Palaestral and Vagaro

Vagaro takes bookings on Vagaro, Instagram, Facebook and Apple Maps, and through a booking widget embedded on a business's own website.¹⁶ A business can take a deposit at booking, keep a client's card on file to charge a no-show or late-cancellation fee, and let clients join a waitlist.⁶ For fitness, members claim class spots through online booking, social platforms and a custom branded app.²

Palaestral

On Palaestral, an instructor's page lives at palaestral.com/i/your-name, under a name that is theirs, and lists the next 14 days of times anybody can book. A lesson's days and hour are set once, and its times are made 120 days ahead in the lesson's own time zone. A private lesson has one seat and a small group has more, and nothing can book the instructor into two places at once. A full time takes a queue of 2 places for every seat, and a freed seat is held for the next person in line. A client books with a name and an email address, with no account to make and nothing to install, and can move their own booking up to 3 times while cancelling would still refund it in full.

Vagaro processes payments through Vagaro Merchant Services, which its site describes as a registered ISO of PNC Bank, N.A.¹ Its fitness page states processing rates as low as 2.2%.² A business approved for Vagaro Merchant Services can receive one card reader at no cost, and one that stops processing with it within 12 months of activation agrees to pay a $150 early cancellation fee.³ Vagaro also offers buy now, pay later through Affirm.¹

Palaestral

On Palaestral, a client pays by card on Stripe's own payment page, into a Stripe account that belongs to the instructor. The instructor is the merchant: the money is theirs, Stripe bills its processing to them, and any 1099-K is issued in their name. Stripe pays the balance out on the schedule that account sets, and the instructor's money never sits with Palaestral on the way: the one part of a payment that passes through is a studio's share, where the instructor teaches at a studio that keeps one. There are no bank debits. A booking is refunded on the terms it was sold under, and a chargeback is the instructor's to answer from their own Stripe dashboard.

Every Vagaro plan includes memberships, packages and gift certificates.¹ For personal trainers it sells session packages, monthly commitments and specialty programs, with recurring billing.³ Vagaro's forms let a business design digital waivers with drag-and-drop tools and digital signatures, stored on each client's profile.⁵

Palaestral

On Palaestral, a membership charges one price a month for a number of visits or unlimited ones, and a member can pause for up to 90 days. A lesson pack sells lessons used as they are booked, any pack can be bought as a gift, and a client can make a lesson weekly to keep their seat. A booking is confirmed only once the instructor's waiver is signed for every person on it, each by name, and for anyone under 18 by a parent or guardian. A signed waiver is kept for 5 years, or a child's until they are 20, whichever is later, and nobody can delete one before then.

Every Vagaro plan includes customer tracking and client data, and SOAP notes.¹ For trainers, Vagaro logs workouts, tracks client progress and manages session credits.³

Palaestral

On Palaestral, everybody who books, buys a pack, is given lessons or pays for a membership month is on one record of what they booked, signed and paid. An instructor's notes about a client are kept 24 months from the day each was written, and a studio the instructor teaches at sees none of them. A copy of everything Palaestral holds about the instructor arrives as one file: each record a spreadsheet and each signed waiver a page.

Vagaro syncs with Google Calendar both ways, for appointments, classes and personal tasks, in an update it released on December 2, 2024.⁸

Palaestral

Palaestral publishes an instructor's teaching schedule as one calendar address to subscribe to from Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. It flows one way, out: a change made in Palaestral reaches the calendar, nothing the calendar holds comes back, and no calendar is signed into or read. The feed covers every place the instructor teaches and carries no client's name, note or price. How often a calendar reads the address is up to the app that reads it: Google Calendar's help, as of October 20, 2026, names no setting for it, and Google Calendar checks on its own schedule.¹⁰

As read on October 20, 2026, Vagaro's US pricing page lists one location with one person ("Just Me") at $30.00 a month, offered at $23.99 a month as an exclusive rate for the first 6 months.¹ Each bookable calendar license added to a location costs $10, up to seven licenses.¹ Vagaro offers a 30-day trial, and the page says a business can cancel anytime with no cancellation fees, and that exclusions apply.¹ The Vagaro Marketplace charges no booking fees.⁷

Palaestral

Palaestral's pricing is set before signups open in January 2027, and nothing is charged before then. Card processing is Stripe's, billed to the instructor's own Stripe account, which sets the rate they pay; Stripe's standard US card rate is 2.9% + 30¢ a charge as of October 20, 2026.⁹ A client pays exactly the price an instructor lists, and nothing is added to it.

Vagaro's own data-transfer team moves a business's data into Vagaro, typically in 1 to 2 business days.¹

Palaestral

Palaestral takes a spreadsheet of the people an instructor already teaches, up to 1,000 rows at a time: names and email addresses, notes and the lessons each has left. Every line is shown before anything is written, nobody in the list is told anything unless the instructor asks, and an import can be undone for 14 days while nobody has been told and none of its lessons has been spent.