Recess vs Mariana Tek
Mariana Tek is a boutique fitness platform, part of Xplor, and it builds a genuinely good member experience for studios where an adult picks a bike, a reformer or a spot by number. The question is not whether it is good software. It is what it costs, who absorbs the card fee, and what the software does when the person in the class is eight years old.
Every Mariana Tek claim below was read on marianatek.com or their own help center on 30 August 2026, never on a review site, and each one is footnoted at the foot of the page.
Recess has no monthly platform fee, no packages and no setup cost. It earns roughly 5% paid by the member at checkout, with card and bank processing covered out of that.
Recess is not built for chains past about a hundred locations. If that is where you are heading, Mariana Tek is the better answer and we would tell you so on the first call.
The two products are aimed at different rooms. Mariana Tek is built for adults booking a spot in a forty five minute class, and it does that particularly well. Recess is built for the studio where a parent enrolls one child in a twelve week term and another in a Saturday camp, and one card pays for both. If your timetable is entirely adults on a drop in schedule, a lot of what follows will not move you.
Where a boutique platform and a program platform part company
Mariana Tek publishes three packages and no prices, so every row on their side describes what they say a package contains rather than what it costs. Where a claim is about what their help center documents rather than what their software can be configured to do, the row says so.
They have built a very good experience for an adult booking a spot in a room, and the depth of it is real. Pick a Spot is not a checkbox on their feature list, it is a whole layer of the product, with seat layouts, spot swaps, held spots, printable map rosters and members moving themselves to a different bike from the app, and a member of a multi location brand carries one login and one stored card across every studio.
If that is the experience your brand is built on, it is a real reason to stay, and nothing further down this page outweighs it. We would rather you kept it than switched and missed it.
The price is invisible, and the card fee lands on you rather than on the member. Mariana Tek publishes three packages and not one figure against any of them, so you cannot compare them with anything until you have been through a sales call. Two things above the entry package are the ones a growing studio reaches for first: two way texting with customers and marketing automation both sit on Core + Growth. And their own help center states plainly that there is no way to pass Stripe processing fees on to a member, and suggests you raise your prices to cover them. On Recess the roughly 5% is paid by the member at checkout, processing is inside it, and the studio is billed nothing.
A child on Mariana Tek is a guest on a parent's booking. Their childcare instructions have staff reserve the child as a guest on the guardian's account and explicitly tell them not to enter an email address for that guest, and the studio types their own site lists are six adult boutique modalities. Their help center index, which covers every article they publish, contains no entry for a season, a semester, a term, a camp, a rank or a progression. That is a statement about their documentation rather than about their software, so ask them. On Recess a child has their own record, their own attendance and their own progress, sits inside a family that shares one balance and one card, and enrolls in a term rather than dropping in to a class.
Mariana Tek publishes no price, so here is everything they do publish
There is no number to quote. Their pricing page carries three package cards, Core, Core + Growth and Full Growth Bundle, and every one of them ends at a Book a demo button. We loaded the page in a browser as well as reading the markup, because pricing is often served differently by country, and there was no currency figure anywhere in it. There is also no fourth contact us tier inflating the count: three packages, none of them priced.
What they do publish is the shape of the packages. Core is described as single locations getting started, and lists custom branded iOS and Android apps, the Biz app, kiosk check in, and waivers and forms. Core + Growth adds marketing automation over email and SMS, two way texting with customers, and landing pages and standard forms. Full Growth Bundle adds gamification, the feedback suite and a custom marketing plan. Separately they list what every studio gets regardless of package, and that list is substantial: multi location management, unlimited schedule and instructors, CRM, insights and reporting, kiosk check in, waivers, forms and transactional emails.
On processing they are unusually straight, and it is worth reading carefully. Their pricing FAQ says they partner with Stripe, charge Stripe's standard flat rate for every purchase whatever the card type, and take nothing on top of the Stripe fees. That is a good answer. It also means the whole of that fee is a cost to your business, and their help center confirms the consequence: there is no feature to pass Stripe processing fees on to a studio member. Their suggested workaround is to raise the membership price by the percentage you pay, or to add a separate product called Membership Fee.
Read that example for what it is. The 3% plus 25 cents is the figure they chose for their own worked illustration, not a rate they publish and not a rate they quote you. This page uses it in the calculator below because it is the only processing figure Mariana Tek has put in writing anywhere, and it is labelled as an assumption every time it appears. Get your actual Stripe rate from them before you sign anything.
Two more things are not published, and both matter more than a monthly figure. The first is the cost of a text message: two way texting runs through Twilio inside Xplor Growth, and no per message price appears on their site or in their help center. The second is the contract. Their migration page draws the onboarding journey as four steps beginning with Sign contract, but the only legal documents published on marianatek.com are a developer terms of service and the Xplor website terms of use, which governs using the website. Term length, renewal and how you leave are not on the site. When we read the pricing page it also carried a banner offering three months free to studios moving across, which tells you there is a monthly figure being discounted, without telling you what it is.
Recess is one thing at one price. There is no package to pick, no per location fee, no setup cost and nothing inside the product behind a higher tier. The service fee is approximately 5%, paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing comes out of it rather than being added to your bill.
That is not automatically the cheaper answer for you, and we would rather say so here than let you discover it later. A percentage that scales with revenue and a fixed monthly fee behave very differently at high volume, and some owners would rather absorb the cost themselves and keep the price the member sees completely clean. Run your own numbers against both shapes.
The one number on this page you can actually check
Mariana Tek publishes no software price, so there is nothing honest to put on their side of a subscription comparison and we have not invented one. What this does show is the card processing a studio absorbs today, using the 3% plus 25 cents from Mariana Tek's own help center illustration, against Recess, where processing is inside the member paid fee and the studio is billed nothing.
On Recess your members pay a service fee of about 5% at checkout, and that is how the software is free to you. Both halves of that are on this page on purpose. The figure above deliberately leaves out the Mariana Tek subscription, because they do not publish one and we are not going to guess at it.
Six questions owners put to us first
Permanently, and with everything included from the first day. There is no package to pick and no feature that appears once you reach a certain size. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered out of that rather than billed to you on top. That fee is the whole business model, so it does not change as you grow.
You will lose depth there, and we would rather tell you now. Recess has rooms and seat maps, so a member can reserve a specific bike or mat rather than a place in a headcount. What Mariana Tek has around that is more developed: spot swaps, held and unavailable spots, printable map rosters, and a member changing their own spot from the app. If reserving a particular machine is the center of your member experience, weigh that properly before you move.
We do not know, and neither will you until you have had a sales call. Their pricing page lists three packages, Core, Core + Growth and Full Growth Bundle, and puts no figure against any of them. We checked it in a browser as well as in the markup, in case prices were being served by country, and there was no currency figure on the page at all. On processing they are clear: they charge Stripe's standard flat rate and add nothing to it, and their help center says there is no way to pass that fee on to a member. The cost of a text message and the length of the contract are not published either.
No. Texting, email, in app messages and push all arrive in one inbox and are part of the single version of Recess, with no package and no add on. On Mariana Tek two way texting with customers is listed on Core + Growth rather than Core, sending requires the studio to complete Twilio registration inside Xplor Growth and a specific staff permission, and messages can be sent only from a class roster or a customer profile.
It changes it more than anything else on this page. Mariana Tek documents childcare as a guest reservation made on the guardian's account, with staff told not to enter an email address for the guest, and the studio types listed across their own site are six adult boutique modalities. Their help center index has no article on seasons, terms, camps, ranks or progression, which is a statement about their documentation rather than about their software, so put the question to them directly. On Recess a child is a person with a record, a term is something you enroll in, and a family shares one balance and one card.
No. Multiple locations, shared products, per location settings and brand wide reporting are all in the single version of Recess, at no extra cost per site. The size we are genuinely wrong for is past about a hundred locations, and we will say so on the first call rather than after you have moved. Mariana Tek also puts multi location management on every package, so on that point neither of us is charging you for it.
Every Mariana Tek claim above was read on marianatek.com or on their own help center at support.marianatek.com on 30 August 2026. Nothing here comes from a review site, a software directory, a roundup or a summary, and no company is named as anyone's customer. Packages, features and prices change; check anything that will decide your answer, and ask them directly about anything this page records as absent from their documentation.
1. marianatek.com/pricing/, read 30 August 2026, last modified 11 December 2025 according to the site's own record. Source for the three packages and their contents, the absence of any published price, the list of what every studio gets, the studio types they serve, the processing answer, the five to eight week onboarding answer, and the three months free banner running when the page was read. The absence of pricing was confirmed by loading the page in a browser at desktop width and searching the rendered page for any currency figure, because pricing pages are often served differently by country. There was none.
2. support.marianatek.com, Is there a way to pass Stripe payment fees on to the studio member?, read 30 August 2026. Source for the statement that there is no feature to pass Stripe processing fees to a member, for the suggested workarounds, and for the 3% plus 25 cents figure used in their own illustration.
3. support.marianatek.com, How can I send text messages to customers?, read 30 August 2026. Source for the Twilio registration requirement inside Xplor Growth, the staff permission, the sending number, and the limitation to a class roster or customer profile.
4. support.marianatek.com, How does childcare booking work?, read 30 August 2026. Source for the guest reservation flow and the instruction not to enter an email address for the child.
5. support.marianatek.com, What can I customize in the Android and iOS apps?, read 30 August 2026. Source for app colors, in app ads and up to four integration tabs.
6. support.marianatek.com/llms.txt, the help center's own machine readable index of every article it publishes, read 30 August 2026. It was searched in full for season, semester, term, camp, sibling, family, youth, rank, belt and progression. This page reports what that index does and does not contain. It is evidence about their documentation and not about their product.
7. marianatek.com/features/customer-experience/, read 30 August 2026. Source for spot selection, one login and one stored card across locations, and staff notes, tags and profile photos.
8. marianatek.com/migration/, read 30 August 2026. Source for the onboarding sequence that begins at Sign contract, and for the white glove onboarding description.
9. marianatek.com/page-sitemap.xml and the site footer, read 30 August 2026. The only legal documents published are a developer terms of service and the Xplor Technologies website terms of use, last updated April 2026, which governs use of the website rather than the software subscription. No term length, renewal condition or exit term is published on the site.
Assumption, stated at every point of use: where this page puts a number on card processing it uses 3% plus 25 cents. That is the figure Mariana Tek chose for a worked illustration in their own help center. It is not a rate they publish, not a rate they quote, and not necessarily the rate you would be charged. It is used because it is the only processing figure they have committed to writing. No figure is put against the Mariana Tek subscription anywhere on this page, because they publish none and estimating one would be inventing it.