Switching platforms without losing your clients.
This is the real reason a studio stays on a platform it has stopped liking. Here is what comes across, what doesn’t, and how long it actually takes.
What you’re afraid of losing, and what it actually is
When a studio says "I’ll lose my clients", it rarely means the list. It means the balances: class packs already paid for and not yet used. Getting those wrong means answering, one at a time, to people who have already paid you.
So the list and the balances are the only two things Movently’s importer handles, and it handles them carefully. Everything else — the schedule, the prices, the services — is typed in, and that is an evening or two of work rather than a migration.
How it goes
You export from the platform you’re on
A CSV of your clients. A second one for unused packs, if your platform exports those separately — most do.
You drop the file in
Movently reads the header and matches your columns to its own. Case, accents and punctuation are ignored, so "E-mail Address", "email_address" and "Courriel" all land in the same place. The column names it recognises were taken from what the platforms in this market actually export.
You read the preview before anything is written
Every row with a problem is flagged by its number — the one you see in your spreadsheet, header included — with the reason. Errors are not imported. Warnings are, with the caveat shown beside them. You fix your file and drop it in again.
You confirm where the packs go
Your export says "Pilates 5-Class Pack". That name means nothing on our side, so Movently never resolves it alone. Every distinct label is put in front of you with a service and a pack already suggested — the number in the label is the strongest signal, and the one part both systems agree on — and you confirm or correct it. Anything below the bar arrives blank rather than guessed.
You import
What comes across is the remaining balance, not the original pack size: it is the only number the person still owns. The same file dropped in twice is refused, so two clicks on Import can’t double 400 balances.
What comes across, and what doesn’t
The second column is the more useful of the two. Know it before you pick a date, not after.
Comes across
- The people
- Name, email, phone and language. Name is the only required field.
- Unused class packs
- The remaining balance, attached to the right person by email, on the service and pack you confirmed.
- People with no email
- Imported as profiles, without sign-in credentials. They exist in your list and you can book them into a class.
Doesn’t come across
- Booking and attendance history
- It stays on your old platform. Export it and keep it — that is the reason not to cancel on day one.
- Recurring memberships
- A membership is not a balance. Movently flags labels that look like one — "unlimited", "monthly" — instead of importing them as a class pack, and you recreate them as memberships.
- Saved credit cards
- They belong to your old platform’s payment processor. Your clients enter theirs on their first purchase.
- The schedule, services and prices
- Typed into the setup wizard. An evening or two for an ordinary studio.
The month not to do it in
September. It is the month the platform hurts most, and that is exactly why nobody should move during it: your schedule is filling, your autumn packs are selling, and you do not have an evening to give a spreadsheet.
The two windows that work are early January and the summer. In January the schedule starts over and autumn’s packs are spent or nearly. In the summer everything is slower and a mistake costs less.
- Run both platforms in parallel for a few weeks. Cancel only once you have taken a full week of money on the new one.
- Export your booking history before you cancel, even if you import it nowhere. Once the account closes, it does not come back.
- Pick a switch-over date on which you are not teaching.
What we get asked
- My export isn’t from one of the platforms you name.
- Not a blocker. The column names it recognises were taken from what Mindbody, Momence and Arketa produce, but the matching is on headers, not on where the file came from. Any CSV with a name column works, and if a column isn’t recognised, rename it in your spreadsheet and drop it in again.
- I have 400 clients. How long does this take?
- The import itself is minutes, and most of your time goes to confirming pack labels — a studio with four services and three pack sizes has a dozen of those to look at, not 400. The evening goes to the schedule and the prices.
- Can I import in two passes?
- Yes, and it is the normal way to do it: clients first, packs second. They are separate files, and packs attach to people by email whether that person was just imported or was already there.
- What if I get it wrong?
- The preview shows you what will be written before any of it is, and bad rows are named by line number. A file that has already been imported is refused if you drop it in again unchanged. Beyond that, write to us — a person answers, and during a migration that is when it matters.
When you’re ready
Movently opens to studios in small groups. Leave your email and tell us when you would actually move — "not before January" is more useful to us than silence.