Fons
About Fons
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Most Helpful Reviews for Fons
1 - 5 of 95 Reviews
Rob
Verified reviewer
Music, 1 employee
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed September 2018
I no longer dread billing my students.
I love teaching guitar, but I hate the tedious administrivia part of running your own business, and until recently the worst part was scheduling and billing my students. I tracked their lessons with pencil and paper, and used email to schedule and bill. Looking back on it, the whole process was incredibly inefficient and prone to miscommunication and mistakes. Now my calendar is synced with my students, and the billing happens behind the scenes. When I first signed up with Fons I think it had just opened for business, and I'd occasionally encounter bugs. Their customer service is AMAZING. Like, "how do you stay in business with this level of service?" amazing. Not only did they genuinely care if I had a problem, often things I reported got fixed within a few days. The app now feels solid and I recommend it without reservation.
PROSNot spending six hours at the start of every month calculating and emailing invoices to each of my students.
CONSA minor gripe: I'd like to have access to a record of each email Fons sends on my behalf.
Vendor Response
Thank you Rob! This is awesome! We are so happy you are with us at Fons and we appreciate you! :)
Replied March 2022
Jeff
Education Management, 1 employee
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2023
Great support, just not a great fit for my business
Very good experience and I wish the features (enhancements) I needed could have been worked in to their 'roadmap', but unfortunately it wasn't to be.
PROSThe team behind Fons is exceptional. My experience was that they did more than any other SAAS platform to get to know me, my work flow, and connect on a personal level. Extremely helpful and responsive.
CONSThere were features I needed (down-time "padding" before and after appointments, keeping count of the number of appointments used in a billing cycle to name a couple) that I really needed and did not seem to be forthcoming.There were a couple of incidents of clients getting double-billed which, to their credit, Fons made good on right away ... but I just can't have that happening to my clients.
Reason for choosing Fons
Fons was far more affordable and "to the point" of what I needed.
Reasons for switching to Fons
Previous software did not perform well.
Samantha
Music, 1 employee
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
2
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed September 2018
Fons customer service feedback
I like the quick customer service feedback, but I have two pieces of advice to make the customer service experience better. Sometimes it feels like the team is defensive about bugs, despite this being a new software and therefore understandably prone to bugs. For Fons, it doesn’t seem like the customer is always right. I had a rather negative experience when the CEO responded to my anxiety in an email badly, accusing me of not reading it thoroughly getting impatient when I didn’t understand. I think this is unfair, since I am not a tech person and operating this level of technology for my business has been daunting and stressful, especially since adopting it correctly affects how and when I’ll be paid. As a disability rights activist who is married to someone with a reading disability, the accusation of not reading it correctly came across as rather ableist and condescending. I’d rather keep things professional, which for the customer service side I think means dealing with understandably nervous and anxious clients with grace and kindness. Or not taking their money. Which unfortunately I had already paid for the entire year just before this distressing exchange.
PROSIt’s pretty easy to use, but has a learning curve that can be overwhelming, especially since it’s a new software and there are still bugs being worked out as features are added.
CONSThe high learning curve and how that affected how quickly I’d be paid.
Vendor Response
Hey Samantha. I am so sorry that any of my correspondences came across as anything other than supportive. My aim was to be as succinct and explanatory as possible. Our team was "all hands on deck" to try to get you up and running as smoothly as possible. That was our intention, and why I jumped in to try and help. I teach and and have worked within the developmentally disabled community, & I feel quite saddened that I represented myself in a way that offended you. We appreciate your willingness to use the platform and we value your feedback. If you decide that you don't want to use Fons for your studio, we'll refund your money and wish you well.
Replied March 2022
Esther
Fine Art, 1 employee
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2022
Amazing customer service
Basically this platform has been life-changing for my business! I love the internal messaging feature. It allows any communications for scheduling or payment processing to be done through the software. This frees up my email and really brought my anxiety down by having everything organized in one place. I also love being able to charge a client’s credit card anytime I need to. The client doesn’t have to do anything. There is absolutely no friction on their end. This was of the utmost importance for my business.
PROSThe best thing about Fons is that they keep making it better. They are interested in their clients needs. This was crucial for me as I think it is the most important thing when it comes to your business. No platform is perfect, but I am confident this is going to be the best one out there, given the drive and dedication of the Fons team
CONSWhen I am editing appointments there are no batch actions and it always takes me back to the home calendar page… So it can be a bit clunky and time consuming when doing things like this. I’m sure they will fix it!
Reason for choosing Fons
The customer service.
Vendor Response
Hey there! Thank you so much for your review, and the excellent idea to improve navigation for editing appointments. We will send this over to our design team right away and see how we can better that flow. Grateful that you're enjoying the platform, and thank you again for your note.
Replied May 2022
Andy
Music, 1 employee
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed May 2020
So helpful for my business
I've used Fons for my studio of around 40 guitar students since spring of 2019. It's helped smooth out the day to day running of the business in numerous ways, from enabling me to automate payments, to giving students an easy way to reschedule missed lessons. Fons' CEO, Eric, is one of the nicest people out there, and makes himself remarkably available for someone who's surely very busy. Their support staff is simply the best I've ever seen. They reply often within minutes of me contacting them. The platform is easy and intuitive to use. I learned my way around it quickly, and have had almost no issues with clients' ability to use it.
CONSFons is still a little ahead of it's time. It, and other services like it, are still not widely used by music teachers. Thus, music teachers can sometimes encounter resistance to using the service from clients. On the other hand, there are clients out there who really like it, and see it as something that positively sets me apart from other teachers in my area.
Vendor Response
Hey there Andy. Thank you so much for your kind words, and especially for your note about students resisting digitization. That really resonates and is one of our core objectives right now... make digital payments & scheduling more simple & less obtrusive for the clients. We want to get friction for customers as close to zero as possible. Thank you so much for being part of our community. We so appreciate you.
Replied May 2020