Thinking about leaving Jackrabbit? Read this first.
Most "Jackrabbit alternative" pages are the same vendor pitch wearing a comparison-page costume. This one isn't. I'm James, half-owner of a dance studio with my wife. We built Presently because Jackrabbit and the other incumbents weren't designed for how studios actually work in 2026.
But Jackrabbit isn't a bad product. It runs thousands of studios. If you're already on it and reading this, you have a specific reason. Let me help you figure out if switching is actually worth it.
What Jackrabbit gets right
Before I tell you why we built Presently, here's what's genuinely good about Jackrabbit. Anyone who skips this section is selling you something.
Battle-tested reliability.
Jackrabbit has been running studios since 2003. They've seen every weird edge case in dance billing and their system handles it. If you're a 500+ student studio that absolutely cannot afford an outage during recital week, that track record matters.
Big support team.
Phone support, ticket queues, business hours coverage. If your front desk needs to call someone at 9am on Saturday during enrollment week, Jackrabbit has the staff for that. We're a small team; we won't pretend otherwise.
Industry recognition.
Jackrabbit is the safe pick. Your accountant has heard of it. Other studio owners have heard of it. There's a real comfort cost in switching to software your peers haven't seen yet, and that comfort is genuinely worth something.
If those three points describe what you most need from your software, keep using Jackrabbit. Seriously. The rest of this page is for everyone else.
Where Presently is genuinely different
These are the things we built differently because they bothered us at our own studio. Not feature parity claims. Actual decisions.
1. The interface is built for 2026, not 2003.
Jackrabbit's UI is from the era when web apps still felt like Windows applications. Multi-level menus, narrow tables, modal dialogs nested in modal dialogs. The staff at our studio used to dread training a new front desk person on it. With Presently, a new admin is productive in about an hour. That's not because we're geniuses; it's because we built the UI the way Stripe and Linear and modern SaaS tools build them.
If your team is comfortable with Jackrabbit's UI, this doesn't matter. If you've ever had to write a 3-page internal guide just to teach someone how to drop a student, you'll feel the difference immediately.
2. Transparent payment processing.
Jackrabbit's payment processing has fees on top of the standard Stripe rate. They don't publish exactly how much, so you can't easily run the comparison for your own volume.
Presently uses Stripe Connect directly: Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ on cards plus a flat 1.5% Presently platform fee — both lines itemized on the receipt. Two known numbers, not one opaque cut.
3. Recital lineup is a real feature, not an afterthought.
Jackrabbit has event management, but the lineup tool is functional rather than thoughtful. We built ours after one too many recital weeks where we discovered, the night before, that a 7-year-old was supposed to do a back-to-back costume change in 90 seconds.
Presently's lineup editor flags those conflicts automatically. It supports multi-show events (matinee + evening with separate lineups). It exports to PDF for the stage manager and Excel with full student rosters per number. There's a "missing classes audit" so you know which performing classes haven't been added to a show yet.
If recital is the most stressful week of your year, this alone might be worth the switch.
4. Month-to-month, no annual contract.
Jackrabbit typically locks you into an annual commitment. If it doesn't work out in November, you're paying through next August. We don't do that. Presently is month-to-month. If we stop earning your business, you stop paying us.
This is a confidence statement, not a sales tactic. We bet on retention, not lock-in.
Side-by-side, with the real story
Not a checkmark table. Both have features. Here's where the difference actually shows up.
Pricing transparency
Tiered by student count, roughly $59–129/month for a typical dance studio. Payment processing fees on top, charged on a per-transaction basis. Setup fees may apply. Annual contract typical.
$49, $99, or $149/month based on student count. Auto-upgrades to the right tier as you grow. 1.5% Stripe platform fee. No setup fees. Month-to-month.
User experience
Dense, comprehensive, dated. Has every feature you need but takes weeks to feel comfortable with. Strong if you have a dedicated, trained admin.
Built for modern browsers. New admins are productive in an hour. Family and instructor portals feel like a 2026 web app, not a 2003 form-and-submit experience.
Recital and event tools
Basic event tracking. Can build a class list per event. Lineup management is workable but not the headline feature.
Drag-to-reorder lineup, back-to-back conflict warnings, multi-show events, intermissions, PDF/Excel exports, missing-classes audit. Built by a studio owner who has run too many recitals.
Family-facing experience
Parent portal works. Online registration works. Both feel like utility tools.
Family portal is a first-class product. Parents can browse the schedule without an account and enroll directly from a class card — we email them a one-click sign-in link, no password to forget. Optional live chat add-on, portal auto-translates. New parents can register at midnight without any handholding.
Support model
Phone support, ticket queue, help center. You'll usually speak to tier-1 support first.
Email and chat support. I read every message personally. Trade-off: not 24/7, but you're talking to someone who has run a studio, not reading a script.
What switching actually looks like
Migrating studio software is scary. Every studio owner I've talked to has a horror story about a switch that went wrong. Here's how we'd do it:
A real call, not a sales demo.
We'd talk for 30-45 minutes about your studio specifically. What's working in Jackrabbit, what's broken, what scares you about switching. Honest assessment.
Migration during a slow week.
Don't switch during recital season. Don't switch during enrollment. We'd pick a quiet stretch — usually late summer or mid-winter — and run the data migration. I do this personally, not a junior support tech.
Parallel run, then cut over.
For the first 30 days, you can keep Jackrabbit alive in read-only mode while Presently is your primary. If anything is missing or wrong, we fix it before the cutover.
Trial extension if you need it.
The standard trial is 30 days. If you need more time before the subscription kicks in, I can extend it. Nobody should feel like they're racing a clock to switch.
Questions worth asking
Should I just stay on Jackrabbit?
If you have 500+ students, a tenured admin team that already knows Jackrabbit, and recital management isn't a pain point, probably yes. Switching has real cost. Don't switch for novelty. Switch because something specific is broken.
Can you actually import my Jackrabbit data?
Yes. Families, students, classes, enrollments, and historical ledger entries. Jackrabbit doesn't have a great export, so this usually means me working with a CSV they generate. Free, included in onboarding.
What about all the integrations Jackrabbit has?
Honest answer: we have fewer. We integrate with Stripe (for payments) and Twilio (for SMS). If you depend on a specific Jackrabbit integration — say a quickbooks sync — tell me about it on a call. Some we can build, some we can work around, some are genuine blockers.
How small is your company really?
Small. My wife and I run a dance studio and I'm the developer. The product is real, mature, and serves multiple studios — but you're not buying from a 100-person company. The advantage: I can ship a feature you asked for in a few days. The trade-off: if I'm on vacation, response time slips. Eyes-open decision.
What if I switch and hate it?
Month-to-month means you can cancel. We'll also give you your data back as a clean export. The only thing you lose is your time and the cost of any migration disruption. I'd rather you stay because we earned it than because we trapped you in a contract.
Want to talk it through?
If you've read this far, you're seriously considering switching. The next best step isn't signing up — it's a 30-minute call with me to see if it's actually a fit. No demo script, no sales pitch. Just two studio owners comparing notes.