KeepsYa™ vs Sawyer
Same families, same camps, opposite philosophy: their marketplace, or your website.
Updated August 18, 2026 · KeepsYa 0.185.2 + KeepsYa Pro 0.26.55 · Sawyer, current cloud release (SaaS)
The short version: Sawyer is a polished booking platform for children’s activities, with a parent marketplace that can send you discovery traffic. The price of polish is the platform model: subscription plus fees, hosted pages, and your family list living in their system next to your competitors’. KeepsYa does the same core job, registrations, schedules, family accounts, on your own WordPress site with no per-booking fees.
Think of it as renting a stall in someone’s market versus owning the shop on your own street. The market brings foot traffic and handles the till; it also charges rent, takes a slice, and seats your competitors at the next stall. Your own shop grows slower at first and compounds forever: the SEO, the reviews, the email list and the repeat families all accrue to you.
Side by side
| KeepsYa | Sawyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on your own website and domain | ✓ | — hosted pages / embeds |
| You own your data ⓘ | ✓ | — |
| Subscription and booking fees | — flat Pro license only |
✓ see their pricing |
| Parent marketplace for discovery | — | ✓ |
| Semester and multi-session schedules | ✓ | ✓ |
| Family accounts with saved children | ✓ | ✓ |
| Offline payments tracked (cash, Zelle, Venmo, check) | ✓ | — |
| QR check-in with codes emailed to families | ✓ | attendance tools |
| Waitlists, deposits, credits and refund workflow | ✓ | ✓ |
| Referral program with store credit | ✓ | — |
| Punch cards and prepaid packages | ✓ Pro |
class packs on some plans |
| Works with your page builder (Bricks, etc.) | ✓ | — |
| Rename the app to your program’s words (participant, coach, roster) | ✓ | fixed platform terms |
| Built-in AI (discovery interview, content & ad writer, flyer maker, parent chatbot) | ✓ Pro: discovery interview, writers, flyer maker, chatbot |
— no native AI suite |
Where KeepsYa wins
Fee-free forever
No subscription tiers, no per-booking slice. The founders Pro license costs less than most platforms charge in a month.
The asset compounds
Every season of SEO, reviews and repeat families builds your site’s value, not a marketplace’s.
Cash and Zelle welcome
Offline money is tracked and chased automatically, which platform checkouts simply do not do.
Where Sawyer fits better
Marketplace discovery
Their parent marketplace can put a new program in front of local families you have not reached yet.
Zero web presence
No website, no hosting, no interest in either: a hosted platform is the faster start.
Out-of-the-box polish
A heavily designed parent experience with no styling work on your side.
The money math
KeepsYa’s cost never scales with your success: the core plugin is free forever, and KeepsYa Pro is one flat yearly license. Platforms priced per month, per player or per registration take a growing cut as you grow. Run your season’s numbers against their pricing page; the gap usually pays for your whole website.
What they cost
Subscription plus per-registration and processing fees; not publicly listed (contact sales for a quote). See their pricing →
Keepsa: free core, flat yearly Pro license. We re-check these figures weekly; tell us if you spot a change.
or lock founders pricing: KeepsYa Pro at $149/yr for the first 500 (regular $199/yr)
More comparisons: Eventbrite · Event Tickets Plus · Upper Hand · Amelia & Bookly · TeamSnap · WooCommerce Bookings · SportsEngine · Jackrabbit Class · LeagueApps · Jersey Watch · RegFox · all comparisons
Or see KeepsYa for your activity: browse 68+ activities. Grow it with our guides and free AI marketing prompts, including the downloadable AI Prompt Pack.
Feature notes reflect each product’s public documentation and published feature lists as of June 12, 2026. Products change; check their site for current details and pricing. All trademarks belong to their owners; KeepsYa is not affiliated with or endorsed by any product compared here.
Our 30-day, no-questions-asked guarantee
Try KeepsYa Pro and love it, or get a full refund, automatically. If Pro is not right for your program, just log in and cancel within 30 days of your purchase and we will refund your charge automatically. No emails, no hoops, no questions. And if you ever get stuck before then, a real person replies within one business day.
More than an affiliate program: a growth flywheel
KeepsYa Pro turns your own families into your marketing engine and rewards them for it. Affiliate commissions, family referrals and the stored-value ledger are not three features, they are one self-perpetuating loop:
A family shares their link
Every family gets a personal referral link, and partners get an affiliate link, straight from your KeepsYa site.
A friend signs up
The new registration is tracked automatically and attributed to the referrer, first-touch, no codes to chase.
The family earns spendable credit
They receive real, owner-funded account credit (or a cash commission), held in your stored-value ledger and payable after the service is delivered.
They come back and spend it
That credit pulls the family into next season, and their friend now has a link of their own.
The result: your customers promote you, get rewarded, and keep coming back, while you keep every dollar and own all the data. One referral can pay for a whole year of Pro. See how the Pro flywheel works →