Most studios stay on Mindbody two years longer than they want to. Not because they like it, but because the move feels like surgery on a moving patient. The bookings keep coming. The memberships keep renewing. Nobody has time to lose a weekend to CSV files. So here is the actual path, with the parts nobody warns you about.
We have moved roughly 40 studios off Mindbody onto Class Booking. The mechanics are the same every time. The mistakes are also the same every time.
What you actually need to export
Mindbody will export quite a lot if you ask the right reports. The trick is knowing which exports are clean and which ones need a second pass.
- Members.csv — name, email, phone, date of birth, address, marketing consent. Pulled from Reports > Clients > Client List.
- Memberships.csv — active pricing options, start date, renewal date, remaining sessions. From Reports > Sales > Pricing Options.
- Class history — bookings, attendance, no-shows, cancellations. From Reports > Visits.
- Financial data — completed sales, refunds, account balances. From Reports > Sales.
- Instructor and class template data — usually faster to rebuild than to migrate.
Full session history requires the Mindbody Pro tier. On the standard tier you can pull the last 12 months but not the lifetime record. Most studios decide 24 months of history is enough and skip the upgrade.
The four things that never migrate cleanly
1. Passwords
Passwords are hashed inside Mindbody and cannot be exported. This is normal. It also means every member needs to set a new password before they can book again. The fix is an invite email with a magic link, sent the day you go live. Plan for support requests from the 5–10% of members who use an old email address or never reset their password.
2. Gift cards
Gift card exports from Mindbody are inconsistent. Balances arrive but expiry rules, restrictions and original purchase dates often do not. Pull the data, then sit with your front-desk lead for an hour and reconcile against the physical card stack. We have never seen a studio with more than 30 active gift cards. The manual pass is faster than fighting the export.
3. Auto-renew subscriptions
This is the one that catches people. When you move members to a new platform, you are establishing a new payment authority. Most jurisdictions require explicit member consent for that. You cannot quietly migrate a recurring card charge from one processor to another without re-asking.
In practice this means the migration email needs a clear line: "To keep your membership active, confirm payment details here." Expect a 70–85% conversion rate in the first week. The remaining 15–30% become a phone-call list for your front desk.
4. Account balances and credits
Mindbody tracks credit in several places: prepaid sessions, account balance, unused class packs, comped sessions. Export each one separately, then map them to Class Booking equivalents (clip cards, memberships, manual credit) before import. Doing the mapping in the spreadsheet is faster than fixing it in the database afterwards.
The seven-day timeline
This is the timeline we run with every migration. It assumes you keep Mindbody running until day seven.
| Day | Task | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pull all exports from Mindbody. Lock the data in a folder. | You |
| 2 | Normalize CSVs. Map pricing options to Class Booking tiers. Reconcile gift cards. | You + our migration team |
| 3 | Import to Class Booking staging. Verify member counts. Spot-check ten random profiles. | Our migration team |
| 4 | Tier mapping review. Confirm every active member lands on the right product. | You |
| 5 | Invite emails go out. Magic links and payment re-consent in one message. | Automated |
| 6–7 | Dual-running. Both systems live. Front desk takes bookings on Class Booking, references Mindbody for stragglers. | Front desk |
What dual-running actually looks like
Days six and seven are not optional. The pattern is simple: any new booking, any membership question, any payment goes through Class Booking. Mindbody stays open as a read-only reference for any historical query. By the end of day seven your front-desk team has answered every common question twice on the new system, and they trust it. That is the goal of dual-running. Not perfection. Trust.
The studios that struggle are the ones that try to flip the switch overnight. The studios that succeed give themselves 48 hours where both systems are visible and the team can sanity-check anything that looks off.
Cancelling Mindbody
Mindbody contracts auto-renew. Read the renewal date before you start. If you are within 30 days of renewal, you may want to time the migration to land before that date. Cancellation is by phone or written notice depending on your contract. Keep the confirmation email. We have seen accounts continue to charge for two months after a verbal cancellation.
If you want a written migration plan tailored to your studio size and stack, we run free 30-minute migration sessions and produce a CSV-by-CSV checklist before you commit. The plan is yours whether you move or not. See our migration guide for the full picture.