Two UK-built swim school platforms with STA support and a shared belief that software should reduce admin, not add to it. The key difference is how they price — and how that plays out as your school grows.
Disclosure: This comparison is written by SwimsCool. We've tried to represent Soakly fairly based on their publicly available information, but you should read their own site and ideally trial both platforms before deciding.
SwimsCool and Soakly are probably the two most similar platforms in the UK swim school market. Both are genuinely built for UK swim schools (not adapted from US software), both are contract-free, both support STA and Swim England frameworks, and both were created by people with real experience of running swim schools.
Soakly's headline advantage is native mobile apps — a dedicated app for teachers taking registers and a customer-facing app for parents. If you want your teachers on a phone app rather than a mobile browser, that's a real differentiator.
The main advantage of SwimsCool is pricing. Soakly charges 40p per swimmer per month beyond the first 125 included in their £50 minimum. A growing school with 300 pupils pays £120/month. At 500 pupils, it's £200/month. SwimsCool's flat rate doesn't change regardless of how many pupils you enrol.
Soakly pricing: £50/mo minimum includes 125 active swimmers; 40p/mo per swimmer beyond that. SwimsCool shown at Starter plan flat rate. Both platforms are contract-free.
| Feature | SwimsCool | Soakly |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Starting price | £29/mo Lower | £50/mo minimum |
| Pricing model | Flat rate Predictable | Per swimmer (40p/mo) |
| Contract | ✓ None | ✓ None |
| Free trial | 14 days, no card | 1 month free Longer |
| Payments | ||
| GoCardless Direct Debit | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stripe card payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Payment reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling & Classes | ||
| Class scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Online booking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Session attendance tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-venue support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Utilisation reporting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Skill Tracking & Frameworks | ||
| Swim England framework | ✓ | ✓ |
| STA framework | ✓ | ✓ STA endorsed |
| Custom skill frameworks | ✓ | ✓ |
| Portals & Apps | ||
| Owner / admin web portal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teacher / staff portal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Parent portal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Native teacher mobile app | — Mobile web | ✓ iOS & Android Soakly wins |
| Native parent mobile app | — Mobile web | ✓ iOS & Android Soakly wins |
| Staff Management | ||
| Staff management | ✓ | ✓ |
| Staff holiday tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Qualification tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Security & Compliance | ||
| Multi-factor authentication (MFA) | ✓ All accounts Yes | Not advertised |
| UK-built & hosted | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR compliant | ✓ | ✓ |
This is the defining difference. Soakly's model works out well for smaller schools — at 100 swimmers you pay £50/month, which is reasonable. But every new pupil you enrol adds 40p to your monthly bill. A school growing from 150 to 400 swimmers sees its Soakly bill rise from £60/month to £160/month — automatically, with no change in what you get for it.
With SwimsCool's flat rate, the economics flip as you grow: each new pupil effectively costs you less per swimmer, because the fixed cost is spread across more pupils.
Annual cost at 400 swimmers: Soakly costs approximately £160/month (£1,920/year). SwimsCool costs £29/month (£348/year) — a difference of £1,572 per year for comparable features.
Soakly's clearest advantage is dedicated iOS and Android apps for both teachers and parents. Teachers can take registers on their phone, and parents get push notifications and progress updates through an app rather than a browser.
SwimsCool is fully mobile-optimised and works well on phones — teachers take registers and log skills through the mobile browser. But it isn't a native app, which means no push notifications and a slightly less integrated experience. If teachers at your school are particularly resistant to using a mobile website, or if your parents are used to a native app experience, this matters.
Soakly offers a one-month free trial — longer than SwimsCool's 14 days. If you want more time to test a platform with real class data before deciding, that extra two weeks is useful.
SwimsCool enables TOTP-based MFA (two-factor authentication) for all accounts — owner, teacher, and parent. This is increasingly relevant as schools are held to higher standards on data protection for children's records. Soakly does not currently advertise MFA support.
Soakly's "built by swim school owners, for swim school owners" positioning resonates because it's true — and SwimsCool was built from the same starting point. Both platforms have avoided the generic class-management trap and built around the specific workflows of UK swim schools. If you trial both, you'll notice they feel more similar to each other than either feels to Jackrabbit or iClassPro.
Both platforms are contract-free, so there's no penalty for moving. We can help with migrating your class and swimmer data.