Udio vs iClassPro

Udio and iClassPro both offer a wealth of online resources to help clients find answers to their questions. The difference for eastern hemisphere clients is that iClassPro support hours reflect western hemisphere time zones, whereas Udio has a local Australia-based support team on-hand to answer your questions during working hours.

Udio's support team have found that personalised video recordings are the most effective way to answer questions specific to your business, giving you a visual resource that you can refer back to in the future.

"Coming from a previous program where nothing added up and there was no support, this has made my job so more manageable. It has freed up time for me to do other activities."
Tony Gilligan, Owner/Operator of Moffat Beach Swim School

"We’re absolutely over the moon with the service. Any questions are answered within the day. We had spent over 7 months on the previous product but were given very minimal support and paid more for their app."
Linsey Ryder, Owner/Operator at Aeronauts Trampoline Club

iClassPro is delivered in American English and is designed for a specific industry, making terms like 'camps' and 'parties' difficult for non-US businesses to interpret.

Udio, on the other hand, understands that all businesses are unique and cannot thrive with a one-size-fits-all system.

Operators have the ability to configure everything from courses and programmes to packages, vouchers and achievements within the back-end of Udio. Their widget-based dashboards enable you and your staff to arrange the screen to suit your role and display information important to you at a glance.

"You can customise the software to your unique business circumstance. It offers a basic simple setup but as I have become more comfortable with the software I am adding more sophistication, creativity and complexity to our tasks."
David Carew, Manager at John Carew Swim School

While both platforms are suitable for enterprises with multiple locations, Udio was specifically built with scalability in mind. Owners and designated managers can oversee multiple locations/businesses from their Udio account and use the reporting tools to identify trends as well as areas for improvement.

Udio's founders also have more than 40 years of experience in the swimming and sports industry and make it their mission to consistently identify and develop new ways to help you grow your business.

“As Udio is cloud-based, we're able to access it from anywhere in the world, which is really handy as we have centres in Singapore, Melbourne and Adelaide, and our head office in Perth. The fact that it has been able to help our business grow and perform the way it has, I’m sure it would help other businesses do the exact same.”
Ben Robertson, Chief Operating Officer at State Swim

Although iClassPro provide free phone and email support, they charge extra for additional training (between $150USD and $400USD per hour).

When you sign up to Udio however, you receive links to the relevant training documents, as well as a dedicated account manager who will work hand-in-hand with you to optimise Udio for your business. Their aim to have you set up in a matter of days, not months. While Udio imports all your data, you can start familiarising yourself with the system using the test environment provided. There is no additional cost for onboarding and training with Udio.

Udio's logical and clean interface is designed to be modern and professional while maintaining user-friendliness so that you and your team can get to grips with the system as quickly as possible. The customer-facing portal is also designed to flow in a rational way, making it easy for parents to make/change bookings, add their payment information and track their child's progress.

While iClassPro offers some complimentary sessions, they charge extra for ongoing training which means some businesses may find it harder to master the software without paying for those additional training sessions.

"Coming from a very complex system to Udio was a big difference for our centre. Staff, as well as customers, picked up on how to use the software very easily and quickly."
Rochelle Dagher, Customer Service Coordinator at MLC School NSW

"I could not run my swim school without Udio. We invested in the system from day dot as we appreciate the need for good systems. There are so many features that have been thought through that are specific to swim schools developed by people who understand the complexities of managing classes, swimmers, parents and staff when it changes every month!"
Vicky Rope, Manager/Co-Owner of Dolphin Academy

Udio integrates with workflow automation platform, Zapier, which connects your Udio account to external apps (such as HubSpot, Xero and Facebook Ads). You can then transfer information between the two platforms, with Zapier acting as the go-between. This is a big time-saver that helps businesses to reduce their repetitive tasks and introduce smoother workflows.

iClassPro integrates with email marketing platform, MailChimp, using an API key. While MailChimp offers a wider range of marketing features (though most come at a cost), Udio's inbuild email tool allows you to set up and automate triggered emails, send mass emails to your entire customer base and send hyper-targeted emails to a specific class or group. Email and SMS capabilities are included in Udio's base module.

In iClassPro, you have to manually raise your fees at the end of the month or before your new term.

In Udio, you simply set your pricing and charge day (e.g. at the start of the period or two days in advance), then sit back and relax knowing that the system will take care of all your fee raising.