How Forma Studio Runs and What It Costs

The short version

The software is free. Running it costs about $100 a month, paid to the companies that host it, not to me. Setup is a one-time fee if you want me to do it.

No license fee, no per-member fee, no contract.
Every account is in your studio's name. Hosting, payments, email. If I disappeared tomorrow, your studio would keep running.
Your clients book on your own web address, for example book.yourstudio.com, in your colors.

What it runs on

Forma is the studio software: schedule, clients, bookings, selling, reports. For hosting, card payments, email and AI it connects to services you choose and own.

Account	What it does for you	About, per month
Hosting (Render)	Runs Forma and stores your studio's data, in U.S. data centers. One dashboard, one bill.	$75–80
Email delivery (Resend)	Sends booking confirmations, reminders, receipts and sign-in codes from your studio's address.	$20
AI assistant (your own key)	Powers the assistant and AI-written reports. Optional: everything in Forma also works by clicking.	$5–10
To run the software	For a typical single-location studio	about $100

Estimates. Each provider sets its own prices and bills you directly.

Also part of the picture

Account	What it does for you	Cost
Card payments (Stripe)	Takes cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank payments, and pays out to your bank. Your own Stripe account, so saved cards belong to your studio.	Stripe's standard rate
Your marketing tool	Newsletters and campaigns. Keep what you use: Forma connects to Klaviyo, Constant Contact, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign.	What you pay today
Your domain	The web address your booking pages live on.	You already have it
Google sign-in	Lets clients and staff sign in with Google instead of an emailed code.	Free

Forma takes no cut of your sales. Card processing is separate on every platform; here it goes straight from Stripe to you.

What you pay me for

Only help, and only if you want it.

Option	What you get	Cost
Set up for you	I open and connect everything on accounts in your name, build your studio (classes, pricing, policies, staff, branding), move your data, and hand it over.	One-time fee, quoted after we talk
Help afterwards	An owners' community and group office hours. One-on-one help or custom work when you need it.	One-on-one is billed by the hour
Set it up yourself	Download the code and run it on your own hosting. Full features. Opens with the public open-source release.	Free

There is no monthly fee to Forma. Once your studio is set up, you own it and run it.

What "you own it" means in practice

You hold the logins. Each account is opened with your studio's email. I work as an invited team member, and you can remove me at any time.
Your data stays yours. Your client list and history live in your own hosting account, never pooled with another studio's.
Any developer can maintain it. Forma is open source under the AGPL license, so you are never tied to me.
Nobody can raise the price on you. There is no price to raise.

How to compare it with what you pay now

Compare the $100 with your current studio software bill and its add-ons (branded app fees, extra locations, reporting tiers). Leave out the tools you will keep either way, like your marketing platform. If your current software bundles marketing, add the cost of a marketing tool to Forma's side so the comparison is fair.

More guides: How Forma runs and what it costs · Moving to Forma · Accounts to open · Questions owners ask · Security

Forma Studio · forma.consulting/studio/how-it-runs · polina@forma.consulting · November 2026