There's no such thing as the best camp registration software, and any article that hands you one answer without knowing your camper count is an article somebody paid for.
So I did something different. I pulled up twelve platforms in this category, went to their live pricing pages, and wrote down what they actually say. Then I scored all twelve against the same twelve-line rubric I built for myself when I was the one holding the decision.
Two things surprised me, and I want to lead with both.
Five of the twelve will not tell you what they cost. Not "starting at." Not a range. You have to book a call. Regpack, Campminder, and Homeroom publish no dollar figure at all. CampDoc publishes a floor and nothing else. Jackrabbit publishes a starting price with the actual ladder inside an image.
And there is one thing that not one of the twelve publishes. I'll get to it, because it's the reason I ended up building software instead of buying it.
I'll also score my own product on the same rubric, including where it falls short. Everything below was pulled from public pages on August 14, 2026. If you're reading this months later, check the dates, because these pages move.
There's no single best camp registration software, because a 40-camper solo operation and a 500-camper multi-site operation need opposite things. The right approach is to score candidates against twelve capabilities weighted to how you actually operate, then compare total cost at your real registration volume. A tool that's wrong for you isn't a bad tool.
It isn't too expensive. It isn't too complicated. It isn't badly built. It was built for somebody else, and you're being asked to pay for the mismatch.
Early on I started cold-calling local operators to ask how they ran payroll, scheduling, and operations. Not a survey. I just didn't know, and I figured somebody did. Everybody said spreadsheets. Twenty years in, spreadsheets and five disconnected tools.
Within a few months, those same veterans were calling me to ask what I was using. The newest person in the room had somehow become the most systematized, and not because I'm smarter than anybody. Because I walked in with a decade of school leadership and no tolerance for operating blind, so I built the thing they'd learned to live without.
That's where this rubric came from, and then I rebuilt it after I started building software and found out what these tools can and can't do underneath.
Score each candidate 0, 1, or 2 on every line. Zero means no, one means with manual work, two means the system does it. Twenty-four points possible.
#
Capability
Why it earns points
1
Mobile checkout completes in under 2 minutes
Parents register on phones, at night, in a hurry
2
Payment attaches to the registration, no separate collection step
Otherwise you become a collections department
3
Sibling and multi-week enrollment in one transaction
Camp buying is 2 kids × 4 weeks, not 1 × 1
4
Spot counts and capacity update automatically
Manual counts cause double-bookings and refunds
5
Waitlist auto-converts with a payment link and deadline
A manual waitlist is a to-do list with feelings
6
Live enrollment shown against your published minimums
This is how you decide what runs
7
Refund and cancellation rules configured once, applied by the system
Policies in your head get re-decided at 11pm
8
Waivers and forms collected inside the same flow
Every redirect is a percentage of your season
9
Rosters a partner can receive without you generating them
The admin tax nobody prices
10
Instructor assignment and scheduling visible by session, by day
You can't manage what you can't see
11
Instructor hours flow out of the schedule into payroll
Otherwise payroll is a second full job
12
Total per-registration cost known at 1× and 2× your volume
The number that decides whether you keep it in year three
That's the whole method for picking the best camp registration software for your operation: twelve lines, weighted to you.
How to read your score. 18 to 24 is an operating system. 10 to 17 is a strong registration engine and you'll keep a spreadsheet. Under 10 and you're buying a checkout page.
All three are legitimate purchases. Just don't pay operating-system prices for a checkout page, and don't expect a checkout page to give you your Tuesdays back.
Everything in this table is quoted or paraphrased from each company's own public pages, pulled August 14, 2026. Card processing is separate almost everywhere and is charged by the payment processor, not the software company.
Platform
Built for
Published monthly price
Per-registration or percentage
Free plan or trial
Sawyer (a DaySmart company)
Children's activity businesses, camps, after-school. Also a parent marketplace
Launch: no subscription. Grow $189 annual / $219 monthly. Scale $379 / $399. Enterprise by quote
Launch 3% per transaction. Marketplace commission 30% required on Launch, 20% or 15% opt-in above. A "Sawyer booking fee" applies to all tiers and can be absorbed or passed to families. Amount not published
14-day free trial. No free plan
Jumbula
Camps, classes, childcare, after-school, districts, parks and rec. Also a marketplace
Pay As You Go $15. Rise $150. Ascend $285. Enterprise custom
Enrollment credits on PAYG: 10 free, then packs from 10/$20 up to 500/$550. Unlimited on higher tiers. Stripe separate at 2.9% + 30¢
First month free on PAYG. No free plan
Jackrabbit Class
Gymnastics, dance, swim, cheer, music. Not camps-first
From $49, tiered on end-of-month student count. Plus (branded app) from $93 plus $169 one-time setup. Enterprise $245, or $331 with Plus
No per-registration fee published
No free trial and no free plan. 90-day money-back guarantee after setup and one billing cycle
CampDoc
Day and overnight camps, youth and school programs. Health-and-safety led
"Starting at $340.00 per month," everything else by quote
None published
Neither. Demo only
CourseStorm
Arts, community ed, continuing ed, kids activities and camps
Annual: Starter $99, Core $169, Pro $269, All Access $399. Monthly: $119, $219, $329, $499. All "starting price"
$2.49 per registration on all plans, plus Stripe. Pass-through not published
No free plan. Trial invited on the features page but no signup path or terms published. First-year refund available
Regpack
Programs, camps, courses, after-school, retreats, sports
No figure published. Three unpriced tiers, all "Get Pricing"
Processing "as low as 1.5%," custom by volume. Model otherwise not published
Neither. Demo only
Activity Messenger
Sports and leisure organizations, municipalities, camps, swim, dance, gymnastics. North America, bilingual
Light $99 (1 user). Premium $149 (2-5). Pro $229 (6-10). Enterprise custom
1% service fee, minimum $0.25, on top of Stripe 2.9% + 30¢. Bank transfer 1%, min $0.50, max $5
Neither published. Demo only
Homeroom
Schools and PTA/PTOs primarily, with a self-serve provider track. Software plus managed marketplace
Free for schools and PTOs. Providers get started free
Families pay. A service fee is added on top of the class price, plus a 3% card cost. Service fee percentage not published
Free for schools and PTOs. Free provider signup
iClassPro
Gymnastics, cheer, dance, swim schools
Per location. Signature $139. Elite $199. Premium $299 with 12-month commitment. Enterprise by quote
No per-registration fee. Processing card: 2.9% + $0.50, AmEx 3.5%, eCheck 1%, plus $10/mo gateway
No free plan, no published trial terms
Pembee
Independent multi-venue class organizers, clubs, camps, courses
Standard $45 (up to 5 admins). Premium $105 (unlimited admins). Two months free annually
0.59% application fee on Stripe payments, in addition to Stripe's own fees
30-day free trial, no credit card. No free plan
Campminder
Summer camps only, day and overnight, 20 to 2,000 campers
No figure published. Three suites, "customized to your camp," tiered on enrolled campers
None published
Neither. Contact form required
enrops
Camps, classes, after-school programs, kids activity businesses
$0. Free for businesses, permanently
A per-registration enrops service fee at checkout, capped. Current figures on the pricing page
Free for businesses, permanently. Not a trial
What that table is actually telling you
Seven of the twelve publish real numbers you can plan against: Jumbula, CourseStorm, Amilia, iClassPro, Sawyer, Activity Messenger, and Pembee. Jumbula publishes the most granular pricing in the category, right down to individual add-ons, and they deserve credit for that.
Five of the twelve will not. Regpack, Campminder, and Homeroom publish no dollar figure. CampDoc publishes a floor. Jackrabbit publishes a starting price with the ladder in an image.
I'm not going to tell you a quote-only vendor is hiding something, because that isn't fair and it isn't always true. Enterprise-grade health records and overnight camp operations are hard to price, and CampDoc and Campminder are both selling depth that a simple table would misrepresent. But I will tell you what it costs you: you cannot compare five of the twelve without spending a week on sales calls, and if you're a solo operator with forty campers, that week is the most expensive line item in this whole article.
Also worth naming: Amilia publishes $99 and $499 tiers with a 1% service fee on every invoice issued, card at 2.85% or 2.75% + 30¢, and onboarding starting at $899 or $2,999. I left it out of the main table because it's built for parks and rec, YMCAs, and community centers more than independent camp operators, but if you run a community-center-shaped business, put it on your list.
Here's where the rubric earned its keep. I checked all twelve against lines 6, 9, 10 and 11, and the pattern is remarkable.
Rubric line
Who publishes it
6. Live enrollment against your published minimums
Nobody. Not one of the twelve. The closest is CourseStorm's "low enrollment notifications," which is clever, but it's student-facing: it tells registered families a class is at risk and asks them to share it. It is not an operator dashboard telling you which sections are under your minimum today
9. Partner-ready rosters
Homeroom only, which automatically sends the latest rosters to instructors. Everyone else: not published. Rosters are internal or exported
10. Instructor scheduling
Jackrabbit (activity calendar that prevents double-booking rooms and instructors), Amilia (instructor availability, instructor calendar, mobile app, on all tiers), Campminder (assign people to cabins and specialty areas). Activity Messenger lists it as "coming soon." iClassPro has a time clock but no published shift scheduling. Everyone else: not published
11. Instructor hours into payroll
Jackrabbit (time clock with manager approval against scheduled hours, sending payroll data to Express Payroll), Campminder (integrated payroll data, ATS, background checks), Activity Messenger (timesheets that connect to your payroll). Everyone else: not published
Read line 6 again, because it's the whole reason I'm in this business.
Every platform in this category can tell you how many people registered. Not one of them will tell you, on a Tuesday, which of your sections is below the number you need for it to be worth running. That's the decision that costs the most money in this industry, and the entire category treats it as your problem.
I know exactly what it costs, because I ran the number. When we cancel a program for low enrollment, 97% of those families never purchase anything from us again. Ever. That's our own data across 50 school sites. So the decision has to be made early, on a published trigger, and you cannot make it early if you can't see it.
1. The solo operator, under 60 campers a season. Weight lines 1, 2, 3, 7. You need frictionless money in and a refund policy that runs itself. Your realistic shortlist is Pembee at $45, Jumbula's Pay As You Go at $15 with enrollment packs, or a permanently free plan. Skip anything with a $2,999 onboarding fee. Skip anything that requires a sales call to learn the price.
2. The single-site operator with part-time instructors. Weight 6, 10, 11. Your pain isn't enrollment, it's visibility over who is where. Jackrabbit and Amilia are the two that publish real scheduling. My own version of this nearly cost me a partnership, and nobody was careless. A part-time instructor had a problem, saw a phone number, and solved it the fastest way available to her. She routed around me and I found out from the school. That's a visibility failure, not a people failure, and no amount of reminder emails fixes it.
3. The multi-site operator, 5 to 20 sites. Weight 6, 9, 10, 12. Watch how each vendor charges for sites, because the models are opposite. iClassPro charges per location, so twenty sites is twenty subscriptions. Sawyer includes unlimited locations on every tier. Jumbula sells multi-location and franchise solutions. Amilia scales by facility count, up to 10 on Standard and 20 on Advanced. CourseStorm puts multi-site network sites on the top tier only. Run line 12 twice, at current volume and double.
4. The seasonal camp with one big window. Weight 3, 4, 5, 8. Your whole year is decided in a few weeks, so waitlist automation is revenue. Pembee publishes the mechanic most explicitly: when someone cancels, the next person is offered the spot automatically with a hold time. CourseStorm automates waitlist self-registration when spots open. If you run overnight camp with real medical complexity, CampDoc and Campminder are built for you in a way the rest are not, and their price reflects that.
5. The operator inside school and district partnerships. Weight 9, 6, 11. Homeroom is the only one built primarily for the school side, and it's the only one that publishes automatic roster delivery. Understand the tradeoff: it's a managed marketplace, families pay the service fee, and Homeroom holds the money at booking and splits payouts. That's a real model with real benefits, and it's a different relationship than licensing software.
6. The operator who is scared of software. Weight 1, 7, and how fast you can get live. And I'm profile six, so let me talk to you directly.
I got locked out of my own district account as a sitting principal, while every single person on my team handled the password change on time. So when I say a tool should be usable by somebody who is nervous about tools, understand I'm not being generous about somebody else. I'm the somebody. If a demo makes you feel stupid, that's information about the product, not about you. Start with the ones that let you in without a sales call: Pembee's 30-day trial, Sawyer's 14 days, Jumbula's first free month, or a free plan.
Usually no.
A blank canvas is a bill for a consultant you haven't hired yet. Every setting a tool lets you configure is a decision it's handing back to you, and you're already making every decision in your business. Give me strong defaults and let me be live by Thursday.
The exception is if you have somebody whose actual job is maintaining the configuration. Most of us don't, and the ones who think they do are usually describing themselves at 11pm.
Because most of it was built between 2010 and 2012, when getting even a prototype together with real technology in it was expensive. Those companies made enormous investments in an architecture that made sense at the time, and they've been carrying it ever since. Jackrabbit has been the default in gymnastics for years for good reasons. Campminder knows overnight camp better than anybody. That's earned.
It's timing, not carelessness, and for once the timing favors the newer builders and the operators who buy from them.
I also want to be honest about how I found the gap, because it isn't a flattering story. I wrote a survey to validate instructor training, which is what I'd already decided to build. One open question in it: if you could dream up the perfect solution that would take this off your plate, if it existed but does not yet, what would it be?
Multiple operators described, in detail, the platform I'm now building. And I ignored it. My questions were leading. Subconsciously I was steering them toward validating the thing I wanted to offer, and they identified something else completely. I read those responses through the wrong lens and I missed it, because I wasn't looking for it.
They were describing enrops. They had never heard of it.
Same rubric. No inflation.
Line
enrops today
1. Mobile checkout under 2 minutes
Strong. This is the wedge
2. Payment attached to registration
Strong
3. Sibling and multi-week in one checkout
Strong
4. Automatic capacity
Strong
5. Auto-converting waitlist
Strong
6. Live enrollment against your minimums
Strong, and it's the line nobody else publishes
7. Refund rules configured once
Strong
8. Waivers in the same flow
Strong
9. Partner-ready rosters
On the roadmap. Not there yet
10. Instructor scheduling
On the roadmap. Not there yet
11. Hours into payroll
On the roadmap. Not there yet
12. Cost known at 1× and 2×
Strong. Free for businesses, permanently, with a capped per-registration enrops service fee
So: nine of twelve, with three named gaps. If lines 9 through 11 are your whole problem, Jackrabbit or Amilia will serve you better than I will today, and I'd rather tell you that here than have you find out in October.
Lines 9 through 11 are exactly what we're building next, and that's why the platform runs inside my own operation first. 50 school sites. 75+ programs a year. 2,500+ students across 7 districts and 2 states. Every feature has to solve a real problem in my business before it gets offered to anybody else. We say enrops is built for us, by us, because it's built by people who work in this industry. We're the customer.
Print the twelve lines. Weight them to your profile. Then go get real numbers from every vendor on your list, and for the five who won't publish, ask on the call: what will I pay per registration at 200, and at 400?
If a vendor can't answer that in a sentence, you have your answer.
Two things worth your next twenty minutes. Episode 04 of The Enrichment Entrepreneur is the one where I go through the parts of this business nobody warned us about, including why there's no software built for us. And if you want to score mine against the twelve, enrops is free for businesses, permanently. Build a camp listing, time your checkout, run the rubric. Get started free →
Arielle Hammond, Ed.D. is the founder of enrops and host of The Enrichment Entrepreneur.
All pricing and feature claims in this article were taken from each company's public pages on August 14, 2026, and are refreshed quarterly. "Not published" means the company does not state it publicly, not that the capability is absent. If you work at one of these companies and something here is out of date, email arielle@enrops.com and I'll correct it.
