Claybench vs Mindbody
Mindbody was priced for spin studios.You run a kiln.
Mindbody’s typical customer is a boutique fitness studio doing $30-100K a month. Pottery studios are real businesses at a different scale — and they need things no fitness platform has a word for: firing fees, kiln schedules, wheel reservations, clay on the shelf.
The comparison that matters
| Claybench | Mindbody | |
|---|---|---|
| Class scheduling + online booking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Memberships + recurring billing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Waivers / agreements | ✓ | ✓ |
| Branded public booking page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Platform fees charged to the studio | 0% | platform + processing |
| Monthly price for a single studio | $49 | ≈ $99-349 list |
| Firing-fee tabs per member | ✓ | — |
| Wheel / workstation reservations | ✓ | — |
| Kiln schedule the bookings respect | ✓ | — |
| Supply sales + member tabs | ✓ | — |
| Production planning for your own work | ✓ | — |
| Storefront for finished ware | ✓ | — |
| Consumer marketplace app for discovery | — | ✓ |
| Multi-location franchise tooling | — | ✓ |
Mindbody list pricing as published mid-2026; plans and promotions change — check mindbodyonline.com. Claybench’s online bookings carry a flat 3% student-paid booking fee (or absorb it for clean student pricing); the studio pays only card processing.
Why the price gap is structural
$49 isn’t a discount — it’s calibration. A community pottery studio typically grosses $5-10K a month, so $49 is 0.5-1% of revenue: the same share a small fitness studio pays Mindbody. The difference is that Mindbody’s pricing assumes you’re six times bigger.
When Mindbody is the better fit
If you run multiple locations under one brand, need franchise-grade reporting, or count on Mindbody’s consumer marketplace app to fill first-time seats, that ecosystem is genuinely hard to replicate. For a single pottery studio whose students find it on Instagram and Google, you’re paying for machinery you don’t use.