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honest comparison

Junocal vs Momence

Acquired by Clubessential Holdings (January 2025)

Junocal is the independent, operator-focused choice for studios that want to own their data and Stripe account, avoid platform fees, and keep the option to leave month to month. Momence combines scheduling with a built-in on-demand video library, but its ownership and commercial model changed after Clubessential Holdings acquired it in January 2025 and later announced a merger with Xplor. For an in-person pilates, yoga, barre, or movement studio, Junocal delivers the daily operating workflows — pick-a-spot, memberships, packs, terms, intake, waitlists, and payments — without tying software cost to booking revenue. The practical decision is direct ownership and specialist studio operations on Junocal versus Momence's bundled video surface and post-acquisition commercial model.

Sources verified 2026-08-24. If a figure on this page has moved since, tell us and we'll update it.

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Side by side

Fourteen rows of structural facts. Every Junocal value applies to every plan tier; every Momence value is the most-comparable published equivalent.

JunocalMomence
Starting price (USD/month)$15$0 Basic / $60 Pro / $199 Custom
Pick-a-spot at entry tierYesYes (with per-booking fee)
Annual contract requiredNo, month-to-monthOften (post-acquisition)
Payment processorStripe Connect, your accountStripe + per-booking platform fee
Per-booking platform feeNone5% Basic / 2.5% Pro / 0% Custom
Card processing rateStripe standard, direct~3.9% + $0.30 US online
Marketplace commissionNone, everNone (no marketplace)
Data exportOne-click, freeCSV yes; video non-exportable
OwnershipIndependent, founder-runClubessential (Jan 2025); Xplor merger Sep 2025
Branded booking pageSix themes, every planIncluded
Native on-demand videoUse Vimeo / YouTubeBuilt in (you can't export it)
Term and course schedulingBuilt inYou stitch it together by hand
Self-serve membership pauseYes, every planPartial
Substitute notify with photoAutomatic, every planYes
ACH and Direct DebitDay one, every planLimited

Where the differences come from

The PE roll-up strategy is well documented and shows up clearly in the public corporate releases. Acquire mid-market vertical SaaS companies serving fragmented categories (wellness, education, childcare, automotive), consolidate billing infrastructure under a shared payment-processing stack, raise prices on the acquired customer base over an 18-to-36-month window, then exit at a higher multiple. Xplor's Mariana Tek (acquired 2019) and Glofox (2021) both follow the pattern, and Momence has now joined the same orbit: Clubessential Holdings acquired Momence in January 2025, and Clubessential and Xplor announced a merger in September 2025. The mechanism is not malicious; it is the rational economic response to the multiple the acquirers paid. The same pattern that affected Mariana Tek pricing within 18 months of acquisition is now affecting Momence pricing. Junocal is independently owned and has no acquisition-driven economics that require those moves. The five Junocal commitments on the homepage are not just product preferences; they are structural commitments the founder has made publicly and are difficult to walk back without alienating the customers who switched to Junocal specifically because Momence's commitments were walked back. That is the difference and it is not symmetrical.

Where Junocal is better

Five specific things, each with a number or a documented behaviour behind it.

  • Per-booking platform fees plus processing, versus no markup

    Momence charges a per-booking platform fee that varies by tier — 5% on the free Basic plan, 2.5% on Pro ($60/mo), and 0% on Custom ($199/mo) — on top of standard card processing (about 3.9% + $0.30 per US online transaction). On the lower tiers, that platform fee flows to Momence on every booking and stacks with processing. Junocal uses Stripe Connect Standard with zero platform fee and zero markup: the studio pays Stripe's standard rates directly, and Junocal never touches the payment flow. For a studio doing $200,000 a year in online bookings, a 2.5% platform fee alone is around $5,000 a year that stays with the studio on Junocal.

  • Pick-a-spot at the $15 entry tier

    Momence offers pick-a-spot, with its tiers running from a free Basic plan up to Pro at $60 a month and Custom at $199 a month. Junocal Starter at $15 a month includes the full pick-a-spot floor plan editor, touch-friendly client booking, automatic rerouting when a spot goes out of action, and the per-class toggle, with no per-booking platform fee layered on top. The feature implementations are roughly equivalent, so the cost difference (Junocal's flat subscription with no platform fee versus Momence's lower subscription plus a per-booking platform fee) is the actual operational difference.

  • Independent ownership, no roll-up exposure

    Momence is now part of a PE roll-up: Clubessential Holdings acquired it in January 2025, and Clubessential announced a merger with Xplor in September 2025. The roll-up strategy has produced visible pricing pressure at Xplor's Mariana Tek and Glofox post-acquisition, and the same pattern is now applying to Momence. Junocal is independently owned by the founder, with no outside investors and no acquisition-driven economics. The structural commitments on the homepage (no contract, no marketplace, no processing markup) are difficult to walk back without losing the customers who chose Junocal specifically for them. If you switched to Momence between 2020 and 2024 to get away from Vista's Mindbody, the structural argument for switching off Momence in 2026 is the same.

  • Term-based courses built in, for UK studios

    On Momence, a term-based course is something you build by hand on top of recurring class bookings. You create a recurring class series, attach the payment yourself, and set up swap rules through a workflow. On Junocal, a term is built in: a fixed set of sessions on a fixed slot with one instructor, one upfront payment, swap rules, and a refund-with-medical-doc flow, all ready to use. For UK studios where term-based course revenue is a meaningful share of the business (PilatesBridge survey suggests around 30 percent of UK pilates studio revenue comes through term-based bookings), that saves real setup time every term.

  • Migration carries email opt-in status

    Email opt-in status is one of the fields that's most often lost in studio-software migrations — clients land on the new tool marked unsubscribed, and the studio has to re-collect consent from each one. For a studio with 2,000 active clients, that's a months-long marketing project. Junocal brings opt-in status across as part of the import, signed off in the dry-run review, so the field comes through and you are back in business the day after cutover.

Who Momence is built for

A focused comparison of the operating models where Momence's specific scope may matter.

  • On-demand video hosting built in

    Momence bundles upload, organisation, and playback inside its branded pages. Junocal uses a modular model: the studio runs bookings, memberships, intake, and payments on Junocal while a dedicated host owns the recorded library. That keeps the content independently portable. Multiple Capterra reviews report that underlying video files cannot be exported from Momence on cancellation, so operators comparing the bundle should verify how they would retrieve a valuable library before committing.

  • Back-office breadth for complex reporting teams

    Junocal organises booking, attendance, memberships, packs, intake and payments around the workflows independent studios use every day, keeping the operating surface fast and legible. Momence adds bulk operations, cross-filtered reports and custom receipt templates for dedicated back-office reporting teams; buyers can verify any specialist reports they require during both trials.

  • Managed payments versus direct Stripe ownership

    Momence manages more of the payment relationship inside its platform. Junocal uses Stripe Connect Standard so the studio is Stripe's direct customer, owns the account and payout history, and can manage disputes, payout schedules, and negotiated rates directly with Stripe. Studios that prefer one vendor to mediate the entire payment relationship may prefer Momence's model; studios that want control and portability should choose Junocal's.

Total cost of ownership

Momence publishes three tiers: Basic at $0 a month (with a 5% operator platform fee plus a 4% client fee per booking), Pro at $60 a month (2.5% operator platform fee), and Custom at $199 a month (0% platform fee). On top of whichever tier, standard card processing applies at roughly 3.9% + $0.30 per US online transaction (about 2.5% + 20p in the UK) — that is the gross processing rate, not a markup. The right way to read Momence's cost is per-tier platform fee plus processing. Worked scenario: a 3-instructor reformer studio doing $200,000 a year in online bookings on Momence Pro ($60/mo = $720/yr) would also pay a 2.5% platform fee (about $5,000/yr) plus processing, while on Junocal Studio at $29/mo the studio pays roughly $350 a year plus Stripe's standard processing directly, with no platform fee. The subscription gap is modest; the per-booking platform fee is the structural cost differential, and it compounds with billings volume. For a studio doing $500,000 a year, the 2.5% platform fee alone is about $12,500 a year. Worth noting: Momence's pricing pages have been moving since the Clubessential acquisition. The numbers above are based on the published rates as of mid-2026 and may have moved by the time you read this — check the current Momence pricing page and re-run the worked scenario.

Who should choose which

choose Junocal if

Studios currently on Momence and feeling the post-acquisition pressure: pricing increases on renewal, contract length increases, support quality drift. Studios who originally chose Momence specifically because it was the operator-friendly alternative to Vista's Mindbody, and who are now living the same dynamic again. UK studios that need term-based courses built in. Studios where Momence's per-booking platform fee (5% on Basic, 2.5% on Pro) is operationally material (most studios doing more than $100,000 a year online qualify). Studios who do not depend on Momence's built-in on-demand video and would be fine with Vimeo or YouTube for that content.

choose Momence if

Online-first businesses whose paid on-demand library is the centre of the membership offer and that specifically want video hosting inside the same vendor. For in-person studios, compare the platform fee, contract terms, payment-account ownership, and the workflows you actually use before treating an existing setup as the default.

Migrating from Momence

Junocal handles Momence migrations directly in the first 30 days, free. We migrate the full client list with profile data, complete booking history, active memberships with current period and pause status intact, class packs with credits remaining, intake forms with completion status, and email opt-in status (the field most cross-tool migrations lose). The migration that requires special handling on Momence is the on-demand video library: Momence's video content is documented as not-retrievable on export, meaning the studio cannot pull the video files out of Momence's hosting. Studios moving from Momence with a meaningful video library typically re-upload to Vimeo or YouTube during the transition, then link from the Junocal booking page. The video migration step adds approximately one week to the timeline for studios with more than 50 videos. For studios without a significant video library, the migration typically completes in five business days from receipt of the Momence export. Cutover is usually scheduled for a Sunday evening, and we coordinate the timing with you, run the final sync immediately before live, and stay online during the transition. Most studios cancel their Momence subscription at the end of that billing period, after running a few classes on Junocal to confirm everything is intact.

Questions

Is the acquisition really changing Momence?

Yes, by every signal that is publicly observable. Pricing pages have moved since the January 2025 acquisition by Clubessential Holdings. Contract minimums have appeared on tiers that were previously month-to-month. Support response times have lengthened, with multiple public Reddit and Trustpilot posts citing the change. With Clubessential and Xplor announcing a merger in September 2025, deeper integration with that broader portfolio (Mariana Tek, Glofox, payment infrastructure) is the expected direction. None of this is unique to Momence; it is the standard pattern a PE roll-up runs after acquiring a vertical SaaS company, and the same pattern applied to Mariana Tek and Glofox within 18 months of their respective acquisitions. If you are on Momence today and renewal is coming up, expect the renewal terms to be different from what you signed up for.

Will my Momence on-demand video library transfer to Junocal?

Junocal migrates the bookings, memberships, packs, intake forms and client list, then gives the video library a portable setup. Because Momence does not export the underlying video files, studios re-upload them to a video host and link them from Junocal. The result keeps the content independent of the booking platform and ready for future reuse.

What does Momence's per-booking platform fee cost in real numbers?

Separate from card processing, Momence charges a per-booking platform fee that depends on your tier: 5% on the free Basic plan, 2.5% on Pro ($60/mo), and 0% on Custom ($199/mo). Standard card processing (about 3.9% + $0.30 per US online transaction) applies on top. On Junocal there is no platform fee at all — you pay Stripe's standard rates directly through Stripe Connect Standard. So the apples-to-apples difference is the platform fee. For a studio doing $200,000 a year in online volume on Momence Pro, the 2.5% platform fee is about $5,000 a year; on Basic, the 5% fee is about $10,000. The platform fee is a percentage of revenue, so it scales linearly with how much business you do.

What if I am under a Momence annual contract that hasn't expired?

Most Momence contracts before the January 2025 Clubessential acquisition were month-to-month with no minimum. Contracts written after the acquisition frequently include 12-month minimums per the post-acquisition terms. If you are on a pre-acquisition month-to-month, you can move when ready with no penalty. If you are on a post-acquisition annual contract, you have two options: start the Junocal trial and run both tools in parallel until your Momence term expires, then cancel Momence; or contact Momence support about the cancellation terms, which sometimes allow a buyout. The Junocal trial is 14 days free with no card, so running parallel for a short period is low-cost.

Does Junocal have everything Momence has, just at a different price?

The products make a different scope choice around recorded video. Momence hosts an on-demand library inside its platform. Junocal focuses on studio operations — scheduling, pick-a-spot, memberships, intake, payments, waitlists, substitutes, and terms — and pairs with a dedicated video host when recorded content is part of the offer. For an in-person studio, Junocal keeps the operating system focused and the studio's data and payments portable. Online-first businesses should decide whether bundled video hosting outweighs that control.

What about Momence's marketing automation features?

Junocal connects to Mailchimp and Klaviyo on Studio and Growth, so campaigns and automations run in a dedicated marketing platform while booking and client events stay connected. This gives studios more capable marketing tools without making their booking system the owner of the audience. Momence includes basic broadcasts and automations inside its own platform for teams that prioritise a single-vendor setup.

How is the Momence migration different from a Mindbody migration?

Mechanically similar: we receive the export, run a mapping, dry-run into staging, you review, we go live on a Sunday. The Momence-specific differences are the video library (which does not transfer and needs to be re-uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube) and the fee cutover (Momence's per-booking platform fee stops applying the moment you go live on Junocal's Stripe Connect Standard, where you pay Stripe's standard rates directly with no platform fee). Most Momence migrations complete in five to seven business days depending on the video-library size.

Deeper dives

The cluster around Momence: pricing breakdown, migration playbook, use-case fit, and the Junocal fact sheet.

Switching from Momence?

14 days free, no card. We handle the migration in five business days.