My Music Staff vs Jackrabbit Music for a Growing School

A school with six teachers can still run mainly on recurring private lessons. Another can spend every afternoon moving children between groups, arranging cover and checking which siblings belong in which recital. Those schools need different things from their admin software.

What each system costs as the school grows

My Music Staff charges US$16.95 a month for one teacher, plus US$4.95 for each additional teacher or staff member, with unlimited students. Include yourself and the receptionist when counting accounts. Jackrabbit Music uses the Jackrabbit Class platform, whose core subscription starts at US$49 a month for up to 100 students. Its next two tiers are US$89 for 101–250 and US$129 for 251–500. These are the vendors’ published US prices, checked on 19 September 2026: My Music Staff pricing and Jackrabbit pricing.

Here is how those formulas work for three example schools. Teacher-and-office totals include the owner; the student counts are billable records in Jackrabbit.

There is an important detail in Jackrabbit’s billing-count rules: inactive students count too. The count is taken on a day between the 25th and month-end. Families in the Lead File and students placed On Hold are excluded. A school with 90 current students and 30 ordinary inactive records can therefore fall in the US$89 tier. Check what archiving or placing records on hold changes before using either to reduce a bill.

The table is the subscription subtotal. For a school collecting tuition online, the working monthly budget also needs payment-processing fees, applicable tax and any paid messaging or integrations. My Music Staff supports Stripe and PayPal; Jackrabbit offers integrated payment processing. Obtain a quote for your country, payment mix and monthly volume, including refunds, disputes and any gateway fees. We have not priced a particular school’s merchant account, so a complete all-in total is still missing that amount.

Keep optional upgrades separate. My Music Staff includes SMS reminders. Jackrabbit’s Twilio messaging has additional charges; its optional Plus branded app starts at US$93 a month, with a one-time US$169 setup charge plus app-store fees. Core Jackrabbit has no setup fee. Add any separately quoted migration work and your team’s setup time to the first-month budget. There is no physical delivery or shipping charge for either web subscription.

Four office jobs that reveal the differences

The comparisons below draw on current vendor documentation, not a timed trial in a working school. For your demo, use fictional family details and sample charges. Keep live payment collection and parent messages switched off until you have checked the results.

01 · Family account

Two siblings, different teachers, one payer

Suppose one child takes weekly piano lessons and another joins a guitar group. They have different fees, and the family receives a sibling discount.

My Music Staff is well suited to this mixed lesson bill. It supports per-lesson, monthly and hourly pricing, with a separate billing relationship for each student and teacher. Its invoicing tools also accommodate sibling discounts, extra charges and automated invoices. Ask the demo to show both children’s charges clearly on the family account, then change one child’s rate without changing the other.

Jackrabbit’s online registration form can enrol several children into several classes in one submission. Its discount rules distinguish discounts for multiple students from discounts for multiple classes. That is useful when a school has a published family-discount policy across a large class programme.

Whichever system you try, inspect the actual sample bill. Check which sibling gets the reduction, whether it affects the registration fee, and what happens when one child leaves. Those are school policies someone still has to configure.

02 · Enrolment change

Move a student halfway through the month

Jackrabbit has the more explicit workflow for a student moving from a Wednesday group to a Saturday group. Its transfer function records the old-class drop and new-class enrolment dates, with an option to notify the instructors. There is also an option to change the class associated with an existing transaction. Reassigning that transaction does not, by itself, establish that the family owes the correct amount.

Jackrabbit has separate tuition-proration settings for situations including joining late and leaving early. Have the demonstrator apply your policy to the move and show the resulting charges. This is where class-based billing can save repeated calculation, once the rules are set up correctly.

My Music Staff supports private lessons and groups on its calendar. For a school with occasional group changes, that may be enough. In the demo, establish whether you are changing one event or the remaining series, then inspect the student’s future attendance and charges. A calendar that looks right is only part of the check.

Use these four records to follow the change through either system:

1. Old rosterLast Wednesday
   23 September
2. New rosterFirst Saturday
   26 September
3. Family billCheck both fees
   and any credit
4. People toldFamily and
   both teachers

Example transfer, September 2026. Inspect each result during the demo.

03 · Teacher cover

A teacher is away, but the lessons go ahead

Both products support substitutes. My Music Staff provides individual staff permissions and payroll rules; its January 2026 update also describes substitute attendance access and payroll warnings when cover affects the calculation. For a private-lesson school, check that the cover teacher can see the relevant lesson information and take attendance without receiving wider administrative access.

Jackrabbit’s substitute workflow goes further into coordinating vacancies. A class occurrence can have a substitute assigned or remain pending, and upcoming uncovered classes appear in dashboard alerts. The system can notify the absent teacher and substitute; displaying cover in the Parent Portal is configurable. That is a concrete advantage when the office is arranging several replacements across a timetable.

Run the final check while logged in as the substitute, not the owner. Confirm access to the class and attendance, then try opening family financial details. A permission list is less useful than seeing what the person can actually reach.

04 · Recital communication

Tell the right families about the right performance

For a single recital, My Music Staff’s custom student tags and bulk email offer a straightforward route: maintain a participant group and send that group the arrival time, venue and programme details. The remaining office job is keeping the group accurate as performers join or withdraw.

Jackrabbit becomes more useful when the event itself needs organising. Its recital tools connect classes and students to performances, support running-order changes, and provide family-level reports. Staff can email from the Enrolment Detail report using recital participation. Programme exports and check-in sheets also belong to this workflow.

Give the demo one family with children in two performances and one child who has withdrawn. Preview the recipients and the family’s schedule. That will tell you more than sending a successful announcement to everyone.

What to settle before moving the school

My Music Staff supports student spreadsheet imports and offers migration help. Jackrabbit’s free basic import covers current student and family information. Its data requirements explain how optional class and enrolment imports need matching identifiers. Neither statement is a guarantee that your complete financial history, attachments or saved payment methods will arrive intact.

Before signing off a move, agree these points in writing:

• What transfers: distinguish contacts, family relationships, opening balances, past transactions, lesson notes and attachments. Ask separately about payment authorisations.
• Who does the work: name the person cleaning the export, setting billing rules, checking permissions and training staff. Get a price for anything outside the included import.
• How you check it: reconcile family balances and test a normal bill, a sibling discount and a mid-month change. Keep a dated export from the old system.
• When you switch: set a last billing date in the old system and a first billing date in the new one. Avoid charging the same tuition through both.

Schools with a formal purchasing process can use our software-vendor checklist for the wider questions about access, exports and supplier commitments.

Take the four jobs above into the vendors’ demos. Both publish routes to arrange one:

Ask the member of staff who handles your timetable to perform the awkward class change, then explain the resulting family bill. Note where they needed help or an extra spreadsheet. That is the remaining workload you are choosing to take on.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels.