Sawyer is for activities. SummerBoss is for camp.
Sawyer does a nice job for class-based children's businesses like art studios, swim schools, and enrichment providers. But summer camp isn't a class schedule with sunscreen. It's sessions and waitlists, opening-morning surges, medications and incident reports, and a hundred seasonal staff. That's a different product.
Classes and camps are different businesses
Sawyer earned its audience. For a children's activity business running weekly classes, drop-ins, and semester schedules, it's a polished product with modern registration and a consumer-friendly marketplace. Plenty of enrichment providers are well served by it.
Camp is where the fit gets strained. Camp registration doesn't trickle in like class signups; it detonates on an opening morning, with hundreds of families competing for the same summer weeks. Camp operations aren't attendance sheets. They're medication schedules, incident reports with parent notifications, emergency contacts, authorized pickups, and a gate that needs to know exactly who's on site at 2 p.m. And camp staffing is seasonal at a scale class businesses never touch. Tools built class-first can take registrations for a camp. They don't run one.
SummerBoss is camp software from the first table in the database: programs and sessions, a registration day engineered not to crash, a staff app for counselors, a MAR board for the nurse, and a parent feed for the summer. Plus the part Sawyer got right (a public marketplace where families discover you) built into the same platform.
Credit to Sawyer
For what it was built to do, it's good:
- Polished, modern registration for class-based schedules
- A consumer marketplace that brings providers real discovery
- Good fit for drop-ins, semesters, and recurring enrichment programs
- Clean parent-facing checkout experience
Side by side
The short version, feature by feature. The sections below tell the longer story.
| Feature | SummerBoss Pro | Sawyer |
|---|---|---|
| Built for camp sessions and weeks (not class schedules) | ||
| Waiting room with pre-open lineup (no crash) | ||
| Live registration-day Mission Control | ||
| Handles registration-day load | ||
| Online checkout with payment plans | ||
| Public directory with featured placement | ||
| Medication (MAR) board for the nurse | ||
| Incident reports with parent notifications | ||
| Staff app for counselors (rosters, meds, incidents) | ||
| Parent QR check-in at the gate | ||
| Parent app + daily feed | ||
| Waitlists with auto-promotion | ||
| Scholarship applications | ||
| Bring your own registration (import rosters) |
Camp registration isn't class signup
A class business takes registrations all semester. A camp takes half its season's revenue in one morning. SummerBoss treats that morning as the main event. Families line up in a waiting room before doors open, enter checkout in order, and see their real position the whole time, so no sale is lost to a crashed page. Programs release in waves you control. Mission Control shows you the morning live, and payments that hiccup retry quietly so nobody loses a spot to a dropped connection.
- No 9:00 a.m. stampede, and no lost sales when everyone shows up at once
- Wave openings with per-wave countdowns
- One live screen: families on site, the line, sales, revenue
The part of camp software that runs the camp
Once registration closes, the real work starts, and this is where class-first tools simply end. SummerBoss keeps going: daily attendance with QR check-in at the gate, incident reports logged on the spot with a follow-up timeline and parent notifications, medications on a live MAR board with reminders and an audit trail, emergency contacts and authorized pickups on every camper record, and a staff app that gives each counselor exactly their group's day.
- Who's here, who's out, and who needs pickup authorization, live
- Incidents logged in under a minute, parents notified as it progresses
- Every dose due, given, or missed on one MAR board
A marketplace built around summer planning
Sawyer's marketplace is real, but it's oriented around ongoing children's activities. SummerBoss's directory is built around how families actually plan a summer: browsing camps by week, comparing sessions against their calendar, saving options, and coordinating with other families. When a parent maps out June through August, your camp shows up exactly where that decision happens, and your featured listing, photos, and reviews do the selling.
- Families plan whole summers on SummerBoss, week by week
- Featured placement, unlimited photos and video on your listing
- Analytics showing which programs families view and save
Your families stay your families
Marketplace-first platforms sit between you and the family, and the relationship accrues to the marketplace. SummerBoss works the other way. The directory brings families in, but they register with your camp, join your feed, and build history with your organization. Your CRM keeps every household, sibling, and season. When next January comes, you're re-enrolling your families, not renting access to the platform's.
- Full family CRM: households, siblings, history, balances
- Direct communication: your updates, your brand, your feed
- Re-enrollment campaigns to your own list
Switching? We'll move your data for you.
For camps joining this season, our team does the migration with you: we take your exports (rosters, families, programs, sessions, contacts), clean them up, and set up your SummerBoss account so your first login already looks like your camp. No CSV wrestling, no retyping five hundred families.
Sawyer exports come across cleanly (families, campers, enrollments) and our team will handle the move for you.
- We map and import your rosters, families, and program history
- Your next season is pre-staged and ready to review, not rebuilt from scratch
- A real person double-checks everything before you go live
Included free for camps onboarding for the upcoming season.
Prefer to do it yourself? The import wizard walks you through exporting from your current system and brings your data in step by step.
Built for registration-day rushes
A waiting room keeps the site from crashing, programs open in waves, and payments retry and recover, so the busiest morning of your year stays fast.
Switch on your schedule
Import rosters from any system and run the day (QR check-in at the gate included), then move registration over when you’re ready, even mid-summer.
We handle payments
Families pay by card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay at checkout. SummerBoss collects and pays you out on a regular schedule, with every order tied to each transfer. No Stripe account to set up on your end.
Your data, secured
Encrypted in transit and at rest, with role-based access and a full audit trail.
Questions Sawyer camps ask us
See the difference on your own camp
A 20-minute walkthrough on your programs. Bring your Sawyer questions.
20 minutes · no commitment · see it on your own camp