Sawyer

RATING:

4.5

(280)

About Sawyer

Sawyer is a cloud-based camp and activity management solution that offers booking and scheduling services for children's after school class providers, camps and events. The solution also offers an online marketplace, where parents can register their children for semester programs and camps. Key features include online registration, an online payment gateway, a parent portal and student management. Camp and class providers can take booking orders on their website by embedding the Sawyer widget. Once a booking is initiated by a parent, details of the order can be tracked on an online dashboard. The solution also offers an online payment gateway allowing partners to add classes to a virtual cart and checkout. Besides class booking, scheduling and online payment management...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2023
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.
Sawyer booking

Sawyer Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for Sawyer

1 - 5 of 280 Reviews

Michelle

Non-Profit Organization Management, 11 - 50 employees

Used less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

Reviewed March 2021

Sawyer has made my life easier!

User Profile

Alison

Verified reviewer

Arts and Crafts, 1 employee

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed August 2018

Great software for registrations!

I have been super impressed with the way Sawyer is adding options and new features all the time. The customer service I have received from Isabelle and the rest of the team is top-notch!

PROS

I love that I have all of my services in one place. It makes registration simple and easy for both my customers and myself! I also love that I can create a service once and then simply copy and paste it into my schedule. It makes customization very easy.

CONS

Sometimes the navigation of Sawyer Tools can be cumbersome. It would be nice to have a menu drop-down that allows access to other pages without having to go back to the main menu each time. Also, being able to add a quantity option for adult events and classes would be quite helpful.

Liz

Music, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed September 2022

Professional and Productive

Excellent! I believe Sawyer sets myself apart from other children's programing in my area, gives a very professional appearance to my customer base and allows me to save a great deal of administrative time.

PROS

The Sawyer system is easy and intuitive for my families as well as for myself as a center director. Easy registration as made a big impact on my ability to bring new families into my program, as well as keep my current customers re-enrolling every new semester. I have been using this exclusively for years, and I've absolutely loved the improvements Sawyer has made. They are open and responsive to their providers, and the customer service is top notch.

CONS

I would absolutely love to see the Sawyer Marketplace grow within my local area, in the suburbs of Houston, TX. I believe it would be an excellent resource for parents in our massive metropolitan area, and would be a more effective tool in promoting new business for my program. The membership function is excellent, however I personally haven't figured out to make it work for my program. I would also love to have more creative and expansive email options- such as tags and targeting marketing email features. Also, a way to easily generate a birthday report for children.

Reason for choosing Sawyer

The ease of use, design, and general efficiency of Sawyer. The majority of other center directors in my business (Music Together) use Main Street Sites, and I feel like Sawyer has much more to offer and is more attractive to modern parents.

Elizabeth

Education Management, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

2

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

2

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed July 2022

Very poor and confusing reporting system!

Exhaustingly Bad! It has made my administrative work FAR MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than doing them myself. If you client body is small like 20-40s , Sawyers is fine. If you are like us with hundreds.. I HIGHLY recommend you to look elsewhere.. I have switched to Amilia, a far more robust software. I was 15+ system level developer, and my partner was a Microsoft SQL expert. Looking at Sawyers report service, we both must regret to say.. it is far from prime time. It is ok for a shop with 30 some students. Not for us. We have over 200 students (still considered being pretty small).

PROS

calendar review for daily activities. This is very helpful for ONLY daily operation - like the front desk staff to do quick look up.. But, by far not for the administrator, me.

CONS

Report becomes unusable when students sign up for multiple classes! It puts ALL dates into a single cell in the report, in various order. Asked support to look at it.. Nothing can be done about that. So, I had to go through EVERY student who has signed up for more than one week to figure out. Reports with mismatched headers. e.g. DOB as the header, but it is actually something else like email address. Half of them are mismatched! To say unacceptable is an understatement. I was told it was some customization issue??? No form of customization should render such a fundamental error. This clearly indicates very sub-par software. No proper auditing. .. cannot explain why a balance showed discrepancy.. the only reason I got was " someone must have changed it." The administrator again simply insisted that made assumption it was us, or the client making the changes. No auditing info for accountability! An unacceptable excuse! This tells me this is ot an adequately built software. I would be ok with it if the administrator did recorgnize the error and committed future improvement! But they seemed to be content placing the blame on us, or the mysterious someone!!! Missing one of the most fundamental reporting features: Cannot generate a report of scheduled classes unless at least one student is already registered? But, I have to manually check one by one! It would be ok if you have 10-20 classes, not 40+ like us.

Vendor Response

Hi Elizabeth, We're sorry that Sawyer wasn't able to meet your reporting needs. We work with organizations of all sizes to power their registration including franchises, non-profits, and schools in addition to smaller businesses. We continue to evolve our products because of critical feedback like this and thank you for taking the time to share it with us. We loved getting the opportunity to work with Storming Robots and wish you all the best in your future success.

Replied July 2022

Gara

Performing Arts, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed July 2019

Game-changer for this small youth theatre!

PROS

Always rolling out new functionality Great design

CONS

Lengthy learning curve - takes a while to get into the flow Few options for custom coding

Reasons for switching to Sawyer

Our youth theatre has year-round programming, and we are almost always in active registration. We were using a half-dozen services to cobble together our registration system: a form manager plugged into a credit card merchant with a side of PayPal invoicing, and hours spent making rosters from scratch for every class. Sawyer combines everything we need (signup forms, printable rosters, checkin/checkout, custom discount codes, and plenty of payment options for our users) with everything we want (ease of use, user-accounts for our families, a built-in messaging system). Once you learn how to set up classes and navigate Sawyer, it's like a dream come true. That sounds dramatic (hey, we're a youth theatre) but it's been such a game-changer for our organization.