Sawyer Reviews

1. I love that HiSawyer is specific to use for children activities and classes. I tried other booking plugins or websites that were a "one size fits all" (appointments for nail salon or doctor's office) and well... they didn't quite fit for my business. For instance, HiSawyer allows the possibility to see the age and birthdate of the kids, having an "older sibling discount", adding semesters or multiple...

Read more

I really love everything about it. If I had to really look for perfection: it would be awesome if there was an app. It might be just me, but checking it from mobile can be a little bit frustrating sometimes. Nothing out of this world, not bugs or errors, just think about checking social media from a web browser in your phone. But other than that, I love this!

I like how easy it is to manage and use. Our clients seem to enjoy it as well since it allows them a lot of accessibility and privacy especially when registering. I also appreciate all of the options that we can do for creating camps and classes. Overall, there are a lot of options that we can do for our programs now that we have Sawyer.

Because of how easy the program is to use, there are some options that we would appreciate having but do not have yet. For one, it would be nice to have the ability to send out receipts to clients on the financials page if we were to increase their balance or charge them through there. It would also be nice to have a notes section on the financials page so that our accountant and I don't have to look...

Read more

It can be imbedded on your website. Visually it is appealing to the purchaser.

Instead of paying out event registration income once, after the event, or one time at the end of each month, they pay out micro payments every 3 days. This renders keeping your checks and balances almost impossible, and we are currently paying extra payroll hours for our accountant to tally up each payment (We are talking about payouts as small as $1.25, when we are receiving as much as 10K a month with their platform). Can you imagine your accountant adding up all of those micropayments to hit 10K? It equates to hours of work. The whole process does not at all match industry standards and is very unrealistic for companies to handle. It's a hidden expense that makes the platform not worth the use.

I am so sorry that you had a less than stellar experience at Sawyer, that is never our intent nor our goal. We continue to evolve our products because of feedback like this and would love to connect on how we can improve if you're open to it.

The software is SO easy to use! When you’re setting it up and training other employees it’s easy to see that it’s hard to mess anything up!

No Point of sale feature available. We still pay for another 3rd party software for this part

Financials - reporting, payment plans, etc. I used to spend so much time creating and managing payment plans for parents! Our previous software made it almost impossible to get information about our deposits, fees, etc. It is very transparent with Sawyer.

It is more for children at this point and we have classes for children and adults so sometimes we have to do a lot of explaining to people. A little more flexibility for that would be nice.

Ease & functionality for admin and user.

Not very customizable for class display.

This is the most user-friendly, easy to use and learn software that I have ever used! Super easy to set up and use daily! Your customers will love it! Customer service is amazing! like honestly, the best ever! I cannot say enough good things about my experience with Sawyer!

I like everything! You got a lot for the money!

Easy to set up and get started. Ease of use, most things are pretty instinctual. The automatic charging is fantastic! Class management is SO MUCH easier with this system!

No way to cancel all future payments, so have to go in one by one.

Registrations are very simple to make, promotion is effective and also calendar integration is helpful.

Some of the UI parts like "Class Notes" are really primitive looking and more attention could be paid to that.

I love that it’s for kids. There are features different softwares might overlook (like number of siblings or sibling ages). Also, it’s key turn ready to use. Once a user starts setting up classes, it’s pretty simple from start to finish.

The reason I love it as also a small reason I find flaws. It’s a extremely easy to use registration and class tracker for childrens events. If you need a more customizable, advanced system or one setup for a different target demographic (adult patients for example), it might prove challenging.

Let's start for the basic: It's a software specifically for booking children's activities, which is my exactly what my business does, so every single feature in Sawyer is just perfect for what we do. I had tried 5 or 6 different software companies and all of them are for other industries (spas, gyms, consulting businesses), so they weren't ideal to use. I love Sawyer has children-activity-specific features such as camps, semesters, drop-ins, sibling discount, caregiver needed in the class, ages for the class, etcetera. Also it supports different locations, gift cards, and most important for us: a widget to add the registration form to your website.

Sawyer keeps improving and adding new features, I've run into tech problems when they just launch a new functionality but I consider this normal and I appreciate they keep improving their product. Tech support always replies fast when there have been issues.

Because I was not a web designer and didn't have backend experience, I needed a platform that I could basically input information into, I wish however it was more customizable. I also was drawn to Sawyer because I wanted to create memberships as well as classes and this gave me the opportunity to do both.

There are more things I dislike them like unfortunately. Some of them small like wishing I could customize the color other than red, some of them huge in that the forms are rigid meaning I can't have a different form intake for a member from my students. I need more flexibility and options for my businesses I was hoping everything could live under one umbrella. I find it almost impossible to navigate...

Read more

I like how easy it is to set up. They do all the inputting of information and then send you the code to embed on your website. I like that as a parent, it retains my information from year to year so registering my child is quick and painless. I like how they handle all the gathering of money. For the first time, all our accounts paid their tuition and I didn't have to track anyone down.

It's hard to get reports of how many kids have registered or print lists by ages. I would like for them to work on that capacity. The last software we used, you could print all kinds of reports but I have a hard time getting what I want on Sawyer.

I love that parents have a username and password that saves their information and helps them easily sign up for future events quickly and efficiently. Easy to collect payment and quick deposit times. Love the attendance feature and how quickly I can assign users so they have access to all medical information.

Sometimes it is difficult to set up classes . But once I got the hang of it I found this software to be great.

I love that it's so easy to use and very user friendly. I didn't need to "learn" to use it - it's very self-explanatory. I like that I get paid very fast with Sawyer direct deposits. I like this new party booking feature - haven't tried it yet but intend to sign up for that!

- it's less flexible in terms of creating one off classes. for example, in pearachute, i am able to create an "impromptu" class with a certain musician. On Sawyer I have to create a new schedule, then a new activity, etc. it's a bit overwhelming. I don't always necessarily want to create an event for one offs but the way the Sawyer system is no you almost have to. - some glitches along the way....

Read more

Always rolling out new functionality Great design

Lengthy learning curve - takes a while to get into the flow Few options for custom coding

Their tech support is beyond compare. Anytime we have a problem, we almost always get a response, from an actual person with a name, within an hour. The response often comes directly from our account manager. They also listen to feedback from their users to continually improve the software.

My only real complaint is that it does not integrate with Quickbooks, which causes some additional accounting headaches, but still SO much better than the previous registration software we were using.

I am a visual arts teacher and have a website where parents sign up their children to take classes from my studio. What I like most about Sawyer is how professional it makes my website look and how easy it makes my registration process. All my listings are set up in order of time of week and time of day with a bright red button that is irresistible to push! I love that parents can pay online using a payment plan or pay in full. I don’t have to hassle with trying to get payments each month as it is done automatically. All my forms are set up through the software so I get all the information I need about the parents and students. This is all kept in a client list where I can reference when needed. Total Organization tool!

Some of the things I would like Sawyer to fix or change about their software are the following: 1.) Allow more personalization to the registration page. When I don’t have classes to register for, I would like to have my own personal message instead of the generic one Sawyer has. I would also like to allow more personalization on the registration page to look like the rest of my website. I had to...

Read more

I like the simplicty of the software and the easy navigability. I also appreciate the ease of making payments. The quick pay feature can be a lifesend for unique billing situations. In addition, Sawyer has an active directory listing. We've gotten a number of new clients this way who have become committed customers. The group development meetings have been helpful, along with the additional office hours with both the front-end and back-end teams. I've gotten much better results from Sawyer when I've been able to communicate with people directly about my issues.

The main issue I have is the frequency of bugs in the system. I've had many bugs appear on Sawyer such as difficulties logging in, glitches in payment processing (thankfully no double payments have been made though), glitches in changing pre-existing schedules, glitches in viewing reviews, and more. I also wish the Sawyer software could be more automated and more easily integrated into other services. We have to recreate a lot of inforamtion from Sawyer events such as Google Calendar events, payment reminders, and automated emails because these features are not fully included. It creates extra effort on our part that I would prefer to avoid.

For me I need scheduling to be easy and not complicated but most importantly I want the parents of my students to book a class with ease! I am not a big tech person but I found setting up everything on Sawyer to be very straightforward. I have used other scheduling systems in the past and am so happy that I went with Sawyer.

The only thing I find a little frustrating is when I post a picture as part of a listing it takes several tries to get it to look good. It often repositions and doesn’t look good. But after a few attempts I get it right.

Our customers have very precise needs that have been difficult to handle for our bookkeeper. Even our CPA or QuickBooks expert was not able to satisfy our needs. Our customers sign up with a Nonrefundable Deposit about 6 months before classes begin. We almost always sell out in a couple of weeks of registration opening. Then some pay with a monthly purchase order, but not till class has already...

Read more

The thing we also needed but have not been able to implement in our organization we also have theater performances and we can not figure out how to sell tickets to the shows. We had to put event espresso back on our website to accommodate ticket sales.

It's very easy to use and minimal learning curve. I launched a summer camp for kids and was figuring it out as I went. Sawyer made that easier for me because they had everything in place already including things I hadn't even thought of. Sawyer had all the features I needed and they continue to add more, especially when the pandemic hit and businesses needed to pivot to online classes. Their onboarding couldn't have been easier. Their front-end AND back-end interfaces are modern and "Apple-like" making it easy for me as well as users. The other softwares I tested were outdated and extremely clunky. Their customer service is very helpful.

I've used the software for going on 2 summers now and I cannot think of anything I don't like. Oh, I wish I was able to embed my Registration page on my website myself but Saywer does it quickly so really not a big deal to me.

I really like how Sawyer has great customer and created a product that reflects how they listen to their clients’ needs.

So far I haven’t had any issues. I like that they recently added monthly pricing, which made it easier for me to offer the pricing structure I wanted.

Marketplace, Easy to use/train employees, design, customer service/tech support, form fields, messaging system, coupons, pivot to online learning was incredible and easy!

Stripe takes too long for deposits, inablilty to copy semesters so it takes a long time to set up new ones, would love to be able to attach files in roster emails

I love that I can be doing something else -- anything else -- and I will look at my phone and see that I have a registration. It's always exciting to see who has registered for what and how much money I just made while doing something else! My customers love that they can register online without having to call in!

It's not intuitive. Even after all the years I have been using it I sometimes still have to search around to find what I want to do. But I am getting better at it! So far there is no way to create online registration for our rolling enrollment.