Last Updated on May 26, 2025 by Ewen Finser
If you are looking for an all-in-one medspa, wellness, or salon software option, chances are two names have come up: Boulevard or Mindbody. Both platforms give you similar options for payments, booking, and marketing, but while they might have the same offerings, these offerings look very different side by side. So how do they compare?
The Short Answer:
Up front, I absolutely love Mindbody as a top rated software for fitness and wellness class-based businesses, primarily fitness companies like yoga studios, boxing, weight training, and other forms of personal fitness. Boulevard, however, is much better suited to medspas, regular spas, and salons, especially those who are scaling, have multi-locations and a growing staff. Let’s see why.
Boulevard vs. Mindbody Comparison: The Booking Process
Let’s start with Mindbody. As I said, this software is really intended for fitness companies, and nowhere is this more evident than the booking process.
Mindbody UI for Those Booking
The initial layout is pretty simple; you choose whether you are a business or looking for classes and services, and then login.
As a potential customer looking for fitness classes, Mindbody is great. I can, for example, wake up and decide that on a Wednesday midday I want to take a fitness class, like boxing or yoga, then look up what classes are available within the Mindbody platform, in my location, based on the times I want and the distance, then book directly:
I can also edit for studios or instructors if I know there is someone or somewhere I prefer.
Mindbody UI for Business Owners
Now, as the business owner or fitness professional looking to manage my bookings and payments, I’ll admit that the platform doesn’t have nearly the same time and effort invested in its interface.
- As someone looking to book a fitness class, the user interface is outstanding, very simple to use, clear colors that aren’t over the top, with all relevant details needed when and where you expect them.
- As someone who is offering classes on the platform, the internal side is straightforward but a little mundane. Nothing to write home about, as they say.
On the right hand side you have a menu with details relevant to the type of business you offer and your relevant sales information is automatically displayed when you open the platform. It can take a minute to find what you’re looking for, but once you get the hang of it it’s pretty straightforward.
Boulevard Booking UI
When you first log into Boulevard as a business owner, it’s very easy to check on the calendar and see which appointments have been scheduled with which team members.
Already you’ll notice a difference in the layout and the user interface. Boulevard uses colors, but not grotesquely; they use them where relevant to identify key information like individual team members or important notifications under the messages tab on the top or booking a new appointment in the top right hand corner.
I absolutely love the way they use a black header to differentiate between the drop-down menu options. this makes it very easy to visually and mentally identify where your key categories are and where your drop-down options are within those categories. For example, when you click on “Calendar” from the black header, you can view staff availability for one day, four days, or the next week as your drop-down menu options.
I personally prefer not having the main menu options along the left hand side the way Mindbody does because they blend in all too easily. I think the Boulevard user interface is more intuitive and has better visualization.
Boulevard vs. Mindbody: Filling in an Empty Schedule
One of the ways that you can tell Mindbody is better for Fitness companies while Boulevard is better for spas and salons is the way they help your business fill an empty schedule.
Auto Emails
The creators behind Boulevard are industry professionals themselves, so they understand some of the main pain points and issues that stylists or estheticians might face.
For starters, the platform helps you reduce no-shows and last minute cancellations by sending automated email and text reminders to your clients, offering an internal way for them to confirm or make changes to their appointment. Internally, all of this is managed in the platform under the messages center where staff members can communicate in real time with clients who might want to change their appointment.
As a spa professional or a stylist, you are going to have last minute cancellations or days where you have a lot of availability unexpectedly. So, Boulevard helps fill those spaces with an automated feature that you can set up to trigger emails or text messages to all of your customers when your availability reaches something like 30% or higher.
This, combined with a waitlist feature, make it possible to schedule a lot more last minute appointments for your customers.
ClassPass
Mindbody does things a bit differently. As they are geared more toward Fitness companies, it’s less likely that you’ll simply have a day where you don’t have a lot of appointments during your main business hours and more likely that you will have classes you are offering that aren’t very full.
To help with that, you can choose to integrate Mindbody with ClassPass. This helps fill classes and book last minute spots.
Boulevard vs. Mindbody Comparison: The Onboarding Process
Switching to a new platform or transitioning from an old platform can be a headache. So what is the onboarding process like?
Boulevard: Live Onboarding Specialists
Boulevard gets a lot of credit for how many options they have for onboarding, including live agents, video recordings, and articles. However, they have designed the process to be done with the help of a live onboarding specialist over the span of several weeks, comprising about 15 hours worth of material.
Now, if you are training your staff for a major transition from one or more other software platforms to Boulevard, this is a nice way to ensure that all of the information is legitimately retained. There’s nothing worse than Death-by-PowerPoint where you are exposed to too much information at once. Not only will you not absorb any of it, but it is profoundly boring in a way that shaves years off your lifespan.
Right away I was able to tell that the Boulevard onboarding process was designed for larger businesses and professionals who might all be working together in the same onboarding process.
Mindbody: Self-Paced and Follow-Along
When I made my way through the onboarding process for Mindbody, one of the things I noticed was that it was clearly intended more for independent instructors who are choosing to use the self-paced, DIY option (probably at around 2:00 a.m. while frantically juggling other personal and professional responsibilities).
You can actually follow along with the setup guide that includes recorded videos, after which you can access each of the related screens through your platform to fill in things like:
- Administrative details
- Payment information
- Policy forms
Admittedly I’ve gone through all the training videos and they don’t have a lot of information you need. They are mostly sales videos disguised as training videos. At the bottom of each software tutorial or training video you actually have step-by-step guides where you can follow along and those are much more helpful. They, too, have small videos that play on the right hand side of the screen without the awkward Zoom call style sales pitch attached.
When you log in to your platform, it will automatically initiate a setup checklist that has a handful of drop-down menu options in the center of the page so that you can go through each of the steps you need to set up classes, set up your staff, set up appointments, and anything else.
On the far right side it’ll keep tabs on your progress and if you are trying to launch your business by a certain date, you can set that date on the goal section of the calendar and it will remind you how many days you have left to finish all of your onboarding.
Money Talks: Boulevard vs. Mindbody Payments
There are some key differences in how payments work between the two.
Payment Integration
Mindbody has an integrated payments account that allows you to accept payments through an app, your website, or using a POS system. You can set up things like recurring billing, use different payment processors depending on your business location, or use the internal Mindbody payment processor that is offered. Mindbody also has different options depending on your location, whether you are in the US, the UK, Singapore, Ireland, Hong Kong, or Canada.
What I like most is that Mindbody has an internal payment processor for all integrated payment accounts. This is great for independent fitness pros who want everything in one place without having to invest in a separate payment processing app that just so happens to integrate with Mindbody.
Boulevard also has integration features with an exclusive, internal Duo system, similar to what Mindbody offers. You can process various payment methods through the dedicated iPad app, which lets you process both payments and tips. If you already use another platform like quickbooks, you can sync your data with that platform as well.
Staff Payments
Boulevard offers a time clock feature that you can choose to enable after you set up your location settings. This simple feature lets staff members clock in and out and generates time clock summaries and time cards for payroll. With Boulevard you can automatically set up employees who are independent contractors (like an independent stylist) to receive payments and tips from their respective appointments as well.
Mindbody makes it easy to add new staff members, if, for example, you are offering a new class at your fitness center. What I really like, though, is that they let you adjust the time clock and payment options for each staff member.
This is especially beneficial for fitness centers which might have front desk staff and management staff who are paid an hourly wage as well as a handful of instructors who are paid based on the number of people who show up for a given class.
Staff members can log in with the Mindbody platform as their time clock. It’s especially nice for front desk personnel or management who can use it to monitor classes and book appointments while also using the self-clock-in option.
Mindbody Classes
Small font aside, Mindbody makes it really easy to manage classes that might be offered with regularity, whether they’re taught by the same instructor or by a multitude of instructors. Internally, they make it really easy to add classes, create a schedule for something like a beginner yoga class offered at 7:00 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, and alter the pricing for things like:
- Those who book ahead of time
- Those you do a drop-in
- Those who book a class pack
They offer an option to create class packs where customers might get a discount for booking three classes (for example) instead of just one. I love this because, in my experience, if people see a substantial discount on something they’re already interested in, like a beginner yoga class, they are more likely to spend the money on a package deal even if it takes them several weeks or months to use all of their credit. And in the interim, the more they like it, the more likely they are to invest in multiple class packs.
It’s especially great when juxtaposed to a displayed drop-in rate that shows potential customers just how much money they could save by investing in multiple classes at once.
Summing Up
Up front, Mindbody is great for fitness and wellness businesses, primarily fitness companies offering individual classes. The beautiful front facing component for those looking to book a class compensates for the rather mundane but easy to use layout for the internal side of the software. Boulevard, however, is much better suited to medspas, regular spas, and salons, with a beautifully designed internal interface that handles all of the key features you need as a salon or spa.