Comparison

Set the Tune vs the spreadsheet.

Every August, someone at the school loses a week to the grid: availability forms in one tab, the draft schedule in another, conflicts found by squinting. Spreadsheets are free and infinitely flexible - and they check nothing. Here is the honest trade.

What the spreadsheet is good at
  • ♩Free
  • ♩Infinitely flexible - any layout you can imagine
  • ♩Everyone already knows how to use one
  • ♩No new tool to learn or pay for
What it will never do
  • ✱Warn you that two students landed in the same slot
  • ✱Know that a teacher cannot get from one house to the next in 10 minutes at 4:30pm
  • ✱Notice a teacher booked through lunch, or past an 8-hour day
  • ✱Balance alternating A/B weeks
  • ✱Rebuild itself when three families change their availability in week two
CapabilitySet the TuneSpreadsheets
One-click schedule optimization (whole roster)♩ Yes-
Automatic conflict detection - double-booking, availability, overlaps♩ Yes-
Drive-time-aware scheduling for traveling teachers (real traffic data)♩ Yes-
Teacher workday rules - 8-hour cap, meal-break compliance♩ Yes-
A/B (alternating) week balancing♩ Yes-
Messy-file roster import (CSV/DOCX) with AI cleanup♩ YesIt IS the file
Waitlist with one-click placement♩ Yes-
Drag-and-drop workbench with live conflict checks♩ Yes-
PDF / CSV schedule exports per teacher and family♩ YesManual
Costs nothing-♩ Yes

Based on each product's published feature list and pricing page, June 2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.

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What Set the Tune doesn't do.
Tuition invoicing, attendance, parent portals, family messaging. On purpose. Set the Tune is the scheduling layer - it builds the calendar your admin tools manage. If you need full studio admin, keep it and use both.
Set the Tune
  • ♩Starter $79 / Pro $129 / Studio $199 per month, per school
  • ♩Sized by students you actually schedule, not your raw roster
  • ♩Unlimited teachers on every tier - one price per school, never per teacher
  • ♩Free look at signup: build your real schedule free, pay only to export and keep it
The spreadsheet
  • ♩Free (plus the week of someone’s time it costs every season)

Keep the spreadsheet, actually

Your spreadsheet is probably how availability arrives - and that is fine. Set the Tune imports the messy file directly (CSV or DOCX), cleans it up with AI, and turns it into a schedule the engine has already checked. The spreadsheet stays the inbox. It stops being the workbench.

Schedule the season in an afternoon, not a week.

See your schedule freeSee pricing
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