Fill every class. Keep every student.
Timetable, passes, memberships and waitlists on your own branded site. Your students, your payments, no marketplace skim.
Switching booking software? Bring your class list — and take the platform’s cut to zero.
One timetable, and everything that hangs off it
A studio week is a repeating timetable with a cap on every class. On Chocka that is one schedule your students book from, with a waitlist behind each class and a place confirmed only once the payment has gone through. Two people cannot end up with the last mat.
What differs between studios is what you sell against that timetable. Casual drop-ins, ten-class concession cards, monthly memberships, a six-week beginners course, the occasional Saturday workshop — Chocka runs all of them, in one place.
Passes, memberships and the intro offer
- The intro offer. Set a first-class price on any classes you choose. A student gets one intro across all of them, not one per class.
- Passes and concession cards. Credits, expiry and the balance left are built in. Cancel inside your notice window and the credit goes straight back, with the expiry date unchanged.
- Memberships. Recurring billing, from the Grow plan up.
- Courses. A beginners block is enrolled in once, not booked class by class.
- Gift cards. A balance your students can spend on anything you offer.
Full classes, and the waitlist behind them
When a class fills, students join its waitlist instead of booking. If a place frees up, the person at the top is emailed an offer and has a window to take it; if they do not, it passes down the queue. Nobody is charged for a place they were not given, and you are not the one working out whose turn it is.
You set the cancellation window yourself — any time before the class starts, or a set number of hours before it — and it is the same rule everywhere your students see it. Waitlists can be turned off entirely if you would rather not run them.
Your students, and the money, stay yours
Your students pay into your own Stripe account, on your own payout schedule. Chocka never holds the money and is not a step in the path it takes to you — which is a different arrangement from most booking platforms, and the reason there is a whole page about it.
Your student list is yours on the same principle: one click exports your whole account as a ZIP of CSVs, on any plan, at any time, without asking us. On the flat plans Chocka takes 0% of what your students pay you — see what that costs.
What Chocka does not do
There is no member app. Chocka is a website that works well on a phone, on your own domain if you are on Thrive, but it is not in the App Store and there is nothing for your students to download. If a branded app is what your students expect, that is a real reason to choose something else.
No email marketing, video or point of sale. No Mailchimp integration, no video on demand or online teaching, no retail till or payroll. Multi-staff logins start on Thrive, so a studio where several teachers each need their own access is on the top plan.
No marketplace. Chocka will not send you students. There is no Chocka class directory and we are not building one — your site is yours, and so is the job of getting people to it.
Questions people actually ask
- Do my students need to download an app?
- No, and there is not one to download. Your students book in a browser on their phone or a laptop, and get confirmations and class reminders by email. We would rather you knew that before you signed up than after.
- Can I bring my existing passes and concession cards across?
- Yes. On a managed migration — a person doing it by hand, included on the Grow and Thrive plans — your student list, part-used passes with their remaining credits, gift balances, your timetable and upcoming bookings come across. Two things need your students rather than us: everyone sets a password once, the first time they book on your new site rather than on the day you go live; and anyone on a recurring membership re-authorises their card.
- What happens when a class is full?
- Students join the waitlist instead of booking. When a place frees up, the person at the top of the queue is emailed an offer and has a window to take it; if they do not, it goes to the next person. You can switch waitlists off if you would rather handle it yourself.
- Do I need my own Stripe account?
- Yes, and it is the point rather than an obstacle. Your students pay into your Stripe account, so the money is yours from the first second and arrives on your Stripe payout schedule, which is between you and Stripe. It is free to open and takes a few minutes; you will need your bank details and enough information to satisfy Stripe’s standard business checks.
- Can my teachers each have their own login?
- On the Thrive plan, which is where multi-staff logins and roles start. The free plan and Grow are a single admin login, so a studio with several teachers who each need their own access belongs on Thrive.
- How do refunds work?
- A refund that needs issuing is flagged in your Chocka admin, but you issue it in your Stripe account, because you are the merchant — Chocka then picks the refund up from Stripe and reconciles the booking. Chargebacks are between you and Stripe for the same reason, and Chocka does not act on disputes today. A student cancelling inside your notice window is a different thing and needs nothing from you: a pass credit or a gift-card balance goes back automatically.
- Will Chocka bring me new students?
- No. There is no Chocka class directory or marketplace and we are not building one — your booking site is yours, and the traffic to it is yours to earn. If you want a platform that lists you alongside other studios, this is not that, and we would rather say so here.