Kata is martial arts studio management built from scratch — not adapted from generic gym software. AI-powered tools that fill seats, retain students, and grow your dojo. All features. No contracts. No add-on surprises.
We are opening to 12 founding studios, onboarded by hand by the people who built it.
The advertised price is $117/month. But to run a real studio — with marketing automation, a member app, and a website — the actual bill lands between $450 and $600 per month. Before processing fees that run 3% per transaction.
And if you try to leave? Good luck. Studios report being billed for months after cancellation. Cancellation fees that weren't disclosed. Data held hostage until you pay up.
"Website is $99/month extra. Marketing is $249/month extra. App is $39/month extra. By the time I had what I needed, I was paying $500/month for 80 students."
"After cancelling, they continued billing my students for 3 more months. Getting out cost me as much as a year of software would have."
"Emails went unanswered for weeks. I had billing errors for four months straight. Their response was to blame server issues."
"It looks and feels like something built in 2006. My students laugh at the member portal. There is no polished mobile experience."
"The quote I signed was not the invoice I got. Add-ons, per-module fees, a surcharge I only found in month three. I still cannot explain my own bill to my accountant."
"The system started double-charging students in 2022. They blamed a server issue. We manually refunded 23 families. That was the month we left."
A parent discovers you at 9pm. By 9:02, they've booked a trial class with just a name and phone number. No account creation. No password. No form designed for adults. A confirmed slot and an SMS with what to wear.
Frictionless onboardingTap record during class. Annotate the clip with timestamped notes. AI writes the parent-facing summary. Parents watch their child's technique improve over months. Clips are archived to the student profile permanently.
AI-poweredEvery Friday, parents receive an AI-generated report: attendance streaks, techniques worked on, days to next belt eligibility, instructor notes. Zero effort for you. Measurable retention improvement. Parents who see progress renew.
Auto-generatedWhen you record a promotion, Kata generates a shareable digital certificate branded to your studio. Parents post it to Instagram. Your studio's name is in every caption. Every promotion becomes organic word-of-mouth.
Viral growthPredictive attendance. Automatic waitlist that texts the next person and gives them 2 hours to confirm. When a student misses class, they get a makeup offer within 2 hours with available slots. No staff time required.
Predictive AIEvery Monday morning: a list of students showing early churn signals — missed 3+ classes, no response to messages, declined payment. A personal call this week is worth $200/month for months. Kata tells you exactly who to call.
Revenue protection
Zen Planner's trial flow requires staff to manually create a guest record, send a link, and wait for the parent to fill out a form designed for full members. Studios lose 60–70% of warm leads in this window.
Kata closes that window permanently.
From your Google listing, Instagram bio, or website. Opens a mobile-first page — no app download required.
Child's name, age, parent phone. That's all. They see the next 3 available slots and a welcome video from the head instructor.
What to wear, where to park, what to expect. Reminder 24 hours before. Reminder 2 hours before. Parents show up prepared.
Reply 1 = instant enrollment link. Reply 2 = warm lead flagged to you. Reply 3 = immediate alert to call now. No more 3-day follow-up lag.
Instructors who give video feedback are doing it manually — iMessage, WhatsApp, personal texts. No archive. No record. No scale. And the liability is all yours.
Kata makes technique feedback a first-class workflow. One tap to record, annotate, and send. AI writes the parent summary. Every clip is archived to the student's profile permanently.
No separate app. Record while class is running. Upload in the background.
Text pins, audio notes, or draw directly on the frame like a coach's telestrator.
Natural language. Reads like a coach wrote it. Because one did — AI just made it readable.
Parents scroll back through months of clips. They can see the improvement. That's what keeps them enrolled.
| Kata | Zen Planner | Martialytics | Gymdesk | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $79/mo | $117/mo | $69/mo | $75/mo |
| All-in at 100–120 students | $149/mo | $450–600/mo | $99/mo | $150/mo |
| Annual contract required | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Belt & rank tracking | ✓ Deep | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Frictionless trial enrollment | ✓ 90 seconds | ~ Manual | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| AI video feedback | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Weekly parent progress reports | ✓ Automated | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Belt promotion sharing | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Retention risk alerts | ✓ Weekly | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Mobile app included | ✓ All plans | $39/mo add-on | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Free migration from Zen Planner | ✓ Studio & Pro | N/A | ✗ No | ✗ No |
Every plan includes all features. Pay month-to-month. Cancel anytime.
Founding studios lock this rate for life · Cancel anytime · No setup fees · No annual contract
A real human migration specialist. Not a chatbot. Not a help article. Someone who has moved dozens of studios off Zen Planner and knows exactly where the data is buried and how to move it without losing a stripe.
30-minute call with your migration specialist. We walk you through the Zen Planner export process, handle field mapping, and import your student data, belt history, billing plans, and attendance records. You review a migration preview before anything goes live.
Kata ingests your data. Your specialist reviews every record and flags mismatches. You approve 10 random student records and a count check. Nothing goes live without your explicit sign-off. Our belt rank vocabulary mapper handles terminology differences automatically.
We send a branded email to your members — pre-filled with everything except card number. Target: 85%+ re-authorization before their first billing date. Students who don't re-authorize get flagged for a personal call before any charge attempt.
Two weeks parallel — Zen Planner goes read-only, Kata takes all new enrollments, attendance, and payments. Then you deactivate Zen Planner. 30 days of dedicated Slack support with your specialist. Response under 2 hours, business hours.
Private beta. 12 founding studios. Full features, and free migration included with Studio and Pro plans.