions listed
- 600,000+