Retreat Guru Reviews

Summary: Great product, great service. Makes program registrations very efficient. The staff are exceptional.

Positive: Great customer service and staff and Program makes it very efficient to have in-person programs when housing is involved to track housing, rooms and communicate with registrants.

Negative: Not great for online programs with assignments and certificates needed.

Summary: Retreat Guru is a robust program with many aspects to learn. Our onboarding process was handled professionally and with great attention. Support staff was available whenever we needed help. Michelle met with us twice a week until we felt ready to launch.

We are still new to the program, but so far we are very pleased with the

Positive: - Great Onboarding experience
- robust functionality
- Works well for the variety of programs and guests we host
- Billing our guests is simple and integrated
- the user interface is easy for both staff and guests

Negative: - our old system word as a contact management system, but this has fewer capabilities. I know Retreat Guru is working on more functionality with the Organizations feature.
- there are a few places where we have to repeat data entry because aspects of the "rental" module do not talk to the "program" module. I believe this is being addressed as well.

Summary: Prior to Retreat Guru we depended upon an outdated, unsupported Access database. It provided the most rudimentary functionality. We looked at several software packages but most were for hotels and failed to support the specific needs of a retreat center. Now, we have a sophisticated system that allows us to manage all aspects of our retreat ministry from anywhere.

Positive: We appreciate having all our calendaring, room management, relationship management, retreat management, and billing in one place. We now have a vision of the past, present, and future at both the micro and macro levels. Searching and editing are straightforward.

Negative: Our only challenge comes in the form of report formatting. Retreat Guru assumes all stakeholders are logging into the system but we have some reports that we provide to unsophisticated community members. Depending on what must be communicated we find it necessary to create manual reports.

Summary: Overall Retreat Guru is the best product out there. I researched extensively and I am very confident making that claim. I am extremely grateful for this service and I can't say enough positive things about the people who work with RG. The staff is always available and amazingly supportive. Even after years of working together, they continue to check in and make sure we are content with every detail. Thank you!

Positive: Software is extremely helpful.
Customer service is amazingly attentive.
Payment processing to countries not serviced by other products.

Negative: Costs are a bit higher than other services but its worth it for us.

Summary: Retreat Guru has become an instrumental part of my operations. I did a lot of research before hand, and also tried out Easol (which I switched from). Highly recommended!

Positive: This is hands down the best software to run a retreat center, especially if you also operate as a hotel. If you rent out your retreat center to third parties, the rentals feature on Retreat Guru will save you a ton of time. The back end is very customizable and powerful. Their support staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and responsive.

Negative: It's so complete that it can be hard to get up and running. The out of the box design could be updated, but it's also easy to layer on your own design as well.

Summary: Our overall experience is super good! We look forward to integrating Retreat Guru on our website.

We don't have a clear impression of the flexibility of the design yet.

Positive: Both Alec and Kelly are very kind and helpful. They take our questions serious and help find good solutions.

Retreat Guru has a ton of features. Most of the things we request are solvable.

Compared to last time we talked with retreat guru the pricing is very reasonable and flexible.

Negative: The feature of Retreat Guru registrations going directly to zoom to create personalized zoom links for each individual is lacking.

The person count for the retreat is not very well. To create a person count overview we had to use the meal plan function, which is a bit odd. But, obviously not a big problem.

It would be super cool if the pictures were cropped automatically to fit the consistent view format in a area of retreat guru (fx teacher profiles, rooms or the like). It's a hassle to need to crop everything ourselves.

Summary: Retreat Guru stands heads above the rest when it comes to a booking system! Perfect system! Wouldn't change a thing.

Positive: They thought of everything when they made the Retreat Guru booking system. Retreat Guru:

- assigns rooms
- you can make any questions you want for your reservations
- it is a really intelligent system and will put same sexes in shared rooms or dorms
- endless possibilities for describing things in detail, photos, everything which is needed for any retreat business
- customizable to our particular needs
- sends out automated emails we created specific to our retreats
- auto set up of participant payments
- instruction videos for almost everything you would want to know how to do
- and much more!

I can't even list all the great things there are about Retreat Guru. Literally they have thought of everything! People who made this must have run retreats in the past because they really know what is needed by any retreat center of any sort.

The customer service has been incredible too. Every time I had any questions, they were always quick and happy to help, friendly, and knew exactly what I needed in order to solve my problem. They are so nice at Retreat Guru! Their support is just awesome. Always friendly.

I really appreciated that they would listen to me if I had any suggestions or feedback too. They were always receptive and their system even has a built in feedback option so we can interact with them in an immediate way if there is something we would like to see developed or added, which there was only one thing in the 7 years I've been using Retreat Guru I suggested, and they added it!

I am so grateful we found Retreat Guru for our retreat center because it cut down our time dealing with reservations by literally 10 times. It takes no effort whatsoever to deal with all our bookings. It is all automated. If we need to ever go in and change something because a participant emails us and wants to change something, it's easy and all the ability to change things is there, like rooms, additions, dates, prices, everything.

I may sound like a huge fan of Retreat Guru and that's because I am! The honest truth is that I looked everywhere on Google for booking systems for a retreat center, and found nothing that can even compare. The price is fair too, affordable, and they were willing to help me get it all started. They walked me through everything and literally helped me set everything up in person on Zoom, without any extra charge! They actually spent a lot of time with me teaching me how to use the system and set everything up. It was so amazing. This program does so much and it would have been a challenge to set things up without direction. They gave me all the direction I needed to get started.

Negative: There isn't anything I didn't like or would change. It's perfect.

Summary: We were looking for a while to have a set up like Retreat Guru has and after getting involved with a couple of them we finally ended up with Retreat Guru.
They do everything as promised and when we had a problem they always were reachable.
Great Software, great Team, great support.

Positive: Always a helping support from all the members.
Ease of use of the software.
Punctual payment of deposits.
Top notch accounting!
Great help with the set up.

Negative: No cons yet. The software is running as promised and is a big help in our business.

Summary: Hand-held, professional, relaxed and fully present
Their trust and knowledge in the product, design and flexibility of the team supported me to feel happy and relaxed throughout the onboarding - although being on the computer screen is the last thing I normally enjoy!

Positive: Kelly's clarity, patience, calm and professional manner
Her gentle and soft guidance - steering me to become empowered to use the system for myself (I previously had an admin team doing all back office work for me.

Negative: It took a long time to get PaySafe activated - there were a lot of glitches here - yet Kelly was very patient and supportive!