Amilia review

Amilia (product name: SmartRec) is built for a different buyer than the rest of this catalog — YMCAs, JCCs, community and arts centers, parks & recreation departments, camps, swim schools, and youth sports leagues, rather than gyms or studios. Two tiers are published down to the dollar: Standard $99/mo (up to 5,000 active accounts, 10 facilities) and Advanced $499/mo (up to 10,000 accounts, 20 facilities, two premium add-ons included), both carrying a stated 1% service fee on every invoice plus card or eCheck processing. A Custom tier for large public agencies is quote-only.

Implementation is a real cost the headline price hides: $899 for Standard, $2,999 for Advanced, one-time. Capterra rates it 4.3/5 across 148 reviews — solid, though ease of use lags at 4.1/5, with reviewers calling the system hard to learn. The clearest weak spot: the member-facing Amilia app is rated just 1.6/5 across 77 App Store ratings, the lowest member app we have found in this entire catalog.

• YMCAs, JCCs, community/arts centers, parks & recreation departments, camps and swim schools

  Not a fit for most gyms or studios elsewhere in this catalog.

• Organizations that want transaction and implementation costs stated up front

  , not discovered after signing a contract.

• Youth sports leagues and multi-program community organizations

  needing one system for registration, facilities and payments at scale — up to 10,000 accounts on Advanced.

It is a weaker fit if the member-facing app matters to your families — Amilia's own app is the lowest-rated in this catalog — or if your organization is small and cost-sensitive: implementation alone runs $899–$2,999 before the monthly fee starts, and reviewers describe a required yearly contract.

We fetched amilia.com/pricing directly on October 8, 2026 to confirm both tiers and the Custom tier's terms.

Advanced includes 2 premium add-ons of the buyer's choice (SmartRec Analytics, Community Segments, SmartText, or unlimited API access); Standard can add them on demand at an unpublished price. The page offers preferred nonprofit pricing on request but does not state a discount amount, and does not state annual-vs-monthly billing terms or a contract length.

The subscription tiers and per-transaction fees are fully published; the real gap is in billing-term and add-on specifics.

For a mid-size recreation department or YMCA on Standard, the realistic first-year cost is roughly $99/mo plus the $899 implementation fee, plus the 1% service fee and card/eCheck processing on every transaction families make — meaningful at volume, and worth modeling against actual registration dollars before signing.

• Registration & scheduling

  Program registration, facility booking, multi-location support (10 facilities Standard, 20 Advanced).

• Online store

  E-commerce for program and merchandise sales — 1 store on Standard, 3 on Advanced.

• Reporting

  50+ pre-built reports on Advanced, built for recreation and community-program operations specifically.

• Payments

  Integrated card and eCheck processing, invoicing, and a published service-fee structure.

• Support

  Email/chat on Standard, live phone and chat plus a strategic account manager on Advanced and Custom.

What is weaker per reviewers: the member-facing app (1.6/5), ease of learning the admin system (4.1/5 on Capterra, the softest of its sub-scores), true guest checkout at point of sale, and a refund process some reviewers describe as credits-only rather than direct refunds.

Capterra puts Amilia (listed as SmartRec) at 4.3/5 across 148 reviews, with customer service the stronger sub-score at 4.6/5 despite some cited phone wait times. Ease of use is the softer metric at 4.1/5 — multiple reviewers describe the system as difficult to learn and hard to customize to their specific program structure.

The most repeated complaints: a required yearly contract that some reviewers find restrictive for smaller organizations, a multistep refund process (tickets credited back rather than refunded directly in some cases), slow payment deposits, and missing conveniences like true guest checkout at point of sale or a built-in map/availability calendar for campsite-style bookings.

Amilia has no direct rival in this catalog — it is the only platform built specifically for public recreation departments, YMCAs and camps rather than private gyms or studios. See Amilia vs Mindbody for the comparison against the category's generalist. Full ranking: best gym & studio management software.