The eight-week beginner pilates block. The 200-hour yoga teacher training. The six-week mum-and-baby cohort. Term-based courses are a different scheduling primitive with different rules — Junocal ships them as first-class.
One product. Students enrol once, pay once (or deposit + balance), attend the fixed sessions. No per-class billing, no pack-credit accounting. Deposit-plus-balance supports £180 beginner blocks as £50 + £130, or £2,800 teacher trainings as £500 + £2,300 over instalments.
Configurable swap allowance per course — typically two per eight-week block. Students swap to a different week of the same course from their own account. Course capacity respected automatically. Once the allowance is used, additional swaps require operator approval.
Three modes per course: pro-rata refund (flexible), refund-with-medical-doc (UK-common), non-refundable once started (premium). Mix modes per course type. Configuration sits on the course directly; no operator discretion at refund time.
Course sessions don't pollute the public schedule. Enrolled students see the course in their personal schedule; non-enrolled visitors see it only as an enrolment opportunity until the start date. Intake forms can be course-specific.
Six common course shapes that run as first-class entities on Junocal. All share the cohort + single-payment + swap-rules pattern, with different defaults per type.
Fixed cohort of 8 sessions, £150-£220/student, optional deposit + balance, two swaps per block, refund-with-medical-doc. The bread-and-butter UK reformer course.
24+ weekend sessions over six months, £2,500-£3,800/student, deposit + monthly instalments, separate intake with experience-level checks, restrictive refund rules.
6-8 week cohorts with strict intake (post-natal weeks, healthcare clearance). Per-service intake handles the screening. Typically deposit-only with refund flexibility.
8-12 week dance progressions with level-tagged classes. Often runs alongside drop-in classes. Cohort billing keeps progression revenue separate from drop-in.
Weekend intensives, master classes, retreat-style multi-day programmes. Fixed capacity, deposit + balance, separate intake, stricter cancellation than drop-in.
Single multi-day events with capacity, deposit + balance, expanded intake (travel and medical), typically non-refundable inside a defined window. Configures as a course with one extended session.
Major platforms ranked by how natively they handle term-based courses.
A multi-class block sold as a single product with fixed cohort, fixed schedule, and single payment. Examples: an eight-week beginner pilates block at £180/student, a 200-hour yoga teacher training over six months at £2,800/student, a six-week mum-and-baby pilates cohort. Clients buy the whole block at signup, attend a fixed group of sessions, and have specific swap and refund rules that differ from drop-in classes.
Term-based courses run on different rules than drop-in classes — faking terms with recurring classes creates operational pain. A beginner who misses week 3 of an 8-week block should swap into a different week of the same course (not a different course). A student in week 6 reporting a medical condition should refund the remaining 2 weeks with a doctor's letter. A teacher-training cohort needs separate intake. These rules don't exist in recurring-class systems; they have to be built per term.
Junocal, Mariana Tek, and Walla handle term-based courses natively. Mindbody can be configured to do it but the workflow involves workarounds over recurring classes (most operators have a list of configuration-drift grievances within six months). Momence has term support but less native than the operator-friendly tools. For UK pilates studios where 25-35% of revenue is term-based, the platform's term handling matters operationally.
Each course has a configurable swap allowance (typically two per eight-week block). Clients swap to a different week of the same course up to the allowance limit. Swaps respect course capacity — if the target week is full, the client joins the waitlist or stays put. Additional swaps require operator approval or a small fee, configurable per studio.
Three modes, configurable per course. Pro-rata refund — refund for remaining weeks at the per-class rate, most flexible. Refund-with-medical-doc — refund only with a doctor's letter, common in the UK. No refund — non-refundable once started, common for premium courses and intensives. Most studios mix modes per course type.
By default, no. Once the course starts, it's visible only to enrolled students. Public schedule visitors see the course as an enrolment opportunity until the start date, then it disappears. Enrolled students see it in their personal schedule and can book swaps. Public schedule stays clean; course schedule stays private to the cohort.
Yes — a 'rolling cohort' configuration runs indefinitely with students joining at any week and counting attendance toward an eight-week completion. Common for ongoing pilates progressions. Similar to a fixed cohort but with no end date and no shared completion event. Less common than fixed cohorts but supported.