Wellness studio owners ask different questions than salon owners, and they tend to be more skeptical. They've seen conflicting information about Boulevard, they know Mindbody's marketplace brings real traffic, and they're not sure a platform that doesn't appear naturally in yoga or massage forums is worth evaluating. We'll tell you where Boulevard fits, and where it doesn't.
Boulevard fits appointment-based wellness practices such as massage, acupuncture, float therapy, and holistic health. It has no class scheduling, so yoga, pilates, and barre studios should evaluate WellnessLiving or Walla first. Mindbody charges 20% of a new app-delivered client's first purchase, capped at $30, and its ClassPass marketplace gets clients used to rates 50–70% below retail. Memberships transfer in the Mindbody export, but membership tiers have to be rebuilt by hand over 2–3 weeks of configuration.
No. Boulevard has no class scheduling, enrollment or roster management, class packs, or capacity settings; it's built entirely around one-to-one appointments. For yoga, pilates, and barre studios, WellnessLiving and Walla are built for classes and are the platforms to evaluate first. Boulevard fits appointment-based practitioners such as massage, acupuncture, float therapy, and holistic health, where the appointment is the primary unit of business.
The question to ask yourself: is the appointment or the class the primary unit of your business? The answer decides which category of platform to evaluate.
Mindbody charges 20% of a new client's first purchase when its consumer app delivers someone new to your practice, capped at $30. Existing clients, clients from a tracked referral link, and every booking after the first are commission-free. A client who found you on Google and later rebooks in the Mindbody app costs nothing. Ten new app clients in a month costs at most $300.
Mindbody's pricing page states the rule directly: a fee applies only when the app delivers a client you wouldn't have received otherwise, and only on that client's first purchase.
That makes the fee a one-time acquisition cost. Whether $30 or less per new client is worth paying depends on what a new client is worth to your practice. For studios still in active client acquisition mode, the app can be a cheap channel. For practices with established books, it's a small line, and the bigger question is plan price.
Mindbody acquired ClassPass in 2021. ClassPass is a subscription service that gives members access to wellness classes and appointments at discounted rates, typically 50–70% below retail pricing. Wellness studios on Mindbody are embedded in the ClassPass ecosystem whether or not they explicitly opted in, so clients who book through ClassPass for a year or two get used to discounted pricing and find the studio's retail rate high when they book directly.
The company selling studios their scheduling software also runs the marketplace that conditions their clients to expect discounted pricing.
"A client told me she'd been seeing me through ClassPass for two years. She'd never paid my actual rate. She didn't even know what it was." Source: Reddit, r/massage
Whether the conflict of interest is acceptable depends on whether the traffic ClassPass brings in offsets the price conditioning. For studios earlier in building their book, the answer might be yes. For established practices where premium positioning matters, it's worth calculating the actual cost.
For appointment-based massage practices, three Mindbody alternatives are worth evaluating: Boulevard (from $159/month), with direct booking, no marketplace commission, and support included; Jane App ($200–400/month), HIPAA-compliant and strong for practices combining massage with acupuncture or physiotherapy; and Vagaro ($30/month plus $10 per additional calendar, plus add-ons), with accessible pricing and a free marketplace listing whose opt-in promotions charge commission. Online review volume skews toward salon platforms such as GlossGenius and Square Appointments, which are built for a different use case.
Strongest on the appointment management side: direct booking, no marketplace commission, proactive support included in all plans, membership management built for appointment-based practitioners. No class infrastructure. Best fit for practices where appointments are 80%+ of the business.
HIPAA-compliant, clean scheduling UX, honest pricing with no hidden add-ons. Strong for health practices that combine massage with other modalities (acupuncture, physiotherapy, integrative health). Less name recognition in the massage-specific community than Mindbody, but growing in wellness.
Broader platform covering salons, spas, and wellness studios. A standard Vagaro Marketplace listing carries no commission; opt-in promotions (Daily Deals, Fill My Books) charge 20% on a new client's booking and 5% on a returning client's. Pricing is more accessible than Mindbody for smaller practices. Less specialized for appointment-centric wellness than Boulevard.
The recommendation to be skeptical of: "whichever has the most reviews online." Review volume skews toward platforms with the most salon users (GlossGenius, Square Appointments) which are built for a fundamentally different use case than a massage practice with memberships, recurring clients, and specific service timing needs.
WellnessLiving is generally stronger for class-heavy studios (yoga, pilates, barre): it was built for class businesses, its class infrastructure is cleaner than Mindbody's, and its pricing is more predictable at scale. For appointment-based practitioners such as massage, acupuncture, and float therapy, Boulevard or Jane App is likely a better fit than either. Mindbody does both but has priced itself to be expensive at scale for businesses that don't need its marketplace.
Walla is also worth evaluating for class-first businesses that want a more modern interface. For appointment-based practitioners (massage, acupuncture, float therapy, holistic health), WellnessLiving works but wasn't designed specifically for appointment-centric businesses. The appointment UX is functional; it's not where WellnessLiving's product investment has gone.
If you run 80% appointments and 20% classes, Boulevard or Jane App is likely a better fit. If you run 80% classes and 20% appointments, WellnessLiving or Walla is likely better. The platform should match your primary business model, not the other way around.
Yes, with planning. Membership balances, remaining sessions, and expiration dates transfer through the Mindbody data export, but each membership's configuration (tiers, rollover rules, freeze dates, billing dates) has to be recreated manually in the new platform before go-live. A mid-season switch adds one complication: clients with mid-cycle billing dates need a decided plan for their next bill. Allow 2–3 weeks of configuration before go-live.
The practical challenge: if you have 60 active monthly massage memberships with varying session counts, rollover rules, and freeze dates, each of those membership structures needs to be recreated in Boulevard (or whichever platform you're switching to) before go-live. The data is there; the configuration is manual work.
Mid-season adds one specific complication: clients with mid-cycle membership billing dates. If someone was billed on the 15th in Mindbody and you go live on the 28th, you need a clear plan for whether that client gets billed again in the new platform on the 15th, or whether there's a billing adjustment for the transition month. Neither is wrong; both need to be decided before go-live, not discovered after.
Don't let membership complexity be the reason you stay on a platform that isn't working. It's manageable with planning. The practices that handle it well document every membership tier before the export, build each one in the new platform during the configuration period, and communicate to members before go-live. The practices that struggle try to do it after.
Moving membership clients to a new platform takes five steps and 2–3 weeks of configuration: export membership data from Mindbody (free self-serve CSV exports cover memberships; the paid export service's price isn't published), recreate membership tiers in the new platform before importing, import client records and confirm each member's billing cadence, send members one email and one text about the new booking link and any billing change a week before go-live, and review the first billing cycle for edge cases.
The whole process requires 2–3 weeks of configuration before a clean go-live. Practices that rush this step tend to discover membership billing problems two weeks after launch, when clients are already confused. The ones that plan it well are boring about it, which is what you want a membership migration to be.
Wellness studio owners get conflicting advice online because the recommendations that make sense for yoga studios aren't the same ones that make sense for massage practices or float centers. The free assessment is enough to tell you which platform fits your specific business, and whether Boulevard is even in the conversation for your setup.
Grove only gets paid when a business switches through us to Boulevard. If your studio is better served by WellnessLiving, Walla, or staying on Mindbody, we'll tell you that.
No email required. Results appear on the page in about 30 seconds.
Want to talk it through instead? Start with the assessment and you'll see the option to book a call after, for $97.