Software for studios, written inside one.

Turma started as the rebuild of a seven-school dance network's site, in Lisbon and Porto. The work was not designing pages: it was working out why publishing September's schedule cost a week, why three PDFs contradicted one another, and where the trial-class requests were getting lost.

The answer is the same in every studio: the tools are separate. The site at an agency, the schedule in a PDF, the bookings in an inbox, the memberships in a spreadsheet, the invoicing somewhere else again. Each piece works; what does not work are the joints between them — and the joints are where the money and the patience go.

So Turma is one thing: the public site, next month's schedule, the bookings and enrolments, the memberships and payments, and the front desk where the team works. One platform, one price, everything included — and in every language the studio teaches in.

Dance first, but not only dance

Dance is the first vertical, not the brand. A yoga studio, a pilates studio, a dojo or a music school do exactly the same thing: a timetable of classes, in rooms, with teachers and students. The rules change — belts instead of levels, credits instead of monthly fees, lead and follow in partner dancing — and those are options, not different versions of the product.

Turma is the Portuguese word for the group you belong to. It is what a studio sells, whatever it teaches.

How we work

Slowly, and in writing. Every school that joins is migrated by us — schedules, teachers, photographs, students — and is not left alone with a manual. We onboard four schools a month because that is what we can do well, and launches follow the school year, in September and in January.

The data stays in the European Union, the data processing agreement is available on request, and the full export has existed since day one — whoever comes in has to be able to leave.

Who

Billy, in Lisbon. I answer the requests from this page, I run the launch for the first schools, and I write the product. When that stops being true, this page changes.

Writing to ola@turma.studio reaches the same person.