Recess vs WellnessLiving
WellnessLiving is one of the broadest platforms in this category and the one most often put up against Mindbody, and on features it earns that. The difference this page is about is not the feature list. It is the one thing their entry plan will not let you do, the app that arrives only on their top published plan, and what the agreement underneath the price commits you to.
Every WellnessLiving figure on this page was read on 30 August 2026 on WellnessLiving's own pricing page, feature pages and Business Terms and Conditions, and every one of them is listed at the foot of the page with the address it came from.
Recess has no monthly software fee, no tiers, no add ons and no setup cost. It earns roughly 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing comes out of that fee rather than being billed to you on top of it.
Recess is not built for groups past about a hundred locations. Past that you need central tooling we do not have, and WellnessLiving has an Enterprise tier written for exactly that. We would rather write it here than tell you on the third call.
Who each one suits, plainly. If you want the widest feature surface in this category behind one login, and you are comfortable buying it on a plan with an agreement behind it, WellnessLiving is a serious product and this page will not pretend otherwise. If you run one studio or a handful, you want your own name on the app your members open, and you would rather not sign something that renews itself, keep reading.
Where the money and the paperwork actually differ.
WellnessLiving changes its pricing and its features without notice, and it was running a two month promotional discount on the day this was written. Every figure in their column is printed on their own pricing page, their own feature pages or their own Business Terms and Conditions, and each is dated in the sources at the foot of this page. Check anything that will decide your answer.
WellnessLiving is broad, and unusually little of that breadth is held back for a higher plan. Belt progression, family and relationship management, payroll tracking, roles and permissions, digital waivers and contracts, a form builder, a check in kiosk, gift cards, reviews syndicated to your Google listing, inventory, real time dashboards and an AI client at risk predictor all carry a check on Starter, their $69 plan. Around that sit things nothing else in this comparison has at all: a consumer directory listing, ClassPass and Wellhub, door access hardware, an AI front desk that answers your phone, on demand video, and 75 reports.
If you want one login that reaches that far, and you would rather have free data migration and a named onboarding specialist than the lowest bill, WellnessLiving is a good answer and you should stay where you are. Nothing below outweighs that.
Your own name on the app, from the first day. WellnessLiving ships a client app on every plan and it is theirs. The one that carries your name and your icon, the White Label Achieve client app, is listed on their own feature table as an add on on Starter and on Business, and comes included only from BusinessPro, their $349 a month plan, or $314 a month if you pay for the year. What the add on costs below that is not published. On Recess every studio gets its own app published to the Apple App Store and Google Play under its own listing, on the free plan, because there is only one plan.
What you sign is not the price. Their Business Terms and Conditions, last updated on 14 August 2026, renew your subscription automatically for a term of equal length to the one that just expired, have you appoint them your exclusive software and payment processor for the duration including renewals, let them change the fees on thirty days notice posted to their own website, and make a data extraction and transfer fee a condition of getting your records back. The length of the term itself sits in an Order Form they do not publish. Recess has no term, no notice period, no exclusivity and no exit fee, because there is nothing to leave.
Three prices they publish, and five they do not.
Start with the credit, because they have earned it. WellnessLiving publishes three of its four plan prices, monthly and annual, and a full feature matrix showing what each plan carries and what it does not. It publishes the entire US SMS price ladder. It publishes $19 a month for API access. Most of this category publishes a starting price and a button that books a call. Starter is $69 a month, Business is $199 and BusinessPro is $349, or $62, $179 and $314 if you pay for the year.
Do the charges stack? Yes, and their own table is where you read it. Underneath the plan sit the rows their feature matrix marks Add on or Pay Per Use: the White Label Achieve client app and the Presence custom website on the plans below BusinessPro, the CAASI AI front desk, FitBUILDER, FitLIVE and FitVID on demand on every plan, MailChimp and Constant Contact syncing on every plan, direct mail postcards and 2 way conversational SMS as pay per use, and API access at $19 a month. Of those, only the API price and the SMS ladder carry a number.
Every figure in that card is theirs rather than an estimate of ours, and it comes to $4,884 across a year. What it leaves out is card processing, because WellnessLiving publishes no processing rate anywhere on its website. On Recess the same studio pays nothing, gets the app, the two way messaging and the data, and its members pay roughly 5% at checkout with card and bank processing covered out of that.
WellnessLiving does not publish a card processing rate. Their pricing page says you save over 20% with their payment processing and their payments page says integrated processing reduces processing fees, but no percentage and no per transaction amount appears on either. We are not going to invent one for you, and no processing figure appears anywhere on this page. Ask them for their rate in writing, card present and card not present, before you sign anything.
The Order Form is the document that decides most of this, and it is not on their website. Their Business Terms refer to it for the length of your term, the fee per Active Location, your Minimum Location Commitment, the data extraction and transfer fee per data set, and any early termination fee. Those are five numbers you cannot read before you get on a call, and they are precisely the ones that matter if you ever want to leave.
One more worth knowing if you take payments through them. Their Payments By WellnessLiving addendum prices an early exit from a payments term that is not month to month at 100% of the fees they would have received for the rest of it, with each remaining month valued at the average of the previous six. It also lets them hold back up to 200% of your rolling twelve month average of returns and chargebacks in a reserve account, for up to 180 days after termination.
That is a trade, not a verdict, and it does not automatically fall our way. A fixed monthly line is easier to forecast than a percentage, their onboarding is free and staffed, and if your members would object to a fee at checkout then a subscription is a defensible answer. Do the arithmetic on your own volume before you believe anyone, us very much included.
What their published prices come to for you.
Their side uses BusinessPro at their published $349 a month, because that is the lowest plan that includes an app with your name on it, plus their published Message Center plan for 1,000 messages a month. Card processing is left out entirely because they publish no rate for it. Note too that none of their software prices move with your revenue, which cuts both ways and is worth weighing. One assumption is used and it is marked on the line itself: their pricing page does not say whether the plan price is charged per location, so the calculator follows their own Business Terms, which define Fees as the fee per Active Location multiplied by the number of Active Locations. If your Order Form says otherwise, leave the slider at one.
On Recess your members pay a service fee of about 5% at checkout, which on $18,000 a month is roughly $10,800 across a year, paid by them rather than by you, with card and bank processing covered out of it. That is a real trade rather than a free lunch, and the point of this is that you can see both sides of it.
The six things owners email us about.
Actually free, permanently, with every feature included. There is no plan to choose, no staff count and nothing behind a higher tier. 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. More money moves in total than under a flat monthly plan, and none of it moves out of your account, which is the trade this whole page turns on.
A real list, and we are not going to shave it. You lose their consumer directory listing, ClassPass and Wellhub, door access hardware integrations, an AI front desk that answers your phone, a rewards and loyalty leaderboard, customer reviews syndicated to your Google listing, on demand and live streamed video, and their 75 reports. If two or three of those are load bearing for you, stay where you are. Most single site studios we speak to use none of them, which is a different sentence from saying they do not matter.
Their published Business Terms and Conditions, marked Last Update August 14 2026, say a subscription runs for the term set out in your Order Form and then automatically renews for an additional term of equal length until explicitly terminated, and that any add on bought later runs for no less than that same term and renews with it. The length of the initial term is set in the Order Form, which they do not publish, so we cannot tell you what yours would be. Ask for it in writing, and ask what notice you have to give and by when.
On their own published feature table, the White Label Achieve client app is an add on on Starter and on Business, and is included from BusinessPro, which is $349 a month or $314 a month billed annually. What the add on costs on the two plans below that is not published anywhere we could find. On Recess your own app on the Apple App Store and Google Play is included, and there is no higher plan for it to sit on.
On Recess, nothing extra. Two way text and email, templates, sequences and campaigns are in the product at no additional price. On WellnessLiving, system SMS notifications are listed as unlimited on every plan and two way conversational SMS is listed as pay per use. Their Message Center page publishes the US ladder, from $19 a month for 500 messages to $375 a month for 25,000, with a per message rate above each bundle, and adds that US customers must register for A2P 10DLC with brand registration and monthly campaign fees on top.
Their own feature table caps Starter at one staff member, so four instructors with their own logins puts you on Business at $199 a month, or $179 billed annually. If you also want your name on the app your members open, that is BusinessPro at $349 or $314. On Recess staff logins are not counted, there is no plan above the one you are on, and the app is included either way.
Every WellnessLiving claim here was read on WellnessLiving's own website on 30 August 2026, not on review sites, roundups or summaries. WellnessLiving changes its pricing and its features without notice, and was running a promotion marked as expiring on 31 August 2026 on the day we read the page. Verify anything that will decide your answer.
1. Pricing page: the four plans and their monthly and annual prices, the 80% off for two months promotion and its stated expiry, and the whole Key Features comparison table. That table is the source for one staff member on Starter and unlimited above it, for marketing campaigns, lead management with drip campaigns, rewards and loyalty and Book a Spot beginning at Business, for multi location cloud management on Enterprise only, for the White Label Achieve client app marked Add on on Starter and Business and included from BusinessPro, for Presence, CAASI, FitBUILDER, FitLIVE and FitVID marked Add on, for 2 way conversational SMS and direct mail marked Pay Per Use, for API access at $19 a month, for 75 reports below Enterprise and 88 on it, and for the belt progression, family, payroll, waiver, kiosk, gift card, review, inventory and dashboard rows carrying a check on Starter. The same page carries free setup and data migration, and the FAQ answer describing free training and onboarding with a dedicated onboarding specialist, a kick off call and two one hour training sessions. www.wellnessliving.com/pricing/
2. Business Terms and Conditions, published on their Terms of Use page and marked Last Update: August 14, 2026. Section 1 for the definition of Fees as the fees per Active Location multiplied by the number of Active Locations specified in an Order Form, for the Minimum Location Commitment top up, and for the definition of an Active Location. Section 2.1 for the exclusivity appointment covering competing fitness club operating software and competing payment processing during the Term including renewals and extensions. Section 4.8, titled No Ownership of Customer Data Until All Fees Paid. Section 9.1 for fee changes on thirty days prior written notice by posting to their websites or by email, and for no refunds or credits for partial months or for services not used. Section 10.1 for automatic renewal for an additional term of equal length and for add ons mirroring that term. Section 10.2 for termination on thirty days notice for material adverse breach and for the reference to termination, extraction and transfer fees. The Payments By WellnessLiving addendum for the early termination fee at 100% of the fees that would have been received using the previous six month average, for the data extraction and transfer fee specified in an Order Form per data set as a condition of receiving data, and for the reserve holdback of up to 200% of the rolling twelve month average of returns and chargebacks for up to 180 days after termination. www.wellnessliving.com/terms-of-use/
3. Message Center feature page: the US SMS plan ladder at 500 messages for $19 a month, 1,000 for $39, 2,500 for $89, 5,000 for $149, 10,000 for $249 and 25,000 for $375, the per message rates above each bundle from 5 cents down to 1.5 cents, and the footnote that US customers are required to register for A2P 10DLC and that brand registration and monthly campaign fees apply. www.wellnessliving.com/features/message-center/
4. Payments feature page: integrated point of sale, stored client cards, recurring billing and card reader hardware, read specifically to check whether a card processing rate is published anywhere. No percentage and no per transaction amount appears on it, and none appears on the pricing page either. www.wellnessliving.com/features/payments/
5. Achieve client app feature page, read to confirm what the client app included on every plan does and whose name is on it. www.wellnessliving.com/features/achieve/
On assumptions. Only one thing on this page is not WellnessLiving's own figure, and it is not a price. Their pricing page does not say whether a plan price is charged per location, so where the calculator multiplies by locations it is following their own Business Terms, which define Fees as the fee per Active Location multiplied by the number of Active Locations in an Order Form. That is marked on the calculator line itself and in the note above it. If your Order Form says otherwise, set the slider to one location. No card processing figure appears anywhere on this page, in the table or in the calculator, because WellnessLiving publishes none.
On absence. Where this page says something is not named on their pricing page or is not published, that is a statement about what WellnessLiving publishes and not a claim about what their software can be configured to do. It applies in particular to terms, semesters, camps and make up credits, to the prices of their add ons, and to the length of a subscription term. Ask them directly, ask us, and take both answers in writing. Claims about Recess describe Recess's own product.