Open research · July 2026
Bookkind research — what the complaints actually say
Every number here comes from reviews written by people who were already paying.
Method
How this was measured
Reviews rated one to three stars were collected from the Apple App Store across four English storefronts and from Google Play, deduplicated by review ID. Apps were selected for having a real paid tier, so every complaint comes from someone who had already paid.
Each review was tagged against a 23-theme complaint taxonomy using pattern matching on its title and body. Percentages are computed only over substantive reviews — 60 characters or more — because a review reading “Terrible” carries a rating but no diagnosable complaint and would otherwise deflate every rate.
Finding 01
Two users, one product, opposed interests
Mindbody's low-star reviews are dominated by clients — people who never chose the software and are describing an app their studio forced on them. The business is the paying customer, so the client experience is nobody's priority. But the client is the one who books, and 7.7% of complaints are update regressions or removed features: capabilities that worked, and were taken away.
“The interface started showing me the price for a drop in to my gym, even though I have a membership. I had to click through and tell it to use my subscription.”
Mindbody · 2★ · 47 votes
“It glitches, the main page comes up, then refreshes, 3 times before I have to sign in again. Every time I close and open the app.”
Mindbody · 1★ · 62 votes
Complaint themes
| Theme | Share |
|---|---|
| Reliability — crash, freeze | 22.3% |
| Missing feature | 12.9% |
| Complexity / onboarding | 6.1% |
| Ads & upsell pressure | 5.7% |
| Billing & cancellation | 4.8% |
| Customer support | 4.1% |
| Update regression | 3.9% |
| Feature removed | 3.8% |
Dissatisfaction by app
Share of App Store reviews rated one to three stars.
| App | 1–3★ share | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Mindbody | 51% | 1,274 |
| Acuity Scheduling | 43% | 373 |
| Booksy | 35% | 1,410 |
| Calendly | 34% | 314 |
| Setmore | 30% | 621 |
| Vagaro | 29% | 471 |
Limitations
What this study cannot tell you
- 41% of substantive reviews were not matched by the taxonomy — idiosyncratic one-off narratives. The miss rate is roughly uniform across apps, so comparisons hold, but every percentage here is a floor rather than a true rate.
- App store reviews over-represent the daily user. Buyers complain on G2, Capterra and in churn calls; those sources block automated collection and are not represented.
- No recency weighting. A complaint from 2021 counts the same as one from last week; some cited failures may already be fixed.
- Store coverage is uneven. Some apps are iOS-only in practice, so their low-star share is computed from Apple data alone.
We're building against this data
Bookkind — A booking platform where the client-facing experience is the product — no forced account creation, instant reschedule and cancel, one client identity across every business. In development; the waitlist is on the home page.