Pike13 Reviews

We LOVE Pike13. They offer everything a small studio, or a large gym needs to operate.

Pros:

Ease of use, and reliability are amazing! But my FAVORITE thing is definitely the staff app. I can do almost everything from the staff app, so I can work from anywhere, at any time. From running payroll to creating packages or plans, it does it all. Most apps come with limited function, but this software is almost as complete as the desktop version. And what I love about the company is they are always trying to get better. We have been users for man years and they add things I haven't even thought about needing. Its a pleasure to be a customer.

Cons:

The reporting can be a bit confusing for me. Recently they have added a new reporting feature which has much more information, but I still struggle trying to see exactly what I need at times. But I cant even call it a complaint. I had to really think of something to answer this question.

Outstanding Software!

Comments: Absolutely 100% positive and fantastic experience. Customers comment on how easy it is to use and I greatly value this software.

Pros:

I love how versatile it is. i need to be able to run both monthly tuition for regular, weekly classes, plus courses plus punch cards, as my business serves many different populations. I love how easy it was to set-up and how easy it is for my staff to learn. I don't have to provide training for new employees. For the weird times things don't go as planned, customer service is on top of it, very speedy, thorough and helpful.

Cons:

The reporting end is so versatile that I don't know how to easily pull up reports. there are so many ways to filter, which can be a good thing, but I don't know how to pull it up. I wish I could get notifications when someone buys a particular package that I am waiting to get sold.

Avoid... You will thank me later!

Comments: I would not recommend Pike13 to anyone due to their poor customer service and their lack of respect for their clients.

Pros:

Booking Emails: I like the fact that the program sends booking emails on a regular basis. Parents like them for the reminders. Credit Card Processing: It has a nice feature built in that allows credit card processing. They did not tell me upfront that there is a monthly fee associated with it and then said "oh someone should have told you that." Once again, blame game. Documents: The docusign feature is a nice ad on. However, if you want to customize your form, good luck. Pike13 doesn't really want to help you on this and once again try to play the "stupid" card on it. Reports: The reports are nice if you can understand how to use them. They are kinda difficult to get around if your account manager does not explain them in detail.

Cons:

Customer Service Attitude: They don't care once they have your money. Make sure you put a note on your calendar one year out or your service contact will be renewed. Don't expect to speak with anyone over the phone, everything is done through email. On Boarding: I was indifferent about the on boarding process. The guy belittled me several time about coding and whatnot. I was a graphic and website designer by trade and on numerous occasions he talked in circles to try to confuse me. Basically their software doesn't allow for many custom changes and they would prefer to confuse you instead of being straight forward about it. Text messaging: This is not default on the product. I was told that it was. All clients have to enable the feature. When you are dealing with 200+ clients you don't want to have to go through this process with every single client on how to sign up, sign on, go through all of their individualized settings - just to set up a text message. Interface: The interface is very straight forward. There isn't any real customizations on it. You get what you get.

Great "real time" scheduling

Comments: Pike13 has everything we need and continues to evolve and change with the business. I really do like the most recent update!

Pros:

This software processed our monthly billing, scheduling, cancellations, and more. If this software went down, we wouldn't be able to operate our business. Thankfully, in the 7+ years I've been using it, I haven't had to worry about that.

Cons:

I wish that we were able to send emails to a whole schedule for the day. For example, if we need to send an informational email to our schedule, we have to do that for each person. We are able to cancel a whole day, just not send them a mass communication without cancelling.

Used Pike13 (formerly FrontDesk) for years

Comments: Overall I was pretty happy the experience, eventually we decided to part ways though.

Pros:

Very stable platform, app made it easy to access / manage remotely.

Cons:

I was a grandfathered user on an older plan - I eventually left since I got tired of having limited access to reports and metrics that would be included if I 'upgraded'

Weird Set up

Comments: It's almost good. There are definitely things that need fixing, but they don't seem to care and are not evolving. I wish there was a customer service number though. I can't believe there is no way to get answers when you need them. Very disappointing.

Pros:

I do like the dashboard reporting. I can easily keep track of the money that comes in and any payments that fail, etc.

Cons:

The set up is super weird. Like, the software assumes all teachers that teach the same class make the same rate of pay. You have to manually add each teacher to each class in order for them to get paid as well. Instead of assigning pay rates to teachers, you assign them to classes, and even then, it doesn't assume any of your staff is allowed to teach that class. We have 75 classes a week on our schedule and several of them are different types of classes, so each time we add a class (or a new teacher), we have to manually add every teacher to the pay for that class. The customer service is bad. In fact, there is NO customer service number. You literally can't get answers unless you email them and the answers you get back are often a link to one of their self help articles and don't really answer your questions. Also, if you want to raise your prices on existing memberships, you will have to do that manually for every single person. The digital waiver set up through docusign does not work well and no one will help you set it up. Families are unable to manage each other so each child has to have their own unique email address to have a waiver on file as well as an account with us. Parents are always mad about this. Probably one of the worst features is that if someone is on an autopay contract/membership and their payment fails, it's not very obvious. They can continue to take classes (the system does not automatically cancel them nor do they show up as unpaid).

Best All Around Management Software for our Music School

Comments: We looked at many others, from the low end to the very high end. We actually began deployment of another product and found that "the devil is in the details" - there were significant workarounds and changes to our business practices that would be required, and which we were not willing to make. So we looked again, and found that, while not perfect, Front Desk did meet 100% of our "Must Have"s and the clear majority of our "Nice to Have" items without requiring us to squeeze into a predefined mold. All the products out there have feature lists that sound great, but with most, the further we dug into actual implementation, the harder the task became. With Front Desk, instead I found that several of the business practices that make our school unique were handled very elegantly by the software. This is primarily due to the fact that Financials (payment plans, billing, etc.) are completely decoupled from Enrollments (maintaining Schedules, Attendance, etc). At first this was disorienting, but I soon realized it was the distinctive that provided much of the flexibility we needed.

Pros:

Very easy to use, modern / clean interface. The site is essentially identical on a Desktop and on Mobile devices. Note that some would say lack of an "App" was a Con (that was my first reaction) but the Mobile friendly website performs very well on all platforms. Lots of flexibility around pricing models - per class as well as per instructor pricing, e.g. Prices, Discounts and Coupons are all clearly delineated in their roles and each is modifiable at time of sale. The Merchant Account Rates were the best we found also. Viewing schedules for a few dozen teachers can be overwhelming; Front Desk has great flexibility in filtering the schedule (by person, activity, location, etc) as well as flexibility in presentation (list, day, week and month formats). Innovative use of colors also helps make attendance status clear at a glance. I am also very pleased with how flexible the Customer view of the website is. The presentation of our "Course Catalog" can be very customizable, including defining what navigation tabs are available in the interface, etc.... not just what colors and icons are used! (We have yet to integrate the Front Desk website with our main site, but will do so next quarter.)

Cons:

The Payroll functionality appears good with one glaring exception, which is that it does not support hourly pay; instead, you use either commission rates or pay per task (as opposed to per hour). In other words, an instructor earning $20/hour must be separately configured to earn $15 for a 45 minute class and $10 for a 30 minute class. This makes payroll setup (and maintenance with changing rates) quite a bit more labor intensive. So, the system is flexible, but not very efficient. In our case, we've opted to use the reporting functionality to generate all payroll statistics we need, and roll them up in a spreadsheet, rather than take on the multiple Pay Rates per Instructor overhead. We can always adopt their Payroll tools later if we wish. The Reporting function has apparently recently been revamped; the Interface has "Classic" and "New" Reports sections. So, my hope is that the New Reports functionality will be enhanced soon. The data content, and its filtering are very robust - however, right now there are still significant shortcomings; Column order/width cannot be adjusted, for instance. Reports can be grouped only at one level (by Instructor, or by ClassType, but not both). These problems can all be worked around by using the Export to CSV or Excel to handle those requirements offline. Hard copy printouts are also not very impressive for the schedules and reports, although they're functional.

Pike13 is Ever-Evolving

Pros:

It allows our schools to run their business and track key information. We have worked with them to continue to evolve and fine tune this software to our unique business case and a lot of features have been added in the 4 years I have been administering it. Their reporting and API have also progressed over the years which as been a key component to allowing us to customize and expand functionality for our system. Since this is one of our core platforms we have to be able to support our system/franchisees if issues come up, and their support team has always been super timely and helpful.

Cons:

As with any software, there are some growing pains and functionality that do not completely meet our unique needs. Their team has been committed to working with us to change this and as a result a lot of features have been added. In a perfect world we would like to be able to have more control over the reporting integrations, as well as global administration. We currently operate this software in 235 locations, 9 countries, and in 3 languages so there is a lot of visibility/functionality that we need. 2019 is a big year for us as we continue to grow as a business, so we look forward to working with Pike13 to help meet our needs.

Good depending on needs

Comments: Pike 13 did not suit our needs. We weren’t able to get valuable reports, customer service was less than average and the back end was not decreasing our admin time.

Pros:

It has an app which was liked by our staff. Duplicating a session and editing it was easy for repeating classes.

Cons:

No ability to do payment plans, enroll multiple students at one time, do auto discounts. It would work better for a gym/studio but did not work well for our mostly youth programming. Was impossible to get financial info (credit card fee report) from them.

Gets the Job Done

Pros:

User-friendly for end users to book classes. On the company side also user-friendly to administer classes and sessions.

Cons:

The back end reporting functionality is cumbersome and not user-friendly. Makes analytics challenging​.

Poor development - no improvement in 2 years - Biggest Change was their name to confuse everyone.

Comments: Appointments for coaches, payscale, that's about it.

Pros:

works on mobile and ipad through web function, easy to take attendance in sessions, easy to see client images. payscale for paying coaches per client is best feature.

Cons:

again, no improvements in two years, hasn't updated any feature for sales, integration, Zapier integration - poor leadership, went to report functions as their key improvement for past two years, but doesn't work, integrate with Zapier or Google Sheets, doesn't allow shared reporting, so each staff person has to customize their own reports leaving a business to have more time on boarding, rather than less time to onboard. Focus was supposed to be easy for people to buy online and is actually the worst software to purchase online for parents of kids in a sports program. Lost thousands of dollars went we went to Front Desk from EZ Facility. As a former ICON Small Business Finalist with Infusionsoft, I DO NOT recommend this software to anyone wanting over per year in revenue. We've had to modify every feature of the software to make it work, would leave in a heartbeat if it didn't waste thousands of dollars in changing.

Don't waste your time

Comments: All too common software company switchero. They promise functionality, flexibility, and support, all of which mysteriously vanish once you are invested in the product enough that they hope the energy required to switch products is high enough that you make due with crap you have. They have changed my pricing structure without my permission. They took away functionality despite my protest, and they have began trying to up-sell me on features and functionality that I have not requested nor desire. It's silliness like this that make me want to get into the software business, because apparently you can say whatever you want to make the sale and never actually have to deliver on those promises. The most recent scam is to take away the reporting features I have been using for three years in order to "upgrade" me to a more expensive option that requires more of my time to figure out. Not helpful, not designed to be helpful.

Pros:

the sales pitch

Cons:

the actual product that came after the sales pitch

Solid Platform

Comments: Front Desk HQ has an amazing team of support specialists that are incredibly responsive and patient with their customers. I just recently made a big transition with my strength and nutrition business and wouldn't have been able to make the switch if not for the expert team of professionals who assisted me throughout the process.

Pros:

It's honestly not as much about the software as it is about the people. I find the software requiring some workarounds

Cons:

It'd be cool if clients with account credits can have plans attached to them that are auto debited monthly instead of manually having to go in and do it. It'd also be nice to be able to create a plan that allowed for unlimited of one service and a set amount of another service so I don't have to sell one person multiple plans and have them accept multiple terms and conditions as a result.

Front Desk Review

Comments: As a FIT4MOM franchisee, Front Desk makes my life a lot easier than it otherwise would be, keeping track of scheduling, billing etc.

Pros:

Ease of setting up class schedules, client profiles, credit card billing.

Cons:

I have trouble running the reports I need. Figuring out numbers for budgeting purposes etc. When I track things like new clients in an excel spreadsheet separately, where I know my numbers are accurate, I can't get Front Desk reports to give me the same results.

Good software with some growing pains

Comments: Does many things well BUT lacks owner/manager total control. My major gripe is the lack of giving the owner complete control (customization) of all aspects of the financials per client. My business model is monthly plans where a client trains 8-12x/month with a contract commitment of 3, 6, to 12 months. Here are some gripes:
1) Partial Payments: 2) Flexibility of Plans/contracts: 3) Scheduler: Here are my applause points:
1) Customer service: 2) Client Communication: 3) Flexible monthly rate: 4) Online documents: In conclusion:
A good software with some growing pains.
Front Desk has the potential to be one of the best. The payment/billing aspect is where I had the most issues due to that lack of per client customization.
Allow one to change a due date that is reflective in the billing cycle and the plan without having the user to jump through hoops.
Allow user to add (by picking time slot), change, cancel, view remaining sessions.
Allow the user to accept partial payments and the ability for software to reflect the accuracy of payments per client.

Cindy at customer support is the best!

Pros:

Booking feature works the best for our business. Since we deal with many people booking lessons with various teachers I like that everything is automated and we get notifications for canceled and booked lessons.

Cons:

It takes a bit to learn, but if you book time with support it makes it much easier. I have a few things on my wish list for our business, but it seems like they are always trying to add feature. I hope they add the ability to book rooms in the future

I've been a client with these guys for over 3 years and they continually increase their prices on me

Pros:

It's great for signing people in. Auto bill pay is nice but is it really anything that another company can't do? Not sure.

Cons:

They don't like to take care of their longtime customers. Instead of grandfathering them into the rates they've agreed to, they continually increase prices and use semantics to say they are adjusting your discounted rates. Strongly considering looking elsewhere.

Pike 13 at CrossFit Jääkarhu, Austin, TX

Comments: Pike 13 is a great platform for our gym - we are able to run any and all necessary reports that we needs to keep track of and stay on top of our business metrics and our clients!

Pros:

Customer service is A++. Ease of use and functionality is a close second!

Cons:

Can be difficult to make big batch changes on the back end, but customer service and support is always available if we need them to help or assist!

I love Pike13 and clients really love it too

Comments: saves me a lot of time!!

Pros:

the way it looks and what i can do with it.. how easy it is to set up services and plans it's very responsive and i like the business app

Cons:

the new report system also when you're busy in an account and for instance you've changed something then it takes you all the way back to the start.. there's no app for clients

Aweful

Comments: Not user friendly.

Pros:

When it works, it's okay but still not right for my business.

Cons:

Reporting is difficult. It is not intuitive. It is quite frustrating when it is slow.

station ahtletics

Comments: wonderful customer service very helpful and respond very quickly.

Pros:

Great software for multi gym owner. Easy to transfer info and get accurate information

Cons:

was a little challenging for myself to learn but i am not super tech savy.

The support staff at Pike13 are extremely helpful!

Pros:

The fact that I can look up anything I don't know how to do in their Help Center. Anything beyond that, I can contact their support team for more details.

Cons:

Perhaps a simpler way to pull reports. It was a learning curve with all the filters, but once you get in there, it gets easier.

Easy to use and easy to recommend.

Pros:

The flexibility of the features. I can tailor them to my business needs.

Cons:

I wish that my franchise company would invest in an app for my clients as I can't do that myself, it has to be company wide.

Night mare

Comments: One of the worst experience of my life, I would never recommend anyone to waste their time. It's completely ways of time.

Pros:

If you have any question you have to wait days to receive auto reply. Very old and complicated system.

Cons:

Very complicated

Excellent !

Comments: Easy Access
Informative Scheduling
Events
Purchases
Memberships
Emails
Phone #s
Credit Card Details

Pros:

Easy to Use & Organized ! Members are able to easily access the schedule, their profiles and plans !

Cons:

Nothing ! I think it is a fantastic system for any gym/studio that has a membership or class base.